The song of investment capital overseas

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Out of town,
my work takes me out of town.
I empty villages,
I burn their houses down,
I set up factories,
lay out plantations,
and bring prosperity
to the poorer nations.

The roads and rails run like cracks and carry me upon their backs.

[The Art Bears]

PARIS

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My bird, I’m expecting you,
I’m always watching the roads.
 
A few kilometres from the Elysian Fields, in the suburbs of Paris, there is one of the concentration camps for foreign workers. The friend with the car remembers his own problems, when he lived here and he used to eat boiled cats. “Thank goodness I’m past that,” he sighs upon the wheel unable to recognise anything all around, so much have the newly built apartment blocks transformed the place. And memory isn’t helping him, because memory wants to forget. All he has is a distant memory of a way up that should lead to a way down, and there… Two peasants, looking Yugoslavian, with their pouches on their shoulders, point him to a vague direction in the night… They leave the car at a square and go on on foot. “Didn’t I tell you? We’re here. This is the camp of SIMCA.”
 
The camp looks like an army training camp. Instead of buildings, there are metal containers, like oblong wagons with built-in wheels and floors covered with cement to prevent them from absorbing the humidity of the earth. In old containers there are four beds per chamber. In the new ones, two. A shared toilet, kitchen and bathroom. Doors, so to speak, are not there. You come in from the night, you go out into the night. They call the way between a “corridor”. Walking in the corridor, you hear, behind the closed doors, transistor music and voices – Spanish, Algerian, Portuguese, Greek. A sorrow at every door. A State at every sorrow. “And they all talk to the clouds / whose unity is blocked / by the boss, the sun, / like the migrants, / workers in the factory, / spread into separate thermometre tubes / lest they bring out, all together, / the fever of the mass.” And after they scatter them like that into separate camps, they divide them again inside each camp into various containers, making the communication between them problematic. Everything follows an architecture of morale breaking. Coming out of the toilet, an Italian showed them which door to knock.
 
“Come in.” Opening the door they faced a naked room, with two beds, a football calendar on the wall, and a transistor radio next to an electric heater. The time must have been about eight. The two roommates were sitting each on his own bed, back to the wall. They pretended to look for an Ananiadis. “This name does not exist here.” “He was here some years ago.” “Where does he work?” “In chains.” They look at each other. They wonder. Ananiadis. In chains. “And have you come to the right camp? Could you be looking for another factory?” The friend in the fur collar over his black coat insists: “We have a message for him from home.” A message? And who are these two who invade other people’s misery so indiscreetly? The guy with the glasses is checking out the space. Both workers, by experience hesitant to confide and sharing few words with strangers (even if the strangers speak their own language), shake their heads thoughtfully. Without the backgammon in the village coffee shop, they sit, from eight o’clock, with the tiny transistor keeping them company, near Sicilans, Serbians, Mauritanians, Catalans – no, the crucial point is the right dosage in the mix to avoid an explosion – they sit (who is the mother they’ve left behind, who is the sister they have to marry off, where are the fields, where are the olives, where are the springs, where are the cattle?) “migrants, coming from rural districts in their majority, are proletarised in the factories abroad”) inside this frozen tent, a wagon that got detached from the diesel engine that took off like a jet, an immobilised wagon, they sit in the prison of the foreign land, thousands of kilometres away from home, but without the pride of the political prisoner, or the courage, they sit inside a metal container, in the desolation of the walls, with the football team calendar, cut off, unspeaking, with their macedonian constitution, prematurely bald and using few words: “We don’t know him. He might have gone. We’ve been here since 1965” – until (the trip not leading to  any testimonies) the guard came with salvation, asking for the IDs 
and papers of the strangers who entered the camp without his permission. And the guy in the fur collar and the other one with the glasses, again they asked after the same name. “You’d better ask for him at the central offices in Nanterre.”
 
2
 
And you complain to me that your central heating is malfunctioning and that your toilet is in the hallway and not inside the house. You should go see the unseen camps of workers, the camps of your car brand, under the heavy shadow of the newly built apartment blocks, which are so well camouflaged with trees that you couldn’t even see them from an airplane, a few kilometres from the Elysian Fields, in the suburbs of Paris.
 
3
 
– I work in shipowners’ houses, and for the Big One. I work as a waiter in their parties. I know Paris. I’ve been living here for years. I know a lot of people. I used to sell Sweepstake tickets. Until things changed. They put their own people. In this life, my boy, everyone’s looking out for himself. No one cares about us poor. Me, until these good people, the shipowners, took me in, I ate the food off the cats. In the factory, after the workers finished their lunch, a fat woman came, she had an ass that wobbled from side to side, and picked up their leftovers, threw them to the cats. And I used to snatch them away from the cats and eat them. Until these good people took me in. And they spent twenty-seven hundred to dress me. What? I didn’t hear you? Drachmas? Twenty-seven hundred french francs, shiny new. If you please. There’s different kinds of rich. The idiot rich and the good rich. No, there are no beastly rich people. Idiots. If you’re clever, if you can spot what’s what, if you catch on quick, like me, you can tell them from the way they’ll talk to you at their whiskeys. The good one is going to say: “No, thank you, thank you,” twice. The idiot is just going to say: “no.” The butler needs to have an eagle eye, to see which glass is running low and fill it up again. There’s fifty-two numbers, i mean people, working for the shipowners. I don’t know which one of us you’re asking about. Those people, my boy, they don’t give a damn. They don’t care about art, either. Nor about books. Only about their money. And they are always sad. My bosses are always full of sadness. They have all this money and they don’t know what to do with it. Long faces. Isn’t this what they call the people who sulk and pull faces? What can I say. Us poor, we care. You’re hungry and you’re writing a book. Aren’t you? Someone who’s not hungry, why should they write? And they don’t care about whatever Papadopoulos [tn: dictator] or what’d you call them. They’re concerned about the possible devaluation of the franc or the British pound. And that’s all: they eat caviar, they drink champagne, and they’re sad. They’re looking after their own interest. What? Of course they get their hands bloody to climb over people. Who doesn’t do that to get ahead? Ah, enough! I learned one thing in the School for Destitute Boys: not to snitch. We had a teacher who’d tan our hide with the ruler every time we snitched. Here, on the hand, with the stick. That’s why when some people here approached me to spy, I told them, “you’ve tried the wrong door.” I’m not becoming the spy of anyone. I’m on nobody’s side. Never mind. Nobody. They say they’ve abolished the parliamentary exemption from bills. And all the free trips of these bullies, what are they? Who’s paying for them? In any case, you don’t know a thing, either. What goes on the newspapers is tall stories. Tonight the master is having lunch with the King, at Latina gate. Yes, sir. He’s coming back tomorrow. And the Big One is leaving tomorrow on the yacht of a big shipowner. These people know how to live their life, my boy. You see, I move in high society. This is why I drink milk. I suffer from my stomach. I go down to Greece in the summers, I go to a deserted island, and I see no people. This is what it means to be poor: you know how to live, at least.
 
4
 
The workers sat mingled with the students who were there to observe their assembly. They were not the workers you’d see in Greece: here they had the distorted faces of migrants. Without learning the language, what with the years they’ve lived in France – there was no chance of them “improving” their French, since they hadn’t had nannies when they were little –, they also forgot what was left of their Greek. At an oblong table, under the poster for the thirty years’ anniversary, the two councils, the legal and the illegal one, were erupting in counteraccusations every once in a while.
 
With his nasal voice, a short man debriefed the anti-dictatorship action of the Union. The protests, the appeals, the flyers in soldarity with the strikers of Renault. “I didn’t get one,” shouted someone from the audience. “Your own fault,” came the answer “we gave it to everyone.”
 
Luckily inside the rented room – a Moroccan restaurant which closes on Sundays – there weren’t many crying infants. Two pretty women were discussing where they could find large baking pans, like the ones they used in Greece, for spanakopita. “At the basement of the Samaritain,” whispered an “old cat” behind them. And one would marvel looking at a peasant woman from Thessaly with rosy red cheeks, who had been in France for three months and she still hasn’t turned yellow, hasn’t dried up, hasn’t…
 
Then the cashier made a debriefing. All expenses, in the order of 1,200 francs, ended in “centimies”. From the costume ball we collected 230 francs and 83 centimies. To rent the hall for March 25, we gave 340 francs and twelve centimies. In the end, 120 francs and 21 centimies were left in the fund. He sat down.
 
The fight broke out when someone accused a member of the retiring administrative council of “embezzling.” “You want to call me an embezzler! Come outside if you’re a man!” But the “outside” was a french boulevard under constant combing by the local police that fill up the buses for identity checks. It required other circumstances, stemming from other layers of Greekness.
 
The episode seemed to calm down as soon as the worker with the missing fingers in his right hand, who distributed the bulletin to incomers, stepped in the middle. A blond with blue eyes and red veins on the cheeks, one you’d think was French, while he came from Tyrnavos, tried to hit a woman in trousers who dropped a hint about him, but the slap came up short, so to speak, on the tie of the confectioner sitting next to the woman, on the same bench, who protected her.
 
A motion of no-confidence against one of the two councils gave a student the opportunity to make a scientific elaboration of the topic. With a trenchcoat on his arm, a fishbone jacket, and patent leather shoes, he sounded like “classical music inside a taverna.” The majority rejected the motion with their fists raised high.
 
A baby was whimpering and its mother took it out into the hallway. The worker with the missing fingers gave it a sweet.
 
– The colleague keeping the minutes isn’t writing a thing, someone remarked.
 
Next to the one who “wasn’t writing a thing” sat tiny Elpinor, with his broad smile, so broad that it reached his ears making his face seem split in two, who had left Greece in the first days of the dictatorship, because he’d been feeling he’d started to get spoiled in capitalism, with his newborn little factory, and observed then, in the first period, that the French said “Voila” rather than the “Void” that he remembered from school, and when his savings ran out and he had to work as a housepainter, he discovered what arrogant xenophobes the same French that he’d admired a priori were, and how many times he left his job, at the construction site, for the Greek sense of honour, until he got sick and to make it through he gave out the “Free Homeland” of London [tn: a democratic newspaper of emigrated Greeks], tiny Elpinor, who found his final refuge in the rigid party, seeing around him, everywhere, destruction, the plunge into social democracy, he hadn’t closed his shop just to return with the Papandreou-Karamanlis people as liberators, sweet, indomitable, with his wide smile bursting on his face like a gondola.
 
The clock of Saint Sulpice struck twelve. The chairman had to break the meeting. They unfortunately had to leave the rented room. The vote was next Sunday. Some ran off to catch the last metro. The women were complaining that they weren’t done today and had to come back next Sunday. They only had one day of rest, and they were passing it with their husbands’ political posturing. In the end, “who are the workers?” he wondered. Caught in the grindstone of the foreign land, they looked more like transplanted basil plants, which get a different smell at their contact with strange air. In Germany, many and together, they make up another picture. Here they bring to mind the remnant of a mural that’s been scratched off and the old plaster’s falling in pieces. “Every day our life becomes less.”
 

Of men and the flu

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Two are the most loyal companions of civilised humankind throughout its history: mice and the flu. There have been many infectious diseases that have changed the way of social interactions, human habits, even the organisation of cities and societies―like cholera, tuberculosis, typhus, syphilis, smallpox, or of course the bubonic plague. However, the flu, due to its limited lethality and its permanent presence, hasn’t been one of them. Even in its most lethal outbursts, it hasn’t embedded itself into the collective mind, it hasn’t left its mark in art and the records of history.

It’s surprising how little has been written about the spanish flu of 1918-1919, even though it killed between 30 and 50 million people. But on the other hand it came at the end of the enormous massacre and complete catastrophe of the 1st world war. It’s more interesting to examine two other infectious outbreaks of the flu, both “asian”: the one of ’57 and the one of ’69. They went by unnoticed from the world and from history—they caused no historic changes, imposed no new habits or ways of organising, they weren’t even recorded in literature or in art. The huge amount of radical critique from ’68 doesn’t contain any mentions of an epidemic that was quite deadlier than covid. Each of them left more than one million victims on a global scale: the one of ’57, one to two million; the one of ’69 up to four million if we count the subsequent waves. Making the corresponding extrapolations for today’s population, we’ll have to double the numbers: more than two million at minimum, even up to 8 million for each of them. And let’s keep in mind that we’re talking about much less “globalised” markets, and thus with less potential for infectious diffusion than today, and—this is important—with relatively cleaner air (not everywhere, but on average) than today. If we factor in the generalised aging of the population and the partial treatments for many chronic diseases, today’s victims would be analogically even more.

It’s a good question, so I think it’s worth looking into its various parameters, how each case was handled and what we can conclude from this about today’s situation. About why, in other words, for one much less dangerous flu, like the one of covid, there’s this global lockdown.

For reasons of cohesion mostly, let’s examine the so-called western states; that is, mostly, europe, america, and australia. In the two previous influenzas they did almost nothing. There are no records of generalised quarantine measures or putting the brakes on the economy. There will definitely have been exceptions with local measures of isolation, but on the whole both flu epidemics were medically treated.

As to the availability of medical treatment, the situation is more or less the same today—at least compared to ’69. There was extensive use of antibiotics against bacterial infections (the usual lethal complication of respiratory infections), and some antiviral treatments with limited results: that is, more or less what we have today. The situation in public health, if we take into account its degradation in the last years of rabid neoliberalism, might have been a little bit better than today. Regarding the technical means of care, today’s data don’t show an evolution, but rather the opposite. The measure of the quarantine is medieval, and the most successful medical treatment so far is old-fashioned and tested: quinine and antibiotics.

Did governments back then care less about the citizen? In other words, are nowadays’ governments “humanised” and caring for their subjects to the point of asphyxiation, like quarantine? Probably not, maybe the opposite. Back then the keynesian model prevailed, now the neoliberal. The supremacy of the private sector and the fall of decision-making centres to the hands of managers have, by common admission, destroyed every “social face” of the state.

Somewhere around here, it’s time to deal calmly with the toxic “but if?”, this callous poisoning of the present by the possible risks of the future, this blatant twist of logic that has been very fashionable lately. “But if”, say the belated lovers of the state and security, “we weren’t taking these measures, we would have 10, 100, 1000 times more victims.” First off, to avoid debunking monstrosities and because the numbers spouted by all kinds of “experts” are usually in the sphere of the unrealistic, here’s some data. There have been reports of a new virus of the respiratory system in china already since early november. It is almost certain that it’s existed since the beginning of autumn, if not the previous year. China, as well as most of the other countries, took no generalised lockdown measures until much later, in a phase when the virus had possibly already passed from the linear to the logarithmic stage of spreading. After all, the quarantine rarely erases an epidemic. In some cities that took quarantine measures during the spanish flu, no significant reduction in deaths was recorded. The measures were certainly not global like today and the ability to control and discipline the populace was limited. But it’s an undiscountable fact that its contribution to the drop in deaths was probably small. It really had a result in a lot of areas (but never outrageous numbers such as 20 and 50 times fewer deaths); but because of the population’s lack of immunity, the next season was more lethal in the areas that had taken measures than in the ones that hadn’t.

As far as the flu and generally recurring epidemics are concerned, generalised quarantine has always been a fringe and desperate measure, which is why it was mostly applied before the industrial revolution and for diseases that were truly lethal and killed 8 out of 10 infected people, like the plague or smallpox. Especially when it comes to influenzas, by and large (they usually have at least one second wave) they tag along as companions of the human race until they’re eliminated either by a vaccine, or by the population’s natural immunity, so quarantine measures are of small and limited use. Besides the population’s general immune exhaustion owing to confinement and the lack of sun and fresh air, they only have temporary results. What you’re escaping now is what you’ll be paying back, most probably with interest, in the next season.

In any case, no one can claim that a flu that’s already in the phase of decline and has 118,000 deaths globally would have 2 or 3 million without the measures. (Sweden, which hasn’t taken measures, is only 30% up in deaths compared to its neighbouring denmark, of a similar health system, which was one of the first countries to take strict measures. Deaths doubled in 8 days in sweden, in contrast to 9 and 10 days correspondingly in neighbouring norway and denmark. Given a global trend of elimination of the disease globally, this difference is very likely to balance itself out right after the end of the quarantine, or in the next flu season.)

“We have to protect the public health system, hence the quarantines, so that everyone doesn’t fall ill together, leading the system to collapse.” First of all, the public health system is there to protect you and not for you to protect it. Secondly, in a general context, hospitals in most areas of europe have been having less patient traffic than ever. In their vast majority, not only did they not come close to saturation, but they were underused. It sounds outrageous, given all the mainstream propaganda, and still this is what happened. In greece, where we can ascertain it ourselves, as well as throughout europe.

But even if we accept the danger of collapse of the—indeed ransacked and weakened—public system, why not—at an infinitesimally smaller economic and political cost than the present crisis—requisition all private hospitals and clinics? And how much does it cost to build outdoor hospital units for specialised treatment of the virus? Surely no more than the wage subsidies for the millions of businesses and workers. (Sweden, even if it hasn’t yet reached saturation, is already operating two such outdoor hospitals that specialise on covid, as units of safe treatment and testing for potential cases. The much-publicised one-week-hotels of china have had very little use in the end—and we’re talking about a country with a notoriously bad public health system.) And, in any case, why didn’t the health system collapse in ’69 and ’57, with two much more serious epidemics—was public health that much stronger before?

“Maybe the individual has a lot more rights nowadays and human life is worth a lot more,” various incurable optimists say from time to time. One should only have to show them how europe has reacted to the mass deaths at its borders to make them silent forever, but some of them insist: “We’re talking about european citizens, those in power care because there would be an uprising if people started to drop like flies.”

Firstly, people are dropping like flies anyway. We’ll accept that on a philosophical level one is born and dies alone, but generally people die en masse and one after the other, and so do animals, and plants and bacteria, death is everywhere, maybe it has to do with the second law of thermodynamics, one of the few certainties of existence. But if we want to talk about mass deaths of a pandemical type, one and a half million die every year of cancer, and around four million of heart diseases. We’re talking about two diseases that are fundamentally connected to the current model of profit-making: that is, the ongoing pollution of the air and the ground by industry; the elevated levels of toxicity in the environment and in food; working conditions; and forcing one’s subjects into a wild race for higher productivity and profit. We’re talking about deaths that a government can actually reduce, it’s in its jurisdiction, in contrast to a virus, which comes from outside, and in any case there’s little a government can do about it. There hasn’t been any particular upheaval over this ongoing slaughter of human beings. Why would there be over a flu with only a fraction of these victims?

The argument of cancer or a heart attack being accepted as something ordinary doesn’t hold water for the obvious reason that the same is true for the flu. Every year, 100 to 200 thousand europeans die of the flu, and every so often a new flu outbreak that will lead to many more deaths will be starting. It’s something that humanity can hardly change. If in the case of cancer, diabetes or strokes it is possible to have a spectacular decrease in deaths with another model of organisation, in the case of the flu the changes will have to be much deeper and more radical—what will have to change is the very exploitation of animals, and the harnessing and destruction of the earth: the most central characteristic of what we call civilisation.

In any case, because suddenly everyone has become compassionate and humanitarian, if we care so much about a few tens of thousands of people (most of them old, which means cast aside in a scandalously brutal way, especially in the advanced world) who will be saved if we’re confined for two months, then why not follow this blog’s suggestion and save tens of millions of lives, human and not human, by putting a temporary brake on the capitalist machine of death every spring?

In conclusion, there’s no significant objective difference between this flu epidemic and others of the recent past. The vast difference both in how it’s being handled and in its general intrusion in human everyday life isn’t because of how lethal it is (until now, it is definitely much less lethal than its two predecessors that we’ve seen, unless of course it has other hidden characteristics, a hidden lethality that governments know but are keeping secret, a rather unlikely thing). So, what’s it due to?

I believe the answer has to do with the strategies and obsessions of late capitalism. And this is what I’m trying to do with this diary of records. It’s the inflation of ideological constructs such as security; geopolitical needs and neostatist tendencies; the traditional need for the mass destruction of resources and capital in every crisis of accumulation, that we ought to examine, among other things; the bigger infiltration of financial interests in all aspects of the medical world, as well as a series of newly-formed concepts related to the potential that comes from digitising a bigger and bigger part of human life*. It is crucially important to record tendencies and see through legislated ideological constructs, soon, before they colonise the subjects’ minds and the legal arsenal of rising totalitarianism.

* For those who insist on looking for specific economic gains in the doings of states, let’s not forget

a. wars

b. that humanity is generally spending many more resources and energy to make ideologies prevail and produce symbolic value, than on directly perceptible economic gains.

—

Translated from https://diariesofinfection.wordpress.com/2020/04/14/%cf%80%ce%b5%cf%81%ce%af-%ce%b1%ce%bd%ce%b8%cf%81%cf%8e%cf%80%cf%89%ce%bd-%ce%ba%ce%b1%ce%b9-%ce%b3%cf%81%ce%af%cf%80%ce%b7%cf%82/

The political response to a social infection

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Capitalism is the first way of social organisation that produces an ideology based on which this organisation itself is “rational”. This ideology is called science. There’s no point in describing at length how scientific authority is a pillar of legitimisation for all shades of power. The positivist concept of a science which is neutral and free from political, religious and moral prejudice has been sufficiently dismantled on a philosophical, political, and even on a… scientific level. And yet, in public talks, mainstream scientific discourse is still clad with a mystical aura of authority that overpowers other instances of speech. This fact is reinforced by the impressive technological achievements that are based on science and at the same time give new life to the potential for research but also to the myth of the all-powerful, objective, neutral technoscience. The linear loop of experiment-discovery-innovation monopolises our understanding of the production of scientific and technological knowledge through various mechanisms of Spectacle or of biopolitics production, like e.g. the Media or the State. The modern-day political system involves a double delegation. On one side, we have the traditional mechanisms of representative democracy; and on the other, a blind trust to experts and expertise. Modern capitalism can survive only if its subjects vote, consume, and trust the authorities. So, it’s time to introduce some political thought into the sanctums of science. Let’s infect its sterilised labs with the virus of questioning, and its uncontestable health measures with the germ of solidarity.

Scientific authority is something we have never respected, and we’ve always stood critically against political decisions that were founded on scientific “facts” (here’s an etymological trap, the final and unquestionable value-in-itself that is the concept of fact): We’ve attacked the hegemony of economists who were asking for austerity; the certainty of political scientists exalting representative democracy; the repressive mania of the architects of big cities, who treat the built environment as a process of quantifying living space where everything is translated into numbers so it can be understood in an “objective” manner; the suppression of difference by psychiatrists; the dictatorship of the norm imposed by the normal distribution of statistics. We’ve organised initiatives and struggles against the scientifically-driven exploitation of the earth, which legalises poisoning the environment, obliterates ecosystems, tortures and murders animals on a megascale, displaces people (and causes deadly coronaviruses as a byproduct of the needs of the capitalist market). How can we remain silent in the face of the accelerating quasi-scientific approaches that lead to total control of our lives on an all but worldwide scale? How can we view the “objective” and “necessary” measures imposed on us as a simple product of a neutral scientific process? No, there is politics in science and this needs to be highlighted.

Only a few days before the emergency measures were announced, no one would have believed that even the fighting parts of society would succumb so lethargically to this demolishing attack and rhetoric from the state. Self-oppression, retreat and a pause of activities make up (with very few exceptions) the direction taken on a personal and collective level. Despite a long tradition of critically approaching and deconstructing the techno-scientific deterministic utterances that back up the designs of power, suddenly blood ran cold against a vague scientific presentation about the results of the new virus. While in various geographic points of the pandemic the struggling parts of society almost immediately brought forward solidarity, mutual aid and self-organisation as the main characteristics of an anti-state strategy against fear, control but also the spreading of the virus, on a local level confusion prevailed for a moment.

We’re not questioning the existence of SARS-CoV-2 like other conspiracy theorist telemarketers. The danger exists, lives have been and will be lost (and this is being written thoughtfully and not cynically), health systems on a global scale are going to be put under an asphyxiating strain, further increasing the risk to those who need them for other reasons, too. But one needs to have completely lost their critical approach to fail to see that it’s unacceptable to present the state curtailing freedoms as a way of responding. In one month the virus will still be here, and, even with lessened spreading, the threat and the accompanying repression will be with us for the long term. How long are those who are asking for additional measures, telling on people, accusing them, and taking selfies for instagram willing to “stay home”? For how long are the rest of us eager to stand in solidarity to our sick and vulnerable fellow humans, to the “unclean” groups of people who are going to be targeted in the next few months, to the thousands of people laid off, unemployed and unpaid that this situation is going to create? How long can we tolerate it when public discussion about such a serious topic but also decisions on measures that change modern life as we know it are happening in terms of hero worship or political power play? When the authoritarians themselves are degrading scientism by singing biopolitical hymns and playing games of absolute control on the body of a society that never had the time to get back on its feet from the previous crisis, it’s our duty to counter this with all our tools, political, ideological, material, in order to resist the shrinking of the next-to-none freedoms that we have left.

We have to look to the future, and not the short-term and terror-mongering present, before it is too late. To critically deconstruct policies that are based on “scientific data”. The epicentre of our thinking—and this is exactly what differentiates us—always needs to be the social stakes. SARS-CoV-2 infects first and foremost society, solidarity, and collective demands, building a future of individualism, repression, and totalitarian control. Responding to the pandemic is not a scientific issue, but a clearly political one. We’d better protect from the coronavirus as best we can, and mostly protect those who are more at risk from its diffusion. At the same time, we must not forget the devastating blows of capitalism to the planet. Every three seconds one child dies on our planet due to lack of food. Let’s always keep in mind that no state is taking measures against this. Inversely, they take measures to guarantee that this will keep happening.

102 years ago, the spanish flu caused millions of deaths all across the earth. No one wants a repetition of this. While the flu was still spreading, the bolsheviks overthrew the tsarist regime once and for all, the spartacists revolted in Berlin, Makhno took control of some of the Ukraine, the anarchist workers of Buenos Aires rebelled… When we voluntarily accept the reduction of our freedoms, we are making sure that nothing of the kind will ever be repeated. As the father of the neoliberal dogma, Milton Friedman, once said: “Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change.” Let’s turn their ideas into vehicles for their complete undoing! And a good starting point to shake capitalism is by questioning the scientific ideology that feeds the myth of its rationality…

Μετάφραση από: https://apatris.info/i-politiki-antimetopisi-mias-koinoni/

Η εξουσία δε θα μας σώσει. Η αλληλεγγύη μπορεί.

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Ο Covid-19 θα έφερνε θάνατο και αναστάτωση ανεξαρτήτως πολιτικών συστημάτων ή αρχηγών. Κι όμως αναμφίβολα οι πράξεις και των απλών ανθρώπων αλλά και αυτών που έχουν την εξουσία επηρεάζουν την τάξη μεγέθους των θανάτων και της καταστροφής. Παρ’ όλο που χιλιάδες εργαζόμενα για το κράτος κάνουν ηρωικά τη δουλειά τους και κάποια πολιτικά πρόσωπα αποδεικνύουν ότι μπορούν να οργανώσουν ένα πλάνο αντιμετώπισης της κατάστασης έκτακτης ανάγκης, το κράτος το ίδιο δεν έχει αποδείξει ότι είναι η πιο κατάλληλη μορφή κοινωνικής οργάνωσης για την υπεράσπιση των ανθρώπινων ζωών.

Δεν αρκεί να εξυμνούμε και να προωθούμε τα θετικά αποτελέσματα του κρατιστικού τρόπου οργάνωσης ξεγράφοντας τ’ αρνητικά. Θα πρέπει η αξιολόγηση να αφορά το κράτος στο σύνολό του.

Μια αποτελεσματική κοινωνική αντίδραση στην καταστροφή δε θα στηρίζεται στην εξουσία, αλλά στην αλληλεγγύη διαφόρων ατόμων που αναγνωρίζουν το κοινό τους συμφέρον. Όταν τα εργαζόμενα στις κρατικές υπηρεσίες και οι οδηγίες τους σώζουν ζωές, το στοιχειώδες αίσθημα ευθύνης υπαγορεύει να μην τα εμποδίζουμε. Όμως όταν τα άτομα αντιλαμβάνονται ότι το κράτος και οι ισχυροί δε θα λύσουν τα πάντα και αρχίζουν να δρουν αλληλέγγυα, φτιάχνουν δίκτυα αλληλοβοήθειας που λειτουργούν ανεξάρτητα από το κράτος. Τα αυτόνομα δίκτυα μπορούν να διασφαλίσουν την ελευθερία και την ευημερία του κάθε ατόμου καλύτερα από ό,τι το κράτος, στην καθημερινή ζωή αλλά και σε καιρούς έκτακτης ανάγκης.

Το κράτος είναι ένας θεσμός εξουσιαστικός —και σε έκτακτες καταστάσεις θα οικειοποιηθεί αυθόρμητα περισσότερη εξουσία, ακόμα κι αν έτσι δε βοηθάει στην επιβράδυνση της μετάδοσης της αρρώστιας.

Τα κράτη βασίζονται στα όργανα επιβολής τους. Πιο πολλή εξουσία στην αστυνομία θα πει πιο πολλά μέσα για να βλάπτει την κοινωνία. Οι αστυνομικές επιχειρήσεις–σκούπα ενάντια σε άτομα που ζουν σε δημόσιους χώρους πλήττουν δυσανάλογα τον κόσμο του περιθωρίου, αλλά επιπλέον μπορεί να στείλουν άτομα σε φυλακές, όπου είναι πιο πιθανό να αρρωστήσουν. Στις γεμάτες φυλακές, η κοινωνική αποστασιοποίηση είναι αδύνατη, ενώ οι δεσμοφύλακες περιορίζουν την πρόσβαση στα καθαριστικά και τα είδη υγιεινής. Σε πολλές πόλεις συνεχίζονται οι συλλήψεις για πταίσματα και για εγκλήματα χωρίς θύματα, ενώ ταυτόχρονα η αστυνομία αναλαμβάνει εκτακτες εξουσίες ώστε να στέλνει κι άλλο κόσμο στη φυλακή. Αυτό κάνει μεγάλο κακό στα άτομα που στοχοποιεί η αστυνομία και δημιουργεί τον αχρείαστο κίνδυνο τα αστυνομικά όργανα, τα εργαζόμενα στις φυλακές και τα έγκλειστα άτομα να διαδώσουν μια θανατηφόρα ασθένεια στις κοινότητες στις οποίες εργάζονται και στις κοινότητες στις οποίες ζουν.

Το κράτος επιβάλλει την ανισότητα, που δυσχεραίνει τις προσπάθειες των ατόμων να παραμείνουν ασφαλή. Σε μια εποχή που το μήνυμα προς τον κόσμο είναι να μείνει σπίτι, πάνοπλοι εκπρόσωποι του κράτους εμποδίζουν ευάλωτα και άστεγα άτομα από το να κατοικήσουν σε σπίτια που αφήνονται άδεια με κρατική εντολή ή εξαιτίας επενδυτών που περιμένουν την κατάλληλη εποχή για να πουλήσουν με μεγαλύτερο κέρδος.

Το κλείσιμο των συνόρων και οι αυστηροί περιορισμοί στη μετακίνηση είναι εργαλεία που επιβάλλει το κράτος και συχνά δημιουργούν επιπλέον κινδύνους στο κοινό. Όταν είχαμε πια αντιληφθεί τον κίνδυνο πανδημίας, ο ιός είχε ήδη αρχίσει να μολύνει πολλές κοινότητες, ανεξάρτητα από το αν η μόλυνση είχε εντοπιστεί.

Το βιαστικό κλείσιμο των συνόρων και οι περιορισμοί στη μετακίνηση με το άστε ντούα έχουν προκαλέσει αρκετές επικίνδυνες καταστάσεις όπου πλήθη κόσμου στριμώχνονται σε μικρούς χώρους και περιμένουν να ταξιδέψουν πριν να είναι πολύ αργά. Αναμφίβολα κάποια άτομα έχουν μολυνθεί σε τέτοιες καταστάσεις και πολλά έχουν μεταδώσει αρρώστιες σε άλλα εν αγνοία τους. Μα ο συνεχής στενός έλεγχος στα σύνορα είναι θανάσιμος για τα φτωχά και καταπιεσμένα άτομα που εμποδίζονται να περάσουν στην απέναντι πλευρά, ενώ επιπλέον γεννά έναν πιο επικίνδυνο κόσμο με αυξημένη την εθνικιστική βία και περιορισμένες τις επωφελείς επιστημονικές και οικονομικές ανταλλαγές.

Η ύπαρξη των συνόρων συνεπάγεται και την αστυνόμευση του ποια άτομα θα περνάνε. Τον καιρό που πολλά άτομα σε τεράστια κλίμακα προσπαθούν να ξεφύγουν από καταστροφές και κρατική βία, τα κράτη βάζουν προσφυγ@ σε στρατόπεδα συχνά συνωστισμένα και ανθυγιεινά, αντί να τ’ αφήσουν να φύγουν και να φτιάξουν υγιείς κοινότητες.

Σε αντίθεση με την εξουσία και την καταστολή, η κοινωνική αλληλεγγύη και το αίσθημα κοινής ευθύνης είναι υγιείς αντιδράσεις στην καταστροφή. Μια ελεύθερη κοινωνία που διαπνέεται από το αίσθημα της αλληλεγγύης και που είναι ευαισθητοποιημένη στην περιβαλλοντική δικαιοσύνη μπορεί να αποσοβήσει την καταστροφή και να ανταποκριθεί σ’ αυτήν καλύτερα απ’ ό,τι το κράτος.

Σε μια κοινότητα στην οποία τα άτομα συνδέονται με αμοιβαία επωφελείς σχέσεις μπορεί να αναπτυχθεί μεγαλύτερο αίσθημα κοινωνικής αλληλεγγύης. Οι ελεύθερες κοινωνίες δημιουργούνται όταν τα άτομα οργανώνονται σε αυτόνομα σώματα οπως τοπικά συμβούλια και συνελεύσεις, που ικανοποιούν τις βασικές τους ανάγκες χωρίς να τους στερούν την ελευθερία, σε συνδυασμό με παγκόσμια δίκτυα που καθιστούν δυνατή τη διασύνδεση ατόμων με παρόμοια ενδιαφέροντα και προωθούν δίκαιες συναλλαγές.

Οι ελεύθερες κοινωνίες προάγουν την ελεύθερη διακίνηση της πληροφορίας και την αποκέντρωση της έρευνας, της παραγωγής και των τεστ. Όταν τα εργατα έχουν περισσότερο έλεγχο στην παραγωγή, είναι πιο πιθανό να θέσουν ως προτεραιότητα τις ανάγκες τις κοινότητας παρά το κέρδος των επενδυτών που περιμένουν στις απομακρυσμένες επαύλεις και τα καταφύγια πολυτελείας τους μέχρι να τελειώσει η καταστροφή. Αν οι ζωές των εργατών εστιάζονται στην καθημερινότητα, εκείνα που συνεχίζουν να δουλεύουν μέσα στην πανδημία θα έχουν πιο πολλά μέσα προστασίας στη διάθεσή τους κι εκείνα που θέλουν να μείνουν σπίτι θα έχουν τους πόρους για να το κάνουν. Η δημιουργία ενός υγιεινού περιβάλλοντος για όλο τον κόσμο θα μειώσει τα χρόνια προβλήματα υγείας που κάνουν την ασθένεια πιο θανατηφόρα.

Η κυβέρνηση των ΗΠΑ έχει υπό τον έλεγχό της αρκετούς πόρους για να προωθεί την εξουσία της σε όλα τα μήκη και τα πλάτη και να αντιδρά σε προβλήματα εντός των συνόρων της, αλλά έχει αποτύχει παντελώς να προετοιμαστεί και ν’ αντιδράσει στην πανδημία. Αυτό οφείλεται σε μεγάλο βαθμό στο ότι αυτοί που κυβερνούν είναι μια συμμορία φασιστών με αρχηγό τους έναν απατεώνα ρατσιστή που κάποτε είχε πει ότι η κλιματική αλλαγή ήταν μια κινέζικη φήμη. Αυτή η κατάσταση δεν προέκυψε από το πουθενά· και είναι καιρός να ξανασκεφτούμε το σύστημα και την κοινωνία που έδωσαν εξουσία σ’ αυτά τα άτομα.

Η αναρρίχηση του Τραμπ στην εξουσία έχει τις πηγές της στον καπιταλισμό και τον ρατσισμό της Αμερικής, καθώς και τη βοήθεια διεθνών εξουσιαστών. Η πολιτική του καριέρα ξεκίνησε τον καιρό που ήταν αστέρας της τηλεόρασης, μια θέση στην οποία κατάφερε να φτάσει μετά από χρόνια αυτοπροβολής και ύποπτων κτηματομεσιτικών συμφωνιών. Χρησιμοποιώντας το βήμα που του έδωσε ο πλούτος, έχτισε ένα κίνημα γύρω απ’ την ιστορία πως ο πρώτος μαύρος πρόεδρος των ΗΠΑ ήταν ένας ξένος απατεώνας που δεν είχε καμιά δουλειά στη χώρα.

Η ρατσιστική συνωμοσιολογική πολιτική που ανέπτυξε ο Τραμπ μεγάλωνε καθώς αυτός ξεκινούσε την προεκλογική του εκστρατεία. Χρησιμοποιούσε εκφράσεις όπως «δε στέλνουν και τους καλύτερους», λέγοντας ταυτόχρονα πως ο κύριος όγκος των μεταναστών από το Μεξικό και την Κεντρική Αμερική ήταν εγκληματί@ και βιαστ@. Οι απολυταρχικές του τάσεις ενισχύονταν καθώς μάθαινε να ελέγχει οργισμένα πλήθη, δήλωνε ανοιχτά τη στήριξή του στις παραβιάσεις ανθρώπινων δικαιωμάτων στα πλαίσια της μάχης κατά της τρομοκρατίας και μάζευε υποστηρικτά ανάμεσα στα όργανα επιβολής του νόμου. Οι ανά τον κόσμο εξουσιαστές έβλεπαν τον εξουσιαστή Τραμπ ως σύμμαχο κι οι πράκτορες του FBI αλλά και των ρώσικων μυστικών υπηρεσιών τού έδωσαν μια ώθηση προς τη νίκη. Τα μεγάλα μμε γενικά αντιμετώπισαν την άνοδο του Τραμπ προς την εξουσία και την πορεία του προς τον φασισμό ως ένα πιασάρικο θέμα, από την έκθεση που έλαβε ως υποψήφιος που κινούνταν σε μονοψήφια ποσοστά ως τη συγκάλυψη των καταχρήσεων της εξουσίας του. Οι κρατικές δομές που υπήρχαν για να εξασφαλίσουν τη λογοδοσία του θεσμικού προσώπου έχουν αποτύχει, εν μέρει επειδή πέτυχαν οι δομές που υπήρχαν για να περιορίζουν τη δημοκρατία.

Τον Τραμπ τον προωθούσαν τα μεγάλα μμε, του έδιναν αβάντες εκπρόσωπα του κράτους, τον υποστήριζαν άτομα που θεωρούν πως υπεραμύνεται της κοινωνικής τους θέσης ή του επενδυτικού τους χαρτοφυλακίου. Αν αυτός ο κόσμος δεν περιγράφεται από τη λέξη «κατεστημένο», τότε δεν ξέρουμε ποιο περιγράφεται. Η ύπαρξη του κράτους οδήγησε τις ΗΠΑ στην καταστροφή που είναι ο Τραμπ.

Με όλα τα πράγματα που έχει πει και έχει κάνει το καθεστώς του Τραμπ, δεν μπορούμε να αποκλείσουμε πως μπορεί να υπάρχουν άτομα στην κυβέρνησή του που να βλέπουν αυτή την επιδημία ως ευκαιρία. Το καθένα μας κινδυνεύει εν δυνάμει από τον Covid-19. Όταν όμως σκεφτόμαστε με δημογραφικές ομάδες, μια απ’ αυτές που κινδυνεύουν περισσότερο να κολλήσουν την αρρώστια και να πεθάνουν απ’ αυτή είναι τα άτομα της εργατικής τάξης που ζουν σε αστικές περιοχές ή εργάζονται σε συνθήκες μεγάλου συνωστισμού, συχνά μη λευκά, με υψηλότερα ποσοστά υποκείμενων προβλημάτων υγείας εξαιτίας του περιβαλλοντικού ρατσισμού. Αυτός ο κόσμος είναι απίθανο να υποστηρίξει τον Τραμπ ή το κόμμα του. Όταν αναλογιζόμαστε πως αυτή η κυβέρνηση υλοποίησε μια πολιτική αρπαγής παιδιών απ’ τους γονείς τους και εξαφάνισής τους μέσα σε βάναυσα στρατόπεδα ως μέσο αποτροπής της δημογραφικής αλλαγής, δεν μπορούμε να αποκλείσουμε το ενδεχόμενο να υπάρχουν σύμβουλα του καθεστώτος που αναλύουν πώς μπορούν να τα βοηθήσουν στη διατήρηση της εξουσίας οι μαζικοί θάνατοι και η προπαγάνδα. Αν χιλιάδες πεθάνουν στις πόλεις των πολιτειών που αμφιταλαντεύονται και αν η προπαγάνδα του Τραμπ πείσει αρκετό κόσμο ν’ αγνοήσει το μέγεθος της καταστροφής, ρίχνοντας ταυτόχρονα το φταίξιμο στα άτομα που βαφτίζονται ξένα, τότε τα αυταρχικά ρεύματα που θ’ ακολουθήσουν μπορεί να δουν σ’ αυτή την καταστροφή μια ευκαιρία που αξιοποιήθηκε σωστά ή, ακόμα, ένα θείο δώρο.

Ο αυταρχισμός και ο μαφιόζικος καπιταλισμός του Τραμπ είναι η πιο άμεση απειλή στο αναγνωστικό κοινό των ΗΠΑ, όμως υπάρχουν κι άλλα κράτη που θα πρέπει να σκεφτούμε. Το σύστημα του κρατικού καπιταλισμού στην Κίνα φυλάκιζε και απειλούσε γιατρούς ενώ έκρυβε βασικές πληροφορίες για το ξέσπασμα της επιδημίας. Η απολυταρχική εθνικιστική κυβέρνηση του Βίκτορ Όρμπαν στην Ουγγαρία εκμεταλλεύτηκε την κατάσταση έκτακτης ανάγκης ως ευκαιρία για ν’ αρχίσει να κυβερνά μέσω διαταγμάτων και γρήγορα ξεκίνησε νέες επιθέσεις στα δικαιώματα των τρανς ατόμων. Τα κράτη πρόνοιας της Ευρώπης επιβάλλουν στα σύνορα ένα καθεστώς που βάζει τα πρόσφυγα σε ανθυγιεινά στρατόπεδα, δίνουν τη στήριξή τους στην κυβέρνηση του Ερντογάν στην Τουρκία καθώς οι δυνάμεις της καταστρέφουν υποδομές κρίσιμης σημασίας και ενισχύουν την τρομοκρατία στη βόρεια Συρία —και γενικά κάθονται και κοιτάνε καθώς η δικτατορία του Άσσαντ σφαγιάζει κόσμο σε περιοχές που είναι υπό τον έλεγχο των επαναστατών.

Υπάρχουν ακόμα άτομα που θυμούνται την εποχή που μεγάλο μέρος της Ευρώπης ήταν υπό τον έλεγχο δολοφόνων κατά συρροή. Κανένα κράτος δεν είναι άτρωτο στην υφαρπαγή και τον έλεγχο της κεντρικής του εξουσίας από την απολυταρχία.

Το κράτος δεν έχει δείξει τα καλύτερα δείγματα στην προστασία της ζωής και της ελευθερίας και η επέκταση της εξουσίας του θα αυξήσει το κακό που κάνει. Ευτυχώς, σε μια εποχή που τα άσχημα νέα αιωρούνται πάνω απ’ τις ζωές μας σαν μαύρα σύννεφα, υπάρχει κόσμος που δρα με αλληλεγγύη και αλληλοβοήθεια. Καλύτερο μέλλον δε θα έρθει ακολουθώντας εξουσιαστές. Ένα καλύτερο μέλλον μπορεί να δημιουργηθεί από άτομα που χτίζουν αυτόνομα δίκτυα για ν’ αλληλοστηριχτούν μεταξύ τους έξω από τα πλαίσια της κρατικής εξουσίας.

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Μετάφραση από https://c4ss.org/content/52812

#Stay_home: how fear and lack of reason are killing freedom and democracy

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The government’s #stay_home campaign will be remembered as a classic example of how, in a very short time, ignorance and fear can destroy the contract of mutual reason between the citizen and the institutions. Faced with the threat of the virus and the danger of the collapse of the health care system, the government has followed since the 21st of March a quarantine campaign based on the hashtag #stay_home, convincing millions of Italians that staying for as long as they can locked inside their homes is the only way to stop the advance of the virus.
 
This is obviously wrong. Other hashtags, a lot more precise and detailed, like #stay_three_metres_apart or #stay_alone, would be much more honest and, insofar as they would be much more sustainable, they would also be much more effective. However, the government opted for the opposite: to base its campaign on a dictate that’s vague and harmful.
 
It is obvious to whoever wants to use a little common sense that locking oneself inside with one’s family is not sustainable and that people need at least access to super markets and other basic services. Which on its own makes the dictate pointless. But it’s also obvious that this measure is not even necessary, because it would be enough to stand far apart and follow the rules provided by the WHO (masks, washing hands, etc.).
 
However, asking the citizens to make a SACRIFICE has been ideologically successful, especially in a country with our own historical and political background. Staying home immediately became a mystical act, adopted for reasons between superstition and sense of community. No one is curious about the transmission mechanisms of the virus. We leave that to the experts, in the same way that in a previous time we left the interpretation of holy scripture to the priests and the analysis of the historical moment to the intellectuals of the left. The populace is happy to trust others, be it the experts or the authorities, staking its destiny on the age-old principle that it’s more important that it be a part of a community, a flock of sheep or a slice of lemmings, its destiny.
 
No one’s asking virologists for enlightenment as to the transmission mechanisms of the virus, a transfer of knowledge that would require a critical scientific attitude towards the problem on the part of the population, but they are asked to give rules and guidelines to be faithfully applied, apart from some exceptions (“father, I have sinned so much, please forgive me”).
 
The threat of the virus, from a concrete problem to be dealt with using the instruments of reason, has transformed into the expression of moral blows from a part of the citizens and legitimised many others to affirm their supposed moral superiority. A paternalistic and moralistic stance towards everything and everyone, similar to the superstitious kneeling that we see in a lot of religions. The ones to be saved from the virus won’t be the most prudent, who will use their brain, but the most righteous, who will be capable of sacrifice, and, together with the others who are as righteous as they are (or slightly less so), will deserve a place in the floating ark. Or this is what people believe.
 
Only this salvational-moralistic divergence can explain the moralistic bitterness and resentment (the wave of sh… against those who don’t conform). Dissent has been immediately associated with a moral failing in the defender. Whoever maintained the importance of physical activity is immediately laughed at (“jogging”, “going for a walk”) or connected to morally inferior personality traits (narcissistic, egoistic, disrespectful), while the abuse of carbohydrates, tobacco and alcohol that went with staying home is seen with indulgence (tobacco) and generally true sympathy (alcohol and food). It is obviously irrational to think that those who run don’t have respect, while those who bake are penitent monks, but it fits the ideological framework where the virus needs to be vanquished by sacrifice and submission to authority, and not reason and continuous effort.
 
We must not run, go to the beach, wander on the mountains, not because these are activities objectively correlated to the virus, but because we are unworthy, incapable of trust. That is, we are sinners and need cleansing from our sins by suffering all together. Maybe by spying behind the window blinds at whoever doesn’t follow the same ritual. The justification of the prohibition of being outside alone is analogous to the one that is given, in states where morality dictates sexual repression, as to why women have to cover their body and their face: because if they didn’t, men would be tempted to violence. And so, since human beings can’t be trusted, even those who are not to blame (women) have to live in isolation. It’s not a coincidence that in these countries, the house and the clothes have a role that’s similar to the one of the house in these days of the quarantine, the role of private space isolated from the presumed external danger (which is, on the contrary, only internal).
 
In this absurd atmosphere, made possible by the traditional lack of scientific culture, applying the dictate becomes an article of faith, and is often more stringently imposed by the believers (the eager sheriffs of the balcony) than by the authorities themselves (the fire department and the police). Parks and beaches are closed, drones are being sent to track down dangerous lonesome hikers, helicopters are sent to get rid of swimmers and divers (this is not an exaggeration). It’s worthless that, according to the WHO, the virus cannot survive in an open space under the rays of the sun and that, consequently, fresh air would be enough to disperse the viral load under the threshold of danger. Against all reason, the outdoors has been connected with a freedom of thought and movement in which citizens, terrified by the hammering propaganda of the media, can’t but believe. As Recalcati recently wrote, “hatred is not being able to stand the other’s liberty”.
 
Like in the novel by Orwell, people are isolated from each other and put through a continuous imposition of announcements through screens installed in their homes. Our difference from this dystopia is that in our case we are the ones to directly pay for these screens.
 
The lonesome runner isn’t putting at risk the citizens’ physical health, but placing under discussion the salvific value of their presumed morality: “if I am staying home to suffer, why aren’t they doing it, too”. And so we have to stay home not to escape the virus, but to avoid opening the discussion about the power of the government society has entrusted its liberty to. For the sacrifice of everyone’s freedom to be effective, it must be shared—we mustn’t talk in church or question the words of the priests (in this case, the expert selected by the government), because this is lack of respect. And this reveals the dark side of irrationality: fear and ignorance. This is a mechanism many have described: from Chomsky to Benasayag, from Canetti to Foucault, from Hobbes to Macchiavelli. There’s no need to cite them.
 
Ignorance inflates fear, which looks for salvation in the sacrifice of freedom and submission to authority, to be followed with the irrational stupidity of superstition.
 
The worst side has been made obvious in all these forms of intolerance and human misery that are amplified in the racism of the balcony. People spy on people because they no longer view others as human beings, but as potential sources of danger. Strict adherence to the law becomes a pretext that lets jealousies, rivalries, inferiority complexes, parochial grudges rise to the surface.
 
Felice Cimatti affirmed in a recent interview that “there are the medical reasons, but there are not only the medical reasons. […] Claiming that this is not the time to talk about philosophy and individual liberties, that now is a time of emergency, is exactly the type of answer that bodes nothing good”.
 
When individual freedom raises suspicions of selfishness, when the moral and political principle that is being followed is that the only true freedom is the one that expresses the universal good (which is of course never universal: it’s the good of some particular people who have the power to promote it, and in actuality impose it, as universal), the person is in danger—because the person has its own freedom, which is individual, non-negotiable, unjudgeable and indomitable.
 
Certainly, every society can propose its own rules of engagement, to put it like this, but without demanding that its own good (the one of the society we’re talking about) should be the universal good or that it should correspond to the good of every citizen. Fear of the virus has led many to renounce their individual rights. Salvation of the body in return for the soul—for many who like the zombies of Romero (another epidemic, another allegory) have deep down never had this soul—is a reasonable bargain.
 
Accepting the dictate of staying home without a reason is not just a health risk (the damage that many will have from this useless confinement inside the house), but it is above all the collapse of the contract of reason between the state and the citizen. The state is not asked to explain the reasonable motives of the rules. The citizens are not asked to act responsibly. They both fall short of their responsibilities and negotiate with each other with an indulgence typical of the immature. The contract is no longer based on reason and mutual respect between people and institutions, but on interests and fear. And superstition is its natural glue. #Stay_home expresses the collapse of freedom and democracy.
 
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Riccardo Manzotti is a professor of theoretical philosophy (IULM University of Milan), a psychologist and an engineer. He has expounded his theory of conscience in various books, among which the most recent is The Spread Mind, which has been translated and published in Italy by editions Il Saggiatore.