[What follows is a very slightly edited version of a speech I delivered yesterday at the Danube Institute’s Rule of Law Conference in Budapest. It is a 10-minute summary of many of the themes I have recently been exploring on my Substack and which I will ultimately, in due course, elucidate in a book. You may find it shorter, more discursive and more direct than my usual posts, but this also perhaps makes it more digestible. New readers may choose to look at some of my previous posts for further detail, some examples being here, here, here, here and here.]
What I would like to talk to you about today is the small matter of the future: the trajectory on which we find ourselves as we head towards the end state of liberalism, and indeed, of modernity as such.
This may not be a topic easily dealt with in the course of ten minutes. But examining developments in the field of human rights will help us to achieve our objective. This is because, as the most perceptive of leftist critics have always argued, human rights are fundamentally a technology of liberalism. They produce the liberal subject. By examining the type of subject which human rights produce, we therefore understand better the liberal future that awaits us.
Let me then frame our discussion by asking what the past decade has taught us about what human rights law is really for. And here I will borrow a technique developed by a Hungarian, although he lived for most of his life in France, Anthony de Jasay.
De Jasay observed that if we want to understand the State, it helps to imagine it as a person – with objectives, desires and motives. Let us, then, taking a leaf out of his book, imagine that human rights law is a person. And let us therefore examine human rights law as though it had motives and desires of its own. What, looking at this person’s behaviour – as made manifest in court decisions and the activities of activists and campaign groups – can we glean about his or her project?
Certainly, securing freedom of speech does not appear to be on the agenda – human rights law seems to be intensely relaxed about censorship. Certainly, it is not for the elimination of discrimination as such – human rights law appears to be quite happy with discrimination as long as it can be understood in a positive sense as leading to the goal of substantive equality. And certainly, as we saw in 2020 and 2021, it is not particularly interested in civil liberties – the rights to freedom of association, to freedom of conscience, to bodily autonomy and indeed to liberty itself. Those things human rights law easily and readily sacrifices.
On the other hand, human rights law appears to be very concerned about particular aspects of the rights of immigrants and asylum seekers – namely, the right essentially not to be returned to one’s country of origin in any circumstances. Human rights law appears to value substantive equality – equality of outcome – very highly. During the pandemic, its chief concern appeared to be protecting the most biopolitical of matters: not just health, but life itself. Human rights law, as we have recently seen in the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights, is also extremely worried about climate change. And it is very keen that there should be no diminution in the size and scope of the welfare state. These are the things, then, which human rights law would seem to care about most.
Thinking of human rights in this way, as though it is a person, with a will and a consciousness, therefore helps us very easily understand what its purpose is. And, holding it up for examination in this way, we see that this purpose is absolutely not a matter of limiting the power of the State. Far from it. Human rights law’s chief concern is rather to facilitate the expansion of the scope of State power to each and every horizon – to bring within its purview not only the means of human subsistence, not only the substantive equality of each and every individual human being, not only the populations of every part of the globe if they are able to make the physical journey to a human rights-respecting location, not only sickness and disease, not only even human life but the very climate itself. There is no aspect of economic, social, cultural or naked biological life that is beyond its ambition.
Human rights, then, is a technology of liberalism par excellence if we understand liberalism not as a limited form of government but rather as how Leo Strauss described it – as that form of government which promises complete emancipation within the universal and homogeneous state. A state in which all are made equal, all are freed from conditions of want, and all human difference is made politically irrelevant because all are secured in the mutuality of recognition.
Strauss was of course commenting on the thought of Alexandre Kojève. But it is through another Straussian sparring partner – separated by centuries of time – to whom we must turn to properly understand this phenomenon: namely Niccolò Machiavelli.
Strauss presents Machiavelli to us as the central figure in the break between modernity and what came before it. This is because Machiavelli represents an understanding of government as being grounded only in temporal justification – never theological justification. The practice of modern government gets its legitimacy and its justification from the fact that it, precisely, ‘governs’: it acts upon the world.
For Machiavelli, this meant modern government could be understood as a relationship between governor and governed in which the former must at all times ‘govern’ in such a way as to secure the loyalty of the latter. Without that loyalty, the relationship would break down and the governing framework would collapse. The modern state’s obsession, then, would be to govern in such a way as to retain the population’s loyalty. And those familiar with Machiavelli will know that he believed there were only two ways in which this could be realised. The state could represent the norms and virtues of the population as a republic. Or it could rule the population as a prince. In a republic, loyalty is secured by the connection between government and people. In the principality, loyalty is secured by the purported necessity of government, without which the population will decay into corruption.
The rule of the prince, then, relies on a discourse through which the population is constructed as vulnerable, needy and decadent – incapable of being left to its own devices, and incapable of governing itself. Government justifies itself, in this model, through a portrayal of itself as indispensable, since the people, without it, are corrupt.
In Chapter VI of The Prince, we see this stated very succinctly, in the course of a single sentence. “It was necessary”, Machiavelli tells us, “For Moses to find the people of Israel slaves in Egypt and oppressed by the Egyptians, in order that they might be disposed to follow him to escape this servitude.” Note the emphasis: it was necessary for Moses that the people of Israel were in a position of vulnerability, destitution and enslavement, that he might be the one to free them and that they might therefore be disposed to follow him.
This is, in essence, the promise which the modern State, and modern liberalism, which increasingly rejects the concept of representative government, makes. Trust in me, and let me lead you, because without me all is chaos. You, the people, cannot be trusted to govern your own affairs, cannot be trusted to cooperate with each other directly, and cannot be left alone – because to do so would be to give effect to your own corruption. It is I, the State, who can free you from want, who can deliver you to a position of perfect equality, who can liberate you from any and all constraint, who can protect you from sickness and death, and who can even protect you from the climate itself. This is the reason why I exist, why I govern, and why I should retain your loyalty.
I will not belabour the point, which should by now be clear, which is that human rights law, in its current iteration, functions as the quintessential tool of liberal political reason. What I mean by this, and those familiar with the work of Michel Foucault will recognise that I borrow his language, is that human rights law functions to justify the exercise of government in the liberal mode – it provides a reason, or a set of reasons, why a liberal governing framework should exist and perpetuate itself.
And it should also be clear now as to the type of human subject which human rights law produces, and the type of relationship which that human subject has towards the State: one of total reliance, in which the individual is liberated, equalised, made secure and morally improved by State power, and in which – by extension – the total merger of State and society, wherein the justification for the existence of government will never be questioned, is ultimately realised. That is the trajectory on which we travel, and it is that project for which human rights is the vanguard. Elaborating the substantive nature of that end state is beyond the scope of my comments here, but I daresay we will see it play out in due course.
Dr. David McGrogan is an Associate Professor of Law at Northumbria Law School. You can subscribe to his Substack – News From Uncibal – here.
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I’m so glad she was all over the media nine weeks after the jab was first administered warning Joe Public about the dangers of having this poorly tested, experimental gunk.
That would have been about the time I was “invited” to have “my” jab. Fortunately, I’d done my own research and knew by then that the jabs were positively dangerous so I declined.
I remember when the risk of blood clots emerged and some countries started withdrawing the AZ vaccine from the under 50’s – the British mainstream media went ballistic, accusing these countries of undermining the vaccine effort, fearmongering and endangering the population.
So the media has a lot to answer for: rather than asking questions and uncovering the truth, they flipped into full propaganda mode.
Now of course they would rather forget about the whole thing, so it’s all gone quiet on the Covid front.
”Speak dollars to power”
How relieved Pfizer and Modrna must be that the discontinued AstraZeneca “Immunity Modulating Substance” is taking the rap. What gets modulated one way can also get modulated the opposite way.
Now can we please have equivalent media coverage of the safety-efficacy profile of the Pfizer and Moderna injectables not currently taking the public rap.
FYI for followers of finance in general and Moderna Director share sales in particular: “Listed below are trades carried out by directors and other individuals which are required to be notified to the market…”
https://www.hl.co.uk/shares/shares-search-results/m/moderna-inc-usd0.0001/director-deals
…Relatively small beer over the last five months, but scroll down to 16 Feb 2024 for ~$2.3M realised by Moderna CEO Monsieur Bancel.
Last time I looked, tip of a massive dollar-berg accrued from CEO share sales over the last five years. Not for nothing is Monsieur said to be a multibillionaire.
Monsieur first come across over a decade ago, when spotted as named inventor on early Moderna patents, despite career background in finance and some of these patents looking like they pre-dated Monsiuer’s appointment as Moderna CEO.
May not sound a big deal, but to this purist acquainted with the concept of invalidating Intellectual Property rights by dubious inventorship claims, it was very telling from the start.
Ample precedent for vanity and small untruths fostering more profitable untruths over time. Sceptics please draw your own conclusions.
mRNA “vaccines” seem to me an infinitely more dangerous proposition because of the mechanisms used, the lack of a long term safety profile, the tendency to see them as a magic bullet because of the perceived ability to develop new “vaccines” quickly. Nobody will want to look at the long term safety profile because there’s too much money, power and kudos at stake.
The moment the industry started parallelising and short-cutting on established “vaccine” clinical trial timings set the alarm bells ringing.
They rang like an air raid siren, when ever-younger arms started getting morally blackmailed by the mandatpry altruism con, in a free for all to work in the NHS, travel abroad, study, etc, etc.
Derelection of duty of care by MHRA, JVCI and all those Rt DisHonourable Ministers, Privy Councillors, Medical Offizers, Profs, Sirs, Dames, FRSs, Professor Sirs and Lord Sir Sir himself in person.
As Charlie Munger memorably puts it “Folly and evil”.
“parallelising” – yup, you can’t create a baby in 3 months by deploying three mothers instead of 1.
The classic sci-fi story features a disaster facing the world, and our hero scientist coming up with a nick-of-time untried solution that may actually make things worse and destroy the universe. The whole tension in the story is always about whether the hasty solution is salvation or armageddon.
My point is that I am unable to conceive how so many in my erstwile medical profession were not crossing their fingers, toes and everything else whilst praying and fasting when a novel pharmaceutical, rushed through in nine months, was rolled out to the whole population.
Yet instead of having their hands poised over the off switch, they express shock and horror that the lack of adequate safety trials predictably resulted in lack of adequate safety.
The sci-fi story always includes blockheaded generals, politicians (and the scientist’s bureaucratic boss) oblivious to risk… they seem to be with us in force even now.
Cue Professor Richard Feynman’s concluding remark to the US Presidential Commission investigating the 1987 Challenger space shuttle disaster:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-challenger-disasters-minority-report/
“For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.”
Made we wonder about how long it will be before Astra Zeneca renames itself. Perhaps the shareholders will have an influence on that.
From speaking to British people and listening to them I get the impression that they definitely prefer the Astrazeneca. You can listen in on a discussion in a coffee bar among middle class English women and they will chat about Moderna, Pfizer etc and they will settle on the Astra because for one thing it isn’t of dubious Yankee extraction and also its a charity thing for them. Honestly that is the level of the discussion. Maybe two years later the cackling hens all get turbo cancer. That is entirely unrelated of course.
That attitude now may be put down to the government’s quiet shadow-banning of the AZ vaccine without any public discussion of why it was withdrawn. I have some sympathy for ordinary people not inquiring into that which they’ve been carefully led to forget.
How is it possibly that a highly trained haematologist could believe any vaxx could be developed in such a short time. Where were the safety and efficacy data? And to advise one’s daughter to participate in the trials of AZ? Dear Lord, you cannot make up a story like this.
Had she had real courage she would have blown the whistle loud and clear at the earliest opportunity.
I had my second AZ jab in April 2021 after this association was well recognised by her and a few other haematologists. As haematologists they should have had sufficient understanding of the low risk of most people from the virus and the potentially serious, though rare, risk of VITT from the AZ jab. Armed with that information many people, including me, would have refused and avoided other fortunately less serious side effects.
Dr Pavord is clearly adopting Chris Whitty’s line of telling us how she recognised the potential problems of the vaccine but failed to stick her head far enough above the parapet
There must be many scientists and doctors who in my view are guilty of professional cowardice in a similar manner who failed in their first duty of a doctor under the GMC Good Practice Guidelines of making the care of the patient their first concern.
All doctors have a duty to report to the relevant authorities if they believe patient care is at risk.
Professional cowardice is a good term: how many of the military would be allowed to be professional cowards and still keep serving? Actually it is a term that can be applied to a lot of professions these days. Courage is sadly lacking amongst people of today.
Moral and Ethical Fortitude.
Pavord was so keen she even persuaded her daughter to take part in the trial.
Not herself? Clearly a kind and loving mother.
The deaths of course have to be contextualised. The risks to those under 50 are twice that of dying under general anaesthetic, for example. Although Pavord supported the Government’s response to Covid, she was lobbying for it not to be given to the under-50s.
Great if you are under 50.
A Canadian group around Denis Rancourt has analysed mortality data from 125 countries, arriving at the conclusions presented in this 10-minute video: https://www.globalresearch.ca/video-denis-rancourt-there-was-no-pandemic-it-was-the-state-that-killed-granny/5876206.
Quoting from the end of the video:
“This was a mega-campaign, … it was planned by the CIA, the military, it was executed, they were going to do it no matter what, and it killed people by how they treated people, and then the vaccines themselves are toxic.
“So the experiment’s been done globally, we know this now, we know that death [from the ‘vaccines’] increases exponentially with age, many elderly people died, it’s hard to complain because they were elderly but, still, they died.
“So just to give you one quantitative figure to leave you with, in most countries, [for] people over 80, the risk of dying per injection is one death in between 5 and 20 injections, depending on the country. That’s the level of toxicity of the vaccines for elderly people. And this is not to mention all the serious harms that are done to young people and young adults, including myocarditis, heart conditions, you name it.”
Just what is wrong with these doctors who so desperately believe in vaccines? Even I – with zero medical training – am aware that drugs need years of experimentation to confirm they are both safe and actually do what they are supposed to do. Has everyone forgotten Thalidomide?
For anyone interested, a simple question on the internet at the time of the ‘pandemic’ revealed that vaccines need 10 to 15 years of development to ensure their safety. But most of the world’s doctors were happy to inject their patients with completely unknown ‘stuff’ that labs had supposedly created in record time. And all in answer to a supposed ‘pandemic’ where the same doctors must have noticed from the patients they were seeing daily that there was no pandemic whatsoever – or, if at all, a pandemic of fear.