Interlude 2: Industrial Corona Gaslighting

“I have spent my whole day wearing PPE – I am both emotionally and physically exhausted.”

“Today I’ve witnessed three patients die [of COVID-19] and had to tell two families they couldn’t visit as they were symptomatic.”

“I get home, turn on the TV and see crowds on people on Bournemouth Beach – it frustrates me when we are trying so hard to protect the public.”

“I beg you. Stay at home as much as you can.” (source)

A break now to discuss this. I am feeling very gaslit (?) by the prevalence and ignorance of the anti-lockdown brigade. They are vocal, amplified by the ruling class and its media. They are waging class war. This is because a) they are taking the choice away from the working class, b) risking an increase of infections and subsequently death, and c) enforcing the 'discipline' of work. Specifically "work or else" - regardless of the cost. Intentionally or not, this squashes revolutionary thought.

None of these options are acceptable. We must be allowed to decide for ourselves.

Second fact: these views are propagated by people who are either unwilling or incapable of recognising the wider context. Corona isn't occurring in a neutral context. It isn't the choice between 'gulag lockdown' and 'free society'. It's a choice between the freedom to wander about with no concern while a highly transmissible and economically devastating (that's one of the traits of a pandemic) virus spreads, and economic devastation with hopefully a flatter curve of viral mobility.

The context I refer to is, of course, our capitalist economy and its supporting culture. This is not neutral, it exists in the interests of the ruling class to the detriment (ie exploitation) of the working class (that's you and I, whether you like it or not). The key point here is this:

All the problems the antiloxxers are pointing to as a consequence of lockdown already exist as a direct consequence or feature of capitalism.

It is a crisis prone system and it is incapable of handling things like pandemics. That should be clear to anyone by now. How many people suffered mental health stress as a result of the last banking crisis - about which many experts still argue we haven't fully recovered from. How many people live isolated and lonely lives as a result of an economic situation over which they have no control?

I say to the anitloxxers: your problem isn't with lockdown. It's with capitalism.

Except it isn't. This is because they aren't opposed to capitalism. They are incapable of rationalising the reality we all face and so side with it. What makes them so toxic is that to resolve this cognitive dissonance one must disregard the human cost. Even then they still perpetrate flawed thinking: they argue that one must still isolate the elderly (a shared class interest: many elderly folk are baby boomers and, crudely, Tory voters) - except that is impossible if everyone else is allowed not to. How do you think covid breached care homes? From outside obviously.

So the antiloxxers are willing to sacrifice each other to perpetuate a demonstrable failed ideology. They will do so aggressively and carelessly and we do not stand to benefit from this. Look at how teachers are being variously offered the chance to be "heroes" (aren't they already? Their work benefits the reproduction of labour) and then shamed for being intransigent pseudo revolutionaries with shades of the Seventies thrown in for good measure.

This, quite simply, is Industrial Corona Gaslighting.

Or, to put it even more simply, Class War.