Wuhan-Wenliang pestilence: See no fascism, say no fascism
He commences with shame … We were slaves.
Pesahim 116a
The destruction of Bethar came through the shaft of a leather.
Gittin 55b.
You should be able to tell the difference between Pesach and TishaB’Av. The destruction of America came through a piece of cloth. Even for an observer like yours truly, having viewed risks of an upcoming fascist era as non-trivial for decades, the speed, ferocity and mainstreaming of transition was stunning. There will be plenty of time ahead for discussion of varieties of fascism. Have you promoted fascism today yet?
Wuhan-Wenliang coronavirus pandemic of 2020 is primarily a spiritual malady (Yes, I used to think of epidemics as natural events, too.) That is subject to further religious interpretations, as is usual with scientific issues. Some would point to the as yet unknown and thus misterious provenance of virus, believed to have originated in a Chinese lab at Wuhan, or а mutation itself. Others would focus on MSM fake news, hoaxes and panic, a generation easily giving up social trust and contacts with friends and family on government say-so, and sclerotic, misguided and repressive government response. Our leaders’ responses turned out to be dumb and evil. Taken together, this is systemwide. All of these are institutional, and spiritual. You can see the resulting epidemic in religious terms as a self-inflicted Divine punishment for these very sins; which should have been avoided.
How did we get here?
First came garden variety government incompetence and mismanagement. File under this decade-long failure to re-stockpile under Obama and Trump admins, boneheaded and damaging impeachment fiasco (still haven’t seen a sane account of Pelosi delay, great timing), etc. The botched testing game between CDC and FDA was both nationalist (CDC chose to ignore WHO/German test) and quasi-socialist, as CDC tried to do government-only response, while private reponse was suppressed. How dare you to act!?
Then they came for the gullible. The same fake news media machine that gave us “all monica, all the time”, iraq-alqaeda link, global warming, clinton email server, russian collusion, metoo, impeachment and lots of other hoaxes and hysterics in between came for the case of bad flu. Boo, it’s invisible and it’s scary. How dare you not to be afraid!?
Bad government doesn’t work, they panicked. Then they came for the sick. Over a very-short-lived deficit of Wuhan-Wenliang tests, the government switched strategy from containment to mitigation, and to healthcare rationing. (Remember “Obamacare death panels”?) That was merely statist. (BTW, the relationship between testing and cases is frequently misrepresented: it’s not that the initial large number of cases precluded widespread testing, rather it’s the reverse, restrictive testing as a health policy choices early on caused cases and deaths to spiral.) In addition they chose to delay or withhold treatment of patients. It’s literally a giant state-run killing machine. Any quick fixes need to be done primarily at this level. How dare you to ask for testing, treatment or protection!?
Because this doesn’t work, they doubled down. Then they came for the people. The governments then switched from merely enabling Wuhan-Wenliang virus killings, to direct attacks on still healthy population, through surveillance, curfews, shutdowns and lockdowns, and widespread social disruption. This response was explicitly totalitarian in nature, it is a super-charged police state, it is a soft preview of distopian future, whereas AI-enabled governments have a luxury to decide that a majority of population is “not essential”. For its’, government’s, well-being. How dare you to walk, talk, gather, pray, live a life!?
Now, it is not inconceivable that a best-run government in a severe epidemic having earned the trust of citizenry and exhausted its options, may find it necessary to resort to limited, short-lived and rational quarantine-style life-disrupting measures, mostly based on reasonable recommendations and voluntary compliance. And indeed, that’s what they are pretending to do. But rather, these governments peddle irrational fears and maladministration guided by confused reasoning. They are unseemly enthusiastic punishing the citizens, precisely for reasonable disregard. How dare you to disagree or disobey!?
Because this doesn’t work, they doubled down again. Then they came for the economy. The current version of QE, and federal bailout amount to a massive program of effectively nationalizing the economy. As in 2009, it turned out to be easier to disburse trillions of dollars than to break through professional dogmas. In this fascist economic model industries are dominated by a few giant corporations, backstopped by the government, acting in concert with them. How dare you to work or function!?
This wouldn’t work either, but provided a short-term pause. Then they came for the democracy and for the elections. Elections are delayed, deformed and likely may be subverted. How dare you to vote!?
Know thy fascism
This is not feminazis, Charlottseville cosplayers, border concentration camps, or garden variety fascist this or fascist that. This is not a joke, this is not a drill. Yes, we should be using the F-word at this stage. It is used here properly, because of the severity and comprehensiveness of the attack and the damage. It is not merely statist reponse, or authoritarianism, or police state, or socialism, or surveillance state, or natsec state, or state of emergency, etc. It is a coordinated attack against individual rights, social institutions, civil society, businesses, democracy and market economy. The system as operates and emerges now is essentially no longer liberal nor capitalist nor democracy, far from these. It is fascist; but the US is still a federalist republic (in hindsight, by now may not have been either - functionally, had DJT impeachment somehow succeded).
It is a properly fascist state and fascist system, perhaps emergent one. A good way of thinking about it is that the system was evolving gradually in proto-facsist direction for a while, at least since the turn of the century, but that was covered with a thinning veneer of LCD; and now this ugly duckling hatched. Somewhere along the way there’s probably a room for a deep state, political interesants or a conspiracy, but these are marginal for the process of this scale. This crisis is but a tipping point.
While this was implemented as a revolution from above, notice the rapidly shifting social norms. You hear fewer people questioning fascist demands, and more normalizing them and instead preversely questioning normality, sometimes with explicitly antisemtic slant. Why are you going outside?! Why are you meeting friends?! Why are you having shabbat, pesach or easter services?! Why are you even talking about rights and liberties?! Why is that government not yet imposed a lockdown? My lockdown is better than your lockdown! It is that kind of fearful obedience to authority amplified by conformism that translates authoritarian and totalitarian action into social transformation. Have you promoted fascism today yet?
What's next?
Domestically, and in Europe, we can expect a partial rollback, perhaps in the near future. While this is a glimpse of the more distant future, the transition will likely not be fully sustained right away. However, neither the rollback will be sufficient. Of the crises-induced deformities of the 21 century, after 9/11 and Lehman, many are still with us, some in somewhat mitigated form: wars, deficits, surveillance, banking and other oligopolies, disfunctional nationalized mortgage market, etc.
Internationally, the US and Europe would suffer tremendous loss of soft power, and China would gain. The American and European influence was based on three whales: hard power, force and wealth; knowledge advantage and competency; and moral and ideological leadership. China went through the Wuhan-Wenliang epidemic with harsh authoritarianism and reasonable competency, resulting in relatively limited loss of life. The West could have chosen a full-fascist Chinese model of response, in hope of minimizing costs. It could have demonstrated a viable alternative by throwing money and resources at the epidemic, doing so competently and sufficiently to contain it while taking a stand on protecting liberty and social institutions. It could have aimed at maintaining semblance of normalcy in the absense of competent response even at a cost of human lives, in a sort of liberty sacrifice, along the lines of short-lived BoJo proposal.
Instead, we are witnessing bumbling and haphazard response, with little if any organizational competence and agility, but unduly rigid and sclerotic, throwing the liberal democracy under the bus for nothing, if not going all the way to Chinese model, and moreover incurring huge loss of life, on top of that, or even because of that. American state was proved to be too powerful and illiberal to be able to inflict immense damage to society, and yet too incompetent to limit the damage from the virus itself. America chose not to lead a model liberal response, or failed to get it off the ground, and it is unable (yet) to fully lead a fascist response. Unfortunatly, it is not for a lack of trying. It is unclear how can liberal democratic model sustain global credibility after losing foothold in US and many places in Europe.
Many people are having the same conversation, and so do many policymakers in many countries. It is clear that american response model is inferior to the chinese; unfortunately. The implications are threefold. First, many of the countries adopting now pro-fascist response would choose to keep some of them. Second, when adopting social policies countries would more likely choose to be guided by chinese approaches, than by western ones. Third, in the future attempts to name and shame them into liberalizing, the retort would be more likely pointing that under stress, american principles gave way.
International fascism would come in variety of shapes and nuances. There is an interesting divergence of early response among the pre-Wuhan nationalists and would-be authoritarians. Some, like Hungary, Phillipines, Russia, choose to use the cover of freshly normalized international fascist response to amplify domestic authoritarianism and power consolidation. Others, notably Belarus and Singapore, choose to make a stand at maintaining pre-Wuhan normalcy a bit longer even under some outiside pressure.
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