Even if many people still don't want to admit it: the covid crisis is over. All over Europe, the various measures that have been in place for the past two years are being scaled back or completely abolished, so that many countries, such as Great Britain and Denmark, have returned to a completely normal situation. Only in France, Germany and Austria, the masks are still on - but it is probably only a matter of time before the totally surreal regulations are gradually withdrawn and a certain normality finally sets in. And even if, for the time being, some people are still convinced by the somewhat cheap argument of preparing for new, “deadly” mutations expected for autumn and winter, in the long run, France and Germany will not be able to defend themselves against the ever-increasing pressure from within, nor against comparison with the outside world. What we are seeing now is a last gasp by a few politicians, journalists and experts who want to save face at the expense of society as a whole, to enjoy their usurped emergency powers for a while longer and to do a few last favours to the various lobbies they work for, before the lucrative source of covid-money stops flowing.
It is therefore high time to learn the first lessons from the last two years.
The first lesson concerns science. Rarely have so-called "experts" made such a fool of themselves as in the last two years, when whole armies of "virologists" and public health researchers, either real or declared such by the media, have proven their obvious inability to discuss objectively and without prejudice divergent positions and, if possible, to refute them, instead of just discrediting them with ultimately political arguments. The dangerous closeness between experts and political elite, which has formed a new power bloc, is also of great concern, since it has, on the one hand, replaced democratic opinion-forming with a set of so-called “no alternative” measures and, on the other hand, abandoned unprejudiced research in favour of the a posteriori approval of political positions. As a result of this crisis, we can see that a growing part of the population has developed a deep distrust of this famous, supposedly infallible and apolitical “science”, whose analyses and counsels curiously diverge diametrically not only from one country to another but even within the same research institute, while everywhere claiming absolute validity and disqualifying all those who question their respective claims as obscurantist “covid deniers”. The consequences of this loss of confidence in the academic world will undoubtedly be felt for the time to come, when we will probably have to face much more serious crises.
The second lesson is that any attentive and critical observer will meanwhile have lost what little respect he or she had left for the mass media, which have turned into the unwilling auxiliaries of a policy that may be in constant flux, but expects unquestioning obedience at all times, and which, with their excessive polemics against all those who do not share their opinion, are largely responsible for the massive polarisation of our society. It has undoubtedly become clear, even to a mass audience, that it will not be possible to rebuild any kind of genuine national or European solidarity without radically questioning the way the media currently operate - not only by re-examining the growing dependence of the private media on state subsidies and politicised advertising, but also by finally drawing the consequences of the public media's manifest inability to fulfil its true mission of political neutrality. It is also hard to ignore the fact that not only the mainstream media, but also social media, by using dubious fact-checking, manipulated algorithms and ruthless censorship, have enthusiastically dipped into the very arsenal of totalitarian manipulation that Europe has prided itself on overcoming for decades.
A third lesson of the crisis is the dangerous readiness of the political establishment to massively restrict citizens' freedoms and dismantle the rule of law without much debate, or even the slightest perception of what is at stake, not only in the phase of legitimate concern that we experienced in the first months of the pandemic, but far beyond. Anyone who is prepared, without democratic debate or even consultation of parliament, to subject fundamental rights such as freedom of assembly, freedom of expression or freedom of the press to massive restrictions and to stigmatise any opponent of the government's policy of the moment as an "enemy of democracy" and subject them to multiple repressions, has probably not understood much about the intellectual foundations of a liberal and democratic system. The frightening brutality and speed with which ideological mechanisms that have not been known since the end of totalitarianism have become acceptable again bodes ill for the crises of the future, whether they are real (such as the coming economic crisis or the confrontation with emerging China) or imaginary (such as the climate crisis, the fight against the “right” or the implementation of the most diverse social quotas). The fact that politics can no longer be trusted, not only with regard to one or another secondary ideological preference, but also with regard to fundamental issues such as the preservation of bodily integrity, freedom of expression or property, has probably been a traumatic experience for many people and should permanently dissuade them from participating in politics with any degree of trust.
A fourth lesson is the growing influence of transhumanism, rooted partly in the elitist thinking of liberalism, and partly in the socio-constructivist approach of the left. Long considered a mere dystopian delusion, it has become, in a few months, the ultimate foundation for political action in the Western world. The idea that suffering and death are not constitutive elements of life, but accidents to be avoided at all costs; the replacement of the divine image of man by his fundamental deficiency; the dream of unlimited perfectibility of the body; the lack of scruples in transforming entire nations into laboratories for experimentation; the dangerous subjection of the medical system to a logic increasingly oriented towards profit; the mechanistic reduction of health to a series of processes that can all be controlled by artificial means and whose inevitable side effects end up making the whole organism dependent on foreign substances; in short, the reduction of man to his body alone and thus, of course, the inability to understand transcendent notions such as freedom, honour, dignity or faith, have become ubiquitous, and it is unlikely that they will voluntarily free us from their grip. It is therefore more than urgent to recognise the dangers of these thoughts in all their importance and closing ourselves off to them fundamentally.
A fifth and final point: it is frightening to see how enthusiastically not only the elites, but also quite “normal” people, who could not profit immediately, have joined the collective hunt for the new “outsiders” – so-called “covid-deniers” or “anti-vaxxers”. Left to their own devices by the media, politicians and experts, these alleged “minorities” or “fringes” (often more than half the population) were presented as dangerous and corrosive parasites, discriminated against and dehumanised, to the applause of the masses, who saw them not only as potential dangers to their own health, but also as fundamental enemies who deserved neither civil and human rights nor respect from others. It is significant that in Germany at least, the dehumanisation of the so-called “covidiots” has been combined with their systematic association with the political “right”, constructed at great expense by the media and politics, in order to create a distorted, almost sub-human image of the ultimate enemy of our supposedly open society. It is becoming increasingly clear where the social fault lines of the future will lie and what behaviours, long thought to be bygone, many of our fellow humans willingly allow themselves to be convinced of, when impunity, gratuitousness and sadism are combined with the fight for the so-called “common good”.
Once the covid pandemic completely fizzles out and most liberticidal measures are gradually withdrawn, the Western world will gain a brief, though perhaps final, respite. What, in retrospect, looks like a rehearsal for the systematic implementation of an authoritarian and transhumanist dystopia will not remain an isolated chapter in our recent history: rather, it is to be expected that the collective reflexes and policy bundles now well established may become the easily reactivated basis for further attempts to transform and enslave our society. It is highly doubtful that an internal cleansing of the Western world can be undertaken in the short time remaining; it is more likely to be a last respite before the next crisis, whether imposed by external circumstances or consciously provoked by freely chosen ideological objectives, and thus the advent of the seemingly inescapable “Great Reset”.
We must therefore make good use of this time and deepen the groundwork that can guarantee the survival of the fundamental values of our civilisation, even under incomparably less favourable conditions. In the last months of the Second World War, many states prepared themselves to keep their traditional identity alive even under the approaching communist regime by creating, at great sacrifice, important networks that were able to exert a beneficial effect for more than two generations and undertake that internal erosion of the dictatorship without which its overthrow would probably not have been possible. It is time to take up the great classics of internal resistance and to put their teachings into practice, as long as those who do not want to submit to external coercion can still enjoy some remnants of traditional freedom.
