COVID – the nationalist perspective

by H&D correspondent Ian Freeman, writing from Northwich, Cheshire

Prime Minister Boris Johnson was among high-profile Covid patients, now joined by President Trump

Whilst the nationalist Movement should not in my view expend our very limited resources on getting involved in campaigning on short-term issues around the current C0VID-19 pandemic, there are a number of wider points which could be made from a Nationalist perspective. Most importantly, the very existence of the pandemic, and the threat of future ones, vindicates our position and offers us a unique opportunity in the longer term.

The salient points here are:

Firstly, the current arbitrary and draconian Govt measures turned on and off by decree in a chaotic and confused way are unlikely to prove effective in controlling the virus or even sustainable, but that is their problem, not ours.

A short period of limited lockdown to build NHS capacity and a Track and Trace system, together with drastic measures to sequester and shield the most vulnerable, most of whom could have been personally identified at the outset, combined with complete closure of all ports and airports to all passengers, save returning Britons who should have been confined to quarantine camps for 14 days, would have been a reasonable and proportionate measure.

Apart from setting up the Nightingale hospitals, which should reduce the risk of the NHS being overwhelmed, this evidently was not done, so in most respects in Britain the lockdown was wasted. Lockdowns in large populations, as opposed to those in small isolated ones such as New Zealand and the Channel Islands cannot eradicate the virus because they would need to be kept going so long that the economy, and as a result society, would collapse, leading to a sort of “Zombie Apocalypse” catastrophe in which most of the population dies horribly amid hunger, other diseases such as cholera and typhus, and violent general disorder. The three-month lockdown in Britain cost about 20% of the economy. Nobody knows how much more of the economy can be sacrificed before a disastrous civilization collapse, but I would advise against the experiment!

In societies as populous and densely populated as ours, at best lockdowns press the short-term Pause button on the virus’s spread, because they have to be abandoned before they reach pressing Stop lest the economy collapses, followed by society. In fairness, even Professor Neil Ferguson made this point in March in the paper he wrote to scare the Government into a lockdown. All the British Government has done by its futile lockdown is move the inevitable main wave of the pandemic out of summer into the peak National Health Service demand winter period.

The subsequent chronic, confused and erratic sub-lockdown measures dragging on for months we see now are likely not to work in terms of stopping the virus spreading, may cost more in lives directly and indirectly than they save, and impoverish the country for decades. Such impoverishment amongst other things means, far from “protecting” it we shall no longer be able to afford the NHS we had. Whilst the lives of an entire generation of children and young people will be blighted. The endless muddled flow of arbitrary and draconian measures, differing from place to place almost at random, will be increasingly ignored and flouted as the public weary of the whole thing, which, like the Prime Minister himself it seems, they will cease to understand anyway. “Social distancing” and mask wearing conflict with very profound aspects of evolved human social behaviour, and so are unsustainable in the long run anyway.

Extra ‘Nightingale’ hospitals were created to avoid the NHS being overwhelmed by Covid cases, but otherwise our government wasted the spring lockdown and might have postponed an inevitable Covid surge into the winter months.

Hiding political muddle behind a specious mask of “following The Science” shows the sort of total lack of understanding of what Science is, let alone what it says, typical of the Western ruling caste. Science is a process, not a body of knowledge. It is not – especially in dealing with a new disease on the basis of, initially, little hard data – an Infallible Oracle. Indeed, if, like the British Government, you set up an advisory committee comprised only of those scientists who agree with the policy of the politicians who appointed them, it can serve as a pseudo-scientific echo chamber for said politicians.

The real Science suggests, and many of the numerous eminent scientists in relevant fields sedulously excluded from the Government’s SAGE fig leaf over their own ineptitude believe, that herd immunity, natural or via a vaccine, is the only way out for this, like every other, pandemic. Ironically Boris Johnson was basically right about this at the outset and then panicked or was put under intolerable political pressure. Images of chaos in NHS hospitals would have played to a traditional perceived Tory weakness – clearly not so much lives as votes were at stake!

Secondly the complete suspension of the System’s pretence of “freedom” reveals the utter hypocrisy underlying their regime. Supposedly we fought two World Wars to defend the very freedoms which were simply snatched away at a moment’s notice in the face of what was already known to be a historically trifling pandemic (the Case Fatality Rate of which was known in March to be of the order of 1%, and even the World Health Organisation now say it is only 0.5-1%, comparable with severe influenza pandemics: indeed the 1918 Spanish flu had a Case fatality rate of 2-3%).

The May VE Day celebrations in which a nation of prisoners under arbitrary house arrest “celebrated the defence of freedom” were simply absurd and an insult to the memory of those who gave their lives, as they honestly, however misguidedly, believed, “for our freedom”.

The extreme risk aversion and unwillingness to sustain (likely very mild, by historical standards) casualties of Western regimes today manifest throughout this pandemic will be noted by enemies which, unlike an RNA virus, have minds. Twice in the previous century our nation and others were willing to sacrifice lives to defend freedom (as the public were told and believed). Now we evidently do the opposite.

Our 21st century risk-averse culture makes a mockery of the wartime generation and the recent 75th anniversary of ‘VE Day’

Thirdly, now the System knows it can impose an all-pervading dictatorship it will be tempted to do so again, for more directly political reasons. That is the only point in all this immediately relevant to Nationalists. That said, it is not yet clear if that current dictatorship will continue to function or will break down in a mixture of sullen non-compliance and street resistance. Hopefully so, or the veneer of “civil liberties” and a “free society” will have proved ephemeral indeed.

Ironically, the “human rights violations” inherent in the lockdowns and their enforcement would previously have drawn the ire of the very regimes now perpetrating them! The System has been revealed beyond dispute as utterly rooted in hypocrisy and lies, which must strengthen the long-term hand of national revolutionary forces seeking its overthrow.

Fourthly it is interesting that the measures implemented do not serve in any way, that I can see, the interests of global corporate capitalism. Indeed, quite the reverse. This shows its “Money Power” is not all powerful, which gives us hope. Nor indeed are our rulers, very evidently, wise, far-sighted or even basically competent. The obstacles in our path are evidently weaker and less formidable than we imagined!

Fifthly the virus is most likely a natural phenomenon, the latest of the epidemic diseases of other animals to jump to our species, in this case from rhinolophine bats. It is remotely possible it could be a bioweapon – the total absence of evidence that it is one either means it isn’t or that the developers have successfully concealed all trace and evidence of their work. Which they would have to do – unleashing, by design or accident, a bioweapon would be regarded by the rest of the world, and notably the United States, as the equivalent of a nuclear first strike, justifying right across the political spectrum of the West massive retaliation. Although its power is growing, China is not yet in a position to win, or even survive as a state or a society, such a conflict, knows this, and would therefore be most careful to avoid triggering it. The more so as the balance of forces is steadily tilting in its favour anyway. President Xi and his Government know this and have shown themselves anything but fools. As indeed they would be to put a bioweapons lab in the middle of Wuhan, a city of 11 million people, when anyone who, like me, has flown over China can see the vast expanses of wilderness covering the north and west of the country in which to keep it both hidden and safely isolated from any risk of accidentally harming their own people. As Chinese nuclear weapon sites are.

Ian Freeman argues that the anti-lockdown cause is discredited by crazy conspiracy theorising

All the other explanations of the pandemic being spouted – CoVID-19 “does not exist/was caused by the Government/a Paedophile Plot/Bill Gates/giant alien lizards/5G masts” etc. are, in the complete absence of the extraordinary evidence, or pretty much any evidence, needed to uphold such extraordinary claims simply deranged loony nonsense. The “lockdown-sceptic” movement, founded on a rational and sensible base of upholding our traditional freedoms and civil liberties and constitutional rights as ably argued by the likes of retired top judge Lord Sumption, is in serious danger of discrediting itself by association with a menagerie of these cranks and nutjobs, the likes of Piers Corbyn and the Giant Lizard Man David Icke. Were we to involve ourselves in this movement they would be used to discredit us and we would be used to discredit them. We would in my view gain nothing by doing so and would be wasting our time and resources.

As we would by getting drawn into the anti-vaxxer lunacy which will I suspect shortly rear its head – “any CoVID vaccine is a plot to poison us or take over our brains” etc. etc. There is a real danger a vaccine, which is the deus ex machina which will end this particular mess and save the System’s bacon, may be rushed out in haste with inadequate testing. To help counter which I would advise readers to do as I have and volunteer to test it – should the vaccine start turning me into a Giant Lizard I will be sure to let you all know.

My view is that we should avoid being drawn into any of this. We should not waste our time on any short-term tactical imbroglio around this pandemic, to which we have nothing in particular to contribute and whose outcome we are as yet too weak to influence anyway. Instead we should take a long-term strategic view on the – long warned about (including by me 15 years ago!) – and now visibly real Pandemic Threat. Of which CoVID is only the beginning.

For, given the endless proliferation of our species, the relentless pressure on formerly wild areas where hitherto untouched wild species may carry potential zoonoses of this sort, and the habit of, especially, the Chinese and non-Muslim Africans of eating exotic wildlife (“bushmeat”) there will certainly be many more of these pandemics from entirely natural causes in the coming years. This is not “a once in a century pandemic”: it is the first rumble of the coming storm, and of course was long predicted.

Our position should be that the Government may or may not have over-reacted to the threat of this current pandemic, but it certainly will under-react to the threat of the next one. And the one after that, and so on, some of them inevitably much worse than this historically very minor pandemic, with death rates not of 0.5-1% but similar to historical pandemics such as the Black Death and the Antonine and Justinianic Plagues, with 30 to 60% of the population dying. We do not know if our civilization could survive that. The origin of that threat lies in the very ideology of liberal capitalist internationalism and is one to which only nationalism has the answer.

For the root cause of the current pandemic, and the much worse ones that will surely follow, is their system based on globalisation and the large-scale rapid movement of people. Moreover, the threat is made worse by the biological and cultural homogenisation of the world’s population through mass Immigration and race mixing, a promotion of universal sameness touted in best Orwellian style as “promoting diversity”. Because that homogenization is turning our species into a genetically similar monoculture, and such monocultures, be they of crops, cattle or people, are most at risk from new diseases.

The best defence against future pandemics, the best way to “keep us safe” from future viruses, is to replace the current globalised world with a world of separate, genetically distinct nations, independent and as far as possible self-sufficient economies, in which new diseases are kept out behind strong, impermeable borders secured by firm quarantines on all arrivals. That world nationalism, and only nationalism, offers.

As recent events have shown, the globalist, internationalist alternative threatens not just our national and racial identities, about which not everyone cares, but all our own individual lives and those of our families, about which everyone does care. It is here, making that broad, strategic point, not messing about with cranks and loonies in the details of the current crisis, that Nationalists should be pitching in.

Taking a broader view against globalisation and internationalism to stop all future pandemics generally, rather than wasting our meagre resources opposing our governments’ floundering attempts to deal with this one specifically, plays to our Movement’s Unique Selling Point. The more so as many influential and expert minds will concede that we are basically right.

As can be seen from the leading textbook on this sort of thing, Global Catastrophic Risks, edited by Nick Bostrom and Milan M. Cirkovic, published by Oxford University Press in 2008. A book our rulers evidently never bothered to read, at the cost now of our lives. On page 16 thereof, the Editors make our case for us thus:

“the evolution as well as the spread of pathogens is highly dependent on human civilization. The worldwide spread of germs became possible inhabited continents were connected by travel routes. By now, globalization in the form of travel and trade has reached such an extent that a highly contagious disease could spread to virtually all parts of the world within a matter of days or weeks.

“Kilbourne” (New York Medical College Professor Edwin Kilbourne, one of the world’s leading virologists and epidemiologists) “also draws attention to another aspect of globalization as a factor increasing pandemic risk: homogenization of peoples, practices, and cultures. The more the human population comes to resemble a single homogeneous niche, the greater the potential for a single pathogen to saturate it quickly. Kilbourne mentions the ‘one rotten apple syndrome’, resulting from the mass production of food and behavioural fads:

“If one contaminated item, apple, egg or, most recently, spinach leaf carries a billion bacteria not an unreasonable estimate and it enters a pool of cake mix constituents then packaged and sent to millions of customers nationwide, a bewildering epidemic may ensue.

“Conversely, cultural as well as genetic diversity reduces the likelihood that any single pattern will be adopted universally before it is discovered to be dangerous, whether the pattern be virus RNA, a dangerous new chemical or material, or a stifling ideology.”

So, the Science follows us. Nationalists, and only Nationalists, offer a way out of an endless nightmare of wave after wave of pandemics, of which CoVID-19 is but the first ripple, a tide which will sweep away our civilization. A tide only Nationalism can stem.

By taking such a long-term, strategic stand, we can win support – possibly rather reluctant support in some cases! – in circles which hitherto were closed to us. What governments do about the CoVID-19 pandemic may or may not prove them right in the short term. That is not, or should not be, our concern. The existence of the CoVID-19 pandemic proves us right in the long term. Our task is to focus on making that clear to all.

—————

Comment from H&D Assistant Editor Peter Rushton: – In several recent issues I have argued implicitly against Covid conspiracy theory, and explicitly against movement groups or parties engaging in militant anti-lockdown protests. My view on that isn’t likely to change. Although from a purely personal perspective I find the Covid regulations intensely annoying and obstructive, I don’t think there’s any political mileage movement-wise in positioning ourselves either in favour of wild conspiracy theory, or in favour of lawbreaking.

Having said that, I’m appalled by the heavy-handed police reaction to anti-lockdown demonstrators, as witnessed for example both in London and Melbourne.

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