I really don’t like polemics. I don’t like reading them and I don’t like writing them. Although I’m not writing about an individual, I am concerned that like everyone else in the world, leftists and especially anarchists have lost their minds.
I’ve been stunned and saddened over the last month or so from the willingness of anarchists to obey and comply with lockdown orders, sheltering in place, social distancing and wearing a mask in public while at the same time condemning protests in the US and around the world. This is the kind of reaction I’d expect from the liberal, center-left and all its boot-licking, obedience to government officials and the mainstream media apparatus.
Whether it’s social media, blog posts or the compliant messages coming from leftist-owned businesses*, the level of fear and obedience to the pandemic narrative is shocking. I’m especially shocked at the anarchists who seem to have halted their common sense and independent thinking only to accept fascism into their lives.
Anarchists who lift up science and rational thinking are now embracing the propaganda and lies spewed by mainstream media, government officials, the CDC and WHO.
They are rejecting the scientific message of doctors, immunologists, epidemiologists and virologists who’ve come out to remind us that we have an immune system that can cope with viruses, bacteria and disease; and what we are doing is the opposite of what we should do to stay healthy against a respiratory illness.
My comrades have embraced the virus/pandemic narrative. This is hard for me to get my head around. The mere fact that these people have absorbed the lies and regurgitate the mantras put out by capitalists like Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci and the World Economic Forum, fills my heart with sadness.
The idea that the only people pushing back and protesting the closure of our society are right-wing, gun-toting, Trump-supporting, conspiracy theorists who want to put everyone at risk is a false narrative being embraced and adopted by anarchists.
They have fallen prey to a reductive and reactionary, multi-million dollar marketing/PR campaign from those who stand to profit from this pandemic. Their response is that anyone who wants the state, country, hell, the world to open up again is putting us all at risk of infection or even death because they’re selfish and that all they want is to bring capitalism back.
That may be the case in some circumstances. The pictures I’ve seen of these protests show a lot of nationalism through flag waving, American flags and yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” flags, people whose politics I personally don’t like. But the people I talk to who want things to open up are average people who want to see their extended family again, need to feed their children and pay their rent or mortgage.
They don’t see their protests as a demand to bring back capitalism. They want the lockdown to end and for things to go back to the way they were; not because of capitalism but because that’s what’s familiar. And although they don’t necessarily want to go back to those jobs they hated, they do want a sense of normalcy that is missing now. None of us really want things to go back to the way they were before.
My comrades are instead focusing on the wrong thing. The protestors don’t necessarily equal all the negative associations with capitalism. Some protestors like the Michigan farmers want to be able to go back to their fields during planting season. Sure they want to continue to work in their fields to make money, they have bills to pay after all. But they also need to work because that’s what they do, they farm and get fulfillment from that. Beyond that however, they have good reason to want to plant again because Michigan is one of the few states that feed the nation and if they don’t start planting soon we will be facing starvation from a famine that could have been avoided.
Instead, a lot of anarchists, like liberals are making a false equivalence between the demand for our human rights to be restored and selfishness. Their criticism is a reductive, binary argument that freedom and collective responsibility are diametrically opposed. That if you are demanding your rights to express yourself, gather together with others, defend yourself and freely move about is the equivalent of putting others at risk of death or disease. This makes no sense to me at all, especially coming from anarchists who are saying that our responsibility to the collective overrides the rights of the individual.
This once again is a reductive and one-dimensional attitude because the collective (society) cannot be free unless the individuals who make up that collective is free. “The collectivity needs individuals to be free, because without that freedom, the social organism would be dead.” Paul Cudenec
“The collectivity needs individuals to be free, because without that freedom, the social organism would be dead.” Paul Cudenec
By condemning those who are demanding freedom; by focusing on the disease and not the secondary effects of the lockdown, we are ignoring fascism. Because what’s coming is far worse than any virus.
While we are all inside sheltering in place a complete restructuring of our society is going on without our notice. We are experiencing a paradigm shift on a tectonic scale. The capitalism that protestors are accused of demanding is morphing into a monster we’ve never seen before. Governance as we know it is shifting from national to global, economies are being destroyed to usher in something new. And the population of the world is being targeted for a massive reduction.
The secondary effects of the lockdown are happening now. Suicide rates are increasing, substance abuse, child and spousal abuse is on the rise and with with the elderly locked away from their families, we can only guess that elder abuse is rampant behind the closed doors of the care facilities they live in.
What’s coming is far worse. The collapse of the food supply chain is going to bring a massive famine and cause starvation in wealthy, western countries as well as around the world. The shutting down of legacy structures and systems are changing the way children will be educated, how we work and how we exist as humans. This is not only an economic crisis, this is an existential crisis that goes far beyond what people can even imagine.
With COVID numbers actually shaping up to be like any flu season, not the biblical plague we were told it would be, I’m surprised at the attitudes toward people who want to go outside, socialize and get back to work. Going outside is good, not bad, and pushing back against the lockdown is the only way we can slowdown the oncoming rise of the radical centrist corporate, global governance that is behind the real plague we’re facing.
Anarchists, of all people, should recognize that the ruling class made up of billionaires supported by governments, government officials and NGOs like the World Economic Forum are pushing agendas to change the world in a way that will negatively effect all life on the planet and bring about a fascism we have never seen before.
The fascism of global governance that is coming will not arrive in a grand, bombastic style like the historical fascism of the German Nazi party but it will be just as cruel. It will instead arrive in a bland, corporate style with policies spelled out in neutral language. Our future will be a beige, colorless world–a color-blind society that will be just as racist, ageist, ableist, classist and prejudiced as corporations are when they’re not regulated or shamed into accepting marginalized communities.
Instead, we will be shamed for not doing what we’re told. And what we’ll be told will be wrapped in corporate feel-good language that claims to support community, the environment and the economy. But this will be nothing more than the same sort of scrubbing we see in corporate reports and will be translated into actions that look progressive, positive and trying to make the world a better place. Instead, these will be more shaming campaigns to keep people in their place, take away liberties, freedom of movement, speech and association. This new corporate governance, cannot have us expressing ourselves, defending ourselves or being who we are, human beings.
Leftists, anarchists, you need to pay attention. You need to wake up. What is going on is not what you think it is. What you believe as “me-first” individualism as capitalism and selfishness is really self-preservation. We need to recognize that people who are pushing back, may not know what is coming but they know something isn’t right. We need to drop our left-right divide and really adopt a collective approach to fighting the future enslavement of all people by the ruling class. Stop believing the lies that the governments of the world and the media are pushing. Start to look around and remember that we’ve evolved with viruses and bacteria and that our bodies have the ability to adapt and fight off disease. The time is now comrades, start educating yourselves about what is going on and ignore the propaganda being fed to you. I will provide links to help you get started. We really are all in this together but not in the way they say we are. We need to oppose the ever oppressive surveillance state and we can simply proceed as if they do not even exist.
Title taken from “Total Football” by Parquet Courts
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Whether you’re an anarchist or not, you can learn from the information provided in the sites linked below.
Book of Ours videos
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCL17omUxm36gOYVerD3630A/featured
The Art of Annihilation
http://www.theartofannihilation.com
Wrench in the Gears
https://wrenchinthegears.com
Wrong Kind of Green
http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org
Winter Oak
https://winteroak.org.uk
Green Anticapitalist Front
https://greenanticapitalist.org