A text submitted anonymously to Montreal Counter-Info, critiquing covid-denialist, conspiracist, and "anti-lockdown" ideas within the anarchist movement.
“The Covid19 crisis has presented a challenge to anarchists and others who believe in a fully autonomous and liberated life” – so a recent submission to Montreal Counter-information declares. These words certainly resonate with our experiences. Anarchy in the UK is not just presented with a challenge; it is itself in crisis. Spycops, squatting ban, abusers, Corbynism, TERFs – the list is long, and the virus already found “the scene” in a sorry state. But Covid-19 represents something different, and on this we can agree with the analysis from Montreal. This is also where our agreement ends. In the following text we critique the analysis – we do so as its arguments are similar to those we have heard among friends and even comrades over the past months. Though the epidemic in the UK appears to be waning, its associated tendencies remain. The text calls for serious critiques, and so we offer the following in the spirit of antagonism against the present. We close with some suggested points of unity for anarchists in these times.
“Politicians”, their text begins, “lie”, and big pharma has exploited the pandemic. Maybe we can agree on a little more! In the UK, we were told that the virus was only a flu and to keep working as usual. (At the time of writing, the death count numbers over 125,000.) And we were told of Oxford’s vaccine, a people’s vaccine with no patent or borders (a mask that quickly slipped as the state reverted to vaccine nationalism). But these aren’t the lies they have in mind. Rather, they argue that politicians and the media have craftily overstated the virus’ threat, in a cunning plan to impose lockdowns and reap pharmaceutical profits. (Surely the hand-sanitiser corporations are behind this too..?) Anarchists, we are then told, have believed this powerful lie. Out of an “admirable [!] want to do well by the elderly and infirm”, the state has succeeded in “hacking our hearts and minds”.
This idea, appealing as it might be, is only a pale shadow of the reality. Covid-19’s threat is not a conspiracy, any more than Covid-19 itself. It is not the result of media hype any more than it is the product of Bill Gates’ brain or transmitted from 5G towers. It is the direct consequence of severe ecological destruction and capitalism’s toxic living conditions. Having brought it into existence, it is of course “exploited” by capital and state. As the critic notes, it is unlikely that capitalism will eradicate it, even if certain states claim this as their goal. Instead it is managed, incorporated, capitalised upon. This is at a far more fundamental level than creating profits for some pharmaceutical companies – we are seeing in the colonial core an historic restructure of work and class-composition. Our critic begins to scratch at this surface (they describe lockdowns as “classist”, as if a lack of lockdown would be classless!). Scratch a little deeper, and we see that capitalism faces a familiar contradiction: exploit workers, but ensure there are workers to be exploited tomorrow. Manage the virus, manage production. Like inflation, the death-graph must be regulated – kept just right. Everywhere this paradox is obvious: “stay at home” but “go to work”! Technocrats and managers debate the 2 metre rule just as the 19th century Factory Acts debated the relation of profits, health and cubic-feet per worker.1
We can call this capital’s “positive” side. Though each worker is cheap and replaceable, capital needs a body of workers. It can’t have everyone ill at once, and it can’t afford killing off too much of its working population. But it also finds and creates bodies superfluous to capitalist production: disposable bodies, bodies in the colonial margins, old bodies, less or unproductive bodies, bodies that cannot “work”. It’s here that we see capitalism’s eugenic and Malthusian tendency. This tendency, always present, has for the disabled been intensified in recent years, as the numerous lives lost due to benefit cuts demonstrate. Since the beginnings of “public health” in the 19th century, triage systems (a military invention) have ranked bodies in a hierarchy of value, rationing resources under conditions of artificial scarcity. In recent times, do-not-resuscitate notices imposed on Covid-19 patients with learning disabilities were the result of a care algorithm – tech meets “accidental” eugenics.2 Capitalism itself could accurately be described as an algorithm of crypto-eugenics, always at risk of fascism outright. Like fascism, Covid-19 presents an existential threat to the lives of certain minorities – the proletarian disabled and the elderly in particular – and a slower death to others.3 And like fascism, liberal democracies allow it to exist, manage it, keep their monster on the leash. At times this management fails: health-care systems collapse, production plummets. At other times, the far-right call for the monster to be set free.
Recognising the pandemic as an existential threat is where “our conversation should begin”. The critic talks of anarchists on the one hand, and the elderly and “infirm” on the other. It’s the anarchist that is agent-subject here, their freedom to act with or without them (the “vulnerable”) in mind. It erases from the beginning elderly anarchists, disability anarchism. Where are they and their freedoms in this imagined revolt? Our critic continues: as free anarchists, we also care for others, we co-operate with “consent” and without “force”. But who’s force, what consent? It’s a simple truth that your right to drink in the pub (that is, the right of the business to re-open) shits on the freedom of those at serious risk, those a few links down the chain of transmission. These chains of transmission are our chains. As anarchists we affirm the violence of liberation. Let us be clear: those that threaten the disabled cannot be consented with. We will find no freedom in frozen morgues.
The critic goes on to downplay the threat of Covid-19, a familiar refrain. Montreal Analysis come Barrington Deceleration – talk about technocrats! They cite statistics on average risks, masking the deadly risks to specific minorities (it won’t be bad for you!). They pit Covid-risks against cancer treatment (we can only afford one or the other!), despite the virus being far more deadly for those fighting cancer. Even were Covid-19 somewhat less risky (look, only 60,000 deaths!), the crypto-eugenic logic remains. In the UK, we must critically analyse recent events – particularly that certain assemblages of the state openly plotted course for “herd immunity” without a vaccine. It’s safe to assume that this Malthusian wet-dream would have led to health-system collapse and perhaps half a million deaths (“acceptable losses”).4
Where the critic calls on anarchists to question and critique the Covid-19 threat, we call on anarchists to reflect critically on eugenics as a logic of capital and state. We must also grapple seriously with its nasty history in the anarchist tradition, from Emma Goldman’s writings to sections of primitivist and anti-civ thought. As pandemics become more prevalent and eco-fascisms enter the mainstream, anarchists must fight to ensure nobody is “left behind”.
Finally, our friend attacks the tyranny of lockdown, claiming that as anarchists this should be our aim, and that in failing to do so we have cowardly ceded ground to the far-right. But their target is both abstract and confused. They use the terms curfew, lockdown and closures interchangeably (one of their cited articles even describes mandated mask wearing as “draconian”!) and argue that these measures must be attacked “in principle” as they are imposed without “consent”. We argue that as anarchists there is no state which can be consented to, and that the very notion of a social contract has nothing to do with anarchy. Rather than make vague statements for #freedom in the style of the Tea party right, we must locate and attack the instruments of power and control. “Lockdown” has come to mean a myriad of very contrasting measures – from asking people to stay at home to policed curfews, from enforcing meager workplace health and safety to the breaking of strikes, from closing businesses and schools to violent prison lockdowns (the term’s original meaning), from fining tourists and quarantine hotels to detaining migrants in military camps. It should be obvious which of these as anarchists we must attack, and which we can leave alone – or even fight for.
We must define our targets and recognise our enemies. Free business has nothing to do with our freedom. Simply opposing lockdown “edicts from on high” is as empty as supporting all protest. In the UK we have seen large, rowdy Covid-conspiracy demos led by celebrity anti-Semites, but we have also seen unpolitical gatherings fighting the police – as well as organised demonstrations for black lives. The US presents an even simpler dichotomy. Nothing could be clearer than the difference between the late-Spring business protests against Democratic governors and the Summer’s black uprising against the police. The first stood for the rights of small businesses and merged into the right-wing militia movement. The second exploded anger at the cops, expropriated goods and created temporary autonomous spaces. As anarchists we know where we stand.
Speculative points of unity:
Smash crypto-eugenics, of the right and of the left
Obstruct Covid-conspiracy demos, recognising them as far-right mobs
Resist the criminalisation of the pandemic, policing powers, curfews and intensified surveillance
Target the reinforced border regime and “lifeboat fascism”
Organise against the return to unsafe workplaces
Fight the evictions of anarchist spaces and the mass-eviction wave
Further networks of mutual aid and act with dangerous care
Sabotage ecological destruction and animal exploitation, the cause of present and future pandemics
Analyse the changing terrain, refuse the postponement of anarchy
- 1 “It has been stated over and over again that the English doctors are unanimous in declaring that where the work is continuous, 500 cubic feet is the very least space that should be allowed for each person. … [but were this to happen] [t]he very root of the capitalist mode of production, i.e., the self-expansion of all capital, large or small, by means of the “free” purchase and consumption of labour-power, would be attacked. Factory legislation is therefore brought to a deadlock before these 500 cubic feet of breathing space. The sanitary officers, the industrial inquiry commissioners, the factory inspectors, all harp, over and over again, upon the necessity for those 500 cubic feet, and upon the impossibility of wringing them out of capital. They thus, in fact, declare that consumption [tuberculosis] and other lung diseases among the workpeople are necessary conditions to the existence of capital.” Karl Marx, Das Kapital (Chapter Fifteen: Machinery and Modern Industry, Section 9). If we assume a work-room height of 10 feet, 500 cubic feet would give a base of approximately 7 x 7 feet, 7 feet being a little more than 2 metres.
On the 26 June 2020, England revised its guidance from 2 meters to 1. Whilst “the evidence shows that relative risk may be 2-10 times higher”, “there are severe economic costs to maintaining 2 metre distancing. With a 2 metre rule in place, it is not financially viable for many businesses to operate.” https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/review-of-two-metre-social-distancing-guidance/review-of-two-metre-social-distancing-guidance
- 2The linked Guardian article is from February 2021, but concerns regarding do-not-resuscitate forms were raised by medical establishment bodies at the beginning of the UK epidemic. https://www.cqc.org.uk/news/stories/joint-statement-advance-care-planning
- 3“I just need you to recognize that this shit is killing you, too, however much more softly, you stupid motherfucker, you know?” Fred Moten on racism (interview, 2013). Vaccine nationalism is increasingly shifting this to the “postcolonial” elderly and disabled. Other groups of course include certain sections of the workforce (mostly low-paid) and people of colour, the urban poor, the incarcerated, migrants. (We would argue that the existential threat directly applies here to the elderly and disabled, whereas the Covid-regime intensifies existing threats against the latter groups.) A lot could also be said about the privatisation of Covid-risk to the household and the domestic abuse this has further enabled. The UK’s Office for National Statistics estimates disabled people as making up 60% of all Covid-19 deaths (November 2020). Similar to “BAME” deaths, “raised risk is because disabled people are disproportionately exposed to a range of generally disadvantageous circumstances compared with non-disabled people.” https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/articles/coronaviruscovid19relateddeathsbydisabilitystatusenglandandwales/24januaryto20november2020#main-points
- 4The ONS estimated that approximately 15% of the population had antibodies to Covid-19 on the 18th of January 2021 (the rate was lower for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland). On this date the total UK deaths of people who had received a positive test result (a relatively low measure) was approximately 95,000. “Herd immunity” is estimated to require a threshold of at least 60% (the percentage Chief Scientific Advisor Patrick Vallance gave in his interview with Sky News on March the 13th, 2020) possibly more. That is, to reach herd immunity without a vaccine, more than four times as many people in the UK would need to have been infected than had in January 2021, making it reasonable to assume four times as many deaths (giving 380,000 as a conservative estimate). This is before considering reinfection, the lack of treatments at the beginning of the pandemic, likely health-system collapse, the higher chance of new variants etc. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveyantibodydatafortheuk/3february2021
More evidence has emerged of herd immunity without a vaccine being a pushed for strategy prior to March 23rd, 2020. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-54252272
Comments
Thanks for that, great
Thanks for that, great article.
For a recent debate over
For a recent debate over similar issues see comments below article here; http://libcom.org/blog/new-covid-denial-single-eric-clapton-van-morrison-21122020
Yes, that's a really good
Yes, that's a really good text - what was written by Montreal anarchists - https://mtlcounterinfo.org/on-the-anarchist-response-to-the-global-pandemic/. Greetings them for that from russian anarcho-syndicalists
And another response to the
And another response to the current article 'Anarchy, Lockdown and Crypto-Eugenics', also posted on Montréal Counter-Information: https://mtlcounterinfo.org/you-cant-be-anti-state-pro-lock-down-a-response-to-anarchy-lock-downs-and-crypto-eugenics/
Not a very good response
Not a very good response that, it seems to be based on the idea that this text is pro-lockdown, which seems like a bit of a misreading.
Montreal Counter-info
Montreal Counter-info
South Essex Heckler and Estuary stirrings are the same group.
So is Winter Oak and the Acorn.
So they've double counted and listed three groups as five. Could be a genuine mistake but a bit desperate either way.
Winter Oak have been pushing some extremely dodgy people, some of that is detailed here: https://nothingiseverlost.wordpress.com/2018/06/20/in-defence-of-anarchism-and-antifascism-a-reply-to-the-winter-oak/
Some anarchists in Wales and England
This is the key thing. It has very much suited all of the state responses (whether anti-lockdown Tories, pro-lockdown Independent Sage and Owen Jones, the government itself which alternates between the two) to posit lockdown and no lockdown as opposites, rather than simply different faces of the same overall strategy. Both of them are based on avoiding any kind of universal material support for people to be able to withdraw from work, either when they're sick for essential workers, or for a few months during the worst of the pandemic. So you either get no support and crammed back into workplaces, or some limited support gets handed out when the entire population is placed under variations of curfew.
Also, the stuff about "The
Also, the stuff about "The disease was originally believed to have a fatality rate of 1% or more. A year later, we know that this is not even close to being true." - as if the fatality rate of the disease was a fixed, unchanging thing, and not related to stuff like the level of medical care provided. What was the fatality rate in Italy at that point where hospitals were totally overloaded? I imagine it must have been a fair bit worse than the current average, and those conditions, or worse, are what you're looking at in the absence of any measures to prevent spreading.
R Totale wrote: Also, the
R Totale
It's also just a complete lie.
Recent study from Imperial college shows the fatality rate in high-income countries is just over 1% https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/207273/covid-19-deaths-infection-fatality-ratio-about/
It's lower in low income countries - purely because there are proportionally less old people to get sick and die.
But even if you average it out, it's 'close' to 1%. The people claiming 0.1% and similar are places like the Daily Mail - which can only be done by lying or looking at deaths as a percentage of population instead of infection estimates.
What an offence this
What an offence this 'critique' is. We are experiencing the greatest ruling class offensive on global workers in history under guise of pandemic. Nothing less. The slightest application of critical thinking can dismantle this charade in 5 mins yet what do we get here? An apology for fascism.
- (At the time of writing, the death count numbers over 125,000.) If we're gonna start off reciting official regime narrative we may as well start with the most easily debunked. FYI, an official covid death is, "a death from ANY cause within 28 days of a positive PCR test". If you do not understand how fraudulent the PCR test is at this point then stop reading now and go educate yourself.
- Covid-19’s threat is not a conspiracy, any more than Covid-19 itself. It is not the result of media hype any more than it is the product of Bill Gates’ brain or transmitted from 5G towers. Laughable. All cause mortality in Eng & Wal since 1993 finds that 2020 comes in 9th. Yes, 9th, just scraping into the top 10 even though the regime did their best to murder 10,000's of our elders in spring by discharging them wholesale back into care homes from hospitals without knowing their covid status.
- They cite statistics on average risks, masking the deadly risks to specific minorities. Here we see them lap up official narrative like a compliant house cat. Virtue signalling nonsense. How are those covid deaths in Africa and Asia stacking up?
- It’s safe to assume that this Malthusian wet-dream would have led to health-system collapse and perhaps half a million deaths (“acceptable losses”) I could scarcely believe my eyes when I read this. Parroting the most egregious regime lies, the very lies that enabled this murderous, bio-fascist lockdown. 500,000 deaths? The estimate from the discredited Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London. The "dodgy dossier" that got the ball rolling; and here they are - supposed anarchists doing the regime's dirty work.
- Finally, our friend attacks the tyranny of lockdown, claiming that as anarchists this should be our aim, and that in failing to do so we have cowardly ceded ground to the far-right. Disgraceful. I was there Saturday. On the streets with brothers and sisters of all different shapes and sizes, all ages and all colours and creeds. How dare you attempt to tarnish that demonstration with some lazy left - right paradigm.
- In the UK we have seen large, rowdy Covid-conspiracy demos led by celebrity anti-Semites, but we have also seen unpolitical gatherings fighting the police – as well as organised demonstrations for black lives Open Democracy funded, divide and rule race baiting riots good. Ordinary workers making their voice heard = Nazi Jew hater. I know, the RC must be pissing their pants reading this 'critique'.
- Obstruct Covid-conspiracy demos, recognising them as far-right mobs And they save the best for last. What should we do if we see a cross section of workers from all over the country demonstrating against the bio-fascist lockdown that has murdered 10,000's of our countrymen and women, that will directly ensure 100,000's of future preventable deaths due to cancelled diagnoses and postponed treatments, lock up workers and deny them from making a living, from denying working class children an education and for the largest wealth transfer in human history? Oh, yeah. Label them all Nazi's and only protest when the regime tells us it's ok to come out from behind the sofa.
A total disgrace from start to finish and the author must be considered an enemy of the working people as a regime shill couldn't have written a more egregious piece of ruling class propaganda.
That reads no different than
That reads no different than any other right-wing or small buisness tyrant COVID skeptic stuff you see in the States.
It checks off a lot of the boxes. Mention of Soros, claims about juking the stats, downplaying extreme right participation in 'open back up' movement, claim that other health issues are or are going to dwarf COVID.
No thanks.
DeadBroke
DeadBroke
Yeah this is just racist, but thanks I guess for making it so obvious.
The reasons for higher death rates in ethnic minorities (which intersects with class) are issues like:
- more likely to live in areas with higher air pollution
- more likely to work in the NHS and care roles, or other 'key worker' jobs that can't be done from home.
- more likely to live in overcrowded and/or multi-generational households
The reasons there are lower deaths in Africa and Asia:
- Most African and some Asian countries have overall much younger populations than the US and Europe, less old people to catch covid and die means a lower death rate.
- Many Asian countries especially in East Asia have experience with SARS, bird flu etc., so their pandemic response was better (test and trace, much earlier widespread use of face masks, better PPE supplies for health workers etc).
But your post implies the only valid reason would be genetics.
DeadBroke
BLM funded by Soros is it?
Ad hominem nonsense.
Ad hominem nonsense.
Deadly risk to specific
Deadly risk to specific minorities? There is no 'deadly' risk to specific minorities unless that minority is the demographic of 80yo+ males with severe co-morbidities; and even then, according to a study by Stockholm University and corroborated by Prof. John Ioannidis, the risk to that particular group - the most vulnerable group - is a 79.92% chance of survival with the next most at risk group, 80yo+ females with one or more underlying conditions, at 92.92% chance of survival.
I expect you're gung-ho for the vaccine and want all workers to be pumped full of the experimental corporate gene therapy as well.
Useful idiots, the lot of you.
Do you want to tell us some
Do you want to tell us some more about who you think is funding the riots and why?
Quote: Ad hominem
As with covid, you clearly don't understand what an ad hominem is. Sure, Juan Conatz did use a logical fallacy in their reply but not an ad hominem. Me calling you an absolute fucking moron with a poor grasp on reality is.
Still waiting on any
Still waiting on any corroborating evidence to support your claims that hasn't come directly from regime sources.
The workers of the world have lost $3.7tr in wealth in the last 12 months whilst the billionaires have increased theirs by $3.9tr.
You fake-left cretins are a disgrace and are enemies of the working man and woman.
Do you want to share some of
Do you want to share some of those sources that you consider more reliable?
You cite Neil Ferguson as a
You cite Neil Ferguson as a source to bolster your argument. Neil Ferguson!!!
Even MSM apologists for this fascist regime wouldn't countenance citing that charlatan for fear of ridicule. Yet here you are; espousing regime lies. If that is your level then you're so far behind the unmasking of this charade as to be at square 1.
As for sources, I have already quoted you universities and professors that aren't suckling at the teet of big pharma. Maybe go look them up and begin your journey. Maybe remember who you are. Maybe remember who the enemy is and what war we're fighting; because at the moment you're just embarrassing yourself. Cui bono.
Would you be able to point
Would you be able to point out when I've cited Neil Ferguson? I was going to point out that I didn't actually have anything to do with writing the article, but then thinking about it, I'm really not convinced that article ever cites Ferguson either, it seems like you've just decided it does.
How does Eat Out To Help Out fit into your understanding of what the "regime line" is?
And what are the sources you consider reliable on the question of "Open Democracy funded, divide and rule race baiting riots"?
DeadBroke wrote: Deadly risk
DeadBroke
My uncle who lives down the street from me contracted Covid in December, thankfully he recovered and doesn't appear to have had any long term effects. He spent two weeks barely able to move, and looked like a zombie when we dropped off supplies. He described the situation as feeling like he was going to die, and had that feeling for at least a week while fighting for breath.
And again, what country do you live in? In the UK the government did nothing for months, hell I remember them making jokes about silly Italians when they were struggling. My work also did nothing until we protests and forced them to make some concessions. Concessions which they're currently trying to get out of maintaining, we'll see how it goes.
A vaccine is not gene therapy its a weakened form of a virus, their are also open source vaccines being developed like the one by Finland https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/finnish-developed_open-source_coronavirus_vaccine_nearly_ready_for_testing/11342151
I also note that having a vaccine isn't being made compulsory which seems like and obvious flaw in whatever sinister plan is being cooked up to install microchips or whatever.
DeadBroke wrote: There is no
DeadBroke
Ioannidis is using his latest academic paper to attack other researchers as not sufficiently credentialed as an excuse not to answer their critiques. As such a fan of pointing out logical fallacies I'm sure this will concern you.
Reddebrek wrote: A vaccine
Reddebrek
Something like AstraZeneca is a weakened form of a virus (i.e. it uses an adenovirus as the transmitter), but the mRNA (Pfizer, Moderna) vaccines don't have any actual virus at all in them and instead essentially tell cells what to do, rather than exposing the cells to virus and hoping they figure it out. This is why the mRNA vaccines are able to get to well over 90% efficiency compared to 70-80% for traditional vaccines. mRNA is new (only developed past couple of decades), but now it's been proven to work, there is the start of work on malaria vaccine https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/03/01/a-malaria-vaccine-candidate - which just has never been anywhere close before.
The problem with vaccines isn't the actual vaccines themselves, it's:
- Intellectual property, proprietary supply chains, vaccine nationalism etc. preventing accessibility.
- Price gouging soon.
- Reliance on vaccines and curfews to curb the virus, and not dealing with any of the root causes of the pandemic.
For example 20 million mink were culled in Denmark, after Covid infected mink in farms, which then reinfected humans with a mutation from the Mink. Without dealing with industrial farming and ecological devastation more generally (which has been linked to every other recent pandemic), there's a constant source of new pathogens, and vaccines are always going to be a year or five behind.