I borrow the title of a well-known film (1983) by director Nagisa Osima, starring David Bowie. It was set in a Japanese concentration camp for British prisoners in the year 1942. No, categorically no, there is no symbolic association with what is happening today. For God's sake!
I am borrowing it because I am amazed at how much care all the official bodies take to make sure we have a nice Christmas, like normal people. All the government agencies, even the EU institutions, have thrown themselves into the job so that we can have a somewhat normal Christmas. No lollygagging and with all the shops and places open. Not for everyone, of course, but for most, the certified, the «cash-strapped». Those who have the «passport», i.e. normal people, will be able to have a good Christmas - as long as their budget allows it.
The «others», you know who they are, will spend it in their own space. And some of them, those over 60, if they don't wise up, will pay a monthly fine of €100 - whether they have money or not.
The downward slide has no bottom, it seems, and probably the path towards a digital totalitarian model is a one-way street that will be followed anyway. What is unfolding before our eyes is something much broader and more comprehensive than the simple or even formulaic response to an epidemic that threatens the health of all people. The pandemic is a very good springboard for the promotion of measures, norms, economic and social relations, tailored to the standards of the «binary society» and augmented with all the achievements of Science.
The ghost of compulsion and the suspension of democracy
Across Europe, the scene of compulsion is being set, without anyone feeling the need to apologise for the complete failure of all the policies that have been followed to deal with the pandemic for two years now. The answer they give is that the «naturalness» of the coronavirus is such that it generally causes mutations, the individual responsibility of citizens is weakened within societies, so it is all the fault of citizens who do not implement vaccination programmes. Period.
Now they are resorting to open «compulsion». Up to now they have been applying covert compulsion, now it is the time of decrees and disenfranchisement. In the name of society, with the acquiescence of a part of it, the elites proceed on an undemocratic downhill slide and blow up ethologies, rights, freedoms, so long as a commodity called vaccines is consumed - in more Marxist terms, realised.. Monoculture and monoculture and monopolization by this highly commercialized form of dealing with a pandemic, which seems to want to be prolonged rather than dealt with effectively.
Those who do not follow this new credo are declared anti-social, irrational, deniers, right-wing, fascists and whatever else is deemed appropriate for stigmatisation, such as «sprays» and «charlatans». The representative of the Italian industrialists described the unvaccinated as «deserters», adding that in war deserters are executed... In this way, it declared that the field is open for an undemocratic downhill slide of violation of individual and collective freedoms, an open abolition of democracy.
The new decrees of an invisible but real «Comandatur»
The issue of the abolition of public space (which is the world's largest experiment in social engineering) is infinitely more serious than what is described in the film «Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence». Because, quite simply, it involves huge global dimensions. Because it does not put a plaster cast on a single country: the foundations of a global digital dictatorship are being laid, in which everything we have known as culture, rights, public space, legal culture, bioethics, etc. are being blown up. And they are being replaced by new decrees of an invisible but existing «Comandatur» representing the interests of a financial oligarchy, the 1%, and the rearrangements that are taking place within them.
People, nations, countries, countries, regions, subcontinents and continents are treated as «fuel» for a new explosion of the capitalist system in deepest crisis.. The techno-economic complex and the digitalized superstructure with all its manipulative and repressive mechanisms, and the spherification of biopolitical control in all spheres of social life, are not science fiction scenarios, but realizable scenes of digital a/society.
Kostas Kappos (a member of the KKE with rich anti-dictatorial activity, who suffered persecution and horrible torture during the Junta period)), when he differentiated himself from the KKE, he raised a serious issue: not seeing or admitting what was happening in «actually existing socialism» was not a cognitive weakness or an error, but a class issue. Today, those who do not see what lobby we have entered should seriously ask themselves - if they care - the following: Why do they not see that this is a Great Transformation with a reactionary bias and with extremely dangerous prospects for life on the planet in general?;
Christmas decorations, but...
Yes, the holidays are coming and everyone wants to relax, to let off some steam. Normal and human. Maybe even a little extravagance is needed even in the decorations, lights and decorations. But it still has to be said that containers of goods are at a standstill in various ports, the stock markets are very worried, international organisations are changing their forecasts and announcing that the recovery is not coming as they expected, inflation is constantly rising, tariffs - especially for fuel and energy - are soaring, and punctuality is hitting the weakest households. The economic and energy crisis, alongside the ecological (add geopolitical) crisis, is here, along with the health crisis. Close by - and they talk little about them - are the social and political crises.
Anyone who sees only the health crisis, forgetting all the other forms and manifestations of the multi-organic crisis: firstly, it has a very limited horizon and can easily be transformed from a subject to an object of systemic manipulation. Secondly (most importantly), it cannot identify the focus that produces and reproduces on gigantic scales all the contradictions - nor even identify the terms of a way out even in the matter of the pandemic.
Let's repeat it even if we get tired: Freedom, democracy, courage, solidarity are highly therapeutic qualities. When they are lacking in real life and left «compulsory» in the hands of the elites of globalization, then...
«Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence.» Or else, «Boiling Haralabe!»
By Rudy Rinaldi
