There were so many. The regime-battered defiers of Iran. The countrymen, young and old, Muslim and Christian, who filled Martyr’s Square in Lebanon. The Algerian’s who forced an ancient dictator to step down. The youth of Hong Kong and their fight against China. The Gilets Jaunes who stormed the streets of France. The Catalonians who called for a separation from Spain. The poor and angry of Chile. Iraqis, Bolivians, and Sudanese, all calling for change. And let’s not forget those who protested in real space and cyberspace, against environmental destruction, against racism and neo-Nazism, against Trump…
And then they all went….silent.
The Coronavirus, or Covid-19, appeared in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, when many of the aforementioned protests were still going strong. The novel virus lead to lockdowns across China before spreading out across the world. One by one, countries have succumbed to closing borders and locking up their people in a bid to slow down the rate of people infected. Without having to issue any politically-tinged edict, governments democratic and despotic alike were able to shut down the opposition and literally imprison people, albeit in their own homes.
Naturally, the protesting could have moved to the Internet, but there remains a difference between massive crowds blocking a Parliament building versus masses of Tweets and Facebook posts (although the Internet has certainly facilitated protests, such as Egypt’s January 25th Revolution, in the past). Furthermore, the Coronavirus has given everyone something even bigger to talk about. It is something that trumps the next political election, the next tax hike, the next obscenely backwards law…. in short, it is a distraction from everything else, it is something no one can ignore because it has upended the very way each and every one of us lives.
Is Covid-19 a conspiracy, the brainchild of world leaders who got together and agreed to launch a pandemic in order to send protesters home? I am not a conspiracy believer. The idea that world leaders agreed to such a deadly disaster (with so many repercussions beyond the death of innocent people) is farfetched and sounds like a dystopian novel. The theory that either the United States or Chinese government set off a bioweapon (government members of both countries have since made accusations of this sort) seems far more plausible.
Both countries could benefit from the pandemic. If the US set off the virus, they could leverage accusations against China to deepen the increasingly turbulent relations between both nations (although why we would want to destroy relations with China is beyond me, given that they manufacture everything). The US could use the Coronavirus as a distraction from all sort of political mischief (especially if you want to believe that Trump is a Russian puppet), particularly as the Presidential election looms on the horizon. Given the increasingly delayed, slow and incompetent response by the Federal Government and the fact that Republican senators dumped their stocks while reassuring the public that everything was fine, well…. I wouldn’t be surprised at all.
As for China? Not only can they wreak havoc on the world with their chokehold on manufacturing, they have very conveniently shut up the protesters in Hong Kong, who were brave enough to stand up to the authoritarian Chinese government. The Hong Kong protests were a major thorn in China’s side: take real military action, and the world would (hopefully) protest; give in to their demands, however, and set a precedent that the Communist government can be beat. If one wants to believe the conspiracy theory, setting off Covid-19 would also silence those critiquing China’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims (not that anyone seemed to care/protest anyway) and, most importantly, it would weaken the US, which is China’s only real rival on the world stage.
If we want to play up the conspiracy theory, then we could make the argument that it could potentially backfire in the face of corrupt governments everywhere. Why? The worldwide pandemic has highlighted the gross incompetence of governments everywhere in responding to unprecedented crisis, one that they all literally sat back and watched and did nothing to prepare for. Coronavirus has highlighted the need for universal healthcare (US), the need to clamp down on religious zeal in order to save lives (Iran), the need for stronger, modernized healthcare systems (Italy, France). It has highlighted the need for strong social protections, for politicians that care about citizens rather than their pockets, for governments to divert resources to the areas that matter (such as health) rather than the military. It has also highlighted the overall uselessness of the United Nations in bringing the world together (I particularly liked the videos posted by one of UNICEF’s leaders about Covid-19 in which the woman appeared first in a super pricey Moncler jacket and then in a less-pricey-but-still-not cheap Patagonia vest).
The pandemic of Covid-19 has highlighted the need for social solidarity, for an end to racism and xenophobia, for an end to self-centeredness. In suffering through mortal danger, quarantine, job uncertainty, food insecurity and fear, it will allow us to feel the everyday blight suffered by those in Gaza and Palestine, in Syria, in Afghanistan and Iraq. If anything good will come out of this terrifying, apocalyptic mess, it is that we as humans need to care for one another and stop being so greedy.
As surely as spring is here, I think the protests will blossom again. Scarred and renewed, people will walk out of their houses and take to the streets to denounce how their respective governments handled the pandemic. They will call on their governments to make changes so that we will never again find ourselves in this situation. The protests might be dormant now, but they will erupt again, and like this damned Coronavirus, they will spread like wildfire and call for a better, fairer, safer world.
S-L-M