COVID-19 and the Tyranny of Fear
* Book: COVID-19 and the Left. The Tyranny of Fear. , eds. Elena Louisa Lange, Geoff Shullenberger. Abingdon-New York: Routledge, 2024.
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Contents
Vladan JOVANOVIĆ:
"This edited volume is divided into three parts that explore various dimensions of authoritarianism during the “pandemic era”.
The first part addresses the ideology of fear, exploring the left’s support for pandemic authoritarianism and its totalitarian aspects. It presents the crisis as a hyper-realistic simulation and an Orwellian dystopia, where pandemic ideology distracts from an unprecedented transfer of power. In his chapter, Lee Jones investigates how the neoliberal system has weakened democracy, alienating the left from its historic base and causing it to eagerly endorse authoritarian policies in the name of protecting the most disadvantaged populations. On the other hand, Geoff Shullenberger uses Jean Baudrillard’s concept of “hyperreality” to analyze how the left has maintained a politics of panic and crisis during the pandemic, boosting exclusivity and silencing alternative voices. Shullenberger highlights the distorted leftist perception of reality, based on simulated graphic abstractions (viruses), and continuous monitoring as a key issue. He insists that this “hyperreal” understanding of crisis politics, emerging from climate change discourse, foreshadows a further entrenchment of authoritarianism and the manipulation of public perception in response to perceived threats.
In her chapter inspired by Orwell’s concept, Elena Louisa Lange examines pandemic propaganda and argues that contradictory information regarding masks and vaccines was not due to incompetence but rather a deliberate strategy to suppress independent judgment and autonomy. She claims that by creating an environment where nothing can be trusted or questioned, those in power maintain control, producing a climate of uncertainty that stifles critical thinking and dissent, much like the tactics in Orwell’s fiction.
The following section delves into the material processes and reasons driving the pandemic in a capitalist environment, including the expansion of the industrial complex, the bureaucratization of the pandemic narrative, and how the state of emergency hastens the demise of financial capitalism. Thomas Fazi analyzes how the pandemic accelerated the concentration of power and wealth, harming small businesses while benefiting tech monopolies and pharmaceutical giants.
He describes the formation of a state-corporate symbiosis aimed at constructing a “biosecurity state” for profit and control through digital surveillance. In her chapter, Leila Mechoui discusses the institutional incentives behind state responses during the declared pandemic. Drawing on Marxist and Weberian theories, she argues that state bureaucracies, with weak working-class representation and formal left dominance, used rational means for irrational goals to achieve “bureaucratic self-preservation”.
Finally, Fabio Vighi’s analysis examines the dynamics of “implosive capitalism,” exacerbated by the aftermath of the 2007/8 financial crash. He asserts that the controlled shutdown of the economy and the rise of biodigital surveillance were motivated by capitalism’s need to sustain growth through artificial liquidity injections. The “lockdowns” not only aimed to inject liquidity and temporarily shield the real economy from inflation but also provided a pretext for enforcing authoritarian control. Vighi concludes that capitalism, confronted with a fragile and unsustainable debt-based system, seeks to migrate from a liberal to an authoritarian model through a series of emerggencies to maintain its power structure.
The third section of the book evaluates national case studies, focusing on Commonwealth countries and Germany, and delves into the absurdities of Canada’s political establishment, the British managerial elite’s pandemic response, Germany’s shifting anti-fascist paradigm during the state of emergency, and Australia’s middle class’s relationship with pandemic policies. Gord Magill discusses the 2021 Canadian truckers’ protest against forced pandemic measures, concentrating on aggressive state propaganda and the left’s withdrawal of support for this worker-led rebellion, which reveals deeper social and political dynamics in Canada during the state of emergency.
George Hoare identifies the professional-managerial class as the main political force in Britain’s pandemic response, rising from the working class’s defeat under neoliberalism. This class, including bureaucrats with questionable degrees (as seen in Serbia), made use of crises like Brexit and the pandemic to consolidate technocratic control and suppress dissent. Michael Burkhardt’s chapter looks into the German left’s support for pandemic authoritarianism as part of the “anti-fascist struggle”, outlining the manner in which its opposition to neoliberal austerity distanced itself from the working class and steered it toward a populist base.
This transformation resulted in a cosmopolitan “lifestyle leftism” that stigmatized skeptics and critics of official pandemic narratives using similar rhetoric that simulated class struggle themes. In the final chapter, Nicolas Hausdorf investigates Australia’s severe pandemic measures, which amounted to state terror, focusing on the role of the new middle “laptop” class, whose status anxiety and detachment from production made them compliant, uncritical supporters of state policies and scientism."
Review
Source: CURRENTS OF HISTORY 3/2024
Vladan JOVANOVIĆ:
"Since March 2020, the global phenomenon known as COVID-19 was bound to become a legitimate subject of scholarly study as independent judiciaries still hesitate to react in many instances. Its potential involvement in the controlled demolition of the existing social, economic, and political order, as well as orchestrated “emergencies” and crises such as health, climate, food, migrants, energy, and regional wars, guarantees that it will remain a central focus in both natural and social sciences across various disciplines.
As skilled interpreters of the past and contemporaries, historians, along with social scientists and other humanities researchers, are in charge of responding promptly to current events and, at the very least, providing valuable records to assist future generations in understanding recent developments. However, beyond professional duty and ethical responsibility, personal courage is still essential. Elena Louisa Lange resigned from her comfortable position at the University of Zurich due to moral concerns and chose to pursue the uncertain path of a free intellectual, opposing the passive observation of the decline of educational programs shaped by unelected, obscure entities. Something similar happened to David A. Hughes of the University of Lincoln, who is a fierce opponent of the expansion of “techno-feudalism” and “biodigital totalitarianism”, both of which opened the door for unconventional class conflict that he termed “omniwar”. Meanwhile, Fabio Vighi continues to resist at Cardiff University despite his heresy regarding the convulsions of “senile capitalism”, sustained only through a permanent state of emergency.
The book’s editors, Elena Louisa Lange and Geoff Shullenberger, argue that authoritarian measures like lockdowns, mandated vaccinations, and enforced mask-wearing have led to the biopolitical disenfranchisement of human rights and allowed state-corporate institutions to encroach on private life and individual freedom. Paradoxically, by supporting these forceful techniques, the left has veered away from its traditional role as a critic of capital and state power, eventually reinforcing existing hierarchies and exacerbating suffering for “vulnerable groups” it aimed to protect. Thus, the major focus of this book is to unpack the paradox of the left embracing authoritarian methods, unfettered capital growth, digital transformation, biopolitics, and social discrimination while conforming to a distorted neoliberal consensus. The significance of panic and psychological blackmail as tools of dominance in late capitalist society is only one aspect of the debate over whether the left was a passive victim or an active player in the creation and execution of the “tyranny of fear”. With insights from several fields and perspectives, the authors explore the pandemic’s ideological, sociocultural, and economic impacts, advocating resistance to biopolitical technocracy, intimidation, and tyranny that restrict individual freedoms.
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Now we get to the major point of this edited volume: a surreal quiet and indifference of most of the Western leftist academic community towards an authoritarian reaction to the alleged health crisis. Influential philosophers like Slavoj Žižek, Noam Chomsky, and Judith Butler supported radical restrictions on personal freedoms, reducing individuals to mere statistics while ignoring social, ethical, and psychological considerations. This book critiques the “moral bankruptcy” of the current left and the inversion of the leftist perspective, which stems from the blurring of class consciousness, superficial critiques of capitalism, and the neglect of class dynamics in favor of an imposed technocratic approach. The authors identified four epistemic inversions in the leftist paradigm during the crisis, focusing on huge dread and awe of the virus, similar to religious fetishism, with the “invisible enemy” exalted to near-sacred status in a perverted reality.
The book editors attempt to reconstruct the virus’s social dynamics by comparing it to a natural disaster but are still surprised by the left’s response. Instead of pragmatism, the left preached fetishization, panic, and hysteria, which governments effectively exploited for control.
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Both editors believe that the emergence of collectivist cults stimulates ahistorical thinking, erodes traditional structures, and blends political power with disinherited beings who are detached from history and algorithmically predictable. The authors contend that internet censorship restores disconnection, legitimizes policies that erase previous struggles for freedom of speech, and strengthens the biopolitical-technocratic health regime, eventually promoting a collectivist approach that weakens personal autonomy. In other words, the decrease of historical consciousness and the normalization of repressive health practices indicate an alarming tendency of sacrificing individual dignity for a homogenized collective identity."