Jakob Hayner in Die Welt: 'How the Left Learned to Love Subservience [to the State] and Surveillance'

Signs and Wonders, German Legacy Media Edition: Die Welt Offers a Quite Apt Critique of What Passes for 'The Left' These Days: If They Don't Change, Good Riddance To Them

Last Monday, German daily Die Welt published quite a piece. For some time, Die Welt has been at the forefront of legacy media discussing issues—such as adverse events following injection of the Covid 'jabs, the follies of the Energy Transition (Energiewende), and the corruption of the Greens—that the more systemic media outlets are loath to bring up; and if they are brought up, German legacy media is no better than its US corporate counterpart.

Entitled, ‘How the Left Learned to Love Subservience [to the State] and Surveillance’, Jakob Hayner addresses one of the downplayed issues of the Covid mindf******* of our time. Clearly, Die Welt is going out on a limb here, and I am very pleased to provide you with a translation, incl., as always, [brief comments in squared parentheses] and emphases by me, as are the bottom lines.

Note that Hayner’s piece is behind a paywall, so do drop me a line or two via email if you’d like to access the PDF copy of mine.

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How the Left Learned to Love Subservience [to the State] and Surveillance

By Jakob Hayner, Die Welt, 22 May 2023

To this day, it is hard to believe how the left failed in the Corona crisis. Protest against state measures? Nope, that was what right-wingers did. But no police action could be brutal enough against the ‘un-solidaric’. A reckoning [Aufarbeitung] is urgently needed.

‘We’ll vaccinate you all!’, chants a troop carrying Antifa flags. They wear FFP2 [N95] masks in the open air, a distinctive sign among their peers. On their placards they demand ‘system upgates’, alluding to Bill Gates.

It is hard to believe, but true: this is not a militant arm of the Big Pharma lobby, but people who self-identify as radical leftists. In the Corona crisis, the Left stood by the state. Criticism of the mandates, such as state surveillance, uncritical monotony of legacy media, or secret contracts with Big Pharma were hard to find. The lockdown fanatics of the ‘Zero Covid’ faction probably still think that vaccine damage is a conspiracy theory [the third link takes you to a piece that reports on the official number of Covid shot-induced AEs, which in February 2023, stood at ‘over 333,000 reports’]

To this day, it is hard to believe how badly the Left failed as a critical voice during the Corona crisis. They bent over backwards, they did not even dare to talk to talk [to say nothing of walking the walk]. Protest? Nope, that was what right-wingers did. People who had written heaps of student papers on Foucault and Adorno no longer wanted to know anything about Biopolitics and ideological critique. Those who previously imagined themselves as enemy of the state no. 1 now suddenly demanded that the ‘true enemies of the state’ be beaten off the streets. And those who had previously identified echoes of the Nazis' inhuman administrative language in even the smallest word [‘micro-aggressions’] could no longer keep their mouths shut when they were agitating against the ‘un-solidaric’.

And so it went on: when it came to the catastrophic effects of the lockdowns, the Leftists quickly wiped the Global South off the map. It took some ‘“Israel-critical” art’ from the Global South to regain the attention of the academic metropolitan left. When confronted with the ‘killer virus’, even the most radical no-borders Leftists suddenly learned to love border closures. What a shame for those without papers that the doors shut firmest were suddenly those of the next autonomous [in Germany, this term refers to the extra-parliamentary, radical left] centre, including stringent vaccination, testing, and ID requirements under the ‘All Refugees Welcome’ banner.

In short: the ideologised [pathologised] state apparatuses were calling—and the Left, where it was not already part of it, responded so enthusiastically that even the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution [Germany’s domestic intelligence service; for US-based readers: think: the FBI during ‘Russiagate’] occasionally began to wonder. The reflex to jump to the aid of the poor and oppressed was triggered [supplanted] by talk of ‘solidarity’, but instead Leftists rushed to the aid of the government, state-affiliated media, and the most powerful pharmaceutical corporations. The poor were left to look after themselves. From the laptop class of the academic left they received nothing more than a hearty ‘Stay at home!’—or the order to deliver the food and the groceries as part of what amounts to a new urban servant proletariat. Delivery was to take place only with proper distancing and wearing a mask, please!

[this is so insidious—and true; here in Norway, it was the same ‘game’: rainbow-themed banners shouting ‘all will be well’ (alt blir bra) adorned kindergartens, schools, and public buildings, replete with illuminated heart-shaped light-chains; this is an aside, but let’s not forget that the rainbow used to mean Yahweh’s promise to Noah and his descendents to never again destroy humanity, according scripture—the symbol and its meaning have been subverted completely these days, like with the ‘Left’ discussed in the piece; back to Mr. Hayner’s piece]

The Left self-identified as Team Solidarity, Reason, and Science. Except that solidarity was only for those who behaved like themselves [and agreed to this world-view]. And here we note that ‘Reason’ simply meant ‘Prussian Obedience’—and Science was understood to mean the Ministry of Truth. Some Leftists even called themselves ‘Drosten Ultras’: sloganeering and virtue-signalling ruled instead of debate. There was no discussion with the new main enemy, the ‘Schwurbler’ [this defamatory term is extremely hard to translate; it means something like ‘Covidiot’, but in German it has additional attributions, incl. connotations such as ‘deplorables’ (Hillary Clinton), anti-Science™ (Tony Fauci), and, of course, far-right extremism]. When it came to hunting down the Schwurbler, many become very agitated right away: anyone who refused the daily recital of the ‘Lord’s Prayer’ with incidences and vaccination rates was already considered a suspect; whoever shouted ‘No God, no State, no Certificate!’ [Covid Passport] at an anti-mandate rally in the best left-wing tradition could quickly get more than a nasty look.

Watch Out, Morality Police!

When Corona hit, it quickly became obvious that nothing remains behind the beliefs of the official left, especially no backbone [Haltung]. The left cosplays the morality police in a morally bankrupt society. Their words are like flowers decorating [the proletariats’] chains. With the right ‘wording’ and ‘framing’, their slogans are adapted to any policy, no matter how repressive or regressive. It now also has its own ‘middle-of-the-road extremism’, its catechism is the Critical Theory parody ‘Gekränkte Freiheit’ by Oliver Nachtwey and Carolin Amlinger. A [new juste] milieu is forming to fight ‘libertarian authoritarianism’.

The astonishing thing is that the Left is now again blathering about ‘structural exclusions’ in an academic and quasi-academic way, while maintaining an adamant silence about exclusion and coercion during the Corona era. Reckoning? You have to look hard to find any dissenters of the Silence Cartel. In early June, there will be a discussion among leftists in a beer garden in Berlin-Kreuzberg about the , ‘Conspiracyist Manifesto’, a radical left-wing critique of the Corona mandates from France. Recently, the anthology Severe Course: Corona as a Symptom of Crisis was published, which sees itself as an explicit contribution to the urgently needed reckoning.

The contributions in Severe Course [Schwerer Verlauf] outline how an entire society could fall into a state of political and psychological emergency. The failure of the left is attributed, among other things, to the obsessive fixation on identity politics. The lack of Marxist knowledge also renders them incapable of recognising and describing larger social contexts. The only vocabulary that remains, at this dwindling level of leftist literacy, is moralising indignation: shitstorms on Twitter instead of a critique of political economy. Thus, [the left] is easily manipulated instead of incorruptibly analytical.

The Destruction of the Real Economy

The greatest danger of our time lies in the [impending] meltdown of the financial system, argues the Italian theorist Fabio Vighi in his seminal text in Severe Course. To avert that, the world economy had to be shut down. But that only postponed the problem, as the current inflation cycle shows. Vighi talks about traditional leftist issues, about economics, debt, and mass impoverishment. He is convinced that the financial bubble has now become so inflated that it has moved ‘to the controlled destruction of the real economy’ stage. The system is cannibalising itself—with crass consequences [oh, I wonder what Marx would say about that; oh, wait…/sarcasm].

We are witnessing the beginning of a totalitarian doppelgänger of neoliberalism, writes Vighi, the liberal model is being replaced as we speak. The resultant ‘cruelly repressive emergency ideology’ relies on ethical mobilisation, it needs the narrative of an ultimate evil and total threat. Corona was a first leg, with many more looming. Vighi attests to the climate doom movement, with its enthusiasm for climate lockdowns, wanting to control the impoverished masses rather than the climate of the future. According to Vighi, the threat is the ‘imposition of a globally networked, fully digitalised tyranny’. And that will occur in the not too-distant future.

Other contributions look at psychological rather than political or economic causes for the new desire to defame and denounce. [Here, Hayner cites Hannah Arendt as follows: ‘The greatest danger in Modernity comes not from the attraction of nationalist and racist ideologies, but from the loss of reality. If resistance-through-reality is lacking, then, in principle, everything becomes possible.’ Orig. ‘Die größte Gefahr in der Moderne geht nicht von der Anziehungskraft nationalistischer und rassistischer Ideologien aus, sondern von dem Verlust an Wirklichkeit. Wenn der Widerstand durch Wirklichkeit fehlt, dann wird prinzipiell alles möglich.’ As no appropriate citation is given that would allow me to look for the English translation, I’ve elected to replace that quote with the following:]

The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist. [The Origins of Totalitarianism]

This loss of reality has become apparent—not exclusively, but drastically—on the Left. The way back to reason can only be through a new appropriation of reality and its resistances.

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Bottom Lines

There’s a lot I’d agree with whole-heartedly, and, admittedly, the patent absurdity of rainbow-themed ‘refugees welcome’ banners coupled with stringent Covid Passport requirements must be talked about.

It brings to mind (apocryphal) mentions of Ukrainian refugees being ‘vaxxed’ upon arrival in displaced person centres across the West, often, as I’ve heard from officers and journalists in Austria, without informed consent as any follow-up processing of war refugees—mainly women and children—was made contingent on receiving a bunch of vaccinations.

Sure, given the experiences of 2015 (the so-called ‘migration crisis’) and the re-introduction of a host of infectious diseases via hundreds of thousands of refugees, this is not an objectionable policy in terms of public health or reason. BUT: adding (potential vaccine) injury to the insult of arriving in the ‘oh-so-enlightened West’ and having to undergo such coercive procedures should—and, in the past, typically did—have caused stern rebukes from the Left and from the Right. The fact that this policy was not criticised loudly and roundly speaks louder than all words.

I think this is an important piece, hence it’s firmly locked behind the paywall (again, Ill happily share my PDF copy, just email me) of Die Welt.

I also think it’s reasonable to expect whatever passes for ‘the Left’ these days to uncritically, if stringently, denounce the ‘deviant’ critique offered by Mr. Hayner in the most vigorous terms.

In the final analysis, ‘the Left’ has gone completely bonkers and, in many ways, has already replaced ‘the Right’ as the main claqueur of state power; not that ‘the Left’ hasn’t been in this place to begin with, in many ways, the Corona Years have re-tuned politics to certain degrees as some parts of ‘the Right’ are, again, embracing civil liberties, chastise the drastically grown state apparatus, and argue, at least partially, against the Covid madness.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe a word the ‘systemic Right’ offers; only deeds will make me change my mind.

Yet, given Elena Louisa Lange’s recent posting, Mr. Hayner’s piece offers validation to the former’s claims of the Left’s stunning decay and theoretical illiteracy.

I’ve long experienced the best conversations about left-wing theory with ‘far-right’ protagonists who, contrary to most of the contemporary ‘left’, have both read classical left-wing texts, thought about them (more or less profoundly), and made up their minds on their own.

If anything, the op-ed by Mr. Hayner shows that what passes (itself) as ‘the Left’ has a long march back to reality ahead of itself (perhaps somewhat more sarcastically, 40 years in the desert might also do that trick).

Failure to do so will result in only one thing: ‘the (faux) left’ consigning itself to the proverbial dustbin of history.

And that fate would be well-deserved.