Fascism

my brand of humanism sees pestilence everywhere. Indeed, I tend to see pestilence not only in the acts of individuals but in the structures within which the plague takes root and spreads. And this is where the two plagues intersect, Ebola and IS. They both prosper where the immune system is weak.

When it comes to medical infrastructure, Africa definitely has a compromised immune system. The continent has been hit hard by HIV/AIDS (70 percent of those living with HIV are in Africa), cholera (major outbreaks took place recently in Senegal, Zimbabwe, and Sierra Leone), and malaria (an African child dies every minute from this disease). Ebola has spread rapidly because of critical shortages in medical staff and supplies.

But the deeper reason is environmental: the clear-cutting of forests that have served as a traditional barrier to pathogens. West Africa has one of the fastest rates of deforestation in the world, losing nearly a million hectares a year. The forests are Africa’s natural defenses, and Ebola is a sign that these defenses have been fatally weakened. What used to stay in remote villages now spreads quickly to urban areas.

The recent victories of IS in Syria and Iraq, meanwhile, suggest not a breakdown in the environmental system but in the political one. IS is not simply a band of serial killers. They have a distinct ideology and set of political motives. Nor does it matter whether they are operating in a formally dictatorial or democratic environment. IS thrives both where Assad rules with an iron fist and where Saddam is long gone.

The common denominator is chaos. IS has ruthlessly expanded in the grey areas beyond the reach of the rule of law. In Syria, it has prospered in regions that already broke loose from the country during the uprising. In Iraq, it took advantage of a paralyzing conflict between Shi’a and Sunni that left the northern reaches of the country tenuously connected to the central government.

Local governance, whether it’s democratic or authoritarian, serves the same function as the forests of West Africa. Such governance holds society together. When it deteriorates, the very cellular structure breaks down. In Ebola, the cell walls fray and the patient bleeds out. With a virus like IS, the fibers of the social fabric fray and large sections of the country bleed out.

There are, of course, many differences between a pestilence like Ebola and a movement like IS. But they are both the result of systemic breakdown. They are opportunistic infections...

Camus recommended vigilance. Pestilence, he concluded, 'bides its time in bedrooms, cellars, trunks, and bookshelves and…perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city.' 

John Feffer. The Plague. The twin plagues of ISIS and Ebola thrive on the breakdown of the existing order. Augustus 2014. http://fpif.org/plague/

Inderdaad, 'The common denominator is chaos.' De geglobaliseerde neoliberale ideologie heeft een onvoorstelbare chaos gecreëerd, en die chaos bedreigt nu de hele mensheid, zonder dat de politiek verantwoordelijken in staat zijn, laat staan bereid, dit feit onder ogen te zien. De NAVO, het westers militair industrieel complex, bereidt nieuwe oorlogen voor, terwijl de mainstream-media met een opgewekte kadaverdiscipline de rechtvaardigingen voor de komende totale chaos verspreiden. De massamens hunkert, net als in de 20ste eeuw, naar verlossing middels massaal geweld.  Het enige dat u en ik kunnen doen is de doodsdrift beschrijven, tegenhouden kunnen we haar niet. 

Vergeet niet, zoals de Duitse auteur W.G. Sebald in zijn boek De Natuurlijke Historie van de Verwoesting (2003) schreef:

zoveel intelligentie, kapitaal en werkkracht werd ingezet voor het plannen van de vernietiging, dat die zich onder de druk van al dat geaccumuleerde potentieel ten slotte wel móest voltrekken. Een bewijs voor de onomkeerbaarheid van deze ontwikkeling is te vinden in een vraaggesprek dat verslaggever Kunzert uit Halberstad in 1952 voerde met brigadier Frederick L. Anderson van de US Eight Army Air Force... Andersons verklaringen culmineren in een uitspraak waarin het irrationele toppunt van de hele rationalistische argumentatie zichtbaar wordt. Hij wijst erop dat het bij de bommen die ze bij zich hadden tenslotte om 'duur spul' ging. 'Dat kun je ook niet in de bergen gooien of in het vrije veld, nadat het thuis met zoveel moeite in elkaar is gezet.'

The Shujai'iya residential neighbourhood of Gaza City. Photograph: Mahmud

Hams/AFP/Getty Images.