Vinay Lal's racist response to COVID

Vinay Lal is a Professor of History who says that the emblem of the Red Cross derives from the mark placed on the residences of those suffering from the plague who thereby gained 'inviolable sanctity'. The truth is the Red Cross is the inverse of the Swiss flag and represents neutrality. It is not true that people living in plague ridden homes have 'inviolable sanctity'. On the contrary, they die like flies.

Lal makes heavy weather of BoJo's statement- “We’re taking away the ancient, inalienable right of free-born people of the United Kingdom to go the pub”- Lal thinks it racist. Yet, the truth is- since slavery was abolished long ago- every person currently on the soil of the U.K is 'free-born'. BoJo wasn't being racist at all. He was saying 'I understand a lot of people won't like this measure. But it is necessary.' What makes it necessary? An imperative of a purely Scientific kind. Nothing cultural or racial or national is involved.

Lal's latest blogpost, however, continues to argue the toss-

The contours of each country’s national history appear to be on display in the responses that have been witnessed across the world to the coronavirus pandemic.

This is nonsense. What is on display is differences in the opinions of the scientific establishment in each country together with the very different economic and political constraints upon policy making. This has nothing to do with 'national history' precisely because no country currently has the same economic and political constraints now that it had even thirty years ago. 

 However, in suggesting this, I do not by any means wish to be seen as subscribing to the ideas of distinct personality traits that were behind “the national character” studies undertaken in the 1940s, a project that involved what were many of the leading anthropologists of that time, among them Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict.

In other words, Lal wants to talk racist bollocks but does not want to be seen as a racist cunt.

 The argument rather is that someone such as the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, is perhaps more clearly implicated in such a view, judging from his observations about the “freedom-loving instincts” of the English people, and there is little doubt that “national character” studies were rather more common at that time as Orwell’s own essay is indubitably structured along those lines as well.

So, Lal is being racist but says BoJo is more clearly implicated in racism because Lal, racist that he is, says so. Why mention Orwell? Either the fellow was, as Lal suggests, a racist cunt- in which case we needn't bother with him- or he wasn't a racist cunt but Lal wants to implicate him in being a racist cunt coz that's the sort of racist cunt Lal is. 

 It is not difficult to see why the temptation to produce types such as “the freedom-loving” English, the “yellow” or cowardly Japanese,

Did this racist cunt just call the Japanese 'yellow'? How come none of his students are getting triggered? BTW when did the Nips get a reputation for cowardliness?

or the militaristic German might not have been irresistible during the Second World War.

Germany was militaristic during the Second World War. So was Japan. On balance the Japs were braver. It took two atom bombs and an order from the Emperor for them to surrender.   

  Nor is it the case, keeping in mind the preceding two parts of this essay, that there is a seamless history of “Englishness” from Samuel Pepys writing in the second half of the seventeenth century to Britain’s response to the coronavirus pandemic,

In other words, Lal admits he is talking worthless bollocks

though it is striking that, to take one illustration, Britain was an outlier in its refusal to use quarantine in the nineteenth century when the question of controls over the movement of Muslim pilgrims came up at the Constantinople Sanitary Conference in 1866.

Persia opposed it even more vociferously. Britain wasn't an outlier at all. The fact is a lot of  Doctors back then were bitterly opposed to the germ theory of disease.

The French and the Ottomans had pressed the Government of India to impose quarantines as one measure to control the spread of cholera among Muslim pilgrims, but they encountered a wall of resistance.

The fact is a lot of indigent Indians would go for Hajj and then stay on. The Government of India had to make agreements with first the Ottomans and then the Saudis to take back these undesirable immigrants. But even when the Brits restricted sea passage, the wily Indian would get to Mecca by land.

  Though the British argued that they were unwilling to consider any measures that were likely to alienate Muslim pilgrims, it is almost certainly the case that their then rigid adherence to the doctrines of free trade and free movement made them deeply suspicious of quarantine.

What about the Persians? Why were they even more vociferous than the Govt. of India? Was it because of their 'rigid adherence' to the doctrine of laissez faire?

But let us return momentarily to George Orwell. 

So that Lal can finish shitting upon that poor fellow. 

The modern world, he says, cannot be understood apart from the “overwhelming strength of patriotism, national loyalty”, and perforce “one must admit that the divisions between nation and nation are founded on real differences of outlook.” 

Orwell lived long enough to see a new world in which 'national loyalty' meant nothing. What mattered was the type of Economic regime which obtained.

The English are far from being the only people who claim to have a special attachment to liberty,

so, talking bollocks of this stripe is a waste of time. 

and the question of French national characteristics has come up in the debate that is now animating France on whether the proposed deployment of smart phone tracking apps to inform people if they have come in contact with an infected person can be reconciled with the tradition of individual liberties.

Lal is being silly. The fact is, the German tracking system backed by Macron is flawed. Also Apple is refusing to play ball. This has nothing to do with 'national characteristics'. On the other hand, it does present a good opportunity for the Socialists to kick Macron in the goolies. 

  In late March, the French interior minister dismissed the idea of digital tracking, which has thus far been used with remarkable success in South Korea to contain COVID-19, as anathema to “French culture”. 

Christophe Castaner is now backing tracking.  "Tracking is one of the solutions that have been adopted by a number of countries, so we have decided to work with them in looking at these options," he said in an interview with France 2 television on April 5. "I am convinced that if [these apps] allow us to fight the virus and if they do not infringe on individual liberties, tracking is a tool that will be accepted by the French people."

The junior minister in the French government who is responsible for digital affairs and is charged with the development of the app, Cédric O, has similarly gone on record to suggest that the debate “has to do with French history and a sensitivity to freedom that is inherent to French culture.”

But Cedric O is known to be an early supporter of the tracking app. He backs the German rather than the Swiss initiative. Thus talk of 'French history' is just window-dressing. It doesn't matter in the slightest.

  The supposition is that France as a constitutional democracy has a long-standing commitment to the “rule of law”, and that the individual’s love of liberty, subject only to the constraint that such love should not constrain someone else from their rightful exercise of liberty, is inextricably interwoven into the “rule of law”;

But the law permits the public interest to override individual liberty. There is no suggestion that digital tracking is illegal per se. 

correspondingly, Asian nations, even when they, as may be said of present-day South Korea, display democratic features, have only a historically contingent relationship to the idea of freedom as it is not intrinsic to their cultures.

This is a racist statement. Lal may get away with it because he is a darkie but it shows that deep down he is a racist cunt. The fact is South Koreans are smart and good at sciencey stuff. That is why the French are emulating them. 

The official cue to frame the debate as one pitting the apparently severe constraints on freedom of movement deemed necessary to mitigate the coronavirus against the cultural and political inheritance of the French people may have come from the French President, Emmanuel Macron.  In addressing the nation on April 13th, he expressed the hope that the discussion in the National Assembly would make it abundantly clear to the nation that “under no circumstances should the coronavirus weaken our democracy or infringe on [our] civil liberties.”

Macron has been forced to hold a vote on this issue. 

  It is telling, however, that if French officials have invoked the cherished principles of the French Revolution and its call to liberté, égalité, fraternité, they have not taken recourse to the idea that the French have an inalienable right to frequent their neighborhood café for the customary coffee or aperitif. 

It is not telling at all. What should worry Macron is Le Pen defying the lockdown. 

The English claim their liberties only for themselves: 

Nonsense! A slave who reached British shores immediately became free. Britain has sheltered hundreds of thousands fleeing Continental tyrants. 

as Orwell would have it, the English like their pub and their “nice cup of tea”, and are at heart a nation of flower-lovers, stamp-collectors, coupon-snippers, darts-players, and crossword-puzzle fans. 

Which nation lacks flower-lovers and stamp collectors? W

They had an empire, too, as Orwell—who was born as Eric Arthur Blair in Motihari, in present-day Bihar in India, and served in the Imperial Police Service in Burma from 1922 until his resignation in March 1928—knew all too well, but “the patriotism of the common people is not vocal or even conscious.”

Orwell was an Old Etonian fuckwit. His notion of the 'common people' was about as accurate as his understanding of farmyard beasts as depicted in Animal Farm. 

France, that other freedom-loving nation on the continent, has in contrast always thought of itself as a country that sets an example to others: thus, in the present debate on whether digital apps might be used to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, Sacha Houlié, a French lawmaker from President Macron’s own party, La République En Marche, put it quite candidly:  “We are France.  In terms of civil liberties, being France means something.  It means that, in a sense, the world is watching what we do.”

And what the French Government wants to do is to back the Germans. 

The world has better things to do than watch France. But let us put that aside. Given the long histories of European colonialism, and the unspeakable brutalities of colonial wars, one might with very good cause forthright dismiss all talk of the supposedly intrinsic attachment to the ideas of liberty among the British, French, or indeed other Europeans as nothing more than bunkum and balderdash. 

Lal admits that he is talking bunkum and balderdash. But he won't stop doing it because he is too stupid to do anything else.

To do so would be to fall grievously into the error of supposing that unearthing the hypocrisies of peoples, or nations, furnishes enough warrant to dismiss the motive force of the national imaginary in shaping a country’s social response to something like the coronavirus pandemic.

In other words, if we accept bunkum and balderdash is worthless shite then we would fall into the grievous error of not ourselves talking bunkum and balderdash. But it we don't do so we may get the sack coz we are Professors of History and are paid to talk worthless shite.

The demonstrations over the last few weeks in the United States against the restrictions that have been placed on the movement of people, as well as against the mandated closing of schools, universities, government offices, indeed all “non-essential” businesses and private enterprises, provides yet another if more muddled illustration of how national histories and notions of national identity continue to play a critical shape in shaping the political epidemiology of a global pandemic such as COVID-19. 

Nonsense! The US illustrates how individual states go against the national trend because of indigenous socio-economic conditions and constraints. Local history may matter. National history, evidently, does not.

Demonstrations had broken out, as reported in major newspapers and media outlets, in mid- to late-March in Michigan, Ohio, Idaho, Kentucky, Washington, and other American states against the continued lockdown and stay-at-home orders that are now common to nearly all parts of the United States.  The protestors, judging from interviews, newspaper accounts, statements released to the press, and the placards that they have been carrying, have expressed a strong desire to be able to go back to work and have demanded that businesses, churches, and public spaces such as beaches be re-opened.  “My constitutional rights are essential”, read one placard held by a supporter of the Michigan Conservative Coalition, while in Richmond, Virginia, demonstrators held placards bearing slogans such as “End the Shut Down” and “We Will Not Comply.”  In Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a boy held aloft a sign, “Freedom is Essential”, while another displayed a placard with a provocation, “Give me Liberty or Give me COVID-19.”  Whatever one may make of the inexpediency and perhaps insensitivity of such demonstrations, they cannot be dismissed merely as expressions of the entity to which modern man has been reduced:  homo economicus.  The demonstrators may want to return to work, but the recourse to another language—freedom, liberty, and rights—also impresses.

But freedom, liberty and rights constitute and fully characterize homo economicus, not any other type of beastie.

Trump, a voracious consumer of Fox News, which has been vocal in its sharp dismissal of state governors who have insisted on more rigorous lockdowns as “authoritarian”, himself has egged on the demonstrators with the all-caps tweets with which his name is now indelibly linked:  “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” and “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” Virginia, with its (in the American experience) hallowed history as the birthplace of some of the country’s most well-known founding fathers—Washington, Jefferson, James Madison, George Mason, among others—has especially rankled Trump as a state that has gone over to the other side and Trump has called to “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment.  It is under siege.”  There is ample evidence that the demonstrators have in part also been instigated by right-wing groups, white nationalists, militant supporters of the constitutional right to bear arms, anti-abortion activists, religious fundamentalists, even—what is more particular to the US with its own particular histories of resistance to any state-imposed intrusions on private life—anti-vaccination groups.

So, there is nothing 'national' here. 'States rights', maybe, but nothing 'national' or 'Federal'. 

Some of the protests have been funded by innocuous sounding organizations such as the Idaho Freedom Foundation, the Michigan Liberty Militia, and the Michigan Freedom Fund, but the link of some organizations to neo-Nazi ideology, white nationalism, or to such causes as the state support of Christianity or the militant advocacy of the unchecked right to private ownership of arms cannot be doubted

I don't know about you, but 'Michigan Liberty Militia' scares me shitless. Lal finds this nomenclature 'innocuous'. Wow! Has he never heard of the Oklahoma bombings? Perhaps not. He is a Professor of History after all.