Political lessons from a pandemic, part 2

 

                                                      Photo by Gilbert Ortega on Unsplash

 

 

Its frightening how quickly people will embrace authoritarianism, and show willingness to forfeit their hard earned civil liberties, during a crisis.  Governments have wasted no time in vastly expanding their powers and subverting the peoples rights, all done in the name of protecting public health and slowing the disease’s spread. Less than a month ago, medical martial law was inconceivable throughout the west. Now, it’s becoming a nightmarish reality. As COVID-19 continues to disperse death and despair in it’s wake,  a hysterical public subjugates itself to the state, pleading for physical and economic security in a time of turmoil. But how far will it go? To what end will these emergency measures lead us.  In desperation, society might end up making a dangerous deal in which there is no return.

 

Billions of people around the world are now under some form of quarantine, or  restricted in their movement because of stay at home orders, by the political authorities. In India, a nation with 1.3 billion people, where more than 70 million live in extreme poverty, citizens who violate the three week lockdown rules are attacked by police with batons, forced to squat down in small circles drawn on the ground with chalk, and perform various humiliating exercises as punishment under police supervision. In West Bengal, a man was beaten to death by police after he attempted to leave his house to buy milk during the lockdown. In Kolkata, a woman has been arrested for spreading “fake news” about the coronavirus on social media.  Thousands of migrant workers are left stranded after the sudden announcement, and face continuous harassment by law enforcement.

In the United Kingdom, PM Boris Johnson (who himself has now tested positive for COVID-19) made the ominous announcement that the entire country was to shut down, instructing all citizens to stay home, or face legal penalties. The U.K. has been drifting into an insufferable police state for some time now, demonstrated by the disturbing fact that approximately 3,000 people are arrested each year for offensive comments posted online. In response to the pandemic, parliament has hastily passed the “Coronavirus Bill”, which threatens the rights of every citizen living in the U.K. Of particular concern, the legislation describes how authorities can detain anyone who may be “potentially” infected with COVID-19, forcibly extract biological samples from individuals for testing, and shut down events and gatherings.  The bill stipulates these extraordinary new powers could last for a period of up to two years, with a “government review” every six months. Meanwhile, the Derbyshire police, oblivious to the Big Brother comparisons it would naturally produce, has taken to filming innocent hikers with a drone, and using the footage to publicly shame people for violating the lockdown. Many in the British press, like elsewhere in the world, have enthusiastically supported these authoritarian actions, with a few dissenting voices such as Peter Hitchens and Brendan O’Neill.

Across the English Channel, France is making all of the same mistakes, only on a higher order. President Emmanuel Macron, who perhaps sees himself as a noble reincarnation of Napoleon Bonaparte, has issued orders for all citizens to practice self-isolation. During the national lockdown, citizens are required to fill out an official form, explaining their reason for leaving home. Like many other countries, the narrowly accepted justifications for leaving include purchasing food, seeking medical attention, or solitary exercise. Failing to present these government required papers to the authorities will result in fines. It almost appears as if Macron and Édouard Philippe are trying to imitate the GDR, but they reassure us their motives are virtuous. Conveniently, the states ban on public gathering of more than 100 people will make it difficult for the gilets jaunes, now on their 70th consecutive weekend of protest, to organize. Unsurprisingly, the military has been mobilized to assist in containing the virus (or was it the population?), in what Chef des Armées Macron has called“Operation Resilience”.

In the American empire, the situation has gone from bad to worse.  With roughly 100,000 thousand COVID-19 cases confirmed, more than half of the United States has been placed under stay at home orders. The vicissitude of the viral outbreak has created perfect opportunities for the political class, and the coronavirus crisis is rapidly becoming a constitutional crisis. A number of reports are showing how personal data is being harvested and used by the ubiquitous, Orwellian surveillance apparatus, in an effort to allegedly “combat the spread of COVID-19”. The plutocratic, technocratic, masters of Silicon Valley have vowed to more carefully monitor and control content on their platforms. This is nothing more than an euphemism for greater levels of censorship. In the background, the Trump administration is quietly acquiring authoritarian emergency powers, such as invoking the Defense Production Act, and petitioning congress to enable the Department of Justice to indefinitely detain citizens, without a trial, “whenever the district court is fully or partially closed by virtue of any natural disaster, civil disobedience, or other emergency situation.” And yet, ending habeas corpus seems to be gaining some popularity in these troubled times, with law professors pleading for the Federal government to relinquish it. All in the name of stopping the coronavirus, and only temporarily, of course. Between the aforementioned changes to U.S. law, the Patriot Act, and the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, what would be left of the bill of rights?

In the U.S, well established foreign policy agenda’s are being advanced, under the cover of the pandemic. With all of the media’s attention on the contagious COVID-19 infection numbers, or a constant update on the current death toll,  insidious Deep state objectives are being pushed forward, with scarcely any scrutiny. For example, the United States Government has indicted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on charges of narco-terrorism. This is a clear escalation in its committed campaign of regime change, where the final step is removing Maduro from power, and installing in his place the puppet politician Juan Guaidó. The U.S. has also ramped up it’s sanctions against Iran, hoping to maximize the pressure while their medical system is tested by the spread of the disease. The Trump administration is also taking every chance it gets to explicitly remind the public that COVID-19 originated in China, subtly shifting blame, and incorporating this message into their information warfare stratagem. All of this can be contextually understood in the U.S. governments longstanding “pivot to Asia”.

 

The novel coronavirus poses a major public health challenge, around the world. As of this writing, there are more then half a million confirmed cases, with approximately 27,000 deaths.  People should understand the severity of this new disease, and act responsibly, to protect their, and the communities, health. Nevertheless, we should not lose sight to how governments around the world are directly benefiting from the crisis, and its surrounding hysteria. It allows the state to cast themselves as benevolent saviors, while imposing draconian, authoritarian, “emergency measures” which will be used to obtain new power and control over society. In the tempest of this global pandemic, we should be vigilant against the pernicious political plays that are being taken. One of the greatest threats societies will be confronted with is how during this pandemic pandemonium, our world, both politically, and economically, could be fundamentally transformed, and it could occur without enough people noticing. Humanity will finally recover from the COVID-19 outbreak, and not notice the precious few liberties we still had, have been stolen. It will be as if nothing had changed, when in reality, everything had.  Do not underestimate the malicious opportunism from those in power. You have been warned.

 

 

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety”

Benjamin Franklin

 

 

 

To contact the author, write to Quinctius1991@protonmail.com