Denialists, conspiracy-theorists, and the hyper-credulous: The reactionary battle for ‘No Pass’
This is not a liberation struggle: it prioritizes the individual over the many
Donatella Di Cesare
The conspiratorial slogans, the denialist insinuations and, particularly, the openly antisemitic language, should be enough to make clear the hallmarks that the movement against the health pass bears, and its political slant. It is certainly not a coincidence that the street protests are manned and manipulated by disreputable figures of the extreme right.
That these groups are rag-tag, as evidenced in the latest demonstrations, should not mislead us: the movement against the pass — direct heir to ‘anti-mask’ and ‘anti-vax’ — has been growing since the beginning of the pandemic and should not be underestimated. Just take a tour of the web and one will encounter yellow stars, absurdly used as an emblem of discrimination by those who wilfully remain unvaccinated, or to stumble upon the term ‘Pass’ with the two last letters written in capitals to evoke Nazism.
Of course, we have already witnessed the “no Nazi pass” placards. There are those who believe they are defending freedom by opposing green, vaccine pass, certification and in so doing even invoke the values of the [Italian] Resistance [to Nazism].
Precisely because we live in an era of great mystifications, it is good to be clear. The fight against the Green Pass is a reactionary battle, a right-wing (if not extreme right-wing) battle. And it is so, from a philosophical, political, and ethical point of view. It has absolutely nothing emancipatory about it — it is not a struggle for liberation. In this respect, it is a pity that philosophical voices, once a reference point for the critical left, have ended up giving the go-ahead to covid-skeptics and that historians such as Alessandro Barbero have signed the appeal against the Green Pass. As for me, I’ve been a member of CGIL University since I started working and I expect my union, led by Maurizio Landini, not to occupy itself with imaginary discrimination, but to lend an important contribution to ensuring school and university function at its best in this very difficult period.
The battle against Green Pass is murky. Many staunch ‘no-passers’ argue that they are not anti-vax. The terrain, however, is slippery: their arguments immediately imply doubts about the vaccine, and from there they quickly move on to questioning the pandemic itself. It’s good to have doubts and raise questions. But beware: believing everything and believing nothing are two sides of the same coin. Alongside the visage of the hyper-skeptic there is also the hyper-believer. As Marc Bloch noted: “Skepticism of principle is not an intellectual attitude appreciably more fruitful than credulity and, moreover, they are easily combined in many simple-minded souls.” This is the problem of the conspiracy-theorist, locked in their own unreflexive doubt, which is its foundation and raison d’être. Critical spirits or occult prophets? Free thinkers? Or rather, perhaps, their own caricatured versions?
The battle against the Green Pass is ultraliberal and reactionary for at least two definitive reasons. First of all, it prioritizes the freedom of the individual over all others — the freedom to be contaminated and to contaminate, and to let the virus circulate and become more dangerous. This is an absolutely egocentric and autarkic freedom, for which the world can also end. Others — the weakest — may perish, as long as one’s individual rights are not touched.
But there is a second reason that is usually overlooked: the anti-pass battle targets neither the state, nor power, nor even less the government. In fact, it undermines the vital dimension of mutual aid, of mutual help. In this sense it panders to the social disintegration caused by the pandemic. Vaccinating oneself, putting on masks, showing the Green Pass (as happens daily with dozens of other documents) is a political and ethical act of solidarity towards the oldest and weakest. Those on the left will accomplish this solidarity with such a consciousness.
Be cautious, then, of this conceptual chaos. Some believe that mobilizing against the Green Pass means being against the society of control or against the state of exception. But to mechanically denounce biopower, which is raised to an emblem of evil, can have grotesque results. And, in fact, it had such grotesquery when, in the first devastating months, while the intensive care units were overflowing, and measures were needed to mutually protect us from the virus, there were those who, just like Agamben, indicated that the pandemic was a pretext for anti-democratic control. However, one cannot help but distinguish the question of phobocratic power [rule by fear] and the state of exception from that of mutual protection from the virus. Those who don’t do so, ally themselves with the covid-skeptics and risk a reactionary drift. It’s not at all left-wing — and all very right-wing.
It is not the apparatus of control and surveillance cameras that are affected by the anti-pass protests, but the treatment centers. It is genuinely sad to see these supposed champions of freedom lash out at ‘collaborators,’ that is, the doctors who try to inform, the health care personnel who fight against the virus every day. And the advocates of the ‘no-pass’ do not propose any alternative health policy.
The fight against the Green Pass emerges from a context of conspiracy denialism and from an ultraliberal, anti-egalitarian and reactionary political imaginary. Among other things, it has the demerit of having distracted us from what should be the objectives of left-wing politics in this instance: to remove patents, to give the vaccine to the poorest, to immunize the world. This, in actuality, is what we should have learned from the Resistance: mutualism and solidarity.
Donatella Di Cesare (September 8, La Stampa)
Translated by Mickey Moosenhauer, approved by Donatella Di Cesare.
