Anarchy, Lockdown and Crypto-Eugenics

big simpin and buying states

a critical response from some anarchists in Wales and England.

“The Covid19 crisis has presented a challenge to anarchists and others who believe in a fully autonomous and liberated life” – so a recent submission to Montreal Counter-information declares. These words certainly resonate with our experiences. Anarchy in the UK is not just presented with a challenge; it is itself in crisis. Spycops, squatting ban, abusers, Corbynism, TERFs – the list is long, and the virus already found “the scene” in a sorry state. But Covid-19 represents something different, and on this we can agree with the analysis from Montreal. This is also where our agreement ends. In the following text we critique the analysis – we do so as its arguments are similar to those we have heard among friends and even comrades over the past months. Though the epidemic in the UK appears to be waning, its associated tendencies remain. The text calls for serious critiques, and so we offer the following in the spirit of antagonism against the present. We close with some suggested points of unity for anarchists in these times.

“Politicians”, their text begins, “lie”, and big pharma has exploited the pandemic. Maybe we can agree on a little more! In the UK, we were told that the virus was only a flu and to keep working as usual. (At the time of writing, the death count numbers over 125,000.) And we were told of Oxford’s vaccine, a people’s vaccine with no patent or borders (a mask that quickly slipped as the state reverted to vaccine nationalism). But these aren’t the lies they have in mind. Rather, they argue that politicians and the media have craftily overstated the virus’ threat, in a cunning plan to impose lockdowns and reap pharmaceutical profits. (Surely the hand-sanitiser corporations are behind this too..?) Anarchists, we are then told, have believed this powerful lie. Out of an “admirable [!] want to do well by the elderly and infirm”, the state has succeeded in “hacking our hearts and minds”.

This idea, appealing as it might be, is only a pale shadow of the reality. Covid-19’s threat is not a conspiracy, any more than Covid-19 itself. It is not the result of media hype any more than it is the product of Bill Gates’ brain or transmitted from 5G towers. It is the direct consequence of severe ecological destruction and capitalism’s toxic living conditions. Having brought it into existence, it is of course “exploited” by capital and state. As the critic notes, it is unlikely that capitalism will eradicate it, even if certain states claim this as their goal. Instead it is managed, incorporated, capitalised upon. This is at a far more fundamental level than creating profits for some pharmaceutical companies – we are seeing in the colonial core an historic restructure of work and class-composition. Our critic begins to scratch at this surface (they describe lockdowns as “classist”, as if a lack of lockdown would be classless!). Scratch a little deeper, and we see that capitalism faces a familiar contradiction: exploit workers, but ensure there are workers to be exploited tomorrow. Manage the virus, manage production. Like inflation, the death-graph must be regulated – kept just right. Everywhere this paradox is obvious: “stay at home” but “go to work”! Technocrats and managers debate the 2 metre rule just as the 19th century Factory Acts debated the relation of profits, health and cubic-feet per worker.[1]

We can call this capital’s “positive” side. Though each worker is cheap and replaceable, capital needs a body of workers. It can’t have everyone ill at once, and it can’t afford killing off too much of its working population. But it also finds and creates bodies superfluous to capitalist production: disposable bodies, bodies in the colonial margins, old bodies, less or unproductive bodies, bodies that cannot “work”. It’s here that we see capitalism’s eugenic and Malthusian tendency. This tendency, always present, has for the disabled been intensified in recent years, as the numerous lives lost due to benefit cuts demonstrate. Since the beginnings of “public health” in the 19th century, triage systems (a military invention) have ranked bodies in a hierarchy of value, rationing resources under conditions of artificial scarcity. In recent times, do-not-resuscitate notices imposed on Covid-19 patients with learning disabilities were the result of a care algorithm – tech meets “accidental” eugenics.[2] Capitalism itself could accurately be described as an algorithm of crypto-eugenics, always at risk of fascism outright. Like fascism, Covid-19 presents an existential threat to the lives of certain minorities – the proletarian disabled and the elderly in particular – and a slower death to others.[3] And like fascism, liberal democracies allow it to exist, manage it, keep their monster on the leash. At times this management fails: health-care systems collapse, production plummets. At other times, the far-right call for the monster to be set free.

Recognising the pandemic as an existential threat is where “our conversation should begin”. The critic talks of anarchists on the one hand, and the elderly and “infirm” on the other. It’s the anarchist that is agent-subject here, their freedom to act with or without them (the “vulnerable”) in mind. It erases from the beginning elderly anarchists, disability anarchism. Where are they and their freedoms in this imagined revolt? Our critic continues: as free anarchists, we also care for others, we co-operate with “consent” and without “force”. But who’s force, what consent? It’s a simple truth that your right to drink in the pub (that is, the right of the business to re-open) shits on the freedom of those at serious risk, those a few links down the chain of transmission. These chains of transmission are our chains. As anarchists we affirm the violence of liberation. Let us be clear: those that threaten the disabled cannot be consented with. We will find no freedom in frozen morgues.

The critic goes on to downplay the threat of Covid-19, a familiar refrain. Montreal Analysis come Barrington Deceleration – talk about technocrats! They cite statistics on average risks, masking the deadly risks to specific minorities (it won’t be bad for you!). They pit Covid-risks against cancer treatment (we can only afford one or the other!), despite the virus being far more deadly for those fighting cancer. Even were Covid-19 somewhat less risky (look, only 60,000 deaths!), the crypto-eugenic logic remains. In the UK, we must critically analyse recent events – particularly that certain assemblages of the state openly plotted course for “herd immunity” without a vaccine. It’s safe to assume that this Malthusian wet-dream would have led to health-system collapse and perhaps half a million deaths (“acceptable losses”).[4]

Where the critic calls on anarchists to question and critique the Covid-19 threat, we call on anarchists to reflect critically on eugenics as a logic of capital and state. We must also grapple seriously with its nasty history in the anarchist tradition, from Emma Goldman’s writings to sections of primitivist and anti-civ thought. As pandemics become more prevalent and eco-fascisms enter the mainstream, anarchists must fight to ensure nobody is “left behind”.

Finally, our friend attacks the tyranny of lockdown, claiming that as anarchists this should be our aim, and that in failing to do so we have cowardly ceded ground to the far-right. But their target is both abstract and confused. They use the terms curfew, lockdown and closures interchangeably (one of their cited articles even describes mandated mask wearing as “draconian”!) and argue that these measures must be attacked “in principle” as they are imposed without “consent”. We argue that as anarchists there is no state which can be consented to, and that the very notion of a social contract has nothing to do with anarchy. Rather than make vague statements for #freedom in the style of the Tea party right, we must locate and attack the instruments of power and control. “Lockdown” has come to mean a myriad of very contrasting measures – from asking people to stay at home to policed curfews, from enforcing meager workplace health and safety to the breaking of strikes, from closing businesses and schools to violent prison lockdowns (the term’s original meaning), from fining tourists and quarantine hotels to detaining migrants in military camps. It should be obvious which of these as anarchists we must attack, and which we can leave alone – or even fight for.

We must define our targets and recognise our enemies. Free business has nothing to do with our freedom. Simply opposing lockdown “edicts from on high” is as empty as supporting all protest. In the UK we have seen large, rowdy Covid-conspiracy demos led by celebrity anti-Semites, but we have also seen unpolitical gatherings fighting the police – as well as organised demonstrations for black lives. The US presents an even simpler dichotomy. Nothing could be clearer than the difference between the late-Spring business protests against Democratic governors and the Summer’s black uprising against the police. The first stood for the rights of small businesses and merged into the right-wing militia movement. The second exploded anger at the cops, expropriated goods and created temporary autonomous spaces. As anarchists we know where we stand.

Speculative points of unity:

Smash crypto-eugenics, of the right and of the left
Obstruct Covid-conspiracy demos, recognising them as far-right mobs Resist the criminalisation of the pandemic, policing powers, curfews and intensified surveillance
Target the reinforced border regime and “lifeboat fascism”
Organise against the return to unsafe workplaces
Fight the evictions of anarchist spaces and the mass-eviction wave
Further networks of mutual aid and act with dangerous care
Sabotage ecological destruction and animal exploitation, the cause of present and future pandemics
Analyse the changing terrain, refuse the postponement of anarchy

Notes:

“It has been stated over and over again that the English doctors are unanimous in declaring that where the work is continuous, 500 cubic feet is the very least space that should be allowed for each person. … [but were this to happen] [t]he very root of the capitalist mode of production, i.e., the self-expansion of all capital, large or small, by means of the “free” purchase and consumption of labour-power, would be attacked. Factory legislation is therefore brought to a deadlock before these 500 cubic feet of breathing space. The sanitary officers, the industrial inquiry commissioners, the factory inspectors, all harp, over and over again, upon the necessity for those 500 cubic feet, and upon the impossibility of wringing them out of capital. They thus, in fact, declare that consumption [tuberculosis] and other lung diseases among the workpeople are necessary conditions to the existence of capital.” Karl Marx, Das Kapital (Chapter Fifteen: Machinery and Modern Industry, Section 9). If we assume a work-room height of 10 feet, 500 cubic feet would give a base of approximately 7 x 7 feet, 7 feet being a little more than 2 metres.

On the 26 June 2020, England revised its guidance from 2 meters to 1. Whilst “the evidence shows that relative risk may be 2-10 times higher”, “there are severe economic costs to maintaining 2 metre distancing. With a 2 metre rule in place, it is not financially viable for many businesses to operate.” https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/review-of-two-metre-social-di...

The linked Guardian article is from February 2021, but concerns regarding do-not-resuscitate forms were raised by medical establishment bodies at the beginning of the UK epidemic. https://www.cqc.org.uk/news/stories/joint-statement-advance-care-planning
“I just need you to recognize that this shit is killing you, too, however much more softly, you stupid motherfucker, you know?” Fred Moten on racism (interview, 2013). Vaccine nationalism is increasingly shifting this to the “postcolonial” elderly and disabled. Other groups of course include certain sections of the workforce (mostly low-paid) and people of colour, the urban poor, the incarcerated, migrants. (We would argue that the existential threat directly applies here to the elderly and disabled, whereas the Covid-regime intensifies existing threats against the latter groups.) A lot could also be said about the privatisation of Covid-risk to the household and the domestic abuse this has further enabled.

The UK’s Office for National Statistics estimates disabled people as making up 60% of all Covid-19 deaths (November 2020). Similar to “BAME” deaths, “raised risk is because disabled people are disproportionately exposed to a range of generally disadvantageous circumstances compared with non-disabled people.” https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarri...

The ONS estimated that approximately 15% of the population had antibodies to Covid-19 on the 18th of January 2021 (the rate was lower for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland). On this date the total UK deaths of people who had received a positive test result (a relatively low measure) was approximately 95,000. “Herd immunity” is estimated to require a threshold of at least 60% (the percentage Chief Scientific Advisor Patrick Vallance gave in his interview with Sky News on March the 13th, 2020) possibly more. That is, to reach herd immunity without a vaccine, more than four times as many people in the UK would need to have been infected than had in January 2021, making it reasonable to assume four times as many deaths (giving 380,000 as a conservative estimate). This is before considering reinfection, the lack of treatments at the beginning of the pandemic, likely health-system collapse, the higher chance of new variants etc. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/...

More evidence has emerged of herd immunity without a vaccine being a pushed for strategy prior to March 23rd, 2020. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-54252272

Link to original: https://mtlcounterinfo.org/anarchy-lockdown-and-crypto-eugenics-a-critic...

There are 32 Comments

With the disparity in the administration of the vaccine, in effect a global petri dish is forming from which the speed at which the mutation of covid strains emerge will overcome the realization of herd immunity being attained, unless all travel, tourism, international commerce ceases, something democratic capitalism will never permit.

Yes, only a global fascist rule with Nation-States dividing people more than they ever did will beat this virus. In like a few years. But trust us... we'll all go back to normal again, don't worry!

I'll come back to this when I discover the energy to wade through its mud.

Looks like liberal state narrative is hijacking anarcho-leftists...

Dig deeper man, you don't have to position yourself in this old trick: liberalism vs fascism. That's the system blackmail since the rise of capitalism.

It hijacked them from the start... years even before Covid. Where've you been?

Starting with that text from Freedom News early the crisis, calling for everyone to "stay home".

"Obstruct Covid-conspiracy demos, recognising them as far-right mobs

+

"Resist the criminalisation of the pandemic, policing powers, curfews and intensified surveillance"

These two things don't go together... What counts as a "covid conspiracy" demo? Who gets to decide what's a conspiracy and what's not? Are anti-lockdown demos "far right mobs" now? So now antifas going to be the covid police man, beating people with batons and pepperspray so as they stay locked down? Will you be running an antifa snitch line against backyard BBQs and children's birthday parties that don't conform to social distancing (recognizing them as far-right get togethers) ? Where does it end? At what point do you recognize you've licked enough boots this year? At what point do you recognize you're a fucking tool of the COIN state?

You disgust me.

It's funny when you treat antifascist like cops, completely being oblivious to how cops have been siding with White supremacists in the streets for ages.

You realize this is just stuff going on in your mind, based on your "reading" of the text above...

Yes.

Also, "siding with white supremacists"?

Are you not aware of the fuckton of white supremacists who are in prison? Guess who put them there? That's right -- your anti-anti-lockdown blue butt buddies.

The cops (and the state by extension) aren't on the side of the white supremacists or the right wing in general anymore than they are on yours. It is, and always has been, a three-way fight.

Still, you guys sure do like to act like them as well as take up virtually all of their talking points.

There's a lot more Black people than your White supremacist heroes in jail, you scumbag.

As for the cops siding with the fash, you're here again in denial. Personal bias, I presume?

The police has had a seizable entry of White supremacists for ages, as checking for ties to these groups was never part of the screening process when it comes to local PD at least. Plenty of protest footage has also shown how cops have been protecting the fash. Your denial is absurd.

"You scumbag"

You even speak to me like the cops, lol.

Also, WS heroes? Lmao.

Look, it's like the FB/Twitter bans.

It's really been very funny to watch the dichotomy play out on both the Left and the Right. Lots of people on the Right be like: "We've been banned! Th- The LEFT is running the show!". Whereas the Left be like: "We've been banned! FB/Twitter is a LAST BASTION of the extreme Right!"

You're both right, and you're both wrong. That's all I'm saying. It's not a contest to see who can get the most fucked over by the state. But if you wanna play that game, fine.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Also when did I mention black people? I was talking about wignats on one hand, and antifa (who are overwhelmingly white) on the other. Keep your commodified identity fetish groups out of this, loser.

Plenty of footage showing 5-0 save your ass from getting your teeth put on the curb, but OK...

Anyways, I saw some people playing frisbee on the soccer field today. Pretty sure they don't all come from the same household. Maybe you should go harass them in the name of aNtI-fAsCiSm!

The point is how you're in fucking denial as to how the pigs have been helping the White supremacists in general, and not clearly not Antifa.

Cut to footage of antifacists being chased by cops over punching a fash dirtbag; conutless cases of lines of pigs standing ON THE SIDE of WS and facing off antifascist protesters; or yeah, like more recently... some antifa dude in Portland becoming a DHS fugitive over shooting back against another WS dirtbag in self-defense while skating. Then bluntly being shot to death 3 days later by pigs. No arrest, no trial, no whatever due process. "You shot one of our gang? You die."

You know there are co-factorial reasons for this that have nothing to do with any institutional racism right? See Coleman Hughes or Kmele Foster.

There is no evidence that WS has any notable structural influence on law enforcement. There are plenty of reasons to go after law enforcement outside of the WS boogieman. Kamala Harris largely represents what contemporary law enforcement is. It's multicultural lipsticked pigs baby.

Way to dodge all of my argumentative points, you bootlicking coof-cop.

I see you wanna vindicate for how SE has been oppressed by the "Antifa cops" here. Adding this to my daily Anews report to FBI Special Agent Reid Ross.

Chisel, slam this nonsense post on the podcast. Here is toxic Lefty shite... give these fuckwits the Chisel snark.

I'm sooo tired of how the capitalists are trying now to commodify empathy, and their media machine avoids mentioning the 10 - 15,000 children who die from preventable sickness and starvation. Sure, there's an element of a crypto-eugenic dynamic driving exposure levels. Ultimately though, the State finds Malthus tedious, and prefers binary warfare as its ultimate means of effecting population trends.
Can see this narrative already being propagated and nurtured for the near future. Global fascist rule with new Nation-State borders may atleast create internally regional pockets of autonomy in the sparsely populated regions.

Global fascist rule with new Nation-State borders may atleast create internally regional pockets of autonomy in the sparsely populated regions."

Whaaaaaaaat?

Is this what happened in Chile after the coup, in Franco's Spain or in Mussolini's Italy? Did it go better for autonomists under the Nazi regime?

Did fascist death squads in Colombia, Salvador and Mexico helped the autonomy of peasants including the ELZN in Chiapas?

Are the massive land grabs by billionaires in the US, all defended by a militarized fascist police, helping local autonomy? Hawaii maybe (lol)!?

But here's a better question above all these... ARE YOU FUCKING RETARDED?

Umm, I'm talking about Alaska, like at Anaktuvuk Pass or some remote outpost. All those places you mentioned are small nations devoid of true wilderness. Hey, Franco's, Hitler's or Mussolini's thugs wouldn't have a hope of finding me where I am. Why so hysterically paranoid?

"Alaska" is controlled by the US of A and now increasingly owned by several extractive corporations. And you think your Nation-States protect against the valuation of lands and their takeover by billionaires...

Also Chile and Spain have no wilderness?

Indeed GTFO way up north Alaska, moron, especially where there's no internet. Or just stay on 8kun next time.

Only the disciplinarians of their own autonomous existence can really say if they are truly free.

This piece is amazing. I feel like we're replaying the antifa story of four years ago, only now with COVID. It's like every so often they roll out a new opportunity to side with the State for a new reason that seems to offer some thin veneer of antistatism if you squint hard enough. Fascinating really.

AntiPa will be next! That's anti-patriarchy. They'll have the AntiMa for those who don't know about the niche matriarchal communities.

For me this is double-ugly: on the one hand, I have a genetic lung issue and autoimmune problems, and if I get covid I expect it to explode into combined viral and bacterial pneumonia, with little chance to survive. On the other hand, I cannot distinguish one form of confinement from any other, and I absolutely cannot tolerate existance in any of them.

When MD's Governor Hogan (who has national ambitions) beat his chest on March 30, 2020 about putting people in jail for defying his stay at home order, I had to pack up and flee my home with just hours to spare before it went into effect. I escaped into the Interstate Highway traffic flow, hearing news of a possible lockdown arrest at the "mixing bowl" intersection in my wake.

For the next six weeks I was a refugee in very remote areas with trusted friends who probably saved my life. I had zero prior camping experience and was severly stressed. Meanwhile back home, harassment by a do-gooder neighborhood health patrol nearly erupted into a gun battle with a neighbor. Finally it became clear after well over a month that the Governor was bluffing and his threats of jail were a hoax, and I was able to return home. With the public at large increasingly ignoring the stay at home, I didn't have to worry anymore about being a unique risk to the community either. While I was in the wild I was not around people other than my campmates, so there too I was able to defy the stay at home without endangering others.

Less than two weeks later, the cities blew. I was home just in time to join the fight. Out of the wilderness and into the inferno of continent-wide uprising I went. Fire and smoke rose into the sky as anger over discriminatory policing of lockdowns was detonated by a pig's murderous knee.

What a stupid article, the very premise starts out wrong: [Recognising the pandemic as an existential threat is where “our conversation should begin” ] But with an over 99 percent survival and it being FAR less deadly than past pandemics and with better tech now to create treatments, there is zero reason to suspect any overall existential threat to humanity. The next argument appears to be that since it is more dangerous to the weak and sick, to not force everyone stay home would be akin to eugenics. But most viruses and illnesses and just life in general are more dangerous to the weak and sick, yet we never called any of that others stuff 'eugenics' before so what gives now? The fact is that most old and sick STILL survive the rona if they get it, even the over 70 group has 94% survival, no group is going to get wiped out or even near to it. Also the definitions of eugenics is controlled breeding and this is not that.

Anarchist dogma has always involved a bit of survival of the fittest so I am surprised to see they pooping on that concept now. I can only guess it's because they are scared of the virus themselves and are no longer willing to fully live by their stated creed. Also the author totally bought into the current propaganda and ignored other more anarchist potential solutions like the weak and sick could be asked to stay home (but it would be their choice) and everyone else could be asked to help protect them. That would keep the economy going and still protect those that needed it.

Also if you don't like your workplace or feel it is unsafe, no one is forcing you to work there. No one has a gun to your head, go get a diff job if you don't like your current one, it's your choice, that's the anarchist way. If companies can't find enough workers, then they will reform their system to attract more employees, that's also the anarchist way.

To be clear, I am not sure I am totally on board with full anarchism for a variety of reasons but if someone is going to claim they are an anarchist, forced lockdowns are the antithesis of anarchist thought. Anarchy is against state control or force or even having much of a central state, it's totally impossible to shoe horn state forced lockdowns with a theory that is against state control and force. Either the author is a scared idiot or controlled opposition. THe only good thing I can say is all the actual true anarchists I know are staying true to their beliefs and are against the lockdowns.

Totally agree that no existential threat exists with covid and with anything else in the affluent narcissistic Western societies.
Existential threats only exist in the underdeveloped regions exploited by the West.

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