16-11-2021: Apartheid. There is no other word which describes the plan by the Queensland government to lock out unvaccinated patrons from a whole range of venues from December 17. Anyone who wishes to attend some public events will need to display a Covid vaccine certificate on the “QLD App” – or be denied entry. The list of public places the unvaccinated can be excluded from is long, and includes: pubs, clubs, bars, restaurants, Queensland (QLD) government run stadiums, entertainment venues, indoor and outdoor music festivals, government owned art galleries, museums, libraries, aged care facilities, prisons, disability care services and hospitals.[1] Supposedly, those in a life or death emergency will be permitted to enter hospitals. Queensland Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll intoned that venues themselves will not be expected to enforce compliance – but they can call the police if an unvaccinated person does not leave the premises if directed.[2]  What this means is that any unvaccinated person can be excluded from many parts of public life, and have the cops called on them if they object. George Orwell could scarcely have envisaged totalitarianism of this nature.

Official segregation

As it stands, unvaccinated people in QLD are “allowed” to enter grocery stores and supermarkets, post offices and newsagents.[3] Yet exclusion from being able to access postal services, and even to obtain food to survive from day to day – could well be the next thing to go. For decades, Western governments have legislated against discrimination on any basis – sex, gender, race, disability, age and so on. Now, they are themselves enforcing open and undisguised discrimination. This discrimination could well degenerate into ostracism and imprisonment in “quarantine centres” – concentration camps by another name. The dissenters are those who can see through the transparent government and media attempts at vaccine blackmail. With the encouragement of politicians, virtual pogroms against the unvaccinated could be unleashed. The only folk who can be guaranteed that they will not become social outcasts are those who silently accede to Covid absurdities.

All these measures which could tear apart the fabric of society will not require an Act of parliament, much less any public consultation or judicial overview. Parliamentary debate, the separation of powers, consultation with constituents through elected local members of parliament – such due process is simply bypassed as so much refuse from a bygone era. Civilised liberal democracy is dispensed with as being irrelevant in an era where people catching cold and flu can be labelled a “public health emergency”. Basic civil and democratic rights which have been won through centuries of struggle against feudalism, and then the middle and late stages of capitalism – have at once become an impediment to the rule of finance capital, i.e., imperialism. Now, with global capitalism in a state of terminal decline, the ruling class has little option but to reverse course on the centuries of enlightened progress it had claimed as its own. At the same time, capitalism was always based on the exploitation of wage labour. Now, the ruling class is compelled to wage a civil war against “its own” people, in order to uphold its “right” to exploitation. “Covid-19” is the code name for this siege.

Rise against vaccine terror

Persecution of the unvaxed appears as wholly irrational to the impartial observer. Yet today’s elite and the politicians who serve them understand they can be swept away by a rising proletariat if they do not now take measures to enfeeble and weaken their nemesis. Vaccine apartheid combined with vaccine mandates thus serve a triple purpose. Firstly, they can be used to terminate the employment of millions. An unemployed worker will then be reduced to working for whatever conditions might be offered elsewhere. Secondly, they can terminate the lives of thousands of workers who may otherwise rise in arms against them, while offering the semi-plausible denial of “we didn’t do it”. Thirdly, they can be used as a form of terrorism to damage the psyche of the proletariat, to intimidate them from fighting back against what they already sense in their bones is a deep injustice.

Marxist philosopher G Novack once wrote that the maintenance of bourgeois democracy requires the presence of four factors: 1. A prosperous economy. 2. An acquiescent working class. 3. A more or less satisfied petty-bourgeois layer and 4. A rational foreign policy.[4]  If one or more of these factors are absent, the entire stabilisation of the system is in jeopardy. Since the second year of lockdowns, one can argue that NONE of these factors are present across Australia, the USA, Europe and elsewhere. This is one reason the ruling elites must provoke a civil war against the working class, in which whole slabs of the middle classes are caught in the crossfire. Vaccine apartheid – a clear case of divide and conquer – is just one of the tools wielded by capital to wage their abominable war.

Russian revolutionary leader L Trotsky noted that in a civil war – much more than in a national war – politics dominates strategy.[5] That is to say, in the American civil war the Union defeated the Confederacy because the anti-slavery cause was just, despite Confederate General Robert E Lee being at least the equal in military and leadership skills in comparison to Union General Ulysses S Grant. In a similar way, the anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine mandate cause is on the side of progressive history and will ultimately triumph provided the masses are prepared to fight for their freedom. QR codes, vaccine passports, facemasks, lockdowns – all these measures must be fought through resistance. While workers can tactically comply where necessary to preserve their employment or to protect their families, all aspects of Covid oppression need to be fought en masse.

Across the globe, millions of people are rising against the utterly irrational and draconian Covid dictates. More often than not, these demonstrations are ignored by the corporate media and censored by Big Tech from forms of social media, despite their size. As critical as these mobilisations are, however, it is not numbers alone which will ensure victory. For this, there needs to be a merging of the freedom movement with the industrial battles now being waged against “No Jab, No Job”. A pro-working class freedom movement can also lay the basis for liberation from capitalist tyranny through the establishment of a new state and a new government – a workers’ republic.

WORKERS  LEAGUE

www.redfireonline.com

E: workersleague@redfireonline.com

---

[1] https://twitter.com/AnnastaciaMP/status/1457863001277485057 (14-11-2021)

[2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-09/qld-coronavirus-covid-restrictions-update-unvaccinated/100605840 (14-11-2021)

[3] https://www.qld.gov.au/health/conditions/health-alerts/coronavirus-covid-19/current-status/queensland-restrictions-80-percent-vaccination (14-11-2021)

[4] https://www.pathfinderpress.com/products/democracy-and-revolution_by-george-novack (14-11-2021)

[5] https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/dewey/session09.htm (14-11-2021)