"Collaboration or resistance, part 3: Scapegoats" by Connor Kelly

Collaboration or resistance, part 3: Scapegoats

 

This is the final instalment of Connor Kelly’s three-part analysis of the terrifying political transformation which has led us to the ultimate choice presented by vaccine passports: collaboration or resistance to the new regime. In his conclusion, Connor explains why the punishment of the unvaccinated is essential for the Covid system to survive.

• Read part 1, about the psychological politics of 21st first century fascism, here.
• Read 2, about the pandemic as a digitally-mediated virtual reality, here.

The British, French and Irish states with many others have identified an ideal scapegoat: the unvaccinated minority. They have been manufacturing hatred and fear of the unvaccinated and all those who question the restrictions or demand their freedom for some time now.

The purpose is not mysterious, it is plain, grubby, banal. Since being unvaccinated now carries a grave risk (the actual risk being insufficiently grave, they needed to invent one), this drives more people onto the vaccine green list, thereby getting them “on the system,” which can and will be expanded. The reimposition of restrictions can be blamed on the unvaccinated. The ‘rising case numbers’ can be blamed on the unvaccinated. The necessity of booster shots, and further forms of ID can be blamed on the unvaccinated. The general feeling of fear – created and driven by the state propaganda machine – can be blamed on the unvaccinated. Death can and will be blamed on the unvaccinated. Governments are instituting this apartheid because they rightly see that there is a chance (as is often the case in the ‘normal’ progression of politics) that they themselves will end up the scapegoat for all that has happened.

But there is more to it than that. The unvaccinated are the ‘natural’ scapegoat for this crisis for both the state, and for large sections of the public. Not because they represent physical danger, nor because they are ‘variant factories’ but because they didn’t get with the programme. (The dehumanisation has already begun with such terminology as variant factories!) The truth is that there are millions of unvaccinated people who are healthy, normal people – shock horror. I’m one of them.

The existence of healthy unvaccinated people is an affront to the new regime – an impermissible transgression. Their existence, and their defiant posture seems to make a mockery of all that people have suffered through. They remind us that the madness of the last year and a half was based on so many lies, on manufactured fear, on psychological abuse. If society is populated with healthy, normal unvaccinated people then the public might begin to question what the last year and a half was all for. And that would mean deeply questioning themselves, their narratives, their own desires and the nature of the society they inhabit – a traumatic event.

Like the puritan full of hatred and vengeance but nonetheless gazing enviously at the freewheeling libertine, the fantasies that are conjured are fantasies of expulsion. Remove the (imagined) source of disorder. The presence of the unvaccinated threatens the coherence of the new moral code, the new piety, the new order in general. And they threaten the psychological coherence of those who have faith in project lockdown.

Understand that this reaction is extremely common, normal even, and in a lot of cases people will defend it for what it is. The more intellectually minded, particularly those with social standing – that is to say those with social standing to lose – will paint more elaborate justifications and rationalisations for their need to expel the unvaccinated.

I have read some arguments that unvaccinated should be excluded on the grounds that this will protect other unvaccinated people – those who cannot for medical reasons get vaccinated. But this is neither the motive of the government – nor do most of the people spouting it actually believe it. It, like so many arguments in the last 18 months is an ad hoc justification that slithers in after the fact. Its purpose is itself. The people using this argument know themselves there is no possible justification for state enforced discrimination on this scale but realise their moral standing would be diminished if they just came out and said ‘keep the unclean away from me’. So, like the conscience-plagued German anti-Semite of the 1930s in two minds, who imagines ‘good Jews’ and ‘bad Jews’ they imagine the ‘good unvaccinated’ and ‘bad unvaccinated’ to justify their support for the persecution of the bad ones.

And the comparisons to the persecution of Jews in Germany are not unfounded even if many are keen to screech moral outrage at the mere hint of such a comparison. On the contrary, the comparison is valid. The people wearing yellow stars to compare the yellow star to the coronavirus passport are entirely correct to do so. The discrimination, persecution and ultimately the murder of the Jews was justified on the grounds of the health of the nation. And it didn’t happen all at once. It happened bit by bit.

‘Did you hear the rumours about what is happening to the Jews in the East?’

‘Urgh, what are you a conspiracy theorist now?’

When people scream louder about an anti-lockdown protestor wearing a yellow star than the overt systematic discrimination of a section of the population in the here and now (there is a good chance those who wore the stars are among them), it doesn’t tell me that the protestor was wrong. It tells me their detractors are screaming so loudly to drown out the truth. That they know on some level – not far from the surface – that the comparison isn’t so farfetched and the psychic terror that this produces in them – ‘are we the baddies?’ – returns their minds to ‘Expel! Expel!’ It cannot and will not be heard. Drown it out. Shut them up. Expel them.

The unvaxed cannot be allowed to exist as normal, healthy unvaccinated people. The passport system solves this. It is not covert – it isn’t that maybe it is, maybe it isn’t discrimination– it is overt, ritualised scapegoating in the form of internal exile for those who don’t get with the programme. And it will accelerate and escalate. You could say, it will mutate.

Possible escalations, in sequential order:

– unvaccinated people are barred from all public places.

– unvaccinated people are barred from work.

– unvaccinated people have their benefits withdrawn.

– unvaccinated people are forcibly vaccinated (likely under the mental health act).

– unvaccinated people are sent to quarantine camps.

– unvaccinated people are murdered.

Some of these are likely, some of these are less likely. All are possible. And for those who bristle, chuckling with indignation at the thought of the last few items on the list, I would ask, why on earth not? Do you think we have in 80 years somehow completely transcended the possibility of barbarism on that scale? Why? The state has all the power. All of it. We’ve given it to them without a fight. We demanded biopolitics and biopolitics is what we got. They are running a police state. They have manufactured a visceral and unhinged hatred against those opposed to taking the vaccine and those opposed to the police state. They have identified their scapegoat. The health secretary yesterday announced that ‘vulnerable’ (the word that covers a thousand modern sins) people should ‘avoid’ the unvaccinated. They want to expel them from social life and are instituting a system to do just that – the idea seems to have widespread support. Where exactly do you think such politics ends?

Being unvaccinated, it is I who they mean to exclude from society, my family members, friends and loved ones. It is your friends, and family members. It’s people on your street, in your town, people you have known for years. It is a tremendous injustice.

If you have any sort of moral conscience at all you must oppose these passports. Do not use them. Do not frequent places that do use them. Loudly, proudly state your objection. If you are in a political party, do your best to get them to oppose. If not, resign – and make it known why you are resigning. Petition local politicians. Organise protests, boycotts, pickets. The passports present a choice (the ‘buy in’ I mentioned earlier) – collaboration or resistance.

And to anyone who supports these or is content to put their fingers in their ears and hum loudly enjoying all the ‘benefits’ that having a Full Blooded-Aryan certificate give while a violation of human decency on this scale is going on, know that you are seen. The unvaccinated see you and history will see you.

Source: Left Lockdown Sceptics

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