if you tattoo a union jack on your body you will be immune from the virus

'naomi klein first identified the “shock doctrine” of radical policies that conservatives rolled out during disasters, the right... (is) now appropriating this narrative for its own ends.' 

when this is all over there will of course be a revisionist history of the epidemic that the lockdowns were not needed and were ineffective anyway, that if you tattoo a union jack on your body you will be immune from the virus. 

horsemouth sincerely doubts that coronavirus was deliberately released by anyone, frankly he doubts there are any secret geniuses 'behind' anything, horsemouth is a subscriber to the fuck-up theory of history. the ruling class rule but not in a world of their making. with capitalism there's no-one driving. 

however once the virus is out of the batcave and spreading through the human (and animal, hello mink) populations it becomes clear that lockdown is the first necessary strategy, and lockdown as soon as possible. 

the half of the people who read the quality newspapers start working from home and the newspapers start writing about it as great social change, ecological groups hail it, lifestyle gurus hail it, because a capitalism that had been prevented from taking up the full productive benefits of new technology (because of its own inertia) has now been forced (accelerated) to. 

the frustrated hail any sign of movement. 

much will fall out from this. good news for the software companies. bad news for public transport companies, office rental companies and sandwich shops etc. 

(and of course the other half of the population are either still working away face-to-face (mask-to-mask, shoulder-to-shoulder on the tube trains), or furloughed, or unemployed already. but let's not talk about them.)

and horsemouth actually thinks bad news for the workers working from home. the debate is really with antonio negri's time for revolution - as the time needed to undertake the tasks sprawl beyond the working day, as the capacities needed to undertake the work sprawl beyond just-do-it to empathy (and being your own IT support), as work itself moves into your home, does this really give you more power to resist? (as negri would claim). 

and is it also, as agamben would claim, that we are surrendering too easily to the biopolitical logic of lockdown? 

but in fact this is still rearranging the deckchairs on the titanic. because coronavirus is the warm up bout for the much bigger global warming. one that the political classes (and capitalism) recognise as an existential threat, that they know is coming, and have no faith in their own ability to dodge. efforts to change up to low carbon economies are as likely to be hindered as helped by the pandemic and the task of paying for the lost production and value. indeed more pandemics are probably coming (as the last of the residual natural world is extirpated). 

capitalism (following the pattern of 2008) can but bounce the costs of the pandemic onto the workers, the forcibly contracted social realm of lockdown is the model for the economically contracted social realm of the austerity 'necessary' to pay for it. Or it can take on the global oligarchs. (creatures who have escaped the gravitational field of being human and may as well be lizards). 

just as the MAGA and brexit movements addressed globalisation from the perspective of the workers (and were thus populist ) and were at the same time a challenge to global capitalism but not to capitalism per se, so the anti-vaxxer/ anti-lockdown movement is another chaffing against the biopolitical controls/ retour a normal (but at a lower level) that capitalism has to offer. 

contrary to the expressed teaching of neo-liberalism there is no withering away of the state as all-knowing markets smoothly meet need but instead, as per its secret teaching the state is necessary to create the very conditions for globalisation and neo-liberalism (and in fact be debt holder of last resort). instead the state has had to step up. 

and what a sorry shambles it has been. it is not exactly match fit. 

and yet the state has appeared again on the field of politics (like a mythical beast) and people can see just how much it can do when it chooses. if a furlough why not a universal basic income? 

this winter brexit and flooding and the virus and lockdown. all will return, actual vaccinations and reliable testings will continue to prove strangely elusive. we don't begin to come out of this until early 2022 (though the austerity will kick in mid 2021). 

merry christmas. 

(of course this assumes that the virus does not mutate beyond the reach of the vaccine). 

1977. it's day two of flux therapy. george maciunas talks too much in an effort to distract himself.