1st Edition
COVID-19 and the Left The Tyranny of Fear
The COVID-19 pandemic and the measures introduced to purportedly contain its spread have wrought an unprecedented global social transformation.
Authoritarian measures such as lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and the enforced wearing of facemasks, have led to a biopolitical disenfranchisement of human rights and the encroachment of state and corporate directives onto private lives. By supporting these measures, the left has lost sight of its traditional critique of capital, the state, and class society and has instead reinforced existing power structures in the name of ‘saving lives’. In doing so, the left has contributed to widespread suffering, especially among the ‘vulnerable’ groups in society the measures claimed to protect, particularly children, the elderly, and the poor.
COVID-19 and the Left explores why the left has departed from its self-understanding as a critical force against state power, unfettered capital accumulation, the digital transformation, biopolitics, and a politics of social discrimination, and instead has largely assumed a stance in line with the neoliberal consensus. In particular, the essays in this collection explore the role of fear, panic, and psychological blackmailing as a tool of domination in late capitalist society and consider whether the left has been a victim, or an active perpetrator, of a ‘tyranny of fear’.
Drawing upon approaches from various disciplines and interrogating shibboleths on the left and right, the essays in this volume consider the ideological, sociocultural, and economic implications of the historical rupture that the COVID-19 pandemic presents and instead argue for a counter-narrative to fear and its harmful consequences. This provocative collection will be of considerable interest to those with an interest in the contemporary left and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Introduction: the tyranny of fear: the historical rupture of the COVID-19 pandemic and the left’s response
Elena Louisa Lange and Geoff Shullenberger
Part one: Orientation: the politics, culture, and ideology of fear
1. From the void to COVID: explaining the left’s support for pandemic authoritarianism
Lee Jones
2. The revenge of the hyperreal: the simulation of crisis and contemporary left politics
Geoff Shullenberger
3. The return of ‘doublethink’: how George Orwell’s dystopia became the cue for COVID-19 ideology and the left’s power grab
Elena Louisa Lange
Part two: Covid and Emergency Capitalism
4. The rise of the COVID-19 industrial complex
Thomas Fazi
5. Bureaucratic momentum and COVID-19
Leila Mechoui
6. COVID-10 and the emergency loop of implosive capitalism
Fabio Vighi
Part three: COVID-19 and the left in Canada, the UK, Germany, and Australia
7. The opera of the phantoms: how the Canadian political establishment memed itself into absurdity
Gord Magill
8. The professional-managerial class in the UK: managing the ‘Covoid’
George Hoare
9. The German left as Schmittians: how the state of emergency became an ‘anti-fascist’ paradigm
Michael Burkhardt
10. Middle-class consciousness: COVID-19 measures and their social base in Australia
Nicolas Hausdorf
Biography
Elena Louisa Lange is a philosopher and political commentator. She was lecturer and Assistant Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Zurich until 2022. She is the author of Value without Fetish: Uno Kōzō’s Theory of ‘Pure Capitalism’ in Light of Marx’s Critique of Political Economy (2021) and co- editor of Conformist Rebellion – Marxist Critiques of the Contemporary Left (2022) and several collections on Asian philosophy. Today, she is the editor-in-chief of Café Américain, a new political magazine.
Geoff Shullenberger is a cultural theorist, managing editor of Compact magazine, and host of the Outsider Theory podcast. He was formerly Clinical Associate Professor in the Expository Writing Program at New York University, USA. He has written extensively about the intersection of cultural theory and the internet, the decline of academia, conspiracy theory, the recent evolution of a biopolitical technocracy, and more. His work has appeared in various outlets, including American Affairs, UnHerd, Tablet, The New Atlantis, and others.
