Left Wing vs Right Wing responses to COVID

[MikeWM]

This article has been doing the rounds today, and I think it is a very good analysis of the Left's support of COVID measures, and in particular reasons as to why they seem to support interventions that affect the working class most, which has always been one of the more bizarre political stances in this period - https://unherd.com/2021/11/the-lefts-covid-failure/ I thought it would add to the previous discussions in this thread.

This is an excellent article and, as someone who would previous to this have described themselves as on the left - actually fairly hard-left - I'd find it difficult to disagree with any of it.

I note it echoes some of the thoughts we had in this thread, which I'm astonished to find was started almost a year ago now, but makes for an interesting re-read.

This sentence, for example, is similar (perhaps a milder version!) to what I mentioned in post #6 above:

This history may partly explain the Left’s positioning today: amplifying the crisis and prolonging it through never-ending restrictions may be seen by some as a way to rebuild Left politics after decades of existential crisis.

and one other very important point that I think I've made before (though perhaps not in this thread):

Moreover, a demos made up of traumatised individuals, torn apart from their loved ones, made to fear one another as a potential vectors of disease, terrified of physical contact – is hardly a good breeding ground for collective solidarity.

Precisely so. How can we be expected to have solidarity with our fellow citizens - a rather key principle of left-thinking - if we are terrified that *by their very existing* they are a physical threat to the wellbeing of others? I'm not sure I've ever seen a less left-wing idea than that.

 

[Cdd89]

A god article, but it doesn’t address the most perplexing thing from my perspective — the vast majority of left-wing and Pro-EU people suddenly hopping to the right of Nigel Farage in demanding tighter border controls, a measure shown not to work in the absence of a zero-COVID policy.

They’ve mostly hopped back now, without any acknowledgement of their position having changed; but that doesn’t make much sense either according to their original premise about “keeping out new variants”, since if you believe that then the time for border controls is before you know about the variant (or new virus); i.e. forever (and especially just before COVID).

This point, in isolation, is what is preventing me from even considering voting Labour for the foreseeable future; lest others think it’s a minor triviality which everyone’s forgotten about! As a dual national with close family in three countries, xenophobia is a red line for me. And to be clear, before border-gate I’d probably have voted for them, despite my disagreement on lockdowns, face masks, etc.

 

[MikeWM]

...the vast majority of left-wing and Pro-EU people suddenly hopping to the right of Nigel Farage in demanding tighter border controls, a measure shown not to work in the absence of a zero-COVID policy.

Which is a rather good point, another oddity. Though I think many of those people were secretly hoping for a zero-Covid policy to emerge.

A related one would be why those pro-EU people who were so irritated about the idea of having to show government-issued papers to cross international borders after Brexit (a point which I have some sympathy with) are among those most loudly enthusiastic about the idea of having to show government-issued papers in order to go to a pub or a shop.

 

[Bantamzen]

A god article, but it doesn’t address the most perplexing thing from my perspective — the vast majority of left-wing and Pro-EU people suddenly hopping to the right of Nigel Farage in demanding tighter border controls, a measure shown not to work in the absence of a zero-COVID policy.

They’ve mostly hopped back now, without any acknowledgement of their position having changed; but that doesn’t make much sense either according to their original premise about “keeping out new variants”, since if you believe that then the time for border controls is before you know about the variant (or new virus); i.e. forever (and especially just before COVID).

This point, in isolation, is what is preventing me from even considering voting Labour for the foreseeable future; lest others think it’s a minor triviality which everyone’s forgotten about! As a dual national with close family in three countries, xenophobia is a red line for me. And to be clear, before border-gate I’d probably have voted for them, despite my disagreement on lockdowns, face masks, etc.

I guess the further left or right you go, the more extreme views you will encounter & sooner or later those views might match those of the extreme opposite. Then it just becomes a case of pick and choose what the other side are not.

 

[Cdd89]

it just becomes a case of pick and choose what the other side are not.

Indeed. That ties in to the most notable point in that article, which I’ve often thought; which is that the left-right positions on Covid were finalised, effectively by random chance, in the space of days.

You don’t have to look back too far to find left wing people and politicians encouraging people to carry on as normal; or to find right-wing reactionaries shouting that we should close the borders in January and being accused of racism.

If Trump had loudly shouted in early March that we need to confine everyone to their homes with the police, and imposed mask mandates, that may well have been enough to have flipped the whole narrative. He closed the borders earlier than many on the left were calling for (but way too late to make any difference), and was criticised for doing so by the left. Lockdowns would have been depicted as harming the most vulnerable, and masks would have been depicted as dehumanising.

 

[Bantamzen]

Indeed. That ties in to the most notable point in that article, which I’ve often thought; which is that the left-right positions on Covid were finalised, effectively by random chance, in the space of days.

You don’t have to look back too far to find left wing people and politicians encouraging people to carry on as normal; or to find right-wing reactionaries shouting that we should close the borders in January and being accused of racism.

If Trump had loudly shouted in early March that we need to confine everyone to their homes with the police, and imposed mask mandates, that may well have been enough to have flipped the whole narrative. He closed the borders earlier than many on the left were calling for (but way too late to make any difference), and was criticised for doing so by the left. Lockdowns would have been depicted as harming the most vulnerable, and masks would have been depicted as dehumanising.

Trump was such a galvanising force for the left, he could have offered to end world poverty and parts of the left would have opposed it. Unfortunately covid has become politicised now, and that isn't going to change for a while. So expect pushing and pulling from both sides as they tussle for the right to own the crisis.

 

[bramling]

It's getting behind helping the NHS and 'saving lives'. Unfortunately the left is full of 'woke' bourgeois socialists, who care about every injustice apart from the exploitation of the proletariat.

Which isn't a new thing, and seems to be something elements of the traditionally Labour-voting electorate have finally awoken to.

It's also a good reason why centre-ground politics works best, however for various reasons we have pulled away from that in recent years.