OVER THE LAST FEW WEEKS I’ve been racking my brains over why the anti-vaccination movement feels so very, very creepy. I’ve sought reassurance in Jess Berentson-Shaw’s gentle enjoinders to engage empathically and constructively with the vaccine resistant, but without success.
Jess reminds me of those naïve souls who argue that non-violent tactics could have brought the Third Reich to its knees. These folk always forget that non-violent tactics only work against a government that is still capable of feeling shame, or, at the very least, fears being depised in the eyes of the world. Regimes fully armoured in self-justifying ideological extremism cannot be successfully challenged by the tactics of Gandhi and Martin Luther King.
Jess’s humanistic faith did, however, set off a train of thought. It caused me to review the history of the black civil rights movement through the prism of non-violence. Was it the key element in the movement’s success, or was there something else at work that caused the segregationist governments of the southern states to step back and take stock? While there is no doubt that the imagery of the civil-rights struggle: of fire-hoses and billy-clubs; savage Alsatian dogs and tear-gas; deployed for the world to see against unresisting, non-violent youngsters; was more than successive administrations were willing to tolerate; it was not enough, on its own, to bring victory.
What effectively ended the official administration of Jim Crow was the Federal Government’s clear willingness to pick up where it left off in 1877. That was the year in which the last remaining garrisons of Federal troops were withdrawn from the South. The year when Washington effectively told Southern Whites that nothing would be done to prevent them from constructing violently racist regimes throughout the states of the defeated Confederacy. It was the 1957 decision of the Republican President, Dwight Eisenhower, to dispatch paratroopers from the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock, Arkansas, to enforce the Supreme Court’s desegregation orders, that made it clear that “Reconstruction”, deferred for 80 years, was back.
After 1957, more and more of the heavy-lifting in defence of Jim Crow was taken up by the openly terrorist Ku Klux Klan. But the violence unleashed by the Klan, and the non-violent response of black and white civil rights activists, only made the Federal authorities’ responsibility to uphold the Constitution more urgent. The FBI’s ruthless counter-intelligence tactics made the Klan’s terrorism increasingly ineffectual. The violence at Selma, the Jim Crow South’s last stand, merely ensured that the crucial 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed – sealing its fate.
Of what relevance is this to the anti-vaccination movement of 2021? Simply, it draws its power from the same mental machinery that constructed the Jim Crow South nearly a century-and-a-half ago.
What enraged Southerners in the aftermath of the American Civil War was not simply that they had been defeated militarily, but that the racist ideological edifice that had sustained slavery was being demolished. The progressive view of humankind espoused by the Abolitionists had prevailed. In contemporary language, the old software no longer worked in USA 2.0.
Something very similar happened in the US, and New Zealand, with the arrival of Covid-19. Dangerous ideas and attitudes, which had been permitted to guide a minority of the population, were suddenly and unequivocally declared erroneous and unsafe by the State. The majority strongly concurred. Anti-scientific twaddle could no longer be ignored. In the context of a deadly viral pandemic, such ideas posed a direct threat to society’s well-being
For those who saw science, and the progressive political and social ideas it underpinned, as the root of all evil, this was an intolerable situation. With some justification, they saw the war against Covid-19 as a war against their own, essentially pre-modern, world-view. Accordingly, the demands being made of them by the State were received as an existential threat – to be resisted at all costs, by any means necessary.
Exactly the same feelings of desperation and outrage gripped Southern Whites as they saw the triumphant principle of racial equality being given practical application in the 1870s. Under the protection of Federal bayonets, Black Southerners founded schools, established businesses and stood for public office. It was not to be borne.
An utterly uncompromising determination to destroy this new regime, and to obliterate the progressive ideology that inspired it, seized an unrelenting majority of White citizens across the Southern states. They would not rest until their version of reality was reinstated. Those who opposed them were shown no mercy. When the political weariness of the Northern states offered them the opportunity to reclaim political control, they grabbed it with both hands. Racist terror became the means of restoring calm to White Southern souls – for the next 80 years.
Peruse the Southerners’ “Lost Cause” propaganda of the Reconstruction Era (1866-1877) and you will find there the same unhinged extremism that throngs the dark recesses of the anti-vaxxer Internet. The same “Big Lies” are there. The same dumbfounding claims. The same threats of violence.
A vast international crisis, the Covid-19 Pandemic, has exposed the irrational underbelly of twenty-first century society. Neuroses and delusions that the majority had reluctantly tolerated (if only because the harm they caused was almost exclusively restricted to those who suffered from them) now threaten the general welfare.
If the violent prejudices of the Jim Crow South, echoing through contemporary struggles, teach us anything, it is that the defence of rationality, science and progressivism must never be allowed to falter. Those pre-modern night-riders, filled with unrelenting hate, are still out there. If the troops of Reason and Justice are withdrawn; if Liberty’s bayonets are sheathed; there will be Hell to pay.
Chris, long time reader of your comments and always enjoy the sense of history you bring to your arguments. But I feel you and all the other left wing, progressive-whatever you like to call them commentators (Bradbury, Campbell, Hager et al), are floundering over this issue.
Quite simply the whole windy edifice of your arguments, like an inverted pyramid, is built on acceptance the “vaccine” is safe.
Take that away and every other righteous argument directed at the non-vaccinated collapses.
For the record – I’m what Mike Moore would describe as ‘tribal labour’. Voted Labour till 1987 then it was another 15 years before I could stomach voting for them again. Voted for the current arrangement twice but when Ardern gleefully announced her vaccine mandate for me this was a Rubicon she crossed there was no coming back from.
A Labour government driving good people out of their jobs because they elect not to take a medical intervention they regard, at best, as dubious. As a lefty of long standing Chris, you know the big pharmaceutical companies have a long and sordid history of fraudulence and malfeasance in the pursuit of profit.
If you haven’t done your research in this area it’s time you did. Forget about wracking your brains and dusting off your history books. It’s not that bloody hard to
understand why some of us ex team of five million want nothing to do with the jab.
I would say you are more feral than tribal, 100 years ago you would have been interned at Somes Island.
“Quite simply the whole windy edifice of your arguments, like an inverted pyramid, is built on acceptance the “vaccine” is safe.”
Garbage. We don’t elect to accept vaccines simply based on whether they are safe. Virtually nothing in life is fully safe. We elect to accept the trade off in risks between their known benefits and known adverse outcomes when these are weighed against the risk of not taking the vaccine or against the disease it is designed to protect against.
Richard, good luck with that
Another day, more disinformation from Nostromo. More research required, I mark your attempt a -G.
‘Disinformation’…where, please explain.
Businesses sell products for a profit for starters, then you add labels like “lefties” to your argument. And driving good people out of their jobs, give me a break. And don’t listen to anything the Hitler says, he’s an ignoramus.
And can we please have your EVIDENCE that the vaccine being used all over the world is not safe? Oh you don’t have any… do you suggest that the Govt just sits on its hands because of the paranoia of you & your AV cronies? You won’t be missed at the next election… looking forward to 1 more vote for Sue Grey or whatever nutter you lot prefer
We live in strange times Chris! As a vaccinated person myself I cannot be totally surprised at the lack of trust in the science community among a significant fraction of society:
Wasn’t it the science community who funded the ‘gain of function’ research that created the virus in the first place?
Isn’t the vaccine made by Pfizer, a company previously that had to pay $2.3 billion settlement for “fraudulent marketing” of one of their products?
Isn’t the Royal Society of New Zealand currently investigating some of its members for daring to suggest that Maori ‘cultural practices’ aren’t real science?
2020 was the year the general public learned that scientists can be frauds too!
Sometimes an unpopular minority is righteous–WWI conscientious objectors being an obvious contender. The Great War was all about imperialist powers jockeying for dominance at the expense of their respective working classes. Those swimming against the tide and refusing to bear arms a hundred years ago were trying to advance the principle of valuing and saving human life, not extinguishing it by avoidable human actions.
The hard core of the disparate anti vaccination groups are the exact opposite. Under a false flag of personal rights and hyper individualism they are quite willing to endanger other citizens. Their core motivation is rotten and undeserving of respect.
“A vast international crisis, the Covid-19 Pandemic, has exposed the irrational underbelly of twenty-first century society.” – Amongst the 20 plus anti-vaxers I personally know are evangelical Christians, vegans, health food promoters abd, homeopaths, old hippies, Ban 1080 people, artists and musicians, Maori activists, and mainstream work colleagues
If nothing else, it shows us who we shouldn’t mix with anymore!
Sounds like a group that either failed school science or had a science teacher that failed them.
You are one hundred percent right in this statement Mr Trotter;
“If the troops of Reason and Justice are withdrawn; if Liberty’s bayonets are sheathed; there will be Hell to pay.”
Question is; who is withdrawing from Reason and Justice, who is sheathing Liberty’s bayonets?
I would point the finger directly at Ardern, Labour and the wokesters. The are effectively dividing the nation so that authoritarianism can be promulgated.
The country stands at a great divide. This is by design. The promotion of “if you are not for us, than you are an enemy” is coming to the fore.
And white people are the blame of all ills to foster this divide. The authoritarian demands an evil enemy to conquer so as to “save” the nation and the grateful citizens will fawn at their feet. Totally under control.
Except that for now the dissidents have a voice. No matter how much rabble they contain, if democracy is to prevail they must exercise the right to that voice. Please don’t encourage this voice to be driven underground.
Its a poor comparison imo partly because you can flip the narrative and thus the protagonists in the essay…
Minority group with limited rights only allowed or able to take certain jobs, only go certain places and for those between 12 and 18 limits to educational and social opportunity in the name of public good…
Still parroting the fake narratives of the [fascistic -melding of corporate and government interests] LINO government, I see.
And still refusing to look at the evidence.
That’s why I gave up on TDB many weeks ago, as have many others.
I guess you’ll learn the hard way, eventually, Chris.
And since this comment challenges the bullshit, I suppose it has to be censored out of existence.
But the truth will emerge, with whatever silly, fascistic, censorship games games TDB play.
You gave up on TDB, yet here you are. Uncensored. Tedious – about as novel as a fly on shit.
Good point……..I mean, I don’t hover around the NZME comments sewer, so why l are there so many right wingnuts here?
You clearly haven’t had dozens of your posts never turn up… yet. If maybe 10% of your posts get made available to the public are you being censored, or not?
“If the troops of Reason and Justice are withdrawn; if Liberty’s bayonets are sheathed; there will be Hell to pay.” – Great writing . .
It’s not about culture wars. Its about the decline and decomposition of capitalism.
Neoliberalism was the last chance for End Stage capitalism to stabilise the global economy.
It failed to restore profitability sufficiently to soak up the stock of capital, leading to speculation in existing assets as opposed to producing new ones.
This decline was not halted by the end of the Soviet Bloc. Worse, Russia and China were born again as rampant capitalist rivals.
As capitalism decomposes, it exposes the rotting corpses of previous modes of production in its bowels.
Slavery, serfdom and unfree wage labor return with all their reactionary cultural effluvia rising to the surface.
Nationalism, racism and sexism break down the advances of ‘enlightenment’ of capital in the 18th and 19th century, unleashing the long overdue backlash of nature fighting back.
We recognise this concept as the ‘capitalocene’ which expresses the deepening contradiction between capital and nature of capitalists exploiting nature for profit.
Yet this contradiction has created the potential in its growth for counter-acting forces to resist as a return of nature to unleash the conditions for a post-capitalist future – the class struggle.
All of this was understood by Marx by 1848 as part of the science of the enlightenment, of reason, under attack by irrationality of postmodern capitalism of today.
The rise of the irrational, the cult of the individual mired in the particularity of nation, race and gender acts to weaken the secular, scientific, universal of our grounding in the material world.
It expresses itself as a cultural war, rather than a class war.
Humanity must restore itself in nature and return to its material roots to wage the class war.
Our survival depends on it.
‘Humanity must restore itself in nature and return to its material roots to wage the class war.
Our survival depends on it.’
Our survival depends on the money-lender-come-industrial system collapsing immediately. And even then it may well be too late, since we are in severe overshoot with respects to most factors -especially population and consumption of resources- whilst at the same time pollution levels have never been higher and biodiversity is in terminal decline.
Undoubtedly the burgeoning food crisis (leading to even more mass starvation) and burgeoning energy crisis (leading to failure of transport systems etc.) will bring the entire system to its knees quite soon. But whether it will be fast enough to prevent the Earth being rendered uninhabitable [for humans] is doubtful. The fake CoP 26 in talkfest in Glasgow clearly demonstrated those in power have no intention of preserving the long-term habitability of the Earth, and are only concerned with preserving the financial system and the benefits accruing to the top 1% in the short term…..thereby ensuring near-term collapse.
What is really telling is that more people die on the roads of NZ and from drinking too much alcohol and from eating junk food than die from the greatly overhyped pandemic.
“the greatly overhyped pandemic”
Did you not see the corpses in the body bags outside the hospitals in Wuhan and Italy 20 months ago. The confirmed death rate for covid is 2%. Without Jacinda’s closed border, managed isolation and quarantine, lockdowns, free vaccinations and an achieved 90% vaccination target, there could have been 100,000 dead kiwis.
If you are unvaxxed please get over the hype, we are not out of the woods yet, it’s likely hundreds if not thousands of unvaxxed kiwis are yet to die.
Newstalk anyone?
Sadly anti-science is encouraged by neoliberal educational bums on seats with lecturers and those getting ahead in the education space who are cheaper, good networkers but now NOT best of breed, top researchers and academics. Expertise under globalism is now not mandatory, paid for lobbyists are getting richer with paid for science and opinions.
Government made the polytechs in NZ equal to universities and now we have nothing, no good trades like builders and fewer academics coming out of the universities. Paid for education has let down domestic students who now are dropping like flies from higher education, instead of the false promise of more inclusion.
Speaking of inclusion, can be very dangerous, when you have inclusions in everything, aka US creation theory, god created heaven and earth being taught in schools, pregnant people not woman, then you get voodoo science and easily led supporters.
Combined with rampant individualism blossoming everywhere, where everyone is taking every else to court if they don’t get their way, mall terrorists with 2 armed SIS agents following them as it’s their right to try to kill others, gang members getting exemptions and millions from proceeds of crime, people with millions in cash and cigarettes somehow getting name suppression for ‘hardship’ while touting a QC, changing race is as easy as changing your sex and fully funded, while the physically disabled get funding cuts…. bonkers is the New Zealand where fairness and equality has been abandoned in individualist, identity, fuckwittery and networking, lobbyists take all.
Mask-wearing cuts Covid incidence by 53%, says global study
Researchers said results highlight the need to continue with face coverings, social distancing and handwashing alongside vaccine programmes
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/17/wearing-masks-single-most-effective-way-to-tackle-covid-study-finds
I agree Chris
The insidious and imported element to the anti-vax movement is not to be reasoned with and this isn’t about a vaccine. The language is jarring and foreign, and pointed, and lastly dangerous.
We’ve been protesting “freedoms” chopping down flagpoles, throwing dildos and shooting flags long before Steven Bannon’s fanatical followers infiltrated this particular movement.
The sad part for me is some well meaning alternative folk don’t realise they are being cuckooed by other forces, and some political parties don’t realise they are being Manchurian Candidated by sinister elements to gain a footing in the New Zealand scene.
And if the do realise, that’s even more abhorrent.
Jacinda Ardern, first she was labeled a pretty communist, then a dopey socialist, then a woke millennial, then a nodding centrist, then a corrupt neoliberal, then an incompetent Labourite…..and now a fascist……..wow, what a woman eh, Buddug must be coming soon….
There really are some badly programmed and very sick minded keyboard bots posting here.
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