Real-Left

15 March 2021
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The scarcity of neoliberalism: A Colombian perspective on Covid policies

It was early on a sunny morning in April 2020 when I entered the store at the entrance of the compound where I used to live, located in a working-class neighbourhood in Bogota, to buy arepas (maize preparations) for my breakfast. As soon as I entered the old man who runs the store, certainly a migrant from a rural area judging by his accent, asked me behind his mask, ‘so, Paolita, how do you see the situation?’ To which I replied, ‘well Abelardo, we humans created this disaster, we now need to face it’.

12 March 2021
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Mass civil disobedience needed to fight 1% NHS pay rise

Although it his now rumoured that nurses will get 2%, the pay offer proves once and for all that the government isn’t locking us down to protect the NHS – it is using support for the NHS to justify an assault on workers’ rights. In reply, NHS workers should join the public in mass civil disobedience.

2 March 2021
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Comrades, Roll up your Sleeves!

There is a nationwide stampede to get the covid jag. Critical voices are routinely blocked by fact checkers on the net. Any criticism is denounced as being from anti-vax conspiracy theorists. Those who opposing mass vaccination or show vaccine hesitancy are abused for being selfish or dangerous. The government are pushing forward with the idea of a vaccination passport, after months of denying they intended to introduce one. The pro-vaccine propaganda is reaching a crescendo.

19 February 2021
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Bare Life: Biopolitics and Covid Capitalism

For the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, this state of affairs is not an aberration or a mistake, but simply the extreme manifestation of the West’s direction of travel since its very beginning in Greek and Roman city-states. Agamben was the first to call out the cruelty and absurdity of lockdown as a response to coronavirus.

18 February 2021
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Lockdown Zealotry on the Liberal Left: A Virtue Signalling Crusade

As a lockdown sceptic, over the last few months I have experienced the kind of treatment at the hands of my lockdown lefty ‘friends’ they previously reserved for online rants at the alt-right Twitterati. As I shared these upsetting experiences it became clear that others had suffered the same kind of abuse from people they had previously considered ‘comrades’. This led to my interest in the psychology driving the left lockdowners’ bullying of socialist lockdown sceptics and widespread denial of debate.