In recent weeks, with the introduction of compulsory Covid pass to access restaurants, bars, stadiums, gyms, universities, theatres, cinemas, museums, libraries and other places of gathering and public demonstrations, the Swiss government has de facto imposed compulsory tracing of the movements of the majority of people who live in the territory. After a first attempt in the summer of 2020 at introducing the SwissCovid app which had little success, in recent weeks the Federal Council has put in place a subtle rhetoric of persuasion-coercion to convince as many citizens as possible to get vaccinated, under the blackmail of being denied access to a whole range of places and services, in some cases even including work and education.
As someone wrote elsewhere: “we fear that the instruments established today in the name of public health can be easily reset in function tomorrow for security purposes, that the declaration of one’s identity and the recording of one’s movements will be standardized and that the mesh of social control will dangerously tighten up”. As soon as they are established as “exceptional measures”, instruments such as health passes become irreversible, thus strengthening police power and adding to the strings of devices which in recent years have been increasingly limiting the individuals’ freedom with the excuse of “counter-terrorism” and the “war on the virus”.
If during the first two waves of the pandemic social inequalities actually worsened (for example in workplaces and in regard of access to healthcare), the Covid pass creates the preconditions for further exacerbating discrimination and exclusion towards those who won’t want or won’t be able to afford a swab or be identified everywhere, people without documents recognized in Europe and people forced to travel as clandestine. Not to mention the distribution of vaccines on a global level dictated by the laws of the “free” market, which even in a situation of pandemic emergency keeps its colonialist and class logics intact.
Moreover, without getting here into the too limited debate “yes vax vs. no vax”, the fact of forcing the population with pressures and blackmails to use “vaccines” whose potential side effects are unknown and which the pharmaceutical companies that produced them have no obligation to give an account of to anybody, should at least arise some doubts of ethical character…
To go back to normality?
The Covid pass obligation has much more to do with the security management of society and the economic imperative of not slowing down the capitalist machine than with real and well-founded considerations of public health protection.
The authorities only want to cure the symptoms rather than the causes of the pandemic.
The causes of the spreading of the virus between different species and of the outbreak of pandemics on a global level such as that of coronavirus are to be found in the very functioning of the capitalist system with colossal speculations in the medical sector and serious impact on the environment. An economic development that devastates and plunders territories and populations in search of new markets and bigger profits, deforestation to give space to monocultures, intensive farm breeding and industries that every day takes vital space away from the ecosystems and the species that live in it.
The preconditions that created the ground for the evolution of the virus SARS-covid19 and which could lead to new pandemics are under everybody’s eyes and are to be found in the current political-economic model. In spite of the evidence, they insist on the one hand on giving simplified and false explanations involving various conspiracy theories, and on the other hand on passing off short term solutions to return to the same capitalist normality which originally created the optimal conditions for the coming of the virus. Even when for centuries this normality has meant colonialism, patriarchy, wars and plunder of resources in the name of profit for the rich countries in the North of the world to the detriment of the poor ones in the South.
For radical change it is fundamental to pause and analyse the complicated structural causes of the pandemic and to deepen the struggle.
Protest! But against what?
As is the case in other areas in Switzerland, also in Ticino several associations and groups took to the streets to protest against the measures applied by the State. Many of these, even if they declare themselves “apolitical”, rely on themes that have always been warhorses of the extreme right.
To the very legitimate questions arising from a real situation of crisis and from the strengthening of unprecedented social control technologies, many people look for answers in a myriad of conspiracy “theories”, which at a closer examination only dust off racist and anti-Semitic old myths such as that of a “new world order” which allegedly governs the world. It is not by chance that neo-fascists, neo-nazis and more or less camouflaged fundamentalist Christians take part in many of these demonstrations and, tolerated by the rest of the “apolitical” demonstrators, they try to recruit new adepts spreading their disgusting supremacy, patriarchal, racist and anti-Semitic ideologies.
In situations of social discontent conspiracy myths propose fictitious causes and responsibilities diverting critique from the real functioning and contradictions of capitalism. These false solutions, almost always centred on scapegoats and fantasies against “the powerful” (often Jewish) actually only justify the current system based on well different relations of force which are not put into discussion.
Moreover, a division of society between the good ones and the bad ones protects the State and allows it to silence any criticism towards it, labelling all opponents as conspiracy theorists and extremists.
We take distance from both the obvious exploitation of the pandemic for purposes of social control exacerbation and cowbells, red cross flags, neo-fascists and dangerous and misleading conspiracy fantasies.
For radical critique of the structures of capitalism until their destruction.
An ill system doesn’t produce cures!
PPPIO Collective
October 2021
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via: frecciaspezzata Translated from Italian by Act for freedom now!
