In the early days of the pandemic, days before Ontario’s first lockdown, the Toronto Star published an article entitled “The fight to stop coronavirus: this is who you’re doing it for”—it was an appeal to readers to take every precaution possible for the sake of the most-at-risk groups: the elderly, and people like myself: the immuno-compromised. The article now reads like satire.
Almost overnight, Ontario, like everywhere else in this country and much of the world, went from embracing the pleas from public officials for collective responsibility to accepting the new message of “individual risk assessment.”
What changed? Mass vaccination along with a ‘let it rip’ approach to the first Omicron wave created a situation where the government was fairly certain that the virus would largely only hospitalize and/or kill, along with the unvaccinated, the immunocompromised and elderly.
In other words, it was never about collective responsibility, but just not overwhelming the health care system, completely (but hospitals strained to the point of barely functioning, is, it seems, permissible). As Ontario Premier Doug Ford, not so sensitively put it, in defense of lifting restrictions: “we have the beds.”
The above analysis is likely not revelatory to most and, particularly, not the readership of this publication. And that’s the problem. Not that we don’t see it, but that we do—and look away. This becomes more difficult if we name what is happening: the normalizing of eugenics. Particularly because I’m Jewish, I do not use the term eugenics lightly. I recognize it immediately brings to mind the barbarism of the Third Reich, but it also comes in subtler and less overt forms.
Aparna Nair, an anthropologist and historian of disability at the University of Oklahoma, spoke with Ed Yong of The Atlantic this past February who said “(Eugenics is) often framed as part of a past that is over. I think the pandemic has demonstrated that that’s not entirely the case.”
The idea that we can now return to a pre-pandemic ‘normal’ in exchange for the severe illness and deaths of the most vulnerable is best described as market-eugenics or “the eugenics of the market” as Development Studies Professor Vito Laterza and Anthropology Professor put it, in an article for Al-Jazeera. Their article, written in the early days of the pandemic, before vaccines, was about the eugenics ideology that truly underlies the notion of ‘herd immunity.’
In the present moment, market-eugenics is both more insidious while also more pervasive. Governments, around the world are not even pretending to have a way out of the pandemic, but in declaring surrender as victory, telling the public it is simply time to ‘learn to live with COVID’—unlike ‘herd immunity,’ the sacrifices of elderly and disabled lives serve no particular ends, but are just a part of a ‘normal’ way of life we will learn to accept uncritically. And, sadly, as a society, we are becoming fast learners.
Of course, most people, oppose ‘survival of the fittest’ as public policy. According to polling, shortly after the lifting of most restrictions, a significant majority of Ontario residents opposed the lifting of mask mandates in public places and the ending of vaccine passports, but their opinions (on these restrictions) are clearly not stopping them from resuming their (optional/leisure) pre-pandemic activities. Believing one thing while acting contrary to that belief leads to what psychologists refer to as cognitive dissonance—the discomfort felt by contradictory ideas or values. Dr. Domonick Wegesin, a professor of neuropsychology at Columbia University, referring to risk-taking during the pandemic, among people who consider themselves informed and cautious, wrote in an op-ed for Psychology Today: “we rationalize anything that is potentially risky and distort ourselves into believing that we’re being safe.”
Many are now rationalizing their behaviours as somehow not endangering others (a virtually impossible calculation), even though we experienced a sixth wave of COVID because of lifting most restrictions.
Dr. Raywat Deonandan, an epidemiologist and an associate professor at the University of Ottawa, asked—somewhat rhetorically—in a CBC interview this past February: “Are we the kind of society that wants to take care of that proportion that is going to be suffering unduly? Or are we the kind of society that wants our lifestyle back at all costs?” The answer to both these questions is less an emphatic “yes” and more of an indifferent shrug.
Of course, a small but loud minority—the ‘trucker-convoy’ movement and their sympathizers—take the cruel, though not dissonant, aggressive libertarian stance of having no responsibility to anyone but themselves. But they are a sideshow and a useful scapegoat that distracts us from the noticing how a eugenic-minded way of thinking is no longer an extremist or fringe ideology.
Around the capitalist world, governments and their experts, along with corporate media, are very invested in resolving the true problem that faces them: the dissonance of well-intended people: so, they can resume “living (that is, largely, consuming) with COVID,” without a guilty conscience.
“Collective responsibility” poses an ideological threat to the Late Capitalist order; it had to be seen as a drastic temporary measure. Least individualism (consumerism, in particular) became a marginal ideology in a ‘new normal.’’ And so it ought not to be surprising (though it is grotesque) that going ‘back to normal’ would ultimately mean normalizing eugenics.
What is surprising is the Left, as Judy Rebick and Corvin Russell wrote in rabble this past February, “is nowhere on COVID…” Their article outlines some scientifically grounded and common sense prescriptions for sustainably living with COVID (such as, ventilation upgrading in all shared, indoor spaces) that hardly anyone on the organizational and institutional Left is collectively fighting for—which, of course, means no one is.
And so, I think before those of us on the Left, can even collectively address the ongoing public health crisis and fight for not a return to, but a better, normal, we must reckon with the eugenics way of thinking that our minds are semi-consciously and passively absorbing.
I think, or hope, we can agree that being a leftist means to carve out values and principles of intersectional solidarity against social injustices—against the common current. Ideology works similarly to cognitive dissonance in that, it’s subtle and sneaky: it is absorbed unthinkingly—and rationalized after the fact, or we actively resist it and hold onto our convictions, regardless of how much in the minority it places us.
I fear I may sound a bit preachy. Likely, I only perceive this psychological and moral calamity (or at least the extent of it) because it so directly impacts me. And I, at least, have the privilege to work from home (but with the ubiquitous downplaying of the pandemic, perhaps for not that much longer). The chronically ill and poor (noting poverty correlates with ill health) and/or working class —the majority of who are racialized people—are not as fortunate.
I want us, the Left, to not merely acknowledge the injustice, but look at it, unflinchingly: the normalizing of eugenics will lead to darker places than we are even at now; who knows what society will tolerate in the next pandemic? Organized action on the Left is both a moral imperative and our only hope.
Support rabble today!
We’re so glad you stopped by! Thanks for consuming rabble content this year.
rabble.ca is 100% reader and donor funded, so as an avid reader of our content, we hope you will consider gifting rabble with a donation during our summer fundraiser today.
Whether it be a one-time donation or a small monthly contribution, your support is critical to keep rabble writers producing the work you’ve come to rely on as a part of a healthy media diet.
Become a rabble rouser — donate to rabble.ca today.
Nick Seebruch, editor
