{"id":94776,"date":"2021-03-26T15:55:31","date_gmt":"2021-03-26T15:55:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/?p=114721"},"modified":"2021-03-26T15:55:31","modified_gmt":"2021-03-26T15:55:31","slug":"we-are-living-through-a-time-of-fear-not-just-of-the-virus-but-of-each-other-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/03\/26\/we-are-living-through-a-time-of-fear-not-just-of-the-virus-but-of-each-other-2\/","title":{"rendered":"We are living through a time of fear not just of the virus but of each other"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome to the age of fear. Nothing is more corrosive of the democratic impulse than fear. Left unaddressed, it festers, eating away at our confidence and empathy.<\/p>\n<p>We are now firmly in a time of fear \u2013 not only of the virus, but of each other. Fear destroys solidarity. Fear forces us to turn inwards to protect ourselves and our loved ones. Fear refuses to understand or identify with the concerns of others.<\/p>\n<p>In fear societies, basic rights become a luxury. They are viewed as a threat, as recklessness, as a distraction that cannot be afforded in this moment of crisis.<\/p>\n<p>Once fear takes hold, populations risk agreeing to hand back rights, won over decades or centuries, that were the sole, meagre limit on the power of elites to ransack the common wealth. In calculations based on fear, freedoms must make way for other priorities: being responsible, keeping safe, averting danger.<\/p>\n<p>Worse, rights are surrendered with our consent because we are persuaded that the rights themselves are a threat to social solidarity, to security, to our health.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Too noisy\u2019 protests<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It is therefore far from surprising that the UK\u2019s draconian new Police and Crime Bill \u2013 concentrating yet more powers in the police \u2013 has arrived at this moment. It means that the police can prevent non-violent protest that is likely to be\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/uk-politics-56391988\"  rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">too noisy<\/a>\u00a0or might create \u201cunease\u201d in bystanders. Protesters risk being charged with a crime if they cause \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/uk-56400751\"  rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">nuisance<\/a>\u201d or set up protest encampments in public places, as the Occupy movement did a decade ago.<\/p>\n<p>And\u00a0damaging memorials\u00a0\u2013 totems especially prized in a time of fear for their power to ward off danger \u2013 could land protesters, like those who <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/2020-06-10\/tearing-down-statues-isnt-vandalism-its-at-the-heart-of-the-democratic-tradition\/\"  rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">toppled a statue<\/a> to notorious slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol last summer, a 10-year jail sentence.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Police &amp; Crime Bill allows for:-<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Gypsy &amp; Traveller vehicles to be seized;<br \/>\u2022 3 months jail or \u00a32.5k fine for a nomadic life without a travellers passport;<br \/>\u2022 Banning of \u201cdisruptive\u201d protests;<br \/>\u2022 Up to 10 years jail for damage to a statue;<\/p>\n<p>Dangerous, totalitarian legislation.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Howard Beckett (@BeckettUnite) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BeckettUnite\/status\/1371364900489068545?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">March 15, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>In other words, this is a bill designed to outlaw the right to conduct any demonstration beyond the most feeble and ineffective kind. It makes permanent current, supposedly extraordinary limitations on protest that were designed, or so it was said, to protect the public from the immediate threat of disease.<\/p>\n<p>Protest that demands meaningful change is always noisy and disruptive. Would the suffragettes have won women the vote without causing inconvenience and without offending vested interests that wanted them silent?<\/p>\n<p>What constitutes too much noise or public nuisance? In a time of permanent pandemic, it is whatever detracts from the all-consuming effort to extinguish our fear and insecurity. When we are afraid, why should the police not be able to snatch someone off the street for causing \u201cunease\u201d?<\/p>\n<p>The UK bill is far from unusual. Similar legislation \u2013 against noisy, inconvenient and disruptive protest \u2013 is being passed in states across the United States. Just as free speech is being shut down on the grounds that we must not offend, so protest is being shut down on the grounds that we must not disturb.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"New Covid Protest Laws - To Protect You Or SHUT YOU UP?\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0l5_wMFvY8M?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>From the outbreak of the virus, there were those who warned that the pandemic would soon serve as a pretext to take away basic rights and make our societies less free. Those warnings soon got submerged in, or drowned out by, much wilder claims, such as that the virus was a hoax or that it was similar to flu, or by the libertarian clamour against lockdowns and mask-wearing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Binary choices<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>What was notable was the readiness of the political and media establishments to intentionally conflate and confuse reasonable and unreasonable arguments to discredit all dissent and lay the groundwork for legislation of this kind.<\/p>\n<p>The purpose has been to force on us unwelcome binary choices. We are either in favour of all lockdowns or indifferent to the virus\u2019 unchecked spread. We are either supporters of enforced vaccinations or insensitive to the threat the virus poses to the vulnerable. We are either responsible citizens upholding the rules without question or selfish oafs who are putting everyone else at risk.<\/p>\n<p>A central fracture line has opened up \u2013 in part a generational one \u2013 between those who are most afraid of the virus and those who are most afraid of losing their jobs, of isolation and loneliness, of the damage being done to their children\u2019s development, of the end of a way of life they valued, or of the erasure of rights they hold inviolable.<\/p>\n<p>The establishment has been sticking its crowbar into that split, trying to prise it open and turn us against each other.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2018Kill the Bill\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Where this leads was only too visible in the UK at the weekend when protesters took to the streets of major cities. They did so \u2013 in another illustration of binary choices that now dominate our lives \u2013 in violation of emergency Covid regulations banning protests. There was a large <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dumptheguardian.com\/uk-news\/2021\/mar\/20\/unacceptable-to-let-police-criminalise-protesters-say-mps-and-peers\"  rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">march<\/a> through central London, while another demonstration ended in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dumptheguardian.com\/uk-news\/2021\/mar\/21\/demonstrators-against-policing-bill-clash-with-officers-in-bristol\"  rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">clashes<\/a> between protesters and police in Bristol.<\/p>\n<p>What are the protesters \u2013 most peaceful, a few not \u2013 trying to achieve? In the media, all protest at the moment is misleadingly lumped together as \u201canti-lockdown\u201d, appealing to the wider public\u2019s fear of contagion spread. But that is more misdirection: in the current, ever-more repressive climate, all protest must first be \u201canti-lockdown\u201d before it can be protest.<\/p>\n<p>The truth is that the demonstrators are out on the streets for a wide variety of reasons, including to protest against the oppressive new Police and Crime Bill, under the slogan \u201cKill the Bill\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>There are lots of well-founded reasons for people to be angry or worried at the moment. But the threat to that most cherished of all social freedoms \u2013 the right to protest \u2013 deserves to be at the top of the list.<\/p>\n<p>If free speech ensures we have some agency over our own minds, protest allows us to mobilise collectively once we have been persuaded of the need and urgency to act. Protest is the chance we have to alert others to the strength of our feelings and arguments, to challenge a consensus that may exist only because it has been manufactured by political and media elites, and to bring attention to neglected or intentionally obscured issues.<\/p>\n<p>Speech and protest are intimately connected. Free speech in one\u2019s own home \u2013 like free speech in a prison cell \u2013 is a very stunted kind of freedom. It is not enough simply to know that something is unjust. In democratic societies, we must have the right to do our best to fix injustice.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Cast out as heretics<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Not so long ago, none of this would have needed stating. It would have been blindingly obvious. No longer. Large sections of the population are happy to see speech rights stripped from those they don\u2019t like or fear. They are equally fine, it seems, with locking up people who cause a \u201cnuisance\u201d or are \u201ctoo noisy\u201d in advancing a cause with which they have no sympathy \u2013 especially so long as fear of the pandemic takes precedence.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">My latest: Trump is not the cause of US political woes, he is one obnoxious symptom. For that reason, banning him from Twitter will not heal the US political divide, it will deepen and inflame it <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/Qe5FYwSICN\">https:\/\/t.co\/Qe5FYwSICN<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Jonathan_K_Cook\/status\/1348582817836498945?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">January 11, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>That is how fear works. The establishment has been using fear to keep us divided and weak since time immemorial. The source of our fear can be endlessly manipulated: black men, feminists, Jews, hippies, travellers, loony lefties, libertarians. The only limitation is that the object of our fear must be identifiable and distinguishable from those who think of themselves as responsible, upstanding citizens.<\/p>\n<p>In a time of pandemic, those who are to be feared can encompass anyone who does not quietly submit to those in authority. Until recently there had been waning public trust in traditional elites such as politicians, journalists and economists. But that trend has been reversed by a new source of authority \u2013 the medical establishment. Because today\u2019s mantra is \u201cfollow the science\u201d, anyone who demurs from or questions that science \u2013 even when the dissenters are other scientists \u2013 can be cast out as a heretic. The <em>political<\/em> logic of this is rarely discussed, even though it is profoundly dangerous.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Political certainty<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Politicians have much to gain from basking in the reflected authority of science. And when politics and science are merged, as is happening now, dissent can be easily reformulated as either derangement or criminal intent. On this view, to be against lockdown or to be opposed to taking a vaccine is not just wrong but as insane as denying the laws of gravity. It is proof of one\u2019s irrationality, of the menace one poses to the collective.<\/p>\n<p>But medicine \u2013 the grey area between the science and art of human health \u2013 is not governed by laws in the way gravity is. That should be obvious the moment we consider the infinitely varied ways Covid has affected us as individuals.The complex interplay between mind and body means reactions to the virus, and the drugs to treat it, are all but impossible to predict with any certainty. Which is why there are 90-year-olds who have comfortably shaken off the virus and youths who have been felled by it.<\/p>\n<p>But a politics of \u201cfollow the science\u201d implies that issues relating to the virus and how we respond to it \u2013 or how we weigh the social and economic consequences of those responses \u2013 are purely scientific. That leaves no room for debate, for disagreement. And authoritarianism is always lurking behind the fa\u00e7ade of political certainty.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Public coffers raided<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In a world where politicians, journalists and medical elites are largely insulated from the concerns of ordinary people \u2013 precisely the world we live in \u2013 protest is the main way to hold these elites accountable, to publicly test their political and \u201cscientific\u201d priorities against our social and economic priorities.<\/p>\n<p>That is a principle our ancestors fought for. You don\u2019t have to agree with what Piers Corbyn says to understand the importance that he and others be allowed to say it \u2013 and not just in their living rooms, and not months or years hence, if and when the pandemic is declared over.<\/p>\n<p>The right to protest must be championed even through a health crisis \u2013most especially during a health crisis, when our rights are most vulnerable to erasure. The right to protest needs to be supported even by those who back lockdowns, even by those who fear that\u00a0protests during Covid are a threat to public health. And for reasons that again should not need stating.<\/p>\n<p>Politicians and the police must not be the ones to define what protests are justified, what protests are safe, what protests are responsible.<\/p>\n<p>Because otherwise, those in power who took advantage of the pandemic to raid the public coffers and waste billions of pounds on schemes whose main purpose was to enrich their friends have every reason to dismiss anyone who protests against their cupidity and incompetence as endangering public health.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">At what point does the UK officially become a banana republic? At the point when its health secretary awards a massive contract for medical supplies to his former neighbour and pub landlord? <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/9DPlVXj5DB\">https:\/\/t.co\/9DPlVXj5DB<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Jonathan_K_Cook\/status\/1332236716749582336?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">November 27, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Because otherwise, leaders who want to crush protests against their their current, and future, criminal negligence with extraordinary new police powers have every incentive to characterise their critics as anti-lockdown, or anti-vaccine, or anti-public order, or anti-science \u2013 or whatever other pretext they think will play best with the \u201cresponsible\u201d public as they seek to cling to power.<\/p>\n<p>And because otherwise, the government may decide it is in its interests to stretch out the pandemic \u2013 and the emergency regulations supposedly needed to deal with it \u2013 for as long as possible.<\/p>\n<h3>Selective freedoms<\/h3>\n<p>Quite how mercurial are the current arguments for and against protest was highlighted by widespread anger at the crushing by the\u00a0Metropolitan Police this month of a vigil following the murder of Sarah Everard in London. A Met police officer has been charged with kidnapping and murdering her.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">A reactionary police force full of white men picked chiefly for their physical attributes is not only inherently violent, institutionally racist and hostile towards political protest but also anti-women. Now who would have guessed that? <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/PfCYwwmF1N\">https:\/\/t.co\/PfCYwwmF1N<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Jonathan_K_Cook\/status\/1371350416731078657?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">March 15, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<div class=\"content grt\">\n<article id=\"post-5104\" class=\"post_box top\">\n<div class=\"post_content\">\n<p>In the spirit of the times, there has been much wider public sympathy for a vigil for a murder victim than there has been for more overtly political demonstrations like those against the Police and Crime Bill. But if health threats are really the measure of whether large public gatherings are allowed \u2013 if we \u201cfollow the science\u201d \u2013 then neither is justified.<\/p>\n<p>That is not a conclusion any of us should be comfortable with. It is not for governments to select which types of protests they are willing to confer rights on, even during a pandemic.\u00a0We either uphold the right of people to congregate when they feel an urgent need to protest \u2013 whether it be against the erosion of basic freedoms, or in favour of greater safety for vulnerable communities, or against political corruption and incompetence that costs lives \u2013 or we do not.<\/p>\n<p>We either support the right of every group to hold our leaders to account or we do not. Selective freedoms, inconsistent freedoms, are freedom on licence from those in power. They are no freedom at all.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Fight for survival<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>What the UK\u2019s Police and Crime Bill does, like similar legislation in the US and Europe, is to declare some protests as legitimate and others as not. It leaves it to our leaders to decide, as they are trying to do now through the pandemic, which protests constitute a \u201cnuisance\u201d and which do not.<\/p>\n<p>The political logic of the Bill is being contested by a minority \u2013 the hippies, the leftists, the libertarians. They are standing up for the right to protest, as the majority complacently assumes that they will have no need of protest.<\/p>\n<p>That is pure foolishness. We are all damaged when the right to protest is lost.<\/p>\n<p>It is unlikely that the aim of the Police and Crime Bill is to keep us permanently locked down \u2013 as some fear. It has another, longer-term goal. It is being advanced in recognition by our elites that we are hurtling towards an environmental dead-end for which they have no solutions, given their addiction to easy profits and their own power.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Decades late we *again* learn that corporations lied to us, knowing they were destroying our health, and regulators failed to act.<\/p>\n<p>Decades in the future, we&#39;ll learn exactly the same: that these corporations were lying to us right now and got away with it <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/gj3UOqEbZq\">https:\/\/t.co\/gj3UOqEbZq<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Jonathan_K_Cook\/status\/1372851217374846981?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">March 19, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<div class=\"content grt\">\n<article id=\"post-5104\" class=\"post_box top\">\n<div class=\"post_content\">\n<p>Already a small minority understand that we are running out of time. Groups like Extinction Rebellion \u2013 just like the suffragettes before them \u2013 believe the majority can only be woken from their induced slumber if they are disturbed by noise, if their lives are disrupted.<\/p>\n<p>This sane minority is treading the vanishingly thin line between alienating the majority and averting oblivion for our species. As the stakes grow higher, as awareness of imminent catastrophe intensifies, those wishing to make a nuisance of themselves, to be noisy, will grow.<\/p>\n<p>What we decide now determines how that struggle plays out: whether we get to take control of our future and the fight for our survival, or whether we are forced to stay mute as the disaster unfolds.<\/p>\n<p>So pray for the \u201canti-lockdown\u201d protesters whether you support their cause or not \u2013 for they carry the heavy weight of tomorrow on their shoulders.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>The post <a href=\"https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/2021\/03\/we-are-living-through-a-time-of-fear-not-just-of-the-virus-but-of-each-other\/\">We are living through a time of fear not just of the virus but of each other<\/a> first appeared on <a href=\"https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/\">Dissident Voice<\/a>.\n<p class=\"syndicated-attribution\">This post was originally published on <a href=\"https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/2021\/03\/we-are-living-through-a-time-of-fear-not-just-of-the-virus-but-of-each-other\/\">Dissident Voice<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome to the age of fear. Nothing is more corrosive of the democratic impulse than fear. Left unaddressed, it festers, eating away at our confidence and empathy. We are now firmly in a time of fear \u2013 not only of the virus, but of each other. Fear destroys solidarity. Fear forces us to turn inwards [\u2026]<\/p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/2021\/03\/we-are-living-through-a-time-of-fear-not-just-of-the-virus-but-of-each-other\/\">We are living through a time of fear not just of the virus but of each other<\/a> first appeared on <a href=\"https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/\">Dissident Voice<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[212,476,92,477,3311,304,479,771,309,6666,13,14,583,11518,35,140,215,3256,200,36,312],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94776"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94776"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94777,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94776\/revisions\/94777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}