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| The nationalist right feeds on fear. Coronavirus is its big chance | |
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| Anxieties about infection have always fed into nationalist neuroses. This pandemic is no different, says London-based writer Samuel Earle | Anxieties about infection have always fed into nationalist neuroses. This pandemic is no different, says London-based writer Samuel Earle |
| The fear of infection has always been intimately related to the fear of foreigners. “KEEP OUT THE GERMS”, the Daily Mail declared in a front page editorial on 3 January 1962, as panic about a smallpox outbreak spread across Britain. By “germs,” the Daily Mail really meant foreigners: the editorial singled out Pakistani migrants who arrived from the “endemic home of the disease”, where there was then a smallpox epidemic, and “walked in [to Britain] without any trouble and were at once a peril to the population”. | The fear of infection has always been intimately related to the fear of foreigners. “KEEP OUT THE GERMS”, the Daily Mail declared in a front page editorial on 3 January 1962, as panic about a smallpox outbreak spread across Britain. By “germs,” the Daily Mail really meant foreigners: the editorial singled out Pakistani migrants who arrived from the “endemic home of the disease”, where there was then a smallpox epidemic, and “walked in [to Britain] without any trouble and were at once a peril to the population”. |
| That spring, the Conservative government passed the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act, finally ending free movement within the Commonwealth and remaining colonies. The health scare surrounding “imported” smallpox – Britain believed that it had long left this disease behind – coincided with Enoch Powell’s stint as minister of health, and helped to nullify parliamentary opposition to the new legislation. As one Labour MP complained, the Conservative government had made border controls “a matter of life and death”, as if immigrants put the health of the nation at stake. If colonial subjects couldn’t be ruled, it seemed, they were neither safe nor welcome. | That spring, the Conservative government passed the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act, finally ending free movement within the Commonwealth and remaining colonies. The health scare surrounding “imported” smallpox – Britain believed that it had long left this disease behind – coincided with Enoch Powell’s stint as minister of health, and helped to nullify parliamentary opposition to the new legislation. As one Labour MP complained, the Conservative government had made border controls “a matter of life and death”, as if immigrants put the health of the nation at stake. If colonial subjects couldn’t be ruled, it seemed, they were neither safe nor welcome. |
| Today, the coronavirus pandemic poses a far more serious threat to national health than the smallpox epidemic, which led to fewer than 100 cases in Britain. Debate rages as to what our post-pandemic world will look like. Socialists, nationalists, internationalists, liberals – all see reason to believe, or hope, that the future belongs to them. For now, however, it’s hard not to think we’re living in a dystopian version of Blue Labour’s Britain: left on the economy, right on culture, a stronger state, tighter borders – we’re all (locked) in this together. | Today, the coronavirus pandemic poses a far more serious threat to national health than the smallpox epidemic, which led to fewer than 100 cases in Britain. Debate rages as to what our post-pandemic world will look like. Socialists, nationalists, internationalists, liberals – all see reason to believe, or hope, that the future belongs to them. For now, however, it’s hard not to think we’re living in a dystopian version of Blue Labour’s Britain: left on the economy, right on culture, a stronger state, tighter borders – we’re all (locked) in this together. |
| In many ways, the pandemic fits most neatly into nationalist narratives: there are few more powerful or reactionary forces in politics than fear, and this is surely the pandemic’s most viral emotion. The outbreak of xenophobia accompanying the fear of infection has been well documented since coronavirus emerged. The disease was first portrayed as a distinctly “Chinese virus”, originating in Wuhan, and people perceived as Asian were subjected to racist attacks around the world. Yet there seems less acknowledgment that this divisive, hostile symptom of the outbreak will likely outlive the disease. In China, for example, where cases of infection have sharply declined, black people are being subjected to random testing and evicted from their homes over anxieties about “imported coronavirus”. Everywhere you look, as Susan Sontag observed in Aids and Its Metaphors, there is the same need “to make a dreaded disease foreign”. | In many ways, the pandemic fits most neatly into nationalist narratives: there are few more powerful or reactionary forces in politics than fear, and this is surely the pandemic’s most viral emotion. The outbreak of xenophobia accompanying the fear of infection has been well documented since coronavirus emerged. The disease was first portrayed as a distinctly “Chinese virus”, originating in Wuhan, and people perceived as Asian were subjected to racist attacks around the world. Yet there seems less acknowledgment that this divisive, hostile symptom of the outbreak will likely outlive the disease. In China, for example, where cases of infection have sharply declined, black people are being subjected to random testing and evicted from their homes over anxieties about “imported coronavirus”. Everywhere you look, as Susan Sontag observed in Aids and Its Metaphors, there is the same need “to make a dreaded disease foreign”. |
| The link between “germophobia” and xenophobia is a recurring theme in politics. The left has not been immune from this trope. In 1958, for example, when tuberculosis was the disease-du-jour, the Trades Union Council warned the Ministry of Labour against Indian and Pakistani immigration, drawing on classic xenophobic anxieties. Key among their concerns were “the poor health of these immigrants and the belief that many of them are carriers of contagious and infectious diseases”. | The link between “germophobia” and xenophobia is a recurring theme in politics. The left has not been immune from this trope. In 1958, for example, when tuberculosis was the disease-du-jour, the Trades Union Council warned the Ministry of Labour against Indian and Pakistani immigration, drawing on classic xenophobic anxieties. Key among their concerns were “the poor health of these immigrants and the belief that many of them are carriers of contagious and infectious diseases”. |
| But a wealth of research suggests that not only is the fear of infection more pronounced on the right, but also – more worryingly – that political attitudes become more conservative and reactionary as fears of infection rise. Indeed, one of the primary causes of “germophobia” is living in cultures that stress hygienic practices (for good reason, that accounts for much of the world right now). A 2011 study conducted at Cornell University suggested that even standing people next to a hand sanitiser dispenser or asking them to wash their hands is enough to make them identify as more conservative. In another 2012 study, researchers from Hong Kong found that people who were shown scenes from Outbreak – a 1995 film set in the midst of an epidemic – became more conformist in their views, wanting to align themselves with a perceived majority. It’s easy to see how, on a societal scale, this could feed into more xenophobia. | But a wealth of research suggests that not only is the fear of infection more pronounced on the right, but also – more worryingly – that political attitudes become more conservative and reactionary as fears of infection rise. Indeed, one of the primary causes of “germophobia” is living in cultures that stress hygienic practices (for good reason, that accounts for much of the world right now). A 2011 study conducted at Cornell University suggested that even standing people next to a hand sanitiser dispenser or asking them to wash their hands is enough to make them identify as more conservative. In another 2012 study, researchers from Hong Kong found that people who were shown scenes from Outbreak – a 1995 film set in the midst of an epidemic – became more conformist in their views, wanting to align themselves with a perceived majority. It’s easy to see how, on a societal scale, this could feed into more xenophobia. |
| At times, such studies about politics and germs stray into the dubious terrain of evolutionary psychology. Rather than acknowledging the political prejudices that could lead one to be hostile towards perceived “outsiders”, a fear of strangers is said to spring “naturally” – apolitically, a-culturally – from the human aversion to infection. But as the anthropologist Mary Douglas showed in her 1966 book Purity and Danger, defining what counts as “dirty” (not to mention who counts as a “stranger”) is a cultural act: it is at least as much about identity formation – defining “us” and “them” – as it is about hygiene. | At times, such studies about politics and germs stray into the dubious terrain of evolutionary psychology. Rather than acknowledging the political prejudices that could lead one to be hostile towards perceived “outsiders”, a fear of strangers is said to spring “naturally” – apolitically, a-culturally – from the human aversion to infection. But as the anthropologist Mary Douglas showed in her 1966 book Purity and Danger, defining what counts as “dirty” (not to mention who counts as a “stranger”) is a cultural act: it is at least as much about identity formation – defining “us” and “them” – as it is about hygiene. |
| The grim frequency with which dirt and disease are associated with “dangerous” outsiders speaks to the emotional force of this narrative. From portraying minorities as “vermin” to casting concerns about immigration as concerns about public health, the political expedience of this conflation has been affirmed again and again. According to a recently published working paper, the Republican party’s weaponisation of the Ebola crisis in 2014 – stoking paranoia and blaming immigration – played an important role in their resounding victory in that year’s midterm elections. | The grim frequency with which dirt and disease are associated with “dangerous” outsiders speaks to the emotional force of this narrative. From portraying minorities as “vermin” to casting concerns about immigration as concerns about public health, the political expedience of this conflation has been affirmed again and again. According to a recently published working paper, the Republican party’s weaponisation of the Ebola crisis in 2014 – stoking paranoia and blaming immigration – played an important role in their resounding victory in that year’s midterm elections. |
| None of this bodes well for our situation, where the fear of infection is already being mobilised to reactionary ends in countries such as Hungary, India, Israel and Algeria. “We are fighting a two-front war,” Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán declared last month, shortly before imposing coronavirus laws that amount to a de facto dictatorship. “One front is called migration and the other one belongs to the coronavirus. There is a logical connection between the two as both spread with movement.” | None of this bodes well for our situation, where the fear of infection is already being mobilised to reactionary ends in countries such as Hungary, India, Israel and Algeria. “We are fighting a two-front war,” Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán declared last month, shortly before imposing coronavirus laws that amount to a de facto dictatorship. “One front is called migration and the other one belongs to the coronavirus. There is a logical connection between the two as both spread with movement.” |
| In the US, Donald Trump – a self-described “germophobe” – plays the same blame game. Even as he downplays the crisis, his popularity in the polls remains strong. To almost every critic of his slow response, he points to how quickly he introduced a travel ban against China, and insists on calling the disease the “Chinese virus” – ignoring that the US is on course to be the worst-affected industrialised country in the world. | In the US, Donald Trump – a self-described “germophobe” – plays the same blame game. Even as he downplays the crisis, his popularity in the polls remains strong. To almost every critic of his slow response, he points to how quickly he introduced a travel ban against China, and insists on calling the disease the “Chinese virus” – ignoring that the US is on course to be the worst-affected industrialised country in the world. |
| Trump’s been here before. On the campaign trail in 2015, he warned of “tremendous infectious disease … pouring across the border”. Now, Trump says simply, “we need a wall more than ever” – he was right all along. The belief that barbed wire, if we can only build it high enough, will “keep out the germs” is an attractive placebo for reactionary fears. And it will take more than the pandemic finally passing for this illusion, and all its toxic consequences, to lift. | Trump’s been here before. On the campaign trail in 2015, he warned of “tremendous infectious disease … pouring across the border”. Now, Trump says simply, “we need a wall more than ever” – he was right all along. The belief that barbed wire, if we can only build it high enough, will “keep out the germs” is an attractive placebo for reactionary fears. And it will take more than the pandemic finally passing for this illusion, and all its toxic consequences, to lift. |
| • Samuel Earle is a writer based in London | • Samuel Earle is a writer based in London |