There follows a guest post by Jon Zobenica and Benjamin Schwarz about why those dissenting from the prevailing orthodoxy about the war in Ukraine should not be smeared as traitors. Ben is the CEO of the US Free Speech Union. You can subscribe to the US FSU’s Substack newsletter here.
During the Cold War they were called comsymps, or were accused of being fellow travellers or fifth columnists or maybe just useful idiots – i.e., those who weren’t full-throated enough in their opposition to all things Soviet and whose opinions dared deviate to whatever degree from official American consensus. Senator Joseph McCarthy even referred to them as the “prancing minions of the Moscow party line,” and their deviations from consensus could – and in some cases did – get them accused of treason.
This habit of calling into question the patriotism and loyalty of those who buck consensus is back with full force, only instead of coming from the reactionary right (the likes of Senator McCarthy), such calls are coming from those in the prestige media, academe, and the current White House and State Department – much more liberal players who are merely availing themselves of McCarthyite tactics.
Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson has come in for particular abuse in this area. For questioning the wisdom of America’s involvement in the Ukraine conflict (given a lack of vital national interests to the United States), and for validating Russian concerns about proposed NATO expansion into Ukraine and Georgia (both former Soviet republics), Carlson has been called “America’s Most Watched Kremlin Propagandist” by Slate contributor William Saletan; has been accused of flirting with treason by Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law professor (emeritus) and former judicial advisor to President Barack Obama; and has been charged by those too numerous to count with parroting, echoing, repeating, mouthing, and so on “Putin’s talking points.” So plentiful is talk of Carlson being on Team Kremlin that one could be forgiven for thinking the slur has become something of a talking point itself.
Professor Tribe’s comments, made in a since deleted tweet posted on Monday, February 21st, were especially regrettable, coming as they did from a person of his position and training. That tweet read:
Led by Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson, the GOP’s Trump wing appears to be throwing its weight behind Putin. If Putin opts to wage war on our ally, Ukraine, such “aid and comfort” to an “enemy” would appear to become “treason” as defined by Article III of the U.S. Constitution.
One is tempted to joke, à la Mary McCarthy, that every word of that tweet is untrue, including and and the. Russia, whatever our prevailing national opinion on it, is not a declared enemy with whom we are at war even now, post-invasion. Ukraine, whatever our prevailing national sentiments toward it, is not an official ally. Domestic deviation from prevailing national sentiments and opinions does not come anywhere near the definition of “aid and comfort” as laid out in Article III of the Constitution.
David French – former U.S. Army major in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, Iraq War veteran, Bronze Star recipient, and outspoken critic of the Trump wing of the GOP – had this to say in direct response to Professor Tribe’s tweet: “This is completely false. Constitutional text, history, and precedent say this is false. It’s not even in the same ballpark as the truth.” In his tweet, French linked to a page at the National Constitution Center site, where two of the centre’s scholars elucidate the treason clause, Article III:
While the Constitution’s Framers shared the centuries-old view that all citizens owed a duty of loyalty to their home nation, they included the Treason Clause not so much to underscore the seriousness of such a betrayal, but to guard against the historic use of treason prosecutions by repressive governments to silence otherwise legitimate political opposition. Debate surrounding the Clause at the Constitutional Convention thus focused on ways to narrowly define the offense, and to protect against false or flimsy prosecutions.
. . . In other words, the Constitution requires both concrete action and an intent to betray the nation before a citizen can be convicted of treason; expressing traitorous thoughts or intentions alone does not suffice.
Yet just this past Friday, February 25, former New York Senator, former Secretary of State, and former Democratic nominee for the Presidency, Hillary Clinton, was on MSNBC’s Morning Joe parroting Professor Tribe’s flimsy accusations. We need to call out “those people who are giving aid and comfort to Vladimir Putin,” Secretary Clinton thuggishly remonstrated. She criticised those who question the received foreign-policy wisdom, “who are unfortunately being broadcast by Russian media not only inside Russia but in Europe to demonstrate the division within our own country.” (Our diversity is our strength – except, apparently, when it’s not.) “We have to be much more united,” Secretary Clinton admonished us, because our national divisiveness “plays right into the ambitions” of those who would “divide and conquer the west without ever invading us but by setting us against each other.”
Those whom Secretary Clinton excoriated have very different views from hers about America’s role in the world and the motivations behind Russia’s conduct toward Ukraine. Certainly, she should strenuously challenge those views. Instead, however, she attempted to quash debate by pronouncing that her opponents’ views approximate treachery against the nation because, as she reckons, their dissent objectively – an adverb Stalinists were wont to deploy – supports the ambitions of a country she has defined as America’s enemy. This tactic used to be called red-baiting.
Secretary Clinton did bring up a good point, even if she did so unwittingly. Our national divisions have long been exploited by clever and ambitious propagandists from the Soviet Union and then from the Russian Federation. Civil Rights marchers protesting the status quo in the Jim Crow South made for great footage that highlighted American divisions and hypocrisies for Soviet Bloc audiences, all the more so when – with Gandhian sangfroid – the marchers put themselves in circumstances where they were sure to be attacked by the reactionary forces of the status quo. Would that make Martin Luther King a useful idiot or a fifth columnist? (Some on the reactionary right tried to paint him thus. And remember, this all happened during the height of the Cold War, when the great powers were competing globally for potential client states, not least among the newly independent and predominantly brown-skinned nations of the once-colonial Global South.) More recently, Russian propagandists have availed themselves of the words and actions of groups ranging from Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter, words and actions that have brought to light further divisions within America – economic divisions, racial divisions, etc. Are members of groups like these culpable for the uses to which their (domestic) social and political critiques are put by foreign propaganda mills? Are they to stifle such critiques for fear of finding themselves accused, like Tucker Carlson, of flirting with treason?
Treason, of course, involves waging war against your home nation or providing aid and comfort to an enemy of your home nation in time of war. So what about those who explicitly, vociferously protested our involvement in Vietnam? In that case, American military forces were directly engaged with those of a foreign government, that of North Vietnam. The United States alleged that North Vietnam was the aggressor, having violated the border between north and south (established in 1954) by providing men and materiel to the Vietcong, who were taking up arms against an independent South Vietnam. The United States therefore entered into a military alliance with South Vietnam to repel these attacks, in a fashion that included bombing targets in North Vietnam.
Were kids who took to the streets and campuses to protest the war giving aid and comfort to the enemy? What about their moms who supported them by joining Another Mother for Peace – and such people as the former Miss America Bess Myerson, the celebrated paediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock, and the actors Debbie Reynolds, Donna Reed, Dick van Dyke, Joanne Woodward, Paul Newman, and Lauren Bacall, all of whom actively supported those moms – were they giving aid and comfort to the enemy? Many Americans at the time thought so. Many who were alive then still do. But those protesters weren’t guilty of anything like treason, and in fact many Americans celebrated them, and still do, for the stand they took and the divisions they pried open. What, however, of Jane Fonda’s visit to a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft battery (a weapon used, of course, to shoot down American pilots, many of whom, at the time of Fonda’s visit, were being held as prisoners of war)? This was an act of commission. Unlike civil-rights and antiwar marchers, Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter protesters, or Tucker Carlson, all whom might find (or have found) their words and actions put to Russian uses without their intention, Fonda traveled to enemy territory of her own volition and allowed her visit to the gun emplacement to be filmed. The footage shows her – in all her Hollywood fame – seated behind the gun sights and surrounded by applauding North Vietnamese soldiers. She looks as delighted as a birthday girl at Disneyland.
It’s not a good look, which Fonda herself came to realise. It may even have been somewhat comforting to the North Vietnamese, though nowhere near to the degree that it was distressing to Americans. Whatever the case, Jane Fonda was never charged with treason. Many despise her for what she did, just as many despise Tucker Carlson for what he does. But our culture and our society have found ways to coexist with them both, and even to let them thrive. It is by far the better option than dumbing down our concept of treason, the better to set upon each other’s throats. That’s the very divisiveness and national self-destruction that Secretary Clinton, with one breath, claims to fear and, with the other, exacerbates with her loose talk about giving “aid and comfort” to Vladimir Putin.
Some words must be said about these Putin talking points people are supposedly parroting; for Tucker Carlson isn’t alone in finding himself so charged. Several weeks ago, President Joe Biden’s White House Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, accused Republican Senator Josh Hawley, of Missouri, of “digesting Russian misinformation and . . . parroting the talking points of Russian propagandist leaders.” (This came as a result of Hawley’s suggesting that, for strategic reasons, the United States should consider withdrawing its commitment to expanding NATO into Ukraine.) At nearly the same time, State Department spokesperson Ned Price leveled the following remark at an Associated Press reporter (after being rankled by the reporter’s unyielding skepticism regarding a report Price had just made about alleged Russian misinformation): “If you doubt the credibility of the U.S. government . . . and want to find solace in information that the Russians are putting out, that is for you to do.”
The unavoidable takeaway from all this is that parroting isn’t the actual problem in the eyes of officialdom. In fact parroting is preferred, almost insisted on. But you must parrot Us, officialdom asserts. Anything less, and we’ll accuse you of parroting Them. Not only is this incompatible with the principles we presume to stand for at home and abroad (those relating to freedom of speech, an independent and even adversarial press, etc.), but it also betrays an ignorance of the long public debate around foreign policy as it relates to Russia. Working backwards chronologically, here are but a few highlights from that debate.
In a 2016 then President Obama said, “The fact is that Ukraine, which is a non-NATO country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do.” He added that “we have to be very clear about what our core interests are and what we are willing to go to war for.” One can agree or disagree with these assessments. But at the time they were offered, it probably didn’t occur to those who now find Russian disinformation hidden in every lampshade to claim that President Obama was naught but a Kremlin mouthpiece.
In 2015, John J. Mearsheimer, a University of Chicago professor of political science (and a West Point graduate), gave a lecture titled “The Causes and Consequences of the Ukraine Crisis.”
In that lecture, he cited the 2008 Bucharest Summit (in which NATO pledged to one day incorporate Ukraine and Georgia) as a proximate cause of the 2008 war in Georgia and a contributing cause of Russia’s 2014 annexation of the Crimea and its military support of pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine.
The Bucharest Summit Declaration, from April 3rd, 2008, reads in part: “NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.” Reflecting the Russian foreign-policy consensus, Vladimir Putin has consistently said that he would never allow that to happen, that such an action would be considered a direct threat to Russia. And Professor Mearsheimer doesn’t wonder why, reminding us that the United States has for two hundred years proclaimed the rights of a hegemon within its own hemisphere (via the Monroe Doctrine), that we have spent more than sixty years in a state of pique over the fact that a socialist (and, for a long time, Soviet-allied) Cuba sits just off our southern shore, and that we would never allow, say, Canada or Mexico to enter into a military alliance with Russia or China against us. Ukraine, as both Professor Mearsheimer and President Obama note, is a core interest of Russia’s. It is less obviously of vital national importance to the United States. It was not treasonous for Professor Mearsheimer and President Obama to say so, and it’s not treasonous for Tucker Carlson to do so either.
One is free to agree or disagree with the geopolitical and historical analysis offered by Mearsheimer – analysis largely echoed by such disparate figures as the British historian and sociologist Perry Anderson; the former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jack Matlock; the historian and foreign-policy expert Ronald Steel; the editorial director and publisher of the Nation, Katrina vanden Heuvel; her late husband, the historian of Russia Stephen F. Cohen; the British Russia scholar and journalist Anatol Lieven; the former New Republic columnist Robert Wright; the MIT political scientists Barry R. Posen and Stephen Van Evera; the Texas A&M political scientist Christopher Layne; and the Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times Moscow Bureau Chief David K. Shipler – but such analysis long predates Tucker Carlson’s supposedly treasonous broadcasts on the Fox News Channel. In fact, such analysis long predates Vladimir Putin’s involvement in world affairs.
In 1959, no less towering a figure in twentieth-century American diplomacy than George F. Kennan joined a debate with former Secretary of State Dean Acheson in the pages of Foreign Affairs magazine, on the subject of potential U.S. military disengagement from western Europe. Kennan was one of the architects of America’s containment policy vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, but as he made clear in Foreign Affairs, such a policy – in his eyes – had been aimed at improving America’s negotiating position, from which containment (and its inherent tensions) might eventually be eased in favour of compromise solutions and a more lasting and stable peace, for both the United States and the Soviet Union, and for the nations of both eastern and western Europe. The policy as he imagined it was never meant to be permanent. “Perhaps the deepest issue at stake in this whole problem of disengagement,” Kennan wrote, “resolves around this point.”
Kennan’s article was written against the backdrop of, among other things, ongoing tensions over West Berlin and the crushed Hungarian uprising of 1956 – events that in the eyes of Kennan’s opponents militated against his proposals for disengagement. Kennan made sure to note, however, that it was also written against the backdrop of ongoing U.S. military presence in West Germany, of West Germany’s then recent (1955) admission into NATO, and of the absence of any agreement regarding the diplomatic status of nations that might manage to extricate themselves from the Soviet Bloc. “The sharpness of the challenge which was presented to Soviet interests,” Kennan wrote,
was heightened by the fact that any Soviet withdrawal in the face of the respective pressures would have had the nature of a forced unilateral retreat unattended by any comparable concessions, or indeed by any concessions at all, on the Western side. Not only would a yielding to pressures of this sort have been immediately humiliating, but there was the further danger, against which Moscow had no visible protection, that territories thus released from participation in the Warsaw Pact might end up by joining the Atlantic Alliance [i.e., NATO], thus effecting a major alteration in the world balance of power. [Emphasis added.]
One didn’t have to be sympathetic to Soviet designs to see how unacceptable such a lopsided eventuality would be to the Kremlin. Yet, as Kennan noted, Soviet behavior in response to such proposed lopsidedness was characterized by many as mere Soviet aggression. Nor was it realistic, Kennan continued, to assume that the Soviets would view their own interests and security in precisely the terms the United States conceived of those matters for them. Ergo, the Soviets “will be unlikely to regard as a fit subject of negotiation a mere retraction of their power in favor of the extension to . . . Eastern Europe of the international military, political and economic arrangements now prevailing, under American aegis or encouragement, in the western half of the continent.”
Replace the word Soviet with the word Russian in the following, and you have a perfectly melancholy comment on the current crisis in Ukraine: “We may be paying, here, a bitter price for our tendency over the whole span of Western-Soviet relations to dismiss all Soviet ideological statements as ‘just propaganda,’ and to discuss with Soviet leaders everything but the main thing.”
Given his perspective and reasoning, it’s no wonder that four decades later Kennan characterised America’s push to expand NATO eastward – a policy, contrary to repeated U.S. pledges made to Russian officials at the end of the Cold War, that Russia today sees as prompting the current crisis in Ukraine – as “the most fateful error of American policy in the post cold-war era. Such a decision may be expected . . . to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.” Once again, wise people can disagree – and have disagreed – with such analysis as Kennan’s. One could argue that it is misguided or even dangerous. It is certainly not truth beyond questioning. But neither is it disinformation or misinformation. It is intelligently conceived and articulated information, of the sort that is vital to informed debate and an informed citizenry. And an informed citizenry is never more important than in times of national and even global tension, when prudence and the consideration of complex realities must not give way to Manichaean passions and simple if stirring invocations of “values.”
As Kennan wrote in Foreign Affairs, “National interest, not sentiment or emotion, forms the normal basis for policy; and nations must not be expected to ignore the most vital of their own interests.” It is a view that has been expressed as well by everyone from President Obama to Charles de Gaulle, who famously remarked, in essence, that no nation has friends, only interests.
Cold and unsentimental that may be, but it is not a new idea, and again, it has been voiced by people all over the political spectrum, including – yes, more recently – Tucker Carlson. That such an idea is now being recast as treasonous indicates a great and alarming degradation of American discourse, and an even more alarming instinct to stifle debate when debate is most needed. That such degradation and such instinct to chill speech are emanating from high officialdom, the prestige press, and academe bodes ill for free and informed expression in the United States right now. Alas, our history is replete with instances – from the Alien and Sedition Acts through the wholesale destruction of civil liberties during the First World War, from the witch hunts of the early Cold War to President George W. Bush’s press secretary Ari Fleisher’s warning that “people should watch what they say” when questioning the Global War on Terror – of a pathological tendency to suppress dissent and to demand conformity by conflating criticism of national policy with disloyalty or treason. That we presume to embody values that must be defended abroad but that we can’t tolerate at home reveals something fraudulent – wilfully blind and potentially dangerous – in our amour propre.
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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”.