Viral Militarisation

Opposition to critical analysis of events frequently becomes stronger the more severe the effects of the crisis or incident may be. If militaristic sentiment is invoked, the urgency of acting as opposed to carefully considering the implications of these actions takes precedence. On 17 March Boris Johnson, in typical jingoistic fashion, spoke of his “wartime government”, and how the “enemy” was ‘beatable’. This military rhetoric is nothing but hysterical. It betrays the government as being totally underprepared, and shows our state as one gutted by austerity. Militarisation functions as a way of normalising the deaths of people working during the pandemic. It is the process by which something/someone becomes imbued with the values of, or is directly controlled by, the military apparatus. Demilitarisation is but one process that must exist within a chain of action. If we want to avoid further death of essential workers, healthcare professionals, and the working class in general, then it is necessary that we understand why militarised rhetoric has been employed in this context, and how thinking in military terms limits our view of this situation.

Critical analysis of world-changing events such as the pandemic is often dismissed because it is ‘alarmist’ or ‘hyperbolic’. I’d argue that framing a pandemic in terms of war and stressing the need to keep waging a “campaign” against a “devilish illness” is in fact the most hyperbolic way this could be managed. This situation has demonstrated something that the anti-vax mob would do well to understand: pandemics have been occuring ever since large human settlements were founded, and are not the result of shadowy governmental machinations. Healthcare crises, however, are. Decades of neoliberal capitalism have seen a looting of services and state capacity, leading to the absence of a coherent pandemic response and the worst death rate in Europe. During April, official figures show, the death toll was above one thousand a day for 22 days straight.

What has caused this lack of respect for human life? Countries in the late stage of capitalism such as ours are quite clear in their insistence that human life is prioritised after the growth of the market. We have witnessed this in the past month, as the reopening of businesses has taken precedence over preparing for another spate of mass infection and death. This is nothing new, as material conditions of existence have been declining steadily for everyone not in the upper classes. It is an old, tired story that there is money for bombs but not PPE, yet it is truer than ever. That this sounds like an old cliché should in fact alert the reader to how long this has been the case. This would perhaps not be so insulting were it not dressed up with the same hero-fantasy ideological rhetoric. Boris Johnson’s speech in Greenwich on 3 February made it clear that capitalist economics are more important than silly things such as the right of the population to stay alive and healthy. This type of political discourse comes naturally to our PM, and mystifications surrounding government action conceal the reality of our situation – that maintaining neoliberalism takes precedence over state intervention during a health crisis.

This absence of a centralised state response has necessitated the formation of local, community-run aid networks. Particularly in Bridport, the voluntary work of those staffing the helpline (Bridport Coronavirus Community Support) has proved to be absolutely essential to holding civilisation together. This form of local organising has made it possible to deliver food, medication, and even sensitive documentation to those that are shielding. Their efforts prove that in the absence of an effective state apparatus, it falls to the people to organise the bulk of essential services that have doubtless prevented further death and provided support to the vulnerable. Yet would it not be preferable to live in a world where this precisely was the remit of the state? The function of government should be, at the very least, to organise resources in such a way that the state can provide assistance to the population in times of national emergency, but decades of neoliberal plundering have rendered our services laughably underprepared.

So why not call these volunteers, healthcare, and other essential workers ‘heroes’? My point is not that praising these people is in itself bad, but praising them whilst not improving working conditions is worse than pointless – it’s deadly. To be a hero in a time of war is to have your life immediately associated with sacrifice. It is assumed that the hero is able to operate in any condition, no matter the difficulty or risk. The number of deaths is linked to the severity of battle, which then itself becomes that which sustains this narrative – heroism grows as the sacrifices do. Militarism implies hardship, stoicism, bravery. Military heroes often overcome insurmountable odds in harsh conditions they nonetheless triumph over.

In applying this to essential workers, nurses, and teachers, it cushions the government against calls to improve conditions generally, but also to ensure safety during a devastating outbreak of a contagious illness. You know the danger, and we graciously accept your martyrdom, the hero is told. When, inevitably, a hero is claimed in battle, we mourn their death that in our minds had already occurred. They, along with all the other casualties in this war, become numerical values in a mythology of the pandemic. These values, composed of whole lives snuffed out amidst a manufactured health crisis, are brought into a vast network of graphs, statistical comparisons, and sheer information, rendering them as abstract significations of lockdown severity. As the death toll increases, the real ethical implications collapse into obscurity. When we are dealing with tens of thousands, we are unable to register the extent of each life as a tragic loss in itself, and so, paradoxically, such a death toll can feel like precisely nothing.

The philosopher Slavoj Žižek in his recent book Pandemic! (2020), offers this insight:

“When we react in panic, we do not take the threat seriously - we, on the contrary, trivialize it.”

In the same way, responding to the sheer blind horror of a pandemic with the old tricks of militarised rhetoric and nationalist populism serves nobody but the ruling class. Without improving the material conditions of those that are forced to continue working, being lauded as heroes matters not. The militarisation of the pandemic, while it served to reinforce populist nationalism, was the too-late panicked response that prevented a real, authentic engagement with the severity of the lockdown. In contrast, the response of community aid networks has been effective and measured. Such networks should be more widespread and given better funding, so as to organise to help the vulnerable and disadvantaged to a greater extent.

So how to respond to our government’s failure? In a world where answers to structural problems frequently feel reactive, we should remember what lies beneath the unfathomable complexity of our world – class struggle. It is about time that we remembered the meaning of solidarity, and that when the crisis came, it was not the billionaires and their political stooges that saved us, it was underpaid workers and volunteer community organisers, far too many of whom we have lost because of government negligence. All of our lives are inextricably bound up together, and recognising this is the first step towards harnessing this spontaneous unity of action, and using it to effect political change beyond the realms of this pandemic.