DOUBT IS A TREACHEROUS PATH
By Jonathan Cook.
October 2, 2020 | EDUCATE!
We Must Avoid Being Diverted Towards Terminal Cynicism.
What I think of as the cynical left are once again berating the progressive
critical left, myself included, for failing to write what they want written
about Covid-19. I take this as a kind of unintended compliment: that they
think we can write about their concerns better than they can themselves.
But even if I wished to write someone else's argument rather than my own, it
would still be difficult to know for sure what the cynical left wants from
progressive writers: that we pronounce the pandemic fake, or that we declare
the danger from it overblown, or that we denounce mask-wearing as an
infringement on personal liberty, or that we argue lockdown is a prelude to
George Orwell's 1984. Or maybe all of these.
No matter, the reproval has at least spurred me into setting down the
following 15 points that, I suppose, amount to a mission statement to my
readers, using Covid-19 as a template. I hope they clarify what I am trying
to achieve with my blog and why I see the cynical left not only as misguided
and ineffectual but as ultimately a brake on progressive change. They risk
contributing to the worst trends in our increasingly polarised and
dysfunctional societies.
1. Let me start with a brief comment about Covid-19. I have nothing unique,
informed or interesting to say about the virus I haven't already said in
earlier pieces on my blog. I don't write the same thing over and over - at
least not intentionally.
Were I to write at the moment about the pandemic, all I would add are
statements that I think are relatively obvious and have already been made in
the "mainstream" media:
that most western governments have proved deeply incompetent or corrupt in
handling the virus;
that, even during a pandemic, there must be a balance between public health
needs and our need for a tangible sense of community, and daily I entertain
doubts about where that balance should properly lie;
and that governments in trouble will try to exploit the pandemic as best
they can to impose more repressive measures on their publics, exactly as is
happening right now where I live, in Israel.
Attacks on our freedoms need to be identified and addressed as they occur. I
don't see a global conspiracy to lock us all into our homes. Those who do
see such a conspiracy should be writing pieces to convince me and others
that they are right, not whingeing that I have not written the piece for
them.
2. The incompetence and corruption of our governments in handling Covid-19
are not specific to the virus. They are the symptoms of defective political
systems that were long ago captured by corporate interests. Western,
technocratic governments have no real solutions for the pandemic in exactly
the same way that they have no real solutions for the collapse of
eco-systems or for making our economic systems, based on endless growth on a
finite planet, sustainable. The reason these challenges defeat them is
because they have no values apart from ever greater concentration of wealth.
3. Even were I or others to narrowly focus on Covid-19, there are far more
pressing things to talk about than the threat of masks and lockdowns. Such
as how we have increased our exposure to new viruses like Covid through
rampant colonisation and exploitation of the planet's final wildernesses,
depriving other species of their natural habitats. Such as how economic
incentives in food production ensure we are deprived of proper nutrition and
encouraged to stuff ourselves with empty calories, provoking an epidemic of
obesity and chronic illness, that has weakened our natural defences to
disease, especially a new one like Covid-19. I am less worried about
lockdowns than I am about western lifestyles that make lockdowns our only
way to prevent higher mortality rates.
4. More generally, my journalism strives to attack western power structures
where they are most overtly aggressive, most unjust, most exposed and most
vulnerable. I expend my very limited resources and energies on trying to
persuade readers of the very real and very visible conspiracies - structural
conspiracies - perpetrated by our elites to maintain and expand their power.
5. There are very explicit conspiracies that can be grasped with only a
little critical thinking, such as the current efforts to lock away Julian
Assange for life for exposing US crimes against humanity and the five-year
campaign to destroy the Labour party's former leader, Jeremy Corbyn, before
he could reach a position where, it was feared, he would be able to disrupt
the neoliberal status quo rapidly driving us towards extinction. That
conspiracy embraced senior party officials, leaked documents have shown.
A similar conspiracy by the Democratic leadership in the US to prevent
Bernie Sanders becoming the party's presidential candidate in 2016 was
exposed in a leak of the DNC's emails, though that, of course, has been
largely plunged down the memory hole and replaced with a straightforward
narrative about "Russian" malfeasance.
6. There is a reason why overt conspiracies - like the ones against Assange
and Corbyn - are not instantly evident to a larger proportion of western
publics: the coordinated efforts of corporate media, from rightwing to
so-called "liberal-left" outlets, to enforce narrative orthodoxy. That can
be seen in the media's blackout on what is happening in the current Assange
extradition hearings, and in the media's earlier, blanket disinformation
campaign against Corbyn. I have focused on these cases because they can
encourage readers to question whether the corporate media really are
truth-seekers, as they claim, or are simply the public relations wing of the
power establishment.
7. These political and media conspiracies are the Achilles' heel of a grand
narrative designed to relate the west's moral superiority and global
benevolence. Exposing these conspiracies is the best hope of getting people
to raise questions in their own minds - questions that may put them on the
path to understanding that our leaders and our political systems are now
controlled by billionaire donors not even pursuing their own nation's
interests, let alone the interests of humankind and the planet. Rather, this
billionaire class pursue narrow, self-destructive corporate interests,
whether it is banks driving people into debt, oil companies fuelling
systemic environmental crises, or arms manufacturers lobbying for endless
wars against an intangible "terror".
8. Covid-19 does not appear to be one of those weak points in the western
narrative, not least because it is very hard to discern any meaningful
western narrative about the virus other than an agreement that it is a
dangerous disease for some sections of the population and that its rapid
spread could overwhelm most countries' health services.
To challenge and disrupt that narrative, one would need either to persuade
the public that the disease is not dangerous at all or that health systems
can easily cope with large numbers of people getting sick. Even if I
believed that were true, which I don't, my chances of persuading anyone -
outside of the small circle of believers among the cynical left - that I
should be listened to over a majority of epidemiologists would be close to
zero. And even if I could persuade significant numbers of people, what would
it suggest other than that our political leaders were fools to listen to the
medical establishment? What kind of political awakening would that amount
to?
9. If there really is a conspiracy about the virus, it does not need writers
like me to expose it. This is not the equivalent of a journalist few of us
have ever met being locked away out of sight, or a political leader few of
us have ever met being uniformly pilloried in the media. It is a virus
running wild through the population. If it is a hoax, if there is no danger,
if lockdown is entirely unnecessary, the truth of that will eventually
become evident to ordinary people without the intervention of pundits like
me. People do not want to be locked up. Fear, for themselves or their loved
ones, is what makes them compliant. If they reach the conclusion that the
restrictions on their liberty are unnecessary, they will react - whatever I
or others tell them.
10. While I am being berated yet again for not challenging the supposedly
nefarious motives behind lockdown, I and my family are enduring a second one
in Nazareth. From here it doesn't look like Netanyahu is bringing the
Israeli health system to the brink of collapse; it looks like the virus is.
Most definitely, Netanyahu has been incompetent. And equally certain is that
he hopes to shut down growing street protests against his rule by exploiting
the public health crisis.
His abuses of the system do not mean that, as Israel grapples with what
appears to be the worst per capita infection rate in the world, the renewed
lockdown is necessarily the wrong policy. But it does mean the Netanyahu
government's motives are muddled and public dissatisfaction is growing.
Other governments are surely watching to see how Netanyahu weathers this
storm.
11. Fears about the threat posed by Covid to western health care systems do
not look to me like a political or media conspiracy. Fears of that threat
appear to be the consensus of the western medical establishment. It is
possible that the medical establishment may eventually be proved wrong. But
it is hard indeed to believe that they are saying what they are saying only
because it is convenient for politicians - or even that what they are saying
is what most politicians want to hear. Politicians are only too aware of the
public's mounting frustration at being repeatedly locked up, seeing their
jobs disappear and local economies start to collapse. To me, western
politicians look deeply uncertain, fearful of a potential popular backlash,
not co-conspirators in a grand plot to lock us all up indefinitely.
12. We are on a knife edge, and I am not here referring to Covid-19.
On the one hand, we are in a race - if our societies are to survive - to
arrive at a new consensus, a new social contract, recognising that we need
urgent and fundamental change. That will first require a greater popular
acceptance that our leaders are incapable of overseeing that change because
they are trapped in defective political structures. Those structures are
irredeemably defective because they were captured long ago by corporate
interests driving us towards extinction. We have to increase the depth and
extent of popular doubt because, without it, there will not be enough people
thinking critically to push for wholesale change.
13. On the other hand, too much doubt - doubt simply for the sake of doubt,
or cynical doubt - will not improve our chances of reorganising our
societies and giving ourselves a shot at survival. The danger is that
justified, educated, targeted scepticism morphs into kneejerk, enervating,
fatalistic cynicism. That is the very trend our leaders have been
cultivating in us - mostly inadvertently - through their own nihilistic
support for a neoliberal status quo that, it becomes clearer by the day, is
hurtling us towards a desolate future.
14. Doubt is a treacherous path to navigate. It has a decisive fork along
the way: one route could lead to salvation, whereas the other heads with
absolute certainty towards ruin. If we become so filled with doubt that we
are no longer prepared to believe anything, or we see everything as equally
a conspiracy, we will be paralysed into inaction and hopelessness.
15. It is hard to live without hope. Humans need to foster hope, even when
it seems clear there is no hope. If we lose a sense that we can create real
change through our actions, we end up - as some are doing already - looking
to authoritarians and father figures who can reassure us that, though our
situation appears bleak, they can make everything better, they have the
answers.
The cynical left wants to drag the critical left down a path that propels us
towards this doomed future. It is not my path. I will continue to ignore the
siren calls urging me away from constructive critical thought towards
destructive cynicism.
