On liberal fascism

I have nothing good to say about Ronald Reagan. I do, however, have to report the troubling fact that he predicted what I am about to name: fascism arriving in the name of liberalism.

Politically, I have known only the period in which capital has reasserted itself at the expense of the people. (This is an Anglocentric blog.) I have seen the destruction of livelihoods and communities. In the first phase, this evil was proud enough to speak its own name, and it claimed to assert the rights of the individual over those of the community. I know best the second phase - the death of the collectivist left and its replacement with a politics of identity that fuses the most destructive aspects of individualism and collectivism. There has been valuable, real progress in reducing discrimination in everyday life (and for many, this probably has more worth to their prospects of happiness than would economic emancipation). And there has been a triumvirate of destruction: defusion of progressive instincts; distraction from and distortion of economic reality; division, fuelled by that distortion - that community is not a whole, but ethnically-defined groupings of the working class set in opposition to each other. 

This much we know, and it seemed that that was that: its purpose and its outcome being to obscure from the labouring class its exploitation, by obscuring its unity. There is nothing new under the sun. But then, as if from nowhere, came the pandemic crisis - whatever its biological origins, certainly a political construction. (If 2007/8 was 1929, then 2020 certainly fits as 1939, but I for one did not see this coming.)

If this was to be our war, then it started promisingly, politically-speaking. How excited I was that savers of lives were being lauded in this national emergency, rather than the takers of life. Even if I felt slightly uneasy from the outset at being asked to join in a collective act of hero-worship by clapping every Thursday night. We were exhorted to be selfless - to protect the vulnerable by sacrificing our own pleasures for the greater good of the community. Masks came later, not to protect ourselves, but each other. In this war, there was no enemy - nothing bad to attack, only good to cherish and protect. It was, in other words, the perfect war. A liberal total war. 

Of course, this turns out to be an illusion. Though it took me, at least, months to figure this out. I did feel a bit uneasy from the outset - I believe that almost all governments in our world ultimately serve capital rather than their people, so faith in our war required a large measure of cognitive dissonance - but I can't overstate that: I was fooled. In the end, it was reason that dug me out of the hole - a simple cost-benefit analysis of lockdown - the type which is forbidden in this new age of Science. (The costs of lockdown are huge. The potential benefits are smaller than we were initially led to believe - that is to say, the virus isn't as deadly as feared, and it transpires that there is no evidence that lockdowns have a particularly significant impact on its consequences in any case.)

What, then, does this leave? I survey a world of freedoms suspended, and now gradually being replaced by control. Of discrimination based on medical treatment, which is coerced in an increasingly overt manner. This is advocated not through reason and argument, but through emotion. It is illiberalism couched in the language of liberalism - even if the language of 'getting [or, worse, being given] our freedoms back' is that of conditional liberalism at best. It is the 'but what about the rights of the victim?' version of human rights, practised unironically by the nominal, Amnesty International left. 

I see social interactions rationed, pathologised, sterilised. And when they do occur, they do so with the very core of social expression - our face itself - obscured. It is anti-social behaviour disguised as (and no doubt often sincerely motivated by) social concern and consideration. If the fear-propaganda triggered widespread anxiety, then these rules serve to neutralise the social forces that help (many of us) keep our anxieties in check in normal times.

We are in a dangerous new phase now, where enemies are being created. 'Freedom Day' has been suspended, and both government ministers and lurid newspaper headlines are quick to point the finger at the unvaccinated. No doubt, these are the same people as the then-nebulous 'people who aren't following the rules' who were to blame when a summer lull became an autumn and winter resurgence last year, but the picture of the enemy has been sharpened. The good citizens are being given their rewards - Euros football for the masses, and Wimbledon tennis for the elites. The vaccine passes don't discriminate, because everyone has been offered their vaccine. So long as you take your medicine and show your papers (and why wouldn't you, unless you have something to hide?), you might get travel back; you might not have to self-isolate anymore; you may even get cultural, artistic life back. But for the dissidents, none of that, sorry: you've made your choice. 

And yet, this generically liberal anti-totalitarian screed finds no favour among liberals today. For this is a liberal fascism that has been created. We mask ourselves, we isolate ourselves, we allow ourselves to be surveilled because we care about each other. You don't deserve your freedom because you are threatening ours. You aren't exercising (or demanding to exercise) your freedoms: you're being selfish. The language and ostensible motivation are those of kindness, but the end result is the same. 

The liberal advocates are blind to the doublespeak, the irony, the hypocrisy: social distancing; my body, my choice; equal rights under the law. When fear replaces critical thinking; when safety trumps freedom; and when compassion is conformity. Where does this lead us?