Covid totalitarianism! Freedoms, once surrendered, could be impossible to recover.

Covid totalitarianism! Freedoms, once surrendered, could be impossible to recover.

The pandemic is revealing more uncomfortable truths by the day, like our willingness to abandon our freedoms and traditions.

Governments mistrustful of citizens have been overly impulsive in responding to the risks to public health with coercion, rather than simply appealing for a civic-minded people to do the right thing.

In most countries there has been a level of official control seldom seen since the democratic era. And surprisingly, there has been barely any opposition. Peoples who were once prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice of their lives in defence of liberty, have surrendered their freedom on the pretext of saving lives.

Many countries became autocracies overnight, granting unfettered power to presidents or prime ministers, unaccountable to parliament and freed from the rule of law.

Their predecessors felt no need for similar exceptional powers, even during the First World War, Second World War, the Spanish Flu pandemic or other national disasters. Yet, the ‘virus from China’ which is fatal only for a miniscule proportion of those it affects in the general population, and a negligible percentage of people below retirement age, is considered grave enough to suspend democracy and the rule of law.

Police have been turned from citizens in uniform, to the enforcers of ministerial declarations, most of them quite absurd. Fines are imposed by police not the courts. Fines are issued for example for

1. a) walking in public without a mask;
2. b) exercising for more than an hour;
3. c) wandering further than 3km from home;
4. d) shopping excessively;
5. e) getting married;
6. f) overnighting in the house of someone other than their designated intimate partner;
7. g) going fishing;
8. h) playing golf, or smoking outside their front gate.

Democratically elected authorities are interfering with citizen’s private lives in way most citizens imagined impossible, in nations governed by constitutions compliant with the human rights declaration, employing all the available instruments of modern surveillance to keep their citizens in check. And no one knows how long the lockdown measures might end or what comes next. Presidents suddenly appear on media channels declaring which level of restrictions will apply from midnight the next day!

The effects of the resulting recessions will be felt for a generation at least. The deadliest effects of the virus may be reserved for the elderly and sickly, but the biggest losers will be those in the prime of their life, and in many countries where schooling is suspended for months if not the whole year, the teenagers for who every year of education is so crucial.

And much of what we are losing cannot be counted in dollars and cents. Freedoms, once surrendered, can be impossible to recover.

The assumption of emergency powers to fight a real or exaggerated threat is the oldest trick in the manual of dictatorships. Countries ruled by tyranny are frequently those from which millions long to flee. The erosion of democracies typically begins with the indefinite suspension of parliaments. When Victor Orban in Hungary in March 2020 implemented similar measures, he was vilified by the media across the world. Then when most other countries followed his example within weeks, the media just ignored the issue.

The tacit compliance of the media, which, by and large, has not seen fit to challenge the measures, is not surprising. Journalists, like some politicians, have a professional interest in exaggerating the threat. ‘All quiet on the Covid-19 front’ is not a story worthy of page one.

Autocracies are notorious for the proliferation of permits and the checking of papers. Permits become required to travel, to work or cross any border, even internally in a nation. The military are used as auxiliary police. Police powers are drastically increased and punitive fines introduced. Citizens are encouraged to act as informants against their employer and neighbours.  

There has not been one guarantee that all or any of these crackdown laws will be repealed.

Those who grew up with pride in their countries and their part in overcoming previous tyrannies (from apartheid to communism) are understandably shocked at how much we appear willing to surrender for benefits that are as yet unspecified.

With time, hopefully, draconian and reactionary stage-four or five lockdowns will come to be seen as monstrous administrative mistakes which only served to compound the effects of the blunders that allowed the virus to run wild.

We hope that the lockdowns will at least slow the general rates of infection, since the government seems incapable of protecting nursing-home residents any other way across the wealthier nations. However, in the poorer countries, Africa especially, where the average age of populations is low, and homes for the elderly are very rare, why should lockdowns be applied just for the sake of the elderly? We have to question if the result was worth the months that will have been added to the recession, the swelling of the ranks of the long-term unemployed and the shrinkage of the small business sector, the engine of most economies. And the freedoms citizens have been forced to relinquish, with no guarantee they will get them back.

• Adapted by Safcam from a blog by Nic Cater published on Spiked:- 13th August 2020

The annual Wildebeest migration - A useful analogy

The wildebeest in Eastern Africa migrate every year, in search of food to survive.

When they reach the Mara river, the crocodiles are waiting.

They know they will lose a few when they cross the river but for the sake of the survival of the herd, they go ahead anyway.

They have done this successfully for hundreds of years. And the herd survives.

Implementing lockdown is like putting up a fence to prevent the wildebeest from crossing the Mara river, in order to save those that would be eaten by the crocs, and as a result, the whole herd would die of starvation. (Kingsley Holgate)

And then there are so many bizarre discrepancies in the application of restriction instructions!

Big stores get to stay open, but small stores with fewer customers are shut down.

Marijuana shops are open, but hairstylists are shut down.

Mass protests or rallies with thousands of people are OK, but going to the beach is banned.

Funerals for famous criminals and politicians can be packed, but funerals and church services for ordinary people are dangerous – no more than 25 or 50 mourners.

The only standard seems to be what best serves the state's coffers, the politicians' wallets, Covid-‘preneurs’, and the need for theatrics.