‘Greed’ ‘Capitalism’ and ‘Market-first neglect’ : The government’s pandemic discourse sweeps the nation
(SPOILER ALERT: IT WAS NATIONALISM AGAIN)
It is Tuesday 24th March 2021, and it has been leaked that Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has accredited the U.K’s vaccine success to ‘capitalism’ and ‘greed’. Prioritising capital over human life, Johnson has again – this time, without the help of his trusted advisor – swept the nation with the help of nationalistic, affective politics. With calculated political moves, Johnson has managed to associate himself with such a clear portrait of false competence, that shock and horror have met his most recent discourse about the vaccine.
‘Hail Britannia!’ the Tories have again used the same jingoistic discourse to conceal that their own policies have caused a crisis of oppressive and suppressive living conditions. Nationalism, which is employed by our shadow and current government, but particularly monopolised by the Tories has allowed the violence of the nation state to be obfuscated, in a moment in time which without patriotic governmentality, would have exposed Tory policy for what it truly is - violent. An ‘imagined community’, the nation requires continual re-formulation to preserve the idea that it is ‘a deep horizontal comradeship’ – nationalism, is a credence for the fallacy of the nation’s homogeneity, that in this and many other instances, allowed the nation state to use red white and blue to conceal the blood on their hands.
Let’s think back to March 2020, particularly Boris Johnson on This Morning, where he rationalised (and I say that very lightly), the government’s endorsement of ‘herd immunity’. In his typical Johnson manner, he lightly pondered that if the disease could move through the public, one could ‘take it on the chin’. This policy was never official, but there is no doubt that the government’s three step plan to halt the spread - particularly the ‘track’ and ‘delay’ phases, which were completely unsuccessful - were code words for ‘herd immunity’. Shortly after when we were in lockdown, numbly clapping our underfunded, crumbling, and dying NHS, we had the Queen tell us ‘we will meet again’ on April 5th 2020. Scarily, this very language formed why even those who consider themselves so far from nationalism were clapping – nationalism is certainly a force that particularly in moments of crisis has to firstly be noticed, and secondly be fought against avidly. But we felt that by clapping we were showing empathy and solidarity to those workers who the government were presenting as ‘the front line’, but what we were actually part of was reframing the government’s involvement in COVID-19 deaths in and outside of the NHS.
The nation requires continual formulation and work to retain the fallacy of its homogeneity, war discourse was therefore employed to do just that. By bringing up a moment in history where homogeneity worker in favour of the people – incidentally where it also concealed the violence the government was exposing its public to -, war language was and is still being used to appeal to the nation’s affect. It also, however, concealed the government’s ‘rosy’, subtle scapegoating as it went relatively unnoticed for some time in producing boundaries within the nation between those who belonged and those who were seen to effect the nation’s ‘homogenous’ push for success. Sustaining the notion of homogeneity, this nationalist babble actually did effect how we negotiated the early pandemic – understandably, due to the crisis we were in, we failed to see how our public sphere was being reframed into narrative of nationalist success.
The term public in March 2020 was reconstituted: ‘citizens’ became ‘soldiers’, ‘awareness’ transformed into ‘obedience’ and ‘solidarity’ developed into an affective ‘appeal to our patriotism’, as Musu’s work suggests. Musu’s, who studies the effect of nationalism also produced a hypothesis which also became true, as two things happened in response to nationalist discourse. Firstly, an enemy was identified, which typical to Tory racism, was dubbed by Johnson as ‘an invisible killer’, but we all know this invisible other was instantly racialised by right wing sectors of the public, exactly as Johnson intended. Secondly, a my country first attitude was fostered by the governments language, where boundaries of who belonged to the country were drawn within the nation state. The government therefore subtly helped the public identify positive selves and negative others, which we saw initially effecting East Asian sectors of the public, then other identities being targeted as those who still had to work, (namely working class people, many of whom were in minority groups as well) were shamed for not ‘fighting for Tory and country’. Ranging from xenophobic statements like ‘we’ll be in trouble if these guys sneeze on us’, to unprovoked attacks, the ‘invisible killer’ was given an identity, which was seen to be outside of the fallacy of the nation’s ‘homogeneity’.
A prime example of this was the stark difference between how the media (most prominently the BBC) reported on two events which happened at roughly the same time, VE Day and Eid. VE Day street parties and celebrations were all over BBC News and framed as positive moments within the community. Not accidentally these VE celebrations which coincided with the nationalistic thinking the government was implementing were honoured, while Muslims were warned off celebrating Eid. To use the famous Gilroy term, the government perpetuated ‘rosy’ nationalism while disciplining bodies and marginalising racialised communities, to detach the state from being blamed for the physical and epistemic violence it was producing. Using ‘ambiguity’, to form a mode of address, suppression was obscured, and a violent politics of exclusion was produced simultaneously, all in one little neat affective package.
Reframing the public’s every negotiation of existence within the nation sphere, the governments language also came to fashion the representation of those ill with the virus. Neatly sticking to those nationalist lines already drawn in ‘invisible’ ink, some of those who caught the virus were branded as ‘soldiers’ ‘called into combat’. Not surprisingly though, these people were employed along with the government’s language as a means for concealing their violent politics. Take Captain Tom Moore for instance, famed for making money for the NHS, then made into a martyr as he became victim of the very care home crisis he was fighting to end. Compare this to Belly Mujinga, who found her case of being attacked dismissed, by the very fact it showed the fault lines in the government’s rhetoric, and here the lines of ‘positive self’ and ‘negative others’ show their true racialised colours. The lost lives of marginalised people, for this very reason became un-grieve-able and underserving of justice through the rhetoric which came straight from Tory mouths. Whereas ‘grieve-able’ lives became a site for nationalist narratives of sacrifice and bravery much as they do during a war.
Nationalism, in the form of war language, swept the nation and aided the government’s concealment of its violence, in three ways. 1. It appealed to the nation’s affect. 2. It produced boundaries between those affected (those assimilated into the nations ‘we’) and those unaffected. 3. It encouraged further homogeneity by creating boundaries within the nation by identifying ways the public should be affected by the same (‘right’) things. Not incidentally, those affected by the same ‘right’ things, were firstly most susceptible to nationalistic discourse, and secondly, the very people the government wanted to keep safe. In short, those most affected were those that could be instrumented for jingoistic hate, those who indeed already perpetuate such discourse and enable the governments failings to be concealed. When it comes to nationalism, affectivity renders few innocent of perpetuating obfuscations. What we must remember is nationalism is perpetual in governmentality, and in Valluvan’s words, it is always the violent premise of the nation state that will forever include the exclusion of those deemed as ‘outsiders’. However rosy, nationalism is always violent, no matter how attractive, affective and distracting it may be, it always seeks to obfuscate the violence perpetuated by the very nation we all scream for when England score.
