So-called ‘ZeroCovid’ is a ‘zero-tolerance’ approach to the virus, promising to eliminate community transmission in Ireland. The concept has gained traction among young people, especially, desperate for an end to a seemingly endless cycle of lockdowns, and others worried by the danger posed by the disease itself.
The original ‘zero-tolerance’ policy is identified with Donald Trump’s associate Rudy Giuliani’s tenure as mayor of New York (1994-2001), and involved punishment for even minor infractions.
Rudy Giuliani
Most criminologists agree, however, that zero-tolerance, based on the ‘broken window’ theory of policing, made little difference to overall crime rates, which seem to have been falling in New York prior to Giuliani’s period in office. New powers of arrest simply handed police carte blanche to remove homeless people from affluent neighbourhoods. Thus Time Square became a safe haven for tourism, but ghettos remained no go.
Zero-tolerance policies emerged in a neoconservative era alongside ‘humanitarian interventions,’ culminating in the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, led by U.S. President George W. Bush, and supported by U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair. Blair also backed a zero tolerance approach to crime in the U.K., and has recently inveigled his way back to prominence as part of the ‘war’ effort against Covid-19.
Tony Blair: "There is no prospect of a return to anything like normal without enabling people to show their Covid status – vaccinated or tested; and technology allows us to do it with privacy and efficacy." https://t.co/dwzrgteQVd
— Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (@InstituteGC) February 14, 2021
Neoconservatives engineered a War on Terror which, apart from direct military actions, included ‘shock and awe’ tactics to cow opponents, galvanising support through appeals to nationalist sentiment and by demonising – often phantom – enemies.
Finally, neoconservatism is aligned with neoliberal austerity adopted in the wake of the Financial Crisis, beginning in 2007-2008. Austerity proponents assume purgative measures – described as ‘The Shock Doctrine’ by Naomi Klein – are required to heal the body politic of its economic woes.
Family Resemblances
The ZeroCovid elimination approach in Ireland bears significant family resemblances to an illusory zero-tolerance policy to crime. There are also shades of the War on Terror’s ‘shock and awe’ tactic of elevating fear and appealing to narrow national self-interest. The imprint of austerity is apparent in a promise of deliverance after painful expurgation, as a population already frayed by successive lockdowns is exhorted to double down and accept greater stringency. Naomi Klein has also identified a Pandemic Shock Doctrine.
It may seem surprising that Irish leftists should be attracted to a policy which seems to have a neoconservative mentality, but notably ‘recovering socialists developed neoconservatism in the sixties and seventies,’ and the Marxist dialectic permits great suffering before the achievement of a socialist paradise.
Authoritarian ideas rarely originate from bad intentions. They tend to be championed by idealists who believe they know better and that their dream destination justifies the means. Authoritarians ideas thrive in times of moral crisis, fear and anger, and linger on afterwards.
Leading spokespeople do not, however, give the impression they welcome the embrace of leftists. Tomás Ryan recently called for ‘more of a grand coalition attitude’; while another, Anthony Staines is, or was, a member of Fine Gael. Among the few practising doctors associated with ZeroCovid is Maitiú Ó Tuathail, whose friendship with then Fine Gael Taoiseach Leo Varadkar gave him access to a confidential agreement between the State and the IMO, which is now the subject of a Garda enquiry.
ZeroCovid is certainly not a blueprint for a socialist republic – the narrowness of its focus its quite striking – and advocates assert pro-business credentials, Ryan emphasising that ‘ZeroCovid countries are ranking highest in business confidence.’ Far from being treated as revolutionaries in the mainstream media, its spokespeople have become household names during the pandemic, blurring a distinction between expert witness and political actor.
Some on the left may be attracted to ZeroCovid in the hope that ‘Napoleonic’ state mobilisation witnessed during the pandemic will be carried into ‘peacetime,’ to address poverty and environmental destruction. The shady dealings we have witnessed in this period, however, set a dangerous precedent, as the executive director of the British Medical Journal Kamran Abbasi put it:
Covid-19 has unleashed state corruption on a grand scale, and it is harmful to public health. Politicians and industry are responsible for this opportunistic embezzlement. So too are scientists and health experts. The pandemic has revealed how the medical-political complex can be manipulated in an emergency—a time when it is even more important to safeguard science.
There are 1,973 hotels in this country. 14 of which were selected as mass vaccination centers. What was the criteria for selection? Its too early to say. But having a party 'Think In', conference, launch event, etc seems to do your chances no harm. (thread) pic.twitter.com/N46GR1wh4W
It is also notable that despite the obvious distinction between the government’s suppression approach, and ZeroCovid’s elimination policy, there has been no direct confrontation between the two groups. At the end of January, however, the truce ended with the chair of the Irish Epidemiological Modelling Advisory Group Philip Nolan decisively branding ZeroCovid ‘an utterly false promise.’
This intervention may have been linked to recent politicisation, as the Social Democrats, and to a lesser extent Labour (which announced ‘a national aggressive suppression strategy, zero Covid-19 by another name’), followed People Before Profit’s earlier embrace of the project.
Throughout the pandemic ZeroCovid spokespeople have been welcomed within the dominant media consensus – assessing the virus a once-in-a-generation challenge – with nationalist appeals – adopting the hashtag #wecanbezero – perhaps seen as a way way of channeling latent radicalism away from opposition to reliance on strict lockdowns.
The Irish initiative traces its origins to a disparate group of academic scientists led by Staines that brought forward a Crush the Curve petition in July, preceding the emergence of a Zero Covid Island group. It has since morphed into another organisation called ISAG: ‘a multidisciplinary group of scientists, academics, and researchers who have come together to advocate for a SARS-CoV-2 elimination strategy for the island’.
Yaneer Bar-Yam preparing to speak at an event in 2014.
Among those involved is a MIT Professor Yaneer Bar-Yam, who does not appear to have had any previous connection to Ireland. Bar Yam previously advised the Pentagon ‘about global social unrest and the crises in Egypt and Syria’, and the National Security Council and the National Counter Terrorism Council on global strategy, elsewhere described as ‘preventing ethnic violence.’ He also advised policymakers on the elimination of Ebola, a disease which presents a very different challenge to Covid-19.
Tomás Ryan is himself a former Post-Doctoral Fellow (2010-2016) at MIT, having previously been a Junior Research Fellow at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and Wolfson College, Cambridge (2009 – 2010). Ryan’s background is in neuroscience and has no publications in virology or epidemiology.
Bar-Yam set up an organisation called ENDCRONAVIRUS.ORG (https://www.endcoronavirus.org/) in February 2020, and may see Ireland as a potential testing ground for counter-viral methods.
ZeroCovid appeals to national self-interest, requiring exclusion of a diseased ‘other,’ through mandatory quarantines for foreign arrivals, and promotes the creation of zero-transmission zones within the country. In August Bar-Yam co-authored a paper entitled, ‘A green zone strategy for Ireland,’ which recalls Baghdad’s ‘Green Zone’ under U.S. occupation, and districts ‘purified’ by the application of a zero-tolerance approach to crime.
Indefinite elimination of what appears to be an endemic seasonal virus from a globally integrated country such as Ireland appears Utopian however, with most scientists assuming Covid-19 will be with us forever.
Last month, Nature asked more than one hundred immunologists, infectious-disease researchers and virologists working on Covid-19 whether they believe it can be eradicated. Almost 90% responded to say it will become endemic
According to one of those surveyed Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. ‘Eradicating this virus right now from the world is a lot like trying to plan the construction of a stepping-stone pathway to the Moon.’
Jacinda Arden
New Zealand
For obvious cultural reasons, Irish ZeroCovid strategists often cite New Zealand’s as a model to follow – factors other than suppression policies appear to be inhibiting Covid-19 in east Asian countries – but this ignores the extreme isolation of a sparsely populated island nation situated on the other side of the world, under a depleted ozone layer that brings elevated levels of virus-killing ultraviolet light. Moreover, New Zealand does not have a disputed border with another jurisdiction to contend with. Also, importantly, New Zealand’s imports arrive in containers, as opposed to Ireland’s reliance on ‘roll-on roll-off’ trucks.
Moreover, it seems significant that there have been less than two thousand cases of Covid-19 detected in New Zealand so far during the pandemic. Common cold viruses display infuriatingly unpredictable behaviour, waxing and waning seasonally, like influenza, which derives its name from the influenza degli astri, or ‘influence of the planets.’
According to the authors: ‘Examination of specimens taken from the men in relation to the outbreak has not revealed a causative agent,’ which the authors say could ‘well have been the effects of a coronavirus.’ Bewildered, they conclude: ‘in some way virus persisted, either in the environment or in the men.’
Furthermore, in an article for Cassandra Voices Justin Frewen observed how decisive political leadership encouraged personal responsibility:
In addition to providing Covid-19 related information through standard media channels, the NZ Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, has communicated directly with the public, making herself available to the media and holding daily public press conferences, led by New Zealand’s director-general of health, Dr Ashley Bloomfield. Together they have displayed “a reliable, measured and authoritative face for New Zealand’s Covid-19 response”.Of particular value has been the clarity of Jacinda Ardern’s communication on the virus. Her leadership style has been assessed by one commentator as ‘one of empathy in a crisis that tempts people to fend for themselves. Her messages are clear, consistent, and somehow simultaneously sobering and soothing. And her approach isn’t just resonating with her people on an emotional level. It is also working remarkably well.’
The virus returned mysteriously to Auckland in August, however, leading to a second lockdown. Civil liberties advocates may take issue with the mandatory confinement of anyone testing positive – and mandatory quarantining of all visitors – but the response to the virus has been to the benefit and satisfaction of the vast majority of New Zealanders, and the satisfies a principle of proportionality.
But another outbreak at the beginning of Februaryhas brought yet another lockdown to Auckland, and Prime Minister Jacinda Arden has since signalled that the country’s elimination strategy is to be abandoned in the wake of the arrival of vaccines, stating: ‘Our goal has to be though, to get the management of Covid-19 to a similar place as we do seasonally, with the flu. It won’t be a disease that we will see simply disappear after one round of vaccine.’
Yet surprisingly vaccines are not seen as a game changer by ZeroCovid advocates. An ISAG webinar on January 21st found Staines arguing in favour of mandatory quarantine facilities, on the basis that new variants could ‘dodge some of the effects of vaccines.’
It begs the question: if new variants are swirling around the world indefinitely – just as strains of influenza vary from year-to-year occasionally evading the effect of vaccines – will Ireland maintain quarantine requirements indefinitely, as a true believer associated with Bar-Yam’s organisation has proposed? This seems unthinkable for a country with a diaspora of three million and a high proportion of immigrants, some of whom may leave Ireland if this approach is adopted. Unfortunately, as in the War of Terror, the enemy is within, and the war unwinnable.
Australia
A more tortuous, and arguably disproportionate, route to the elimination of Covid-19 was witnessed in Melbourne, Australia, which may serve as a warning to an Irish public desperate for the pandemic to end.
With a similar population to the whole of Ireland’s Melbourne experienced a winter outbreak, beginning in June, that brought a stringent lockdown lasting almost three months. Notably, however, the number of cases peaked at seven hundred per day and the virus declined with the arrival of spring. Ireland has had ten times that number in a single day in January, and as of mid-February has still not brought case numbers down to that level.
Tensions have boiled over at an anti-lockdown rally at Parliament House in Melbourne. Dozens arrested. Capsicum spray used. Protesters chanted “human rights matter” and “freedom” before police moved in to remove them one by one. pic.twitter.com/CZEZkc5lt6
Just this month Melbourne went into another lockdown again after an outbreak in a Holiday Inn, giving the lie to the notion that elimination avoids recurring lockdowns; especially in a country such as Ireland conteding with leaky borders, a poorly resourced health system, and a history of distrust in State institutions.
Advocates of ZeroCovid now call for a level of stringency that brought an end to the Melbourne outbreak, in particular advocating schools close until late April, seemingly oblivious to the damage on children, already denied months of education.
Apocalyptic Warnings
Irish ZeroCovid advocates have been unusually apocalyptic in their assessment of the danger posed by Covid-19, with Tomás Ryan projecting in June that a herd immunity approach, involving successive lockdowns, would result in 50,000 deaths, while Sam McConkey warned in March there could be up to 120,000 deaths.
The latter death toll would be greater than has been witnessed in the U.K., which has the second highest mortality rate (after Belgium) in the world, and a population ten times that of Ireland. Even in almost libertarian scenarios – such as in the two Dakota states in the U.S. – death tolls have been nowhere close to those proportions.
While ZeroCovid might be dismissed as a fringe organisation, or cult, the degree of media exposure its advocates have enjoyed, and their tendency to ‘shock and awe’ with outlandish projections has distorted debate in Ireland, drawing attention away from the profound damage of lockdowns.
The Irish media has developed a fixation on the virus to the almost total exclusion of other challenges we face. Mortality from Covid-19 is not portrayed as equivalent to death by natural causes, but a consequence of moral failings in the population or an indulgent government. It has parallels with the attitude of the Pro Life movement.
Looking forward to life improving.
And yet, as spring approaches case numbers will surely recede, with a range of vaccines and new treatments reducing severity and mortality. Socially distancing has become second nature to many Irish people, and there is increasing knowledge of the importance of ventilation.
The Irish government should resist a social experiment that holds no promise of success, and the public should look forward to life improving. In time we are likely to accept a seasonal mortality from Covid-19, just as we tolerate the burden of seasonal influenza, along with many of the environmental factors that cause or exacerbate the non-infectious diseases that remain our leading killers by far.
Percentage breakdown of top ten registered causes of death, January – October 2020. Source CSO
How are the little ones holding up at home? I wonder how and with what my old mother feeds them?
We toil daily to subsist Forced to migrate to make ends meet
The nation may be great But our lives are miserable
This wicked disease struck us and wrecked our lives
What life is this? What life is this? a wretched life, a pathetic life an abject life, a broken life
Is there a disease worse than poverty? Is there a solace greater than being with one’s family?
Just to be at home in these troubled times would have been enough
At least we would have survived together, on some gravy or gruel
The kids flit and hover in my eyes all the time My wife’s laments chase me ceaselessly
What, what should I do? What am I to do? What to do? What can I do?
No need of buses or trains, O’ saaru Just let me go, master! I will walk my way home
No need of buses or trains, O’ saaru Just let me go, master! I will walk home
How are the little ones holding up at home? I wonder how and with what my old mother feeds them?
How are the little ones holding up at home? I wonder how and with what my old mother feeds them?
Let me go, O’saaru! I will walk my way home! Let me go, master! I will just walk home!
Imagined Communities
Nations, while possessing points of similarity with others, such as a general ‘reverence’ of their external borders, are each a unique and distinct mélange of dominant and disputed histories, cultural groupings, social identities, economic modalities, political structures and legal strictures. Citizens share a set of collective memories and a sense of belongingness with their wider national community – though this can conflict with localised identities particularly in post-colonial states where different ethnic and religious groups were lumped together – despite only ever getting to know a small minority of its members.
These ‘imagined communities’, according to Benedict Anderson, possess a number of characteristics. They imagine themselves as ‘limited’, as each nation sees itself as different from others; ‘sovereign’ as they are free to determine their own destiny; and ‘as a community’ in that no matter how unequal the internal social relations might be, ‘the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship.’[ii]
‘Habitus’ and the State
The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu uses the term ‘habitus’ to describe how individuals are socialised through the ‘historical and cultural production of individual practices – since contexts, laws, rules and ideologies all speak through individuals who are never entirely aware of what is happening.’ Individuals then reproduce these practices, mediated to varying extents by their own self-interest and interpretation.[iii] This individual concept of habitus can be applied at the level of groups, such as a nation. This ‘collective habitus’ refers to its
shared perspective on the world, relatively common sets of values and shared dispositions to believe and behave in particular ways. The state partially orchestrates this collective habitus by creating the conditions under which certain things come to be viewed as natural and inevitable… and others unthinkable… But perhaps the most effective way that the state creates an orchestrates this collective habitus is by ensuring that is seen by the people it governs as being ‘the voice of the people’, which gives it legitimate authority to rule us, and even to exercise violence against us.[iv]
As individual nations have their own distinctive ‘collective habitus’, the political and social contexts within which governments operate will vary. This will impact upon the respective levels of freedom they have to resort to force or repressive measures in advancing specific policies. What is deemed acceptable by the citizens of different polities will largely depend on the history of repression in their states, the restrictions accepted in the past, the tradition of resistance, public confidence in the authorities, the current levels of political freedom and whether the state and its citizens are faced by some form of existential threat.
An interesting illustration of how the historical experiences and collective habitus of a nation can impact upon how repressive measures are accepted and rejected, can be seen in the reaction of some segments of society and even the political leadership in the U.S. to the lockdown. In several cities, large gatherings of citizens were able to successfully assemble in public to protest lockdowns in defiance of restriction on movement ordinances.
Paul Becker/wikicommons
Moreover, not only did the U.S. President Donald Trump state his support for their actions but he even went so far as to encourage them to ‘liberate Minnesota, Michigan and Virginia’, states which are, not surprisingly, ‘election swing states with Democratic governors.‘[v] In many other nations, such acts of civil disobedience, in contradiction of state ordinances enacted to protect citizens from an infectious disease, would have been heavily clamped down upon by the authorities.
Power, Control and the Use of Force
In his book on Power, John Scott expounds on modern governmental management of a territory and the political management of nations and their citizens.
Modern rulers… see their task as one of government in… shaping, guiding, and directing of the conduct of others by using persuasive processes of signification and legitimation to work through their desires, aspirations, interests, and beliefs… Sovereignty over territory also involves the management of the population to regulating the life processes through which they live, work, and relate to each other. This is what Foucault termed ‘bio-politics’… discipline is a control that is exercised over people through systems of rules that are not simply imposed on them but are instilled in them.”[vi]
Governments can increase their power and control either by direct imposition of repressive measures or through the prohibition of alternative voices and movements, which they wish to suppress. In most instances, a judicious melding of both methods will be applied. The precise mix will depend on the political and social environment together with the historical experiences of the state in question.
However, it is important to remember, as Max Weber emphasises, that while:
Force is certainly not the normal or only means of the state… but force is a means specific to the state… the state is a relation of men dominating men [and generally – one should add – of men dominating women], a relationship supported by means of legitimate (i.e. considered to be legitimate) violence…[vii]
As David Held writes ‘the web of agencies and institutions’ of a state find their ultimate sanction in the claim to the monopoly of coercion, and a political order, is only, in the last instance, vulnerable to crises when this monopoly erodes.[viii]
Covid-19 – Gateway to Repression?
Confronted by an unprecedented and menacing threat, it is normal for people to feel disorientated and even experience levels of panic disproportionate to the threat itself. It is not surprising therefore that the past few months have seen the imposition of unprecedented restrictions in response to Covid-19 by governments around the world. Emergency powers have been used to shut down large sectors of the economy, enforce movement restrictions, screen and isolate potential carriers, and enforce quarantining.
Covid-19’s rapid spread around the world has impacted upon people living in a wide variety of political, economic, social and cultural contexts. These diverse contexts have mediated the repressive policies available to governments – facilitating, refracting or impeding the measures they have attempted to impose – the insecurity and fear caused by the pandemic have undoubtedly facilitated the imposition of repressive measures.
While these measures have generally been implemented in response to scientific guidelines on how to tackle Covid-19, they should be limited to what is required and not used as a means to surreptitiously increase governmental power. Furthermore, as Amnesty International researcher Massimo Moratti warns, while states of emergency are permitted under international human rights law, such restrictive measures should not become a “new normal” and should last no longer than the danger that has necessitated their implementation.[ix]
‘Shock Doctrine’
In her book The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein describes how this process mimics the CIA method of ‘coercive interrogation’ which aims at breaking ‘resistant sources’ by creating violent ruptures between prisoners and their ability to make sense of the world around them. Klein argues that this is how shock doctrine works: ‘the original disaster, the coup, the terrorist attack, the market meltdown, the war, the tsunami, the hurricane – puts the entire population into a state of collective shock. Like the terrorised prisoner who gives us the names of comrades and renounces his faith, shocked societies often give up things they would otherwise fiercely protect.’[x]
The advent of Covid-19 has led to a situation where people are confronted by an infectious disease, for which there is no vaccine, and global lockdowns resulting in deep and widespread social and economic disruption. This has provided an opportune environment for governments to increase their power and control as well as advancing interests of their more powerful supporters. Repressive policies and measures can be introduced, as the ‘shock’ caused by the Covid-19 pandemic leaves the public less able to resist. In a world where lockdowns, isolation and quarantining have become the new accepted norm, coordinated, active resistance to repressive and inhibiting policies has become more complicated. As Patrick Cockburn points out:
Autocratic governments everywhere are becoming more autocratic and repressive regimes more repressive. They believe that they can get away with it: frightened peoples are looking to their governments to save them in this time of peril, and do not want to discover that they are ruled by incompetent people determined to serve their own interests and stay in power.
State Repression
While most of the measures imposed to fight Covid-19 have some level of scientific justification, emergency and repressive powers entail an inherent risk of abuse. Moreover, it is clear many governments have used the COVID-19 pandemic to push through laws and other measures that impose disproportionate restrictions on public freedom and civic rights.
Significant international controversy arose with the granting of wide ranging powers to Viktor Orban, the Hungarian PM, and his Fidesz party, which decreed jail terms of up to five years for the intentional dissemination of misinformation that might impede the government’s tackling of Covid-19. While the chilling effect of this legislation was widely criticised, it was the refusal to place any time limits on the powers being abrogated by Orban and his regime that led to the most concern.[xi]
Viktor Orban
Writing in late March, Osama Tanous describes how Covid-19 has been used as an excuse by Israel to further repress Palestinians:
Repression has continued, with the Israeli occupation forces using the excuse of increased police presence to continue raids on some communities, such as the Issawiya neighborhood in East Jerusalem, home demolitions in places like Kafr Qasim village and the destructi‘’on of crops in Bedouin communities in the Naqab desert.[xii]
Despite initially downplaying the threat posed by Covid-19 and the publics’ ‘hysterical’ response to it, the Philippines President Duterte has subsequently implemented an ‘extreme, militarized approach.’ By early April, the Duterte regime had arrested almost as many people for alleged violations of the Covid-19 lockdown and curfews as had been tested for the virus.[xiii]
In Colombia, already heavily besieged rural and indigenous communities have come under even greater threat as a result of the Covid-19 measures enacted to prevent transmission. In the week following imposition of quarantine measures in cities across Colombia in mid-March, three social leaders were murdered. Already one of the most dangerous countries in the world for social activists and community leaders, with 271 activists killed since the conclusion of the early 2017 peace deal between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), the government’s focus on the pandemic has led to activists saying they are now at even greater risk.[xiv]
emergency declarations based on the COVID-19 outbreak should not be used as a basis to target particular groups, minorities, or individuals. It should not function as a cover for repressive action under the guise of protecting health … and should not be used simply to quash dissent.[xv]
Furthermore, as the OSCE Right’s Chief, Ingibjörg Sólrún Gísladóttir emphasised, a state of emergency must be proportionate to its aim, and only remain in place for as long as absolutely necessary.[xvi]
Masked political control means a systematic effort to hide repressive actions by dressing them in the cloak of democratic norms. Governments might justify an internet crackdown by saying it is necessary to suppress hate speech and incitement to violence. They might cast the jailing of dozens of critical journalists as an essential element in the global fight against terror.[xviii]
As Patrick Cockburn explains:
Governments worldwide claim that journalists are impeding their heroic struggle against coronavirus, but their real motive is more often to conceal the inadequacy of those efforts. Political elites everywhere fear that the pandemic will expose their incompetence and corruption, weakening their grip on political power and economic resources.[xix]
Writing in pre-Covid-19 times, Simon used the ‘fear of terrorism’ as an example how a government might justify repressive actions. Today, similar arguments are being used to validate punitive measures to fight the current pandemic and prevent the dissemination of disinformation. In the digital age, people can access and disseminate information more freely and in real time. However, the technology that enables this unprecedented intensity and extensity of communication has allowed states to devise and develop measures to corrupt information flows by manipulating and influencing the content that reaches people, thus facilitating a new form of censorship. While [This] tactic is commonly used in countries rated as having closed or repressed civic space… [it] has also been seen in all corners of the globe as a subtle tool to silence critics.[xx]
The aim here is to control the narrative and if this proves impossible to at least prevent a coherent oppositional one. As White House Chief Strategist, Steve Bannon once said, the story is more important than reality.[xxi] Today, many governments are applying this dictum to their communications on Covid-19.
Twitter-Gate
The circulation of conspiracy theories can also be co-opted by governments as a valid rationale for the curbing of the free flow of information, on the grounds they are misleading and may be used, as in their usage by extreme groups, to stir up animosity and violence against targeted groups. However, once these repressive measures they can be used to increase government control over the general flow of information, thus having a chilling effect on communications and alternative narratives, as well as potentially preventing the development and implementation of genuine civil society initiatives.
An interesting outcome of the struggle to control the flow of information has been that in the U.S., where social media platforms have been caught in the crosshairs of Trump and his administration. Well in advance of Covid-19, governments around the world had been criticising the dissemination of ‘fake news’ and misleading stories being posted and circulated via social media. Incidents such as the burning of phone masts due to false rumours that they were helping to spread Covid-19 and the dissemination of dangerous remedies to fight the virus, the call for social media platforms to monitor content posted has only increased.
In response, social media companies have started to police posts to a greater extent, purportedly to prevent injurious or false content being uploaded. This increased monitoring of posts led Twitter to fact check a post by Trump over a ‘false assertion that mail-in voting leads to widespread voter fraud.’ In a fit of presidential pique, Trump retaliatedby signing an executive order on May 28 that would decrease the protection of social media companies from being sued for content posted on their services.[xxii]
Failing the Vulnerable
The development and implementation of measures to reduce the spread of Covid-19 need to take into account the particular needs of the most vulnerable. Unfortunately, as the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston writes, this has not been the case as many countries have blithely ignored the needs of the most vulnerable communities,
The policies of many States reflect a social Darwinism philosophy that prioritises the economic interests of the wealthiest, while doing little for those who are hard at work providing essential services or unable to support themselves… Governments have shut down entire countries without making even minimal efforts to ensure people can get by. Many in poverty live day to day, with no savings or surplus food. And of course, homeless people cannot simply stay home.[xxiii]
Tanay barisha (wikimedia)
During an address to the nation at 8pm on March 24, the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that a strict lockdown of 21 days duration would come into force throughout the whole of India at midnight. Every state, district and village were subject to this lockdown.[xxiv] The initial lockdown was to be for three weeks, though it has been extended since, and the people of India were informed they would have to get used to staying at home. Modi warned:
Do not step outside your house. For 21 days, forget what is stepping outside. There is a Lakshman Rekha[xxv] on your doorstep. Even one step outside your house will bring the coronavirus inside your house.[xxvi]
Paulrudd (wikimedia)
Acknowledging that these measures could provoke ‘hard times’ for the poor in India, Modi insisted that draconian lockdown measures were required to prevent the untrammelled diffusion of Covid-19, which ‘spreads like wildfire.’[xxvii] While Modi and the Indian government might argue they had ‘reasonable justification’ for ordering such a harsh lockdown, they could surely have implemented it in a manner which would have relieved the severity of its impact on migrant workers and the impoverished. As Professor of Gender and Development Nitya Rao outlines:
Half of India’s 1.3 billion people are food insecure which means they lack access to sufficient safe and nutritious food. Around 60% of the poorest people from India’s scheduled tribes and scheduled castes, are also anaemic. This means that a total lockdown, while it may help stop the spread of coronavirus, is likely to have a significant impact on food and nutrition. Deprived of the ability to work, threatened by arrest if they ventured forth to secure their rations, the poor of India risked starvation.[xxviii]
The Indian ‘Trail of Tears’
As the lockdown came into force, a serious humanitarian crisis erupted with in excess of an estimated hundred million migrant workers stranded in cities and other locations around India with no work or ability to pay for accommodation.[xxix] Many of these migrants were forced to part with their meagre savings so they and their families could gain places in overcrowded trucks to try and get home. Many more were unable to afford the luxury of transport were forced to make their way home by foot. The traumatic scenes of hordes of migrants of all ages, from babies carried by fatigued parents and siblings to old men and women, struggling along the roads of India in a desperate attempt to return home became a common sight.[xxx]
One of the many heart-breaking stories that have emerged from this modern ‘Trail of Tears’ is that of Jamlo Madkam, a 12-year-old girl. Her parents, Andoram (32) and Sukamati Madkam (30) had eight children. As Jamlo’s mother Skamati recounts, ‘I gave birth to eight children, and of them four died at the age of crawling. And now Jamlo is dead too.’ Jamlo left her home in mid-February for the first time to work at a chilli farm in Telegana with relatives and friends. When the lockdown was instituted, she was left with no choice but to try and make her way home. Tragically, Jamlo passed away on April 18 from exhaustion and lack of food and water. She was only 11 kms from her home in Aded in Bijapur district of Chhattisgarh, having walked more than 100 kms over three days.[xxxi]
Bringing the virus home
Follow-up on the condition and living circumstances of labourers who managed to return to their villages is, at best, minimal. Professor Nitya Rao reports how a local project coordinator witnessed truckloads of migrant families returning from Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka and Kerala to their homes in Koraput district in the week leading up to March 26th. The economic situation of these returnees was extremely precarious as many had not received their payments and had little prospect of any income in the coming months. In addition, they might have brought Covid-19 with them back to their families and communities, with whom they live in cramped quarters.[xxxii]
The lockdown to enforce physical distancing had resulted in the opposite — physical compression on an unthinkable scale. This is true even within India’s towns and cities. The main roads might be empty, but the poor are sealed into cramped quarters in slums and shanties.[xxxiii]
The lack of consideration of the impact of these Covid-19 measures on the more vulnerable members of society is not just on the part of governments. Humra Quraishi writes of the ‘wretched mode of thinking’ on the part of ‘upper-middle class people’ who report that the lockdown is causing them no problems as they can access all they need, blithely ignorant to the suffering of the poor as they themselves ‘have never been exposed to hunger.’[xxxiv]
Of course, India is not the only country that has seen the more vulnerable members of society suffering disproportionately due to repressive measure that that fails to consider or take account of their needs. In Colombia, while the more affluent have isolated themselves in relative comfort during the lockdown, the more vulnerable have experienced severe economic hardship and increased food insecurity. The urban informal sector of small-scale and street vendors comprising the greater part of the Colombian economic system, deprived of adequate support to help them through this period, now face having to choose between letting themselves and their families die of hunger or of Covid-19.[xxxv]
Repression Post Covid-19?
The struggle against the Covid-19 pandemic has provided scientific justification for the imposition of repressive methods including quarantining, isolation and lockdowns. Although their design and implementation have been disputed, there was general agreement that action was required to avoid overwhelming the public health services, often already stretched to their limits due to chronic under-funding. However, there is widespread concern governments might keep repressive and increased surveillance measures in place post Covid-19.
My home country of Israel, for example, declared a state of emergency during its 1948 War of Independence, which justified a range of temporary measures from press censorship and land confiscation to special regulations for making pudding (I kid you not). The War of Independence has long been won, but Israel never declared the emergency over, and has failed to abolish many of the “temporary” measures of 1948 (the emergency pudding decree was mercifully abolished in 2011).”[xxxvi]
Hariri goes on to warn that ‘data-hungry governments’ might try to keep biometric surveillance measures in place on the grounds there might be a second wave of Covid-19. Yuval fears that this could help overcome the resistance of those campaigning for the right to privacy as many might accept this argument given the understandable concern of people in general to place health concerns above those of privacy.[xxxvii]
Google HQ, Dublin.
Since May 5th, the U.K. government has been running a trial of a contact tracing app which has been made available on the Isle of Wight for its residents. The NSHX app chosen by the government however presents a number of ‘practical, legal and ethical questions and concerns that need to be answered.’ Primary amongst the concerns raised is the fact that the NSHX app, uses a centralized model. This means that the data collected by this app will not just be retained on your phone but will also be collected centrally on government servers. This is in contrast to the privacy-protective modelschosen by most other European countries, including Germany, Italy and Ireland.[xxxviii] Although, it should be noted that the Irish app is also facing issues with respect to privacy issues in addition to technical concerns.[xxxix]
Far-Right
Jumping on the Covid-19 fear bandwagon has become a central plank in the platform of the far-right as it capitalises on the elevated levels of social disorientation due to the pandemic. As Barbara Perry director of the Centre of Hate, Bias and Extremism at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology highlights, ‘[T]here’s nothing the far right likes more … than a crisis.’ Increased online right wing activity during Covid-19 comes under three main rubrics: ‘conspiracy theories, anti-immigrant and xenophobic attitudes and accelerationist rhetoric, which is concerned with trying to hasten the collapse of society and a race war that would lead to a “white ethno-state.‘[xl]
A report produced by the London-based Institute of Strategic Dialogue documents how ‘far-right communities have started talking about COVID-19 as an accelerant for a second civil war, also known as boogaloo… From Feb. 1 to March 28, more than 200,000 posts on social media contained the word “boogaloo.” The most popular hashtag within those posts was “#coronachan.’[xli]
Worryingly, Perry warns these narratives are not restricted to the far right anymore, if that was ever truly the case. She notes that ‘[T]here’s a bigger audience for folks for the far right now. So many of us are online… So we’re so vulnerable, I think, to this sort of messaging.‘[xlii]
In a recent article, Thomas Klikauer and Nadine Campbell outlined how the Nazi leader Hermann Goering once observed that ‘the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.‘ Klikauer and Campbell then go on to highlight how Neo-Nazis in Germany have adopted a similar approach to that advocated by Goering, by weaving ‘their ideology into the fear of the coronavirus.‘[xliii]
President Donald Trump talks to senior staff Steve Bannon during a swearing in ceremony for senior staff at the White House in Washington, DC January 22, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
Staying Vigilant
There is a need for the public to rest vigilant to the introduction of repressive and enhanced surveillance methods in this time of Covid-19, both to ensure theses measures are appropriate and fit for purpose, and are rescinded with the passing of the pandemic.
We also need to pay attention to the impacts that repressive measures can have on the most vulnerable in our midst including, inter alia, people on low income with few resources, the homeless, asylum seekers forced to live in direct provision and women at home with abusing partners, and hold our governments to account in this respect. In Australia, experts centrally involved in Australia’s Covid-19 response and the Australasian Society for Infectious Diseases have advocated on behalf of immigration detainees and recommended the relocation of those considered no major security or health risk, to safe accommodation in the community.[xliv]
As the Australian Human Rights Commissioner, Edward Santow, asserts:
We must… speak up for those whose voices are hardest to hear… If combating Covid-19 is a war, we can be proud of why we got into the fight: to preserve life, especially for vulnerable people. Those are the best of our values. We must now ensure those same values guide how we fight.[xlv]
[i] These are the lyrics from a song written by Aadesh Ravi, a Hyderabad composer, about the suffering caused by the lockdown migrations across India. You can see the story behind this song and also listen to it at the following link – Aadesh Ravi, The long march of the locked-down migrants, Rural India online, 16 May 2020, https://ruralindiaonline.org/articles/the-long-march-of-the-locked-down-migrants/
[ii] Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, Verso (new edition): London/NY, 2006, pages 6-7
[iii] Jen Webb, Tony Schirato and Geoff Danaher, Understanding Bourdieu, Sage: London/Thousand Oaks/New Delhi, 2002, p. 15
[iv] Jen Webb, Tony Schirato and Geoff Danaher, Understanding Bourdieu, Sage: London/Thousand Oaks/New Delhi, 2002, p. 93
[xvi] OSCE Press Release, Newly declared states of emergency must include a time limit and parliamentary oversight, OSCE human rights head says, OSCE, 30 March 2020, https://www.osce.org/odihr/449311
[xxv] Originally a line drawn by Lakshmana around the residence he shares with his brother Rama and sister-in-law Sita to protect Sita, as recounted in the Ramayana. In modern India, ‘Lakshmana Rekha’ refers to a strict convention or regulation which must be followed.
[xxxi] Purusottam Thakur and Kamlesh Painkra, Jamlo’s last journey along a locked-down road, Rural India Online, 14 May 2020, https://ruralindiaonline.org/articles/jamlos-last-journey-along-a-locked-down-road/
[xliv] Edward Santow-Australia’s human rights commissioner, We must combat Covid-19 but creeping authoritarianism could do more harm than good, The Guardian, 7 April 2020,
