Antifascism must live: No health without freedom

(Patria) - These days, many claim that our response to the Covid-19 pandemic is a planetary fiasco, the scope of which is yet to emerge with its ever-increasing disproportionate and lasting secondary effects, causing enormous socio-economic, political, and psychosomatic contractions and convulsions. But worse than our response is our silence about it.

By Anis H. Bajraktarević

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It is an established fact that the very essence of Nazism was not Hitler and the circle of darkness around him. Rather, it was the generally accepted atmosphere of the "banality of evil": the good-natured acceptance by ordinary villagers living next to Auschwitz, Mauthausen, Dachau, that the nation was sick and needed to be "cleansed"... The day when questioning ceases and silent acceptance becomes the "new normal" is the day fascism returns to us with full force.

Of course, today we have a diagnosis for this: The creation of consent through the architecture of choice, trapped in fear, infantilized by the media (returned to the pre-oedipal stage) psychology of a desocialized and alienated, atomized human being.

Have we truly forgotten the fundamental lessons of our history: Every time power has gotten out of control, it has degenerated into obscure brutality; ritualizing its power with a stamp on or under our skin to visualize and perpetuate the twilight of reason?

Thus, our response to Covid-19 illustrates - it is argued - nothing more than social pathology: the non-transparent concentration of power and our overall recession of democracy - which further strengthens surveillance and social control systems. And all this as lasting consequences of austerity, the holocaust against nature, privatization (PPP-ization) of key intergovernmental and vital national institutions, globalization of a failed goal, fixation on overly allopathic, drug-oriented healthcare, and lack of public data protection. Pandemic or plundermic...

Trust and support for governmental and intergovernmental institutions are rapidly eroding. An increasing number of citizens do not believe that the mainstream media serves the population. Trust in modern medicine is rapidly declining. The generational contract and the overall social consensus have been undermined as never before in recorded history. The first real stress test since the end of World War II, the UN has failed - many feel deeply disappointed and marginalized by the universal organization due to its lasting "self-marginalization".[2] Is our cohesion irrevocably destroyed?
 
Early lockdowns, in mid-March 2020, were justified by the need to flatten the curve of the virus's 'sudden' impact, as there were not enough hospital beds. In the meantime, lockdowns have been extended and expanded, and the curves have not changed significantly. Yet, in the last nine months, almost no new hospitals have been built in the EU, even though all non-urgent medical services have been suspended. Nor has there been massive investment in general health prevention. The only visible infrastructure growth is in the expansion of 5/6G networks.

Following the simple logic that one's level of health is a genetic expression of chosen lifestyles, it is not surprising that speculation about the reason for lockdowns is also growing - as the most infamous expression of a monofocal perspective and rejection of any integrated judgment based on scientifically grounded discussion. Is it an invasion or protection:
Is the goal herd immunity or herd loyalty (and in this regard, the growing but still unsubstantiated rumors that a possibly 'unnecessarily and undevoluntarily tested' Covid-19 vaccine could contain bio-hacking nano-properties that can autonomously and unnoticed establish a connection with the extensively deployed 5/6G network).
And, is there any normal way out of this crisis, or will this catastrophe 'transformed into planetary terror, a global coup d'état' be used to implement something already pre-designed (with fear, not as a side effect, but as a tool produced to gain control) - thus, is it more connected to biotronics and demographics than to health and economy or any common social purpose.
For example, Le Monde Diplomatique - examining the possible merger of techno-oligopoly and political monopoly - claims: "Political decisions were key in shaping this tragedy - from the destruction of animal habitats, through the asymmetric funding of medical research, to the management of the crisis itself. They will also determine the world we emerge into after the worst has passed." For the past 30 years, every critical juncture has had the same epilogue: justification for and increase of capital, and the burden and suppression of labor. Covid-19 is no exception: since the early lockdowns in March 2020, capital has flowed unhindered while labor, ideas, and people have been under house arrest.[3] The front line of the 21st century is the right to health (including bodily integrity and the right to informed consent) and labor, privacy, and other fundamental human freedoms. (LMD, IV20)

For the earth for everyone, but not enough for the greed of one

However, to be precise, the coronavirus pandemic oktroied by the WHO has brought nothing truly new to already overheated behavior and increasingly binary world relations: it has only amplified and accelerated what has been present for quite some time - the rift between alienated centers of power, each on its side of the Pacific, and the rest of us. It is no wonder that the work on the Covid-19 vaccine resembles an arms race more than a joint humanitarian endeavor.

Would all of this - in its epilogue - relate to the spread of a techno-totalitarian model of governance as an alternative to liberal democracy? Devolutionary singularization into techno-feudalism as the final stage of capitalism? Is it now time to return to the nation-state, a great moment for all dictators-in-waiting who can finally build a cult of personality? So, will our democracy be electromagnetized and vaccinated for the greater good (or a greedier 'god')?

One thing is certain: by opposing the long-term interests of society to the short-term interests of shareholders, the private sector on both sides of the Atlantic demonstrates disproportionate power in its technological share (infrastructure and data). The private sector also profits greatly from enormous public research funds, in return paying modest, if any, taxes to the state.[4] Too often this comes with non-disclosure agreements and other unilaterally beneficial legal instruments, as well as close ties between the private sector, intelligence agencies, and the media. The same applies to large pharmaceutical companies that increasingly dictate a non-preventive, monofocal approach to medicine and research, and control reporting on it - not always in the name of our public health.

Therefore, the aforementioned represents the greatest, albeit elaborately, threat to our democracy and future social order.

Finally, bioinformatics is a dual-use technology. Viewed today, it has enormous potential as a weapon at home and abroad. Consequently, and urgently, this requires comprehensive legislation that builds upon the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Nuremberg Code, and relies on its effective implementation (with oversight mechanisms established for the IAEA, OPCW, RC-BTWC, and the Nagoya Protocol),[5] at the national and international level.

Europe must return to its future

According to many, 2020 will be remembered as the worst year in living memory. Some would say; Covid-19 has stopped history. In fact, 2020 has only quarantined and stopped us, while history has actually accelerated. This is especially true for the Old Continent.

As this author noted back in the spring of 2020: "From the Covid-19 events, it is clear that the right to health is a burning issue for everyone. The search for a reliable remedy to control the pandemic is not a matter for the private sector, but for fundamental individual rights that are located at higher levels of sociality, embedded in the UN and EU Charters, and which are binding on every specialized UN agency or EU body." (Not fabricated consent based on fear, but the right to informed consent as an inseparable segment of constitutionally guaranteed right to health.)

Even if a vaccine becomes the agreed-upon or preferred choice, it must be available to everyone without patent obligations. However, the binarization of the pro-vaccine debate represents a dangerous reductionism and a loss of planetary energy desperately needed for a holistic and new approach. There is no magic wand for Europe's problems. Consequently, there is no solution in one-way medical research as a response to any pandemic, nor a single (or centrally produced) and uniformly prescribed drug for everyone. (Dogma is based on blind belief; science requires continuous multidimensional research. Science, especially medical science, does not contain a single or absolute truth: The closest it can get is the least wrong answer - which must be constantly challenged, literally every day.)

The proportionality of our (current and future) responses in Europe is another key issue. Therefore, what is needed is universal participation through intergovernmental mechanisms. This rule applies at home and abroad, and the Union must adhere to it urgently - as biology and geopolitics have one common rule; comply or die.

The growing particularisms of Brussels, where (with taxpayer money and public trust) increasingly narrow - whether individual, regional, national, or lobby-driven - interests prevail over the unified pan-European project of our common presence and future.

After Brexit, the EU must be particularly wary of its chronically present democratic deficit, the bureaucratic alienation of Brussels, as well as the increasingly widespread concern that the EU without Great Britain is becoming another Greater Germany.

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Anis H. Bajraktarević is Head of Department and Professor of International Law and Global Political Studies in Vienna, Austria. He is the author of seven books (published by American and European publishers), and numerous scientific articles on the geopolitics of energy and technology.

He is a Professor Editor of the New York-based professional magazine GHIR (Geopolitics, History and International Relations), as well as a member of the editorial board of several similar specialized journals on three different continents.

His eighth book, 'Caspian', is due out in the winter of 2020/2021.

The text has so far been published in over twenty countries on four continents. Translated from the English original: A Need to Reaffirm the Nuremberg Code (No deviation from the Nuremberg Code) by Mag. Dragana Stojić (rev. author).