The Monkeypox Left?

05-08-2022: Could it be happening? Is it possible that the self-described left parties which fell hook, line and sinker for the Covid fraud would follow this by embracing the folly of Monkeypox as the next “pandemic”? Early signs are not encouraging. As we have emphasised previously, whether or not the SARS-CoV-2 virus exists and is pathogenic, Covid never reached anything resembling a pandemic, but was rather a political cover for an attempted re-set of global capitalism at the expense of the working class and whole swathes of small businesses. It was in practice a civil war waged by the wealthiest ruling classes in history against workers and the oppressed.[1] Elite politicians and a compliant media, on behalf of mega-billionaires, sold a bogus narrative that people were now bearers of life-threatening pathogens which meant that we had to submit to being continuously tested, drugged, covered up and controlled.[2] The fact that the politicians themselves were exempt from the dangerous mRNA injections we were told was “the only way out of the pandemic” – in itself gave the game away. Millions of workers, meanwhile, were terminated for refusing to endanger their health by taking the potentially deadly vaccines, and the “unvaccinated” were condemned as virtual heretics.

Monkeypox “emergency”

Almost all self-confessed “socialist” parties vigorously endorsed and enforced Covid hysteria, irrespective of previously accepted scientific doctrines. Yet, it did not take long for at least one party of the “Covid left” to take a step into the new realm of a “Monkeypox left”. No sooner had the World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-General declared Monkeypox a ”public health emergency of international concern”[3], the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) leapt into action by fantastically declaring that earlier isolation and testing could have prevented the “outbreak”. This while acknowledging that the WHO Director-General also admitted that the supposed Monkeypox virus is concentrated amongst men who have sex with men, especially those with multiple partners.[4] That is to say, if we stretch the bounds of credibility far enough, Monkeypox is a sexually transmitted disease, which cannot justify society wide lockdowns and the shutdown of whole economic sectors. Yet nothing is beyond rationality in the name of “public health” as far as the SEP is concerned. Last week, the SEP condemned Australian schools for NOT imposing facemasks on children allegedly to protect against Covid.[5] This is despite any number of medical professionals advising against mandatory masking, for adverse effects such as potentially permanent neurological damage to children through oxygen deprivation.[6]

Socialist Alternative (SAlt), who organised counter-demonstrations against anti-vaccine mandate rallies under the guise of their front group Campaign Against Racism and Fascism (!)[7], were barely a step behind the SEP in their condemnation of Australian politicians for lifting facemask mandates.[8] Once again, SAlt are demanding more “Covid” restrictions and mandates than even the most conservative capitalist politicians are prepared to implement. According to SAlt, who are arguably the most vocal in proclaiming themselves “Marxist”, lockdowns, border closures, facemask mandates, and vaccine mandates where the Big Pharma manufacturers are legally indemnified[9] – are all just public health measures! Workers losing their jobs, the loss of freedom of movement, being locked down in your house (if you have one – just ask the homeless) by the armed force of the state – all of these and more are imposed in the interests of your health – or so SAlt would have us believe.

If there was one party on the Australian left which preached against overt alliances between labour and political representatives of capital, it was the Trotskyist Platform (TP). Yet all of their years-long pulpit pounding on this principle vanished overnight with the appearance of Covid. As soon as lockdowns became a part of an unfortunately common vocabulary, TP instead turned against those who even suggested that the openly bourgeois Labor, Liberal and Green politicians might not be telling the truth about Covid. Workers who suspected that enforced lockdowns and vaccine mandates might actually be part of an ulterior motive by the elite classes were all of a sudden “far-right” – which must have been news to them. So much does TP embrace the ruling class Covid ideology, they now declare that 2022 has been the worst year of the pandemic, and “hundreds of thousands” are suffering from Long Covid !![10] At the very least, these “Trotskyists” take their own name deeply in vain.

Covid is “worse than ever” ?

The Australian Stalinist parties don’t even blush at aligning with their supposedly mortal “Trotskyist” adversaries on Covid repression. At the end of May, the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) brazenly declared that Covid is currently “worse than ever”, with 40 people allegedly dying per day. No sources for such dramatic statements are provided, as with the statement that those who do not or cannot get vaccinated have a much higher rate of hospitalisation !![11] The CPA – barely social-democrats at the best of times – have used Covid to outflank the Australian government from the right. Fred Paterson, the only Communist ever elected to an Australian parliament[12], must be spinning in his grave. Even though Paterson was a member of the original CPA (which dissolved in 1991), he didn’t devote his life of struggle to a party which joins hands with the most powerful enemies of working people at the mere mention of virus. When Paterson was first elected in 1944, Communists were made of sterner stuff.

The Australian Communist Party (ACP), a CPA split from 2019, also trash working-class history while claiming to uphold it. For the first year or so of Covid, the ACP remained silent, seemingly trying to work out their position. But when their position became known, they took the trophy for the most outrageous claim of all. The ACP maintain that the Howard Springs Covid detention centre has been “incredibly successful in the fight against Covid-19” !![13] They go on to bemoan the Federal Government and other state governments for being too slow in following the lead of the Northern Territory. We are not making this up. The ACP, who wave banners bearing the hammer and sickle, urge workers to “serve their community” and trumpet their allegiance to “Marxism-Leninism”, all but demand the capitalist state build and operate…concentration camps! This is sheer mockery of socialism.

The Socialist Alliance (SAll) are savvy enough to recognise that society-wide Covid lockdowns are almost universally reviled, so they covered their backing for them by deceitfully referring to them as “shutdowns”.[14] Yet like their Covid left brethren, they act as a right-wing pressure group on the government, by demanding a state led education campaign about Covid, which would supposedly increase the take up of the third and fourth booster shots.[15] These “revolutionary socialists” seem to be auditioning for positions as key advisors to capitalist politicians. Meanwhile, they appear oblivious to mounting reports of injuries and deaths occurring after the Covid injections,[16] of which it is estimated only 10% or less are ever recorded. This is to say nothing of the windfall profits[17] for Big Pharma as a result of Covid vaccine mandates imposed by Western governments. Seemingly for SAll, mega-billionaire corporations are our allies if they are hip to the “fight against Covid” !!

Severing the line of Marxist continuity

The Spartacist League (SL) and their several off-shoots, claim the line of revolutionary continuity passed down from Leon Trotsky to James P Cannon to the present day. One can argue if this was maintained until the 21^st century, but we would suggest that their capitulation on Covid leaves all such claims to Marxist continuity in shreds. To their partial credit, the SL did reverse their endorsement of Covid lockdowns after around 12 months.[18] Yet even here, the SL still swallowed corporate propaganda about a “pandemic” and the “need” for vaccinations. This led to one of the most contradictory positions in left history. The SL declared that they were in favour of vaccine mandates, but supposedly opposed them when used as a reason for the termination of employment.[19] The millions of workers who were terminated for refusing a Covid shot – 99.9% of whom are probably not Marxists – could have told them that “Covid” was being used as a threadbare excuse for mass layoffs.

Marxist economics 101 must have been placed in the bottom drawer by the Covid left. They were seemingly unable to imagine that the capitalist class may actually profit from a shutdown of production, despite thousands of examples of employers locking out workers from their enterprises in order to lower the cost of labour power, i.e., wages. Large employers can easily sustain six or 12 months, or even a couple of years, out of business. Whereas obviously workers can barely go without at least a monthly or fortnightly income. Indeed, Covid was predominantly about capitalism’s economic crisis.

The award for the most misanthropic Covid position must surely go the Internationalist Group (IG). Even their SL progenitors backed the epic Canadian truckers’ protest against vaccine mandates, but the IG labelled them “ultra-rightists and fascists”. Yet worse was to come. Through their teachers’ front organisation, the Class Struggle Education Workers (CSEW), the IG defiantly demanded that there should be NO religious exemptions to Covid vaccine mandates![20] While it is the case that Marxists are generally atheist, at the same time revolutionists are opposed to giving the slightest offence to those workers who currently hold religious beliefs. Forcing workers to take a potentially deadly vaccine which is against their deeply held views in the first place – is the IG asking to be lynched in the streets?

The SL’s sister “Bolshevik” twins broke new records in the subsuming of the Covid narrative deployed by the highest imperialist apparatchiks. The International Bolshevik Tendency (IBT) claimed that the very capitalist governments who imposed lockdowns did so as part of a mad scramble to contain the virus! Their “revolutionary” demands included unlimited sick leave, and free testing of all workers.[21] This is not just drinking Covid Kool-Aid, this is quaffing entirely bourgeois Covid lies wholesale. The Bolshevik Tendency (BT) implied that the major sin of the leaders of global capitalism was that they were incapable of responding to the “Covid-19 outbreak” in a rational and humane fashion, and subsequently workers are concerned about their response to future pandemics.[22] One wonders how the BT would suggest the termination of employment, being locked in your house for weeks or months on end, being terrorised by police and military on the streets, and having forced medication injected on pain of being cut off from society – could be done rationally and humanely!

For a genuine Left

Covid repression was and is carried out by an unholy coalition of imperialists, billionaires, politicians and peak Trade Union bureaucrats while being served by the lockdown/Covid/Monkeypox “left”. As some have commented, the lockdown/Covid/Monkeypox left rages against one half of the ruling class, while insisting that the other half will save us from them. Far from acting as anything which might be described as left, much less socialist, the lockdown/Covid/Monkeypox left became lickspittle conservative court jesters at best – and willing gendarmes for a hideous bio-fascist state at worst. Despite many of them being able to quote Marx by rote, at the first sign of a serious capitalist crisis they joined hands with the “liberal world order” and effectively declared fealty to imperialism itself. While it is true that the strongest ally of the ruling class during Covid was the traitorous Union bureaucracy, the lockdown/Covid/Monkeypox left exposed themselves as mere social democrats.

These charlatans can hardly be considered “left”. Despite the working class being left without leadership at a crucial time, millions heroically fought lockdowns and Covid nonsense, many as part of a freedom movement. “Pandemic” tyranny was and is primarily about the crisis of the capitalist mode of production, and the inability of its Western sectors to compete with the vast socialistic economy of the Chinese mainland, the military power of Russia and their non-imperialist allies. Despite the Chinese and Russian governments enforcing Covid diktats, they still remain the regime change targets of imperialism. This would require world war, which Washington and Brussels are currently working their way towards. NATO’s proxy war on Russia via Ukraine, and now Washington’s proxy war on China via Taiwan, are but an extension of the same crisis which brought Covid into existence.

Workers should not fear an imperialism which has to resort to medical fascism or damaging wars in a desperate attempt to save itself. This merely indicates the final stages of its decline. Provided the working class can break politically from all forms of fake leftism, and forge genuine parties based on the authentic Marxism of Lenin and Trotsky, millions of labouring people would be prepared to put an end to capitalist chaos and blaze a path towards a just, egalitarian and socialist new beginning.

WORKERS LEAGUE

www.redfireonine.com

E:workersleague@redfireonline.com

[1] https://redfireonline.com/2022/05/07/covid-and-the-blurred-line-between-democracy-and-fascism/ (02-08-2022)

[2] https://notrickszone.com/2020/10/04/international-lawyer-takes-aim-at-big-pharma-big-tech-covid-lockdown-crime-against-humanity/ (02-08-2022)

[3] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/monkeypox-who-international-public-health-emergency-rcna39083 (02-08-2022)

[4] www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/07/25/bcgm-j25.html (02-08-2022)

[5] www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/07/30/amqm-j30.html (02-08-2022)

[6] https://www.sott.net/article/442455-German-Neurologist-Warns-Against-Wearing-Facemasks-Oxygen-Deprivation-Causes-Permanent-Neurological-Damage# (02-08-2022)

[7] https://www.carf.melbourne/news/2021-10/protest-oppose-anti-vax-far-right (02-08-2022)

[8] www.redflag.org.au/article/labors-pandemic (02-08-2022)

[9] https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/leaked-document-terms-pfizers-international-vaccine-agreements/ (02-08-2022)