by Phil Shannon
Preamble
The contemporary left’s support for an economically devastating, authoritarian lockdown, which doesn’t even achieve its limited public health aims, is one of the more remarkable developments in current politics. With its support for extreme ‘social distancing’, the left has reached a new nadir in the ‘political distancing’ between it and its traditional working class constituency, a relationship that has been fraying badly since the democratic, national, working class populist upsurge of recent years as symbolised by the Brexit referendum, the thumping Get-Brexit-Done electoral victory of Boris Johnson, and the surprising Trump miracle.
The left’s lockdown betrayal of the working class further accelerates its decline into political irrelevance. This is not a cause for celebration, especially for someone like myself, a four-decade Australian veteran of working class socialism including as a trade union activist, and member of the Communist Party of Australia and more Trotskyist grouplets than you could shake a Program of the Fourth International at, who still cooks on the left burner (see author’s page here).
What follows is an attempt to understand how and why the left has got into such a pickle over lockdown and how it can begin to resurrect its political integrity.
Why the left (and not just the left) should oppose lockdown
Science
- The virus is not the virus to end all viruses. The herd immunity threshold is apparently much lower than expected because of cross-immunity due to the common cold and other coronaviruses. Most people (other than the aged with specific comorbidities) who contract it are either asymptomatic or have only mild symptoms. Panicked by one spectacularly bonkers epidemiological model, however, health authorities and politicians across the planet have done their most flamboyant ‘Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!’ impressions, and massively overstated the virulence and lethality of the virus to justify the lockdown lunacy they rushed to institute in order to be seen to be doing something. The virus did not herald the End Times, there never was a curve to be flattened, it never gave cause for draconian lockdown measures.
Public Health
- Lockdown simply doesn’t work on its own terms. Regardless of if, or when, lockdown was implemented, or how draconian its scope, within and between different countries, the trajectory of the virus, as of other viral pathogens, has followed a natural bell curve of exponential rise, plateau and rapid decline (over just a month or two for the current one) as it hits the limits of natural or acquired herd immunity (Farr’s Law – still going strong since William Farr formulated it in 1840!).
- Lockdown will kill many times more people (from health conditions left undiagnosed and untreated, and from the so-called ‘diseases of despair’ that accompany economic distress) than the virus could ever manage.
The Economy
- Quarantining the healthy is economically catastrophic, with Depression-era levels of unemployment, business closures, and mind-numbing long-term government debts and deficits. A demographically-targeted, strategic approach of protecting the vulnerable would have had far better financial (as well as health) outcomes both for the vulnerable and for the whole population.
Liberty and Freedom
With precious little opposition, lockdown has ushered in:
- ‘Police-state’ powers conferred by emergency decree
- Suspension of democratic accountability – both parliamentary democracy, and the democracy of the streets (unless it’s for an approved, i.e. woke, cause such as #BLM – that’s allowed!)
- Fettering the rights to free speech
- State surveillance (there’s an app for that!)
- Tech giant censorship
- Nauseous government propaganda, and
- Simplistic, in-your-face agit-prop from the establishment media, both private and state
What the left could uniquely contribute to opposition to lockdown
An economic, working class perspective
The left should be emphasising the economic aspect of lockdown because it is the working class who are the principal victims of lockdown. The political right, by contrast, are more authentic when representing the profit-making owners of capital rather than the proletarians they employ, the latter having to content themselves with, at best, an amalgam of conservative economic nostrums such as ‘trickle-down theory’ and ‘a rising sea floats all boats’.
Including retired workers and the young who are destined for a wage/salary-earning future, the working class, those who have to sell their labour to an employer, are the vast bulk of the population. The left thus has the biggest constituency, by far, affected by the economic devastation of lockdown.
A view from the global poor
The rural and other subsistence poor in developing nations are also big losers – from their own countries’ lockdowns and from the contraction of economic demand in the lockdowned richer countries. Three-quarters of new coronavirus cases now detected occur in developing countries and are forecast to increase the prevalence of global ‘extreme poverty’ (living on less than US$1.90 per day) by some 400 million, increasing global ‘extreme’ poverty from one in ten of the global population to around one in seven, and total poverty (living on less than $US5.50 a day) to one in two of the world’s people. This economic hit to the global poor is a result partly of the direct health-related costs of the virus itself but is likely to arise mostly from a population-wide lockdown impacting on the productive, working age population in developing countries because the aged, the most at-risk for the virus, are a much smaller proportion of the total population in poorer countries than they are in the West.
How the left has failed on the virus/lockdown
So, it should be a lay-down-misere for the left to oppose the lockdown on the left’s bread-and-butter economic issues affecting the working class (and the global poor).
It should also be entry-level politics for the left to oppose lockdown on those non-economic issues where lockdown policy dilutes civil liberties and free speech, and strengthens political authoritarianism, censorship, media power, etc.
In the past, the left would have gone off like a firecracker on all the above issues, not least because, historically, it has been the working class which has been the left’s core political stomping ground, and it has been the left which has been the target for repression, censorship and denial of free speech by the capitalist state.
The ideological failings of the lockdown left
What the left has delivered re lockdown, however, are stunning volte-faces on fundamental questions of working class material living standards and on the issues of political and ideological power, such as:
- The economic hit to the working class: The left has displayed either mute unconcern over the economic cost of lockdown to the working class, or passive acceptance of the ‘necessary evil’ of lockdown in a bizarre twist of the old Vietnam War saying that ‘to save the village [from communists/COVID] we had to destroy the village [the people/the economy]’.
- The global poor: Finding the developed world’s (white) working class insufficiently reverential of the ‘Other’ (the West’s BAME people – Black and Minority Ethnic – are the sum total of the left’s attention nowadays), the left has increasingly switched its focus to the world’s poor (BAME writ large), who are now, however, to be thrown under the lockdown bus by the left as lockdown drastically ramps up global poverty.
- Science: The left has rightly demanded that science should prevail over ideology (on climate change, for example) when determining public policy, yet ‘The [Selective] Science’ invoked by politicians, and uncritically embraced by the left, to justify lockdown is either bogus, not proven or still up-for-grabs, and now serves the role of self-justification for promoters of an (ineffective) lockdown.
- Obedience to authority: ‘Question authority!’ used to be the operating principle of the old left. Now, however, on lockdown, the stance of the left appears to be ‘bow down and obey’ as it welcomes policy dictation from above, including the various placebo-like, theatrical ‘social distancing’ rituals (facemasks and tracing apps and social spacing) that dramatically hype the limited threat of the virus. For the lockdown left, the punchline to the old joke set-up of ‘How can you tell when a politician is lying?’ (answer – ‘When their lips move’) has stolen away in the pandemic panic night.
- The media: ‘Always believe the opposite of what the media say’ was once the default setting of the left which was clear-eyed about the establishment media’s role as the propaganda arm of the wealthy ruling class. Now, however, the lockdown left has proven itself to be disappointingly susceptible to a media-confected atmosphere of dread and hysteria foregrounded against the omnipresent graphic of a scary virus, or a harried doctor in full PPE, or a nurse in scrubs, that forms the visual backdrop to every emotionally manipulative virus news item, all invoking a sense of Crisis! Crisis! Crisis! and demanding severe lockdown in response. The left’s political compliance with government lockdown guidance, rules, regulations and laws has been surprisingly cheaply acquired.
- Hypocrisy: Cognitive dissonance is the order of the day for the lockdown left. The imperative to elevate woke pieties above class priorities has, for example, highlighted the woke left’s support for the #BLM protests-cum-riots which flouted the very ‘social distancing’ norms that the left had been, up to then, enthusiastically pushing. Of course, the same leftist priests of social-distancing pronounce anathema on anti-lockdown protests or a Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. For the woke/lockdown left, we’re not ‘all in this together’ – hypocritical political exemptions apply.
The behavioural failings of the lockdown left
The ideological failings of the left on lockdown are accompanied by a pronounced tendency to behave in politically-revealing stylistic ways, including:
- Belligerence: Converse with most lockdown leftists and you will be struck by their hostility to sceptical views and their lack of respect for the holders of those views. Calm discussion of evidentiary and political differences on lockdown has been replaced by the left’s need to beat down lockdown apostates in heated argument, not with better ideas but with belligerence. In politics, as in fashion, ‘the style is the man’ and the lockdown/woke left’s antagonistic and intimidating behaviour reflects poorly on a political grouping that claims to value liberalism, tolerance and ‘diversity’.
- Straw Men: Say that lockdown doesn’t work and is worse than the disease and the sceptic will swiftly be accused of being a callous granny-killer, a moral monster who places ‘money’ ahead of ‘lives’, and profit over people (cf. the facile “No life is worth losing to add one more point to the Dow” of Joe Biden, or the rhetorical doing whatever it takes to “save just one life” homily of New York governor, Andrew Cuomo). Setting up straw men (lockdown sceptic = murderer) to knock down is so much easier than respectfully contesting an exchange of ideas or exploring strategies such as demographically-targeting the vulnerable for protection from the virus.
- Smear by association: Oppose the lockdown? Why, says the lockdown leftist, you must be one of those kooky 5G conspiracists or whatever. Case dismissed. Yes, it is true that some strange political life-forms attach themselves to the fringes of lockdown scepticism. But neither is the left free from a history of its own unwanted and unattractive political relatives, particularly the wild and fundamentally anti-democratic anarchists, up to and including the Antifa goons and Extinction Rebellion loons. Guilt-by-association is a tawdry debating gambit whether used by left or right. Neither the left nor the right can enforce an ideological purity test to control who marches under their banner. There is not much either can do about the loose threads in the great tapestry of political life.
- Virtue-signalling: Left lockdown lovers portray themselves, overtly or by implication, as a better class of person who is superior to the lockdown sceptic – intellectually superior to those they misrepresent as ‘Deniers’ of ‘The Science’ and morally superior to those whom they caricature as being more concerned with ‘the economy’ over health. We, say the left, may have lost a democratic national referendum or an election but we are still better than the nativists, the xenophobes, the gap-toothed, knuckle-dragging deplorables and, now, the heartless lockdown sceptics who are prepared to cruelly cull society of its old geezers.
Why has the left got it so wrong on lockdown?
Given the sign-off in the US and UK on national lockdown guidelines by both Donald Trump and Boris ‘Get-Brexit-Done’ Johnson, there was a glimmer of hope that the left could come out swinging against a lockdown endorsed by their intensely-hated bêtes noires. Opposition to lockdown could have chimed with the left’s noisy imprecations about evil Tories and wicked Republicans responsible for a lockdown which has savaged the working class. This never materialised, however. Why?
The defeat of the trade unions: Neo-liberalism, Thatcher-Reagan and the rise of Woke
The left’s abandonment of the working class for woke politics is the sour fruit resulting from the defeat of the western labour movement in the 1980s when capital, hit by a severe oil crisis, sought to restore capitalist profitability by making the working class pay. At the forefront of this resurgent neo-liberalism was the neutering of the then-powerful trade union movement, an assault led by the dozy Reagan and the flinty Thatcher, who proved to be more aggressive class brawlers than the defensive organs of labour. In industrial battles of Iwo Jima prominence (Reagan vs the air traffic controllers, and Thatcher vs the coal miners), the neo-liberal victory over militant trade unions demoralised the whole labour movement, sent trade union membership into freefall (aided by structural changes in the economy) and juiced up a “globalisation” which imported cheap foreign labour through ‘open borders’ and off-shored domestic industry to cheap labour countries.
Bereft of its crucial labour support base, a left that once defined itself by the principle of ‘class struggle’ now reaches out to a coalition of the social fringes, what Hillary Clinton extolled as a “rainbow of discontents” who primarily define themselves by race, ethnicity, sex and other identity classification rather than class.
In this break-up between the left and the working class, the left did a reverse ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ routine and blamed the working class for the moral and political failings (‘White privilege,’ ‘toxic masculinity’ and other woke analytical concepts) of the relationship, woke concerns which now preoccupy most of the left.
Derangement Syndromes afflicting the left
Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) and Brexit/Boris Derangement Syndrome (BDS)
In response to being jilted by their long-term working class partners, most of the left has succumbed to what the right duly, and accurately, mock as political Derangement Syndromes. The democratic, populist, assertive working class revolts manifested in the Brexit/Boris and Trump electoral outcomes has seemingly traumatised the woke left which reflexively dismisses such political phenomena as racist, xenophobic and reactionary nationalist eruptions instigated by ‘far-right’ demagogues. The Trump and Brexit/Boris phenomena were wrong, ill-informed and morally bad choices, says the woke left, wilful choices made by a working class inadequately enamoured of the economic wonders of globalisation, particularly mass Third World immigration and outsourcing, and its attendant woke politics.
Implicit in every woke leftwinger’s spittle-flecked rave about how Trump, for example, is either Bozo the Clown or ‘literally Hitler’, is a distaste not just for the unlikely populist figurehead but for their voters and supporters, who are largely industrial and blue-collar working class (and still largely, and unforgivably to the woke left, white). Both the US and UK versions of Derangement Syndrome are marked by political ferocity towards all populist policies as the work of the political devil, and which are often accompanied by behavioural paroxysms of rage and resentment, incredulity and incomprehension, and intolerance and illiberalism, not to mention frequent verbal profanity. The various Derangement Syndromes allow a rejected woke left to salve the political wounds inflicted on it by its old working class base, to re-occupy the moral political heights by presenting itself as politically and morally virtuous, despite its democratic rebuffs.
From TDS and BDS to Virus Derangement Syndrome (VDS)
The seamless transition of most of the left from TDS and BDS to VDS (Virus Derangement Syndrome) is not surprising. Just as TDS and BDS allowed the left to rage against the political virus of right-wing populism, VDS licenses the left to proclaim that it is us, the left, who still deserve to be in charge of those who either suffer from ignorance (and need to be enlightened by the left-wing holders of truth on the virus/lockdown), or are stupid (congenitally incapably of grasping ‘The Science’ of social distancing) or who are simply Bad People who choose to be immoral, elder-killing delinquents for the sake of their own convenience and pay packets, and who thus deserve to be shamed and demonised for wrongthink on the virus/lockdown.
The cavalier dismissal of the disastrous economic fallout for the working class (and for the global poor) arising from lockdown is the seedy terminus for a left which has swapped class struggle in favour of woke culture wars and identity politics. As millions of workers join the dole queue and lose their freedoms and civil liberties under lockdown, the left is consumed by statuary, ostentatious BLM histrionics, ‘cancel culture’, transgenderism, ‘believe all women’ and the other woke fads of identity politics.
For the left to drop what should have been easy home games (on favourable economic grounds of lockdown-caused recession, unemployment, etc.) against a third-tier virus opponent, is an existential political crisis for the left if ever there was one.
Prognosis for the left after lockdown
Can the left learn from its self-made political disaster of embracing the damaging lunacy of lockdown?
Signs unhopeful
It will be hard to admit error for a left (as with so much of the scientific, political, media and cultural elite) which is so heavily invested in the myth of an apocalyptic virus necessitating draconian lockdown. Political humility is a rare commodity across the left-right spectrum, and the lockdown left is in the same cognitive-psychological space as were those who were strong supporters of invading Iraq because of (mythical) WMDs and who still believe that WMDs were indeed found after the invasion. So, too, does the left have so much political capital tied to the ‘war’ on the virus that the mythology that lockdown actually saved lives will forever inform the dominant narrative of lockdown as a triumphant vindication of the lockdown left’s ‘lives ahead of money’ strategy. Any self-reflection by the lockdown left will be drowned out by the racket of self-congratulation for supporting lockdown and, indeed, for being more hard-line on lockdown than reluctant and half-hearted lockdown conservatives.
Signs hopeful
There are some leftist heartbeats being detected amongst the lockdown rubble, however. Lockdown Sceptics, for example, has flushed out a heartening number of dissident leftists who oppose the deadly nonsense of lockdown (and who, if they’re anything like me, get a little buzz of political dopamine from each issue). New life for the left could yet emerge from the political crisis of lockdown.
Although it is far easier for the left to never agree with the right on anything, it is possible for the left and the right to agree to be all grown-up and adult on what divides us whilst working productively on opposing, and learning from, the disaster of lockdown. Breaking bread with your traditional enemies does carry political risk (to which the ex-leftists which litter the political landscape testify) but any fear of lockdown scepticism being a conservative Trojan Horse is overblown. Strange lockdown times make for strange political bedfellows but if the greatest political blunder and economic own goal in living political memory doesn’t throw up some novel and much needed political couplings, then what will? And who knows what new political charms and pleasures we may discover in each other’s arms?
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A simply terrific article, covering all the bases as far as I can see.
Agree totally JBW. I feel I am getting the most valuable education from Toby’s chosen posters. Thank you to all, and to Toby!
I fully concur, including the castigation of the faux left “woke” brigade which to my mind are simply, paraphrasing George Carlin on politically correctness, fascists pretending to have good manners.
A superbly written piece. And so correct. It deserves a wider audience.
Trying to do some of that.
An EXCELLENT article, best one on the subject of left support for the lockdown, which is exceeding the right’s in its zealotry.
Wonderfully put. A question for other leftwing people… if you are left wing for thw reasons I am – to improve equality and tolerance between classes and races, has the left, left us behind?
It went in a different direction.As in 1914, when the “left,” contrary to numerous pledges to never support a war between the major powers, did so, each national faction supporting its nation’s war effort. That’s when activists left the left behind.
It’s so true that modern discourse fails to realize that “the left” really hasn’t existed in the west for a heck of a long time. As a label, the term is totally obsolete, and I reckon we’re currently right down to some human basics here: The bright vs. the dull-witted, or, if you prefer, the decent vs. the downright evil. I hope it is obvious that my definitions cross all party and class lines.
I always thought of myself as “leftist”, but Blairism seems to have grabbed the left’s megaphone, and it won’t hand it back. Hard to feel at home with leftist principles when their representatives have no idea what “left” is any more.
Unfortunately the answer has to be yes.
But, we are the real left, they aren’t!
Wow. I will definitely have to read this again when I have more time and give this article the reflection it deserves!
This article may be the most embarrassing exposure of the faulty logic of lockdown supporters I have seen in this pandemic. And the fact that it is written by an unashamed leftist makes it even more humiliating and powerful.
I have to praise Phil for his honesty and for his willingness to join forces with the political right to criticize the common enemy–lockdowns. The lockdowns may go down in history as one of the worst of the scientific, political, and media failures of the 21st century. We need as many people as possible to point out this failure, regardless of where they identify on the political spectrum.
I appreciate how broad the scope of this article is—from the disastrously inaccurate Imperial College paper; to the ridiculous, simplistic propaganda of media darlings Joe Biden and Andrew Cuomo; to an honest examination of how destructive the lockdowns have been globally on public health; to the numerous hypocrisies of the media and political left; and so many other issues.
I have to give Phil an A+ for this one!
Someone on the left completely onside with you on this brother. Time to resist being politically pigeon holed just for speaking common sense.
Excellent piece, thank you Phil. Don’t agree with the socialism, but this critique is accurate as far as I can see.
Please see my anarcho-analysis of the radical left (with coronavirus postscript on page 3 — in which I have linked to this article) for some context on why it has responded in this way.
I agree this is a truly excellent piece, moreover one whose greatest strength has nothing to do with references to socialism – or to any other political ideology for that matter.
A seminal pjece. Bravo! Brings home that the true Left is currently homeless. We had a last chance with Corbyn but it proved to be a last hurrah. We need to regroup with libertarian allies anywhere.
There is NO way anyone left can ally with propertarians (“libertarian” is a mere euphemism). They are the Left’s very worst enemies, and must be resisted and crushed.
‘Quarantining the healthy is economically catastrophic, with Depression-era levels of unemployment, business closures, and mind-numbing long-term government debts and deficits. A demographically-targeted, strategic approach of protecting the vulnerable would have had far better financial (as well as health) outcomes both for the vulnerable and for the whole population.’
Similarly: I live in a small town in Maine. Only a few months ago did they ban plastic bags. So: for several decades, instead of every one of its 5000 citizens bringing their own reusable bag to the store, each week thousands of bag went out from store — many ending up in water, on streets, etc.
Ditto for me in Mass. After a loooong campaign to ban plastic bags that was finally successful I think two years ago—adopted in all towns in the area—now we are back to square one. Clouds of bags leaving stores. At least they are paper bags, but still now onetime use.
A number of aspects of this are ridiculous.
If you can’t bring a supposedly contaminated reusable bag from home, then how come you are allowed to walk into a store with your contaminated clothes on??? Probably more contaminated because the bags have probably been lying in a box in your car forever, whereas your clothes have been exposed to your infectious family and activities on an ongoing basis!! Maybe we should all shop butt-naked to prevent viruses that cling to our clothes from colonizing the store and other people . . .
Furthermore, if shops were serious about trying to continue to observe the earlier bag bans, it would be very easy to engineer a system whereby clean and folded used bags can be stored in boxes for a few days and then brought out to be used again at checkout.
One can only hope that if/when this madness tapers off, consumers will appreciate the accomplishment of banning one-use plastic bags and return to their canvas shopping bags with relief.
From a fellow Australian who worked in the UK for 23 years (before that in the Netherlands) now back in Australia. No left-right axe to grind as I don’t vote and never will vote…..however…..a very good article. Honest and analytical. The left are destroying themselves and have completely ignored their base, ignored the evidence and ignored the great danger facing everyone. Some actually think that a kind of “socialist paradise” will emerge. Meanwhile people have been literaly murdered and there is worse to come. Not only that but the 1% are concentrating power and getting richer. And the left are helping them. They refuse to behave honestly or engage reasonably.
I said to my son (who was unemployed) on the 18th Sept last year….don’t worry soon millions will be unemployed. How did I know? Because the Federal Reserve started REPO. I warned my family to buy extra food (toilet paper etc)….I knew what was coming. How come no one else did? The virus was incidental. BlackRock had advance knowledge. This is deliberate. Yet the left sees this as an opportunity. More fool them. There is no socialist paradise coming. A technocratic oligarchy ruled by the 1%…..certainly the serfs will be thrown a few crumbs but we face full spectrum dominance. If you thought crony capitalism was bad wait to see this…on steroids and then some. P.s. Watch out for those Hegelian rainbows.
Thanks for a good article
Yes. Check out Whitney Webb´s articles at The Last American Vagabond. Things are about to get very nasty.
As a newly woke lefty in addition to a pinko commie anarchist at heart, ‘we’ – my preferred pronoun in situations such as this – like this piece except its divisive language.
Watch out for the the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset. They’ve got a whole strategy to change ‘corporate capitalism’ into ‘stakeholder responsibility.’ As a stakeholder, we tried to get into the game. But we weren’t invited.
It feels like taxation without representation to us.
Oppressive policy oppresses all of us, except maybe Prince Charles.
Right on, re The Great Reset. Glad you mentioned.
This must be brought into the conversation very quickly, and fought down.
The founder of the WEF, Klaus Schwab, wrote 50 years ago that this is what the WEF aims for. He stated this very clearly recently on the occasion of the WEF 50th anniversary.
Now, with the “covid-9 crisis,” the Davos set have the “opportunity.” How convenient.
They will start trying to get this Reset going in January 2021.
What they call “stakeholder capitalism” can’t be good for most of us.
Sad that saving lives is seen as an attack on freedom. Sad that saving lives (which the ruling class hates) is seen as a betrayal of those that we seek to save from death.
Perfect example of the kind of double-think described in the article.
Troll?
Simply brilliant. Thank you.
Jane
I simply cannot understand the crass stupidity of every global government who chose to lockdown as a first option for s virtual non-existent pandemic… This is a measure that should have been imposed as a very, very last resort only. Meanwhile economies melt down and the cost in social terms is truly astronomical… They say lift the lockdown now but my mind just cannot cope with the fact that it was ever imposed at all!
In fact only one country (New Zealand) rapidly imposed a harsh nationwide lockdown at a point when it was still more-or-less unscathed by the pandemic. Although even there it was largely because they realized they didn’t have an effective test-and-trace strategy in place.
Perhaps a Corbyn government would have locked down sooner for this reason, especially as they’d be more likely to acknowledge the decrepit state of the country’s public health tracking systems (as this was the result of Tory austerity).
But would he have been able to get people to comply with an earlier lockdown in the face of a hostile press?
Last resoert?? Stupit, very stupid.
The UK lost an estimated 10000-20000 lives from a 10-day delay.
A couple of points :
1.The ‘left/right’ single dimension isn’t sufficient as a description of political space. Covid-19 has brought this issue to the fore, even tho’ it has been recognized for some consderable time. THis panicdemic has brought to authoritarian/libertarian distinction to the fore.
2.” …the working class, those who have to sell their labour to an employer, are the vast bulk of the population. “
Exactly – but the article at other times experesses hints of the left-infantilism that hints of a romantic attachment to 19th Century concepts of ‘the working class’. Such is embedded in the notion of Trumpism and Brexit being symptoms of ‘revolt’. It really isn’t quite like that in the 21st century, and it is notable, for instance that Trade Unions have been co-opted to the cause of ‘Lockdown’. A wider, more accurate analysis is needed to nail the current dire situation.
But the article does indeed highlight hard truths about the essential impotent incompetence of the ‘left’.
It’s strange that the Leave/Remain divide is sometimes portrayed as an authoritarian/libertarian one (although more accurately it is an insular/cosmopolitan one) when it seems like Remainers are now more likely to support the lockdown than Leavers.
On trade unions, perhaps the fact that trade unions are almost exclusively public sector these days has a lot to do with it, because in the private sector most of the big old monolithic (and thus easily-unionized) workplaces of the past were broken up by outsourcing, enabled by the new computer technology.
Thanks for the article. I’m an Australian & it’s pretty impossible here to get any dissenting opinion from the Left or from most people for that matter on lockdown. Because we had such a low death toll here, the unquestioned assumption is that LD works. No research made into our success being for a variety of other reasons perhaps (Professor Michael Levitt & others have talked about this).
Now with the new cases in Victoria, we’re repeating the same policy without examining all that’s been learned about the virus. (From what I’ve read from non mainstream analysis, the virus is on its way out but who’s taking any notice of this informed view?) It’s possible that Australia’s lockdown delayed our ability to get some herd immunity so we have new cases. Also we’re in Winter, when seasonally, viruses spike.
There may be a number of reasons why the Left has been AWOL about opposing or questioning the lockdown. In the early stages (China, Italy) the media presented a picture of a rapidly spreading deadly virus that would kill millions (even though The Imperial College prediction that turned out to be wrong). Fear really shuts down the cerebral cortex stopping regulation of emotional responses ergo: panic. Humans of any political stripe are susceptible.
Also since the Spanish Flu in 1918 – when the world was a very different place – the Left hasn’t confronted anything as unique as a global medical crisis. The Left is used to addressing, inequality, the failure of capitalism, systemic racism, misinformation about dodgy wars, contemporary Imperialism etc.
The Left aren’t predominantly made of epidemiologists, immunologists, data analysts etc. On the whole the Left is not experienced in critically examining the quite complex analysis of viruses. Sure the Left (& parts of the Right) are critical of ‘Big Pharma’ but this is different to freaking about a ‘pandemic’. The Left like the rest of us (including myself, until I read some alternative material) has been susceptible to the 24/7 repetition in the media about COVID and one sided scientific opinon what needs to be done. They haven’t exercised their usual critical investigation of what’s served up in MSM. They accept the ‘science’ but only the scientific consensus opinion. So like many, the Left believes alternative views on the virus & how to deal with it are just a bunch of conspiracy theorists.
Also I noticed a shallow take from parts of the Left who viewed opposition to lockdown because of the ‘economy’ as right wing callousness & an obsession with money & profit – rather than seeing it as concern for the majority of people ending up unemployed etc..
In fact, the IC forecast was right. It just had a very wide range, and everyone (incl. the IC people) spoke about the top bar (95% confidence) of the range.
Jen: I am experienced in data analysis and so are several friends and colleagues who I’ve corresponded with extensively. We are all for lock down, having considered everything else. The initial rise in infections and deaths was really exponential and extremely frightening (all of us are well over 60). It was clear from the numbers that every available tool, including lockdown, had to be deployed against this pandemic.
The are also some benefits: leisure, much improved air quality (already degrading since end of lockdown), far less car use, greatly increased telecommuting, acceptance of telemedicine, people getting used to measures which will have to be imposed to mitigate global warming …
Your use of the term “extremely frightening” betrays the level and quality of your analysis of this situation. You panicked or supported the panic and now want to justify your irrational damaging response, it is really hard to admit being wrong but it is crucial to show this fortitude at this time. Don’t fall for the sunk costs fallacy. In medicine, one should first aim to do no harm, this principle was thrown out of the window for this virus. Vastly more lives and years of life have been lost by lockdown than anything lockdown could ever have saved, any rational analysis of the data will reveal this (see this for example – https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/499394-the-covid-19-shutdown-will-cost-americans-millions-of-years-of-life), and it was always going to be a temporary delay measure at best, even if you think lockdowns worked, as it was never a sustainable policy. Your supposed ‘benefits’ are gobsmackingly disconnected from the suffering of millions of people in developing countries who are being sacrificed for your increased ‘leisure’ and ‘telecommuting’. They don’t have any government subsidies to fall back on, they just starve or fall into grinding poverty. Lockdowns are a luxury of western wealthy people, at the expense of the people of developing countries. I hope you come to terms with this reality eventually, before it’s too late.
As a Labour supporter it really does dishearten me to see the opposition party support everything this government is doing. While I am no economist its quite obvious that when you shutdown your economy for any length of time it will affect those least likely to help themselves.The Tories will tell everyone how their saved everyone from certain death and how their now helping to save workers jobs. The electorate will agree with this or just think why didn’t Labour give us an alternative and once again the Tories will be re-elected and Labour will be dazed wondering why? Today I hear more jobs being lost and businesses going under but I hear nothing from Labour pointing out the disaster which lockdown as caused and I wonder why. As Labour given up on the working class because we haven’t given up you if you lead us and expose the disaster of lockdown. So I say lead us and flatten the Tories at the next election.
Well said. I agree with your analysis, as a member of the Labour Party. It is somewhat depressing that the ‘Westminster bubble’ is not operating as a proper opposition on this issue. Remember the timing of it all – not long after the GE last December, leadership change etc, and the absence of local elections this year. Doesn’t look good at present. I suspect that quite a lot of us don’t know what to do just now, and it’s entirely possible that a few membership ‘direct debits’ will be stopped next time round.
Excellent article, but personally I do not believe this was a mistake. It is a carefully planned global coup. And, for some reason not clear to me, the intellectual left is complicit. Yes, I agree that it probably did all start with Reaganism–Thatcherism.
I, too, was a Trotskyist in the 1970’s and this article chimes with me. Once you lose your class perspective, you are no longer the left.
This is a truly superb article. The left’s support for lockdown seems so utterly bizarre but it is very well explained here.
Hallelujah! At last the discussions (and fairly regular rants) that my partner and I have been having for months have been brilliantly summerised. Thank you Phil. I’m going to share this with some of our friends (most of whom think we are bonkers of course) just to show them that somewhere in the world intelligent life still exists!
From NYC, consider myself a radical green leftist and I loathe the hideous technocratic tyranny and want to resist by any means necessary. Please check out these websites:
https://wrenchinthegears.com
https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com
https://questioningcovid.com
http://www.stopcp.com/GlobalResetPSYOP/GlobalResetPSYOPMindMap.html
https://everydayconcerned.net/2020/09/04/breaking-major-investigative-report-by-association-of-french-reserve-army-officers-finds-covid-19-pandemic-to-have-a-hidden-agenda-for-global-totalitarianism-nanotech-chipping-of-all-5g-irradia/
Pam Popper: https://makeamericansfreeagain.com
Del Bigtree: https://www.brighteon.com/channels/highwire
https://www.technocracy.news
As someone on the left, a remain voter and until recently Labour member, I just couldn’t agree more with this article. It basically articulates everything I want to say without actually having to write it …
The left has completely abandoned all of it’s principles in order to play politics. I think for many the political game is more important than the outcomes of peoples lives. Let’s not forget that this ridiculous public health response is going to disproportionately affect the lives of the vulnerable.
If you’re on the real left, if you believe in left wing principles genuinely because you have a deep rooted empathy for people who are less advantaged than you and you want to see policies that help to create greater equality in society and not create further inequalities, then we should band together with rational people of all political persuasions to oppose this destructive madness.
Anyway, it’s all been said, thank you
I have been appalled by how nearly all the leftists and liberals have fallen hook, line and sinker for the virus scare. I know so many Anarchists who are afraid to shake hands, make farcical displays at social distancing. That so many hitherto intelligent people who were skeptical and suspicious of governments and the media, have turned into pathetic whimpering conformist children. Yet it gets more ridiculous. As a result of the far right claiming that CoVid is a scheme by Bill Gates to control the world, leftists and liberals are now rushing to Gates’ defense. There is hardly unanimous conclusions by medical professionals, public health experts and scientists about CoVid19. Of course the dissenting perspectives are excluded from the international mainstream media and/or immediately denounced and discredited by their peers. I’m afraid that the Left’s handling of CoVid and the lockdowns will result them being discredited for at least a generation.
I think this offers a great possibility to respond to far-right conspiracy theories. Bill Gates does have an enormous amount of influence on global affairs through his wealth and his foundation that is concerning on many areas. Most particularly concerning is that he is treated as an authority on diseases by the media even though he has no relevant education or vocational experience in the medical profession. I think by validating the legitimate concerns, that opens up an opportunity to dialogue, and some people on the far-right might be won over to the left’s way of thinking. There is so much concern about offering a gateway to the far-right. Why can’t that gateway work in the other direction?
I agree with many points in the article, but I find the attack on anarchists uncalled for. Most anarchists I know are wonderful people unable to harm a fly (communist libertarians of the Kropotkian type). The critique seems out of the place, especially as part of an article that tries to reconcile different political views into a common front. It’s true that some renowned anarchists have had a very disappointing reaction to this crisis, but so have most of the people I know, no matter their ideology.
Anyway, greetings from Spain and please keep up the fight.
This should be republished Toby as 3 years later it still holds up and has considerable foresight and insight that few on the left or right had at the time. This author from the left has integrity and is worth reading. I didn’t know there were any on the left left! Which is why many like Lee Anderson (and me too) have got it right and left the left. Right? And I bet Phil Shannon will soon join Del and stand as another “little run away”.