Misplaced Sympathies: Anti-Lockdown Protests Undermine Social Solidarity

Lisbeth Latham

As more Australians enter lockdown in response to the spread of COVID-19 there has been an associated rise in protests against lockdowns and other public health measures designed to curb the spread of the virus. These protests are not a new phenomenon but have been occurring since the beginning of the pandemic. Although initially condemned, in Australia at least, there are now attempts to paint these protests in a sympathetic light or even as somehow progressive. According to these commentators, the protests, although misguided, are really a response to the state’s failure to deliver sufficient support to working people. Yet while financial hardship may be a motivating factor for some participants, remedying financial stress is by no means the objective of these rallies. Instead, the protests rely heavily on militant individualism and opposition to state limitations on behavior which are justified by appealing to a range of interlocking conspiracies that question the reality of the pandemic and the motivations for the various state responses to it.

In most countries, the early protests against lockdown and other public health measures aimed at limiting the spread of COVID. This was particularly aimed at the compulsory wearing of masks and the limiting of movement. The right-wing character was made clear not just by the groups pushing heavily within this framework - such as in the US militias, and other far-right currents such as the Proud Boys, and various Christian patriot groups, but the language that was used to justify and legitimise refusal to comply. These were heavily drawn from highly individualistic, right-wing libertarian sources, such as sovereign citizenship etc. which apart from denying the right of states to govern rely heavily on completely nonsensical quotes of non-existent legal arguments regarding the Magna Carta and other historical and totally irrelevant documents. These mobilisations were often also pushed by sections of capital who did not want to forfeit their right to make a profit at the cost of saving lives.

One of the numerous anti-lockdown advertisements published by Clive Palmer in major Australian newspapers.

In July of this year, the protests in Australia were bigger than earlier protests. This has lead to some on the left searching for a basis for this growth, the answer that a number have come to the conclusion that the driver is the shift in the level of financial support provided by the government to workers in lockdown and as such the protests are really, to paraphrase Marx, the sigh of the oppressed. While there is some appeal in being able to explain the growth in the protests as simply the growth in anger at financial difficulties brought on by the pandemic, you do need to be able to establish more than a correlation to demonstrate causation particularly if we are not descending into vulgar forms of materialism and accelerationism. However, the advocates for a position that this is a prime driver provide limited if any evidence. Tom Tanuki, in an article in the Independent Australian, whilst acknowledging that it is:

“a ’big tent’ conspiracist movement that houses discordant ideas and sometimes leaderless factions. It’s given direction by a ruling caste of portrait-video-filming figureheads who often scrap with each other for viral supremacy. The attention-seekers among them get a sugar rush of shares, the grifters get lots of money and the political careerists try to craft a future voting bloc.”

Despite this Tanuki plays down the significance of this reality and instead posits the movement, at least in Sydney, as “left” based on the participation of the working-class and sections of the Lebanese community from Sydney’s South West - however, no evidence is provided to support any of these claims. Christopher Knaus and Michael McGowan writing in the Guardian outline the global far-right network that has been seeking to build the anti-lockdown movement globally and notes that at least some of the organisers in Australia are embedded in these global far-right networks. However, Knaus and McGowan also cite Josh Roose, a senior research fellow specialising in extremism at Deakin University, as suggesting:

“While there were elements of far-right rhetoric among the protestors, what they actually shared was a level of marginalisation and distrust in authority.
“There are some similarities and commonalities to the far right in terms of content but these protests are not driven by the far-right per se,
“What immediately distinguishes these sorts of protest groups from the far right is that they’re highly multicultural and they’re made up not just of angry men at a patriot rally but also women.
“In both Melbourne and Sydney the people and areas being represented are the areas that have been hit particularly hard by the pandemic. There’s also issues here with the cultures and communities often have a deep-seated distrust of government, often for good reason.”

Again no evidence is provided to support either the observation or the conclusion. The idea that the presence of workers, people of colour, or women, may not fit with some people’s stereotypes of the far-right, but all of these identities are heterogeneous and historically they have all been sources of recruitment, particularly amongst more marginalised sections of communities, for the far-right even if our image of the far-right are young white men.

In questioning this argument I am not saying that financial hardship is not a factor. There would undoubtedly be people at the protest who have suffered financially - moreover, there are many people experiencing severe financial hardship due to the inadequacy of state and Commonwealth financial support. For some, this experience may have been a driver for their participation. Whether it is a driver of mobilisations, we should be raising demands not only to increase the level of financial support to workers, the self-employed, those reliant on welfare payments, and small business. Such financial support policies need to be consistent and locked in to provide greater certainty for people in the coming months. Our demands need to go beyond simply demanding the reinstating JobKeeper, and the COVID support supplement, but addressing the significant flaws in JobKeeper, many of which were entirely by the design of the Morrison government and for the COVID support supplement to be incorporated into all government pensions.

In saying this, I am also saying those advocating that financial hardship as the primary driver, or even a significant driver, need evidence that is the case. For me, a key basis for judging motivations of mobilisations are the public justifications for the mobilisations and the demands raised spontaneously within the participants. On this, the evidence does not suggest that seeking to address financial hardship is a key driver. It does not feature highly in the calls to action or with the homemade signs. Instead, we see calls for “freedom” and around the need for an end to lockdowns and other social distancing mechanisms, such as masks, and rejections of vaccines - which are core issues of this movement since its initial development.

Also, the growth and development of the movement internationally while not uniform, suggests it is growing irrespective of the financial and social distancing regulations which are actually in place in any given city or country. So rallies have occurred in cities without lockdown or provisions such as compulsory masking in place, although in these cities the protests tend to be smaller - which you would expect as the perceived threat is not present.

This does beg the question as to why there has been a growth in the anti-lockdown movement? Well, I don’t think it is for a singular reason. One factor is that there has been significant disinformation spread regarding both the virus and the various mitigation measures, including masks and vaccines. This is highlighted by the recent seven-day suspension of Sky News Australia from YouTube over the spreading of Covid misinformation. As the distress of lockdown and other limits on movement have built, it is understandable that some people who are experiencing extreme emotional distress would find the idea that that distress is both unnecessary but also can be ended simply by ending lockdowns. This is particularly the case in a country such as Australia where the health impact of COVID has been more limited - it is easier to imagine proceeding as normal without the fear that infections could explode to the levels experienced in other countries. This is contributed to discussions in both mainstream media and on social which talks about the Australian experience without contextualising it in the global context: at the same time the discussion also tends to discuss the Australian governmental response as far more repressive and restrictive than other states - this is particularly notable in discussions of Australia’s border policy as being unique in closing and limiting travel in and out of the country - which a review of sites such as the International Air Transport Association’s COVID-19 Travel Regulations Map - it is clear that Australia is not alone in having travel restrictions in place, nor does it currently have the harshest restrictions internationally.

Even in countries where infections and deaths have been much higher, most of the experience has been isolated to sections of the community particularly health care workers, and those who have experienced close family and friends become extremely sick and die. This is reflected in experiences in a number of countries of hospitals being targeted by anti-lockdown/COVID sceptical individuals as being part of a big lie to justify incursions on civil liberties.

The problem with identifying the drivers of protests is that they are not singular. However, it is clear that the process of the pandemic and associated public health measures have been extremely distressing for the vast majority of society. This is not a real shock, particularly when we consider the lack of certainty faced by many individuals, will they have work, will they be able to go see friends, will they be able to see family or travel. Uncertainty is highly stressful. It makes us feel anxious and that we have no power, or ability to control our own lives. It should be no surprise that psychological distress would help to create a fertile medium for conspiracy theories and anti-science denial to grow and take root. These ideas provide certainty, against a reality of a virus that might kill you and your loved ones - a counter reality where there is no virus and the restrictions are simply part of a conspiracy by the powerful to control us, can be appealing on many levels. That detachment from reality would not necessarily be a problem if it weren’t for the reality that rejecting the public measures increases the risk of exposure of everyone to a highly infectious virus that not only kills but causes long-term health problems in many of those who catch it.

These dynamics can only get worse as the emotional wear of the pandemic builds.

So what is the answer? While we must always come from a position of empathy, and understand that many participants in the protests are coming in situations of significant and understandable distress - I don’t think that empathy should let us fall into a position of accepting their arguments and motivations as being legitimate. These actions are aimed at undermining measures that protect public health - whilst people should not be treated with excessive or unreasonable force - the protests do need to be limited and prevented as they are aimed at disrupting the limits on social distancing needed to suppress the virus and save the lives and health of the broader community. Our efforts to maintain support for public health measures need to be premised on social solidarity and the idea that through some individual pain it is possible to reduce the severity of the impact on any individual - which means that the pain does need to be shared across the community - the idea of locking down working-class communities and communities of colour in order to enable rich suburbs to go on as if nothing is happening is unconscionable and reasonably erodes the idea that we are trying to protect everyone.

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Neoliberalism and the struggle for social solidarity

Lisbeth Latham Today’s crisis of the established political parties and the rise of far-right political projects are linked to the long-running capitalist crisis in which neoliberalism is immiserating the working class and small producers.

Neoliberalism has become dominant, not just within the centre-right but also the former parties of social democracy. This dominance, and the desire to break out of it, has led some to argue that the populist right-wing represent a break from neoliberal doctrine. This is far from the truth.

US President Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen and Nigel Farage represent an effort by capital to shift popular anger at the impact of neoliberalism on to the most marginalised sections of the community, in particular migrants and refugees. In the colonial settler states, this anger is also directed at indigenous people.

These right-wing populist forces generally support neoliberal policies because they support capital at the expense of the already marginalised and oppressed.

The problem

The problem of neoliberalism has recently become a talking point after ACTU secretary Sally McManus said at theNational Press Club on March 29 that “neoliberalism had run its course”.

This was followed by former Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating who said he had supported neoliberalism because it had delivered wages growth, but that it had now “reached a dead end”.

Guardian Australia columnist Van Badham suggested that Labor, having previously helped promote neoliberalism, could now play a progressive role in leading the centre-left away from it.

While McManus’s comments are welcome, her criticisms of neoliberalism were primarily focused on the negative impact of privatisation. Although privatisation is a damaging component of neoliberal policy, it is only a part of it.

Keating’s support for neoliberalism exaggerated the supposed wage gains for workers in Australia and ignored its impact across the world, particularly in countries such as Indonesia and Chile. There, its application involved the murder of tens of thousands of people and, in the case of Indonesia, hundreds of thousands of people.

In Australia, neoliberalism has delivered casualisation and underemployment. The average earnings for all employees rose just 2.4% in real terms during the life of the Hawke-Keating governments.

It is important to understand what neoliberalism is because simply labelling things we don not like about capitalist society as “neoliberal” reinforces some of the mechanisms that neoliberal ideologues use to strengthen the domination of their ideas.

What is neoliberalism?

Defining neoliberalism in terms of a single aspect, such as “austerity” is inaccurate. Neoliberal advocates have no problem with government spending if it helps sustain capitalist profits or class power: indeed neoliberalism has been described, to borrow from Charles Abrams, “socialism for the rich and austerity for the poor”.

Marxist geographer David Harvey argues that neoliberalism is a political project aimed at the restoration of capitalist class power.

There are many examples of how neoliberalism does this. It reduces barriers to capital investment by making and removing barriers to capital investment and shattering trade barriers. It increases barriers to the free movement of people, specifically workers and marginalised, which results in fewer rights for migrant workers.

It pries open more aspects of social life for capital investment via formal or informal privatisation (such as public/private partnerships). It opens up government services to capitalist competition, often supplemented through voucher systems which enables the state to provide subsidies to capital but which also lays the ground for the total deregulation of these services.

It allows the commodification of a wider range of things (or services); a good example of this is the so-called “sharing economy”.

Weakening the strength and power of organised labour — through the deregulation of the labour market — is central to the neoliberal project. Also essential is the outsourcing of public services to private companies, opening the outsourced service to profit making and undermining collective bargaining.

Shifting the cost of the reproduction of labour further onto the working class, including through increasing taxes on workers and cuts to taxes on capital is also critical.

An example of this is superannuation, which was originally funded via smaller wage increases during the Bob Hawke Labor government in the 1980s, and has allowed for the age pension to be narrowed. It has led to Australia having one of the highest rates of poverty among retirees in the OECD.

Reducing spending on social services, either by total elimination of services or means testing services, is another key aspect of the neoliberalism.

Why did neoliberalism become so dominant?

Neoliberalism emerged as a current in the late 1930s, in response to the growth of social democratic and communist parties and to capitalist governments’ increasing acceptance of Keynsian economic policies.

In 1947, a small group of right-wing intellectuals formed the Mont Pelerin Society. This group began establishing similar think tanks at a domestic level to build what Philip Mirowski has described as a neoliberal thought collective, seeking to build networks of intellectuals, politicians and capitalists who promoted neoliberal doctrine and sought to undermine alternative approaches.

This network was able to take advantage of the social, economic and political crises that emerged. Indonesian and Chilean economists, trained in the University of Chicago’s School of Economics, were able to position themselves in Suharto’s New Order Regime and the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship to drive the neoliberal policy experiments in both countries.

These experiments were described as “economic miracles” internationally — miracles that ignored the repression deployed to implement the policies and also the problems caused by neoliberalism.

The economic crisis that swept the advanced capitalist countries in the 1970s allowed these conservative theorists to push neoliberal doctrines as the only solution to the problems facing advanced capitalist economies. Importantly, and this reflects the power of neoliberalism, there has been considerable success in transforming neoliberal assertions into common sense truths.

Examples of this include the notion that privately-run companies are more efficient and effective in providing services.

This defies not only our actual experience of privatised public services costing more but also basic logic. How can a for-profit company provide a service cheaper than a public service which does not have to make a profit, unless the quality of the service drops and workers are paid less?

Another major ruse is that “the market” is more efficient and should not be interfered with. This ignores the reality that neoliberals regularly promote interference in the market, such as interfering in the ability of workers to organise and the gagging of scientists from using their research to promote policies that run counter to the neoliberal agenda.

Part of this success comes from framing neoliberal policies as the only option. As former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said, there is no alternative. It is done by creating national and international laws that enable governments and companies to deflect public opposition to their agenda by threatening legal action as in many multilateral and bilateral trade deals.

Neoliberal ideologues are adept at undermining social and political movements opposing neoliberalism. It is not unusual to see articles that, on the one hand, deny the impact of racism or sexism and then accuse communities of colour of racism and women of sexism. This is not simply a misunderstanding of the movement: it is a deliberate strategy of division and destabilisation.

Neoliberal ideologues also do their best to destroy social solidarity: they reject the notion that people have common interests and should stand together. Thatcher’s infamous remark — “There is no such thing as society” — helped justify enormous cuts to social services.

The real threat in this idea, however, is not that the conservatives are inhumane and indifferent to the murderous impact of their policies, but that the working class begins to believe that social solidarity is a thing of the past. We see this with the way means testing for social services undermines support for those services among those who are excluded from those services.

This assault on our ability to unite in struggle for our collective interests is the most devastating and despicable aspect of neoliberalism.

It is essential therefore to support those organising against every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it appears, no matter what stratum or class of the people it affects. Only by adopting this approach can we begin to counter the assault on social solidarity, which has the most devastating impact on our class.

[This article was originally published in Green Left Weekly #1136]

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