“He Had Won the Victory Over Himself. He Loved the Lockdown.”

We’re publishing an original piece tonight by Dr Sinéad Murphy, an Associate Researcher in Philosophy at Newcastle University, about why it is the public have put up so little resistance to lockdowns. She was prompted to wonder about this by recent pieces on why the Conservatives did so well in last week’s election, from Freddie Sayers’s piece in UnHerd attributing it to Stockholm Syndrome to Noah Carl’s piece in Lockdown Sceptics discussing status quo bias. Dr Murphy thinks it is something more sinister – and deeper – than that.

In an essay from 25 years ago on contemporary conditions of work, the Italian philosopher Paulo Virno identified the phenomenon of uprooting as increasingly operative in societies like his own. Not a once-off uprooting, such as moving from one job or career to another, but an unending process of uprooting, the effect of precarious employment and its continual auditing, in which workers must always be ready to move onwards or upwards and to cultivate the commensurate skills of adaptability and virtuosic sociability.

Most pertinent in Virno’s analysis is the alliance it indicated between this endless uprooting and a certain brand of gullibility. The erosion of stability gives rise to a hyperbolic and free-floating feeling of belonging, even though occasions for it are slight or implausible.

“The impossibility of securing ourselves within any durable context,” Virno wrote, “disproportionately increases our adherence to the most fragile instances of the here and now… to every present order, to all rules, to all games.”

Does the phenomenon of uprooting that Virno described apply to our situation now? Does it explain the curious adherence of so many in our society to the present Covid order and to those who dictate it, no matter how fragile it, and they, have become?

Worth reading in full.

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CovidiousAlbion
4 years ago

we find ourselves uprooted even from our own body” – I thought that was a reference to the coerced injections, as I first read it.

CovidiousAlbion
4 years ago

Still, “Hence our enthusiasm for the masking, the clapping, the Tik Tok dancing, the taking the knee, the jabbing” is pretty healthy scepticism, for ATL.

steve
4 years ago

Next Lockdown July 2021…… Uk Gov report stating that those they conned into getting jabbed are going to be the ones MOST LIKEY TO DIE in the next wave….. Starting July Section 32. “The resurgence in both hospitalisations and deaths is dominated by those that have received two doses of the vaccine, comprising around 60% and 70% of the wave respectively. This can be attributed to the high levels of uptake in the most at-risk age groups, such that immunisation failures account for more serious illness than unvaccinated individuals.” ******* Let’s see how the CV cultists can get their Escher shaped brains around this one and blame the Vid. If the Jabs work then why will they be the most likely to die? I love the part of this sentence that states “……can be attributed to the high levels of uptake in the most at-risk age groups, such that immunisation failures …..” wtf! So many Questions. 1 – I guess they are not 95% effective 2 – even if they are zero % effective, why are they more likely to die? 3 – when will Toby Y admit he has been played. The answer to those questions is obvious to… Read more »

Noumenon
4 years ago
Reply to  steve

“Stock up, bend down and brace yourself for the next part of the plan.”

What? Buttock injections?

steve
4 years ago
Reply to  Noumenon

They will oblige what ever your preference

“China has made anal COVID-19 swabs mandatory for all foreign travelers arriving in the country, a report said Wednesday.

The government has claimed that such tests provide a higher degree of accuracy than other screening methods for the virus….”

https://nypost.com/2021/03/03/china-makes-covid-19-anal-swabs-mandatory-for-foreigners/

tom171uk
4 years ago
Reply to  steve

So they really are buggering their population!!!

Matt Dalby
Matt Dalby
4 years ago
Reply to  steve

Fortunately the claims are based on modelling, so are highly likely to be completely wrong, as per every other model of Covid deaths and infections. It seems like the modellers (or should that be muddlers) still don’t incorperate seasonality or natural immunity so their predictions are utter rubbish.

steve
4 years ago
Reply to  Matt Dalby

Of course the models are total bs. Have been since Jan last year.

The point is this model, like the last and the next Model, simply builds the “Wave” narrative into people heads so when the deaths begin from whatever is in these jabs, it is blamed on the Vid and the sheep simply believe it.

baboon
4 years ago
Reply to  steve

Next Lockdown July 2021……

Uk Gov report stating that those they conned into getting jabbed are going to be the ones MOST LIKEY TO DIE in the next wave…..

My question is, why do they think a respiratory disease is going to start a “third wave” in the summer? There’s something extremely weird going on with that SPI-M-O document.

peyrole
peyrole
4 years ago
Reply to  baboon

With the RT-PCR test you can manufacture a ‘wave’ anytime you want. Want one in July sir, no problem, set the CT at say 45 and off we go doing mass testing for that new Indian variant in Bradford, Leeds, Oldham etc etc . Gosh time for new regional lockdowns etc. Job done.

B.F.Finlayson
4 years ago

The people of Hartlepool – one of the poorest towns in the country and crushed by Government Covid policies – not only voted in a Tory member of parliament for the first time in history but suffered a 30-feet-high effigy of Boris Johnson to be inflated in celebration on their pier. So what? The North has a long tradition of voting in token Tories (or Independents such as ex-Labour MP Eddie Milne in Blyth) to oust all too frequent Labour complacency and/or corruption. The Tories fielded a candidate that people could relate to, Labour arrogantly tried to foist a former MP (and someone from its burgeoning middle class ranks of doctors, teachers and lawyers) onto the town thinking it would be a safe bet. It is an old, old story. Labour voters, indeed any voters, do NOT like being taken for granted, as the wholly inept and ineffective Keir Starmer cabal is beginning to find out. This is NOT Stockholm Syndrome, this is openly and effectively sticking two fingers at the middle class elites running the parties and by extension the country. Labour or Tory – it doesn’t matter, they have been 100% in cahoots since Starmer and his pro-government… Read more »

ebygum
4 years ago
Reply to  B.F.Finlayson

I’m not an ‘expert’ in anything, but I do know that people very rarely stray from the two-party line when voting. I said this at the time of the election that when people are unsure and feeling as though their lives are in a state of flux they stick with what they know, as in better the devil you know, as you say.
I also agree that for years now voting has been mainly based on the ‘least bad’ options.
It is a sign of how truly low Labour’s star has fallen.

Lucan Grey
4 years ago
Reply to  ebygum

There’s a reason for that.

The British constitution and the way it is constructed *requires* two parties. What that means is that coalitions are required to be built *before* elections, not afterwards. That way the voters knows exactly what they will be getting, and that some change is likely to happen because of the power of the whip.

Proportional systems favour the status quo (favoured by business) and the professional politician who gets to decide from the list of things people have voted for what their favourite topic is. Hence we got a pointless referendum on PR after the 2010 (which the politicians wanted) rather than the abolition of student fees (which is what the voters wanted).

Those parties and their supporters that refuse to conform to this two grand coalition arrangement are politely ignored by our system. They rarely realise why they are being ignored, which is that they and their supporters failed to compromise.

It’s when the two main coalitions fail to offer competing visions that the British system starts to have problems.

B.F.Finlayson
4 years ago
Reply to  Lucan Grey

Hence we got a pointless referendum on PR

No we didn’t, we got a pointless referendum on the equally pointless Alternative Vote (AV) system in 2011. AV bore no resemblance to the kind of ‘system changing’ form of PR that could break the two party stranglehold – and moreover had been promised for decades by the LibDems.
The compromise AV proposal (being effectively ‘fptp+’) was largely because (as in all things) Clegg caved in to Cameron, and hoped the voters wouldn’t notice. But voters did notice, and voted accordingly.

peyrole
peyrole
4 years ago
Reply to  B.F.Finlayson

I understand what you are saying regarding the 2 party politics. But I think you are doing the article a disservice by concentrating on that aspect. The LDS site should not go in for political psyop which is how the article is introduced.
The article though expands into some interesting areas that attempt to explain the broader acceptance, even embracing of the totalitarianism visited on societies world wide.

baboon
4 years ago

It’s a cult. I could see it was turning into a cult with the appalling “clap for the NHS” BS and associated social shaming of anyone not participating. We now have a brainwashed population with no critical thinking skills going deeper and deeper into the delusions. It starts off with good intentions, but before you know it you’re shunning the non believers, and then you are willingly drinking poisoned Kool Aid. Let’s take a look: I noted previously that even though cults should be defined from a theological point of view, we can nevertheless gain valuable insights into certain aspects of the cultic mentality from sociology. . . .[1] Authoritarian Leadership[2] Exclusivism – Cults often believe that they alone have the truth. The cult views itself as the single means of salvation on earth; to leave the group is to endanger one’s soul. .[3] Isolationism[4] Opposition to Independent Thinking[5] Fear of Being “Disfellowshiped”[6] Threats of Satanic Attack – Finally, some cults use fear and intimidation to keep members in line. Members may be told that something awful will happen to them should they choose to leave the group. Others may be told that Satan will attack them and may even… Read more »

Annie
4 years ago
Reply to  baboon

The last one does apply. If they leave the group, the anti-vaxxers will attack them, they will fail to get the holy snake oil, and they will die. Satan is us, friends, in the non-mind of a covvizombie.

DanClarke
DanClarke
4 years ago
Reply to  baboon

The subliminal messages began years ago, remember the UK olympics and the opening ceremony dedicated to the NHS, also the ‘unfriending’ on social media, many were primed for this, the BIT unit weren’t being paid for nothing all of these years

Milo
Milo
4 years ago
Reply to  DanClarke

Oh yes – that came to mind the other day – at the time, given the No Help Service had done nothing for me over many years, I couldn’t understand why it was the subject of such worship at the olympics. If only I had known then what that schmaltz fest was going to morph into.

Annie
4 years ago

C S Lewis got it right as usual. See That Hideous Strength. If you pervert science, divorce it utterly from morality and link it to a godless lust for power, science becomes satanism.

BJs Brain is Missing
4 years ago

Ordo Ab Chao?

chas cowie
chas cowie
4 years ago

Another brilliant piece by Dr Murphy. I always enjoy her articles.

peyrole
peyrole
4 years ago

‘More than this, the Conservative Party, under whose leadership we continue to endure these inhuman restrictions, received a rallying endorsement in recent elections.’
Can the LDS please stop indulging in its own political psyop!
The Tories did not get a rallying endorsement. The Labour vote collapsed but did not swing to the Tories, they all stayed at home. The loser was democracy, now that IS worth writing about, as by default the pig leader tells everyone he is more loved than before. Its not true, so please don’t perpetuate the lie here.

TheFascistCoronaFraud
TheFascistCoronaFraud
4 years ago

Vangelis O. Papathanassiou – We Were All Uprooted
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0taO3Bz8Vys

We were all uprooted
The earth was stolen from beneath our feet
We became a Diaspora
An unnamed nation of bastards
We channeled our roots to the pulse of light
deep within the galaxies of our mind
Our breath was the sky
Our dreams were water
We claimed the wilderness
We recognized one another