Boris Johnsons COVID-19’s message builds on a long-established culture of individualism – Byline Times

Jon Bailes explores why the government may have changed its Coronavirus messaging to “Stay alert” and how it represents the principles of a culture in which social problems are blamed on perceived individual failures.

It is not surprising that the Boris Johnsons government is trying to divert responsibility for its response to the public from the coronavirus.

Dodging responsibility is a major feature of right-wing populism, now succinctly clarified by US President Donald Trump when he said in response to a discussion of COVID-19 test failures: “I take no responsibility at all . “

But this refusal is not specific to the political brand of Johnson and Trump. Establishing a sense of individual responsibility for social problems has been part of neoliberal culture for years.

The 2008 financial crisis was a prime example of high-level, systemic and technocratic failure, but even then, there were accounts that reflected the responsibility of those who had taken on too much debt. Such a perspective downplays how debt has become a necessity for many and how banks aggressively push loans. Instead, because we are aware of the risks and obligations, we were all accomplices and the austerity was a kind of just punishment.

This feeling of individualized responsibility is deeply rooted in the daily experience of the consumer. Food packaging displays color coded information on fat and sugar content. Fairtrade products are placed next to the regular brands (unfair trade) on the shelves. But the warnings against unhealthy and unethical purchases are always offset by competing advice that encourages us to prioritize frugality, or to let go and fulfill our desires. This is enough to guarantee that each choice is not optimal, whatever our vigilance, and that problems of all types, obesity, depression, poverty are our fault.

Consumer choice also serves to equalize otherwise disparate considerations, as it reduces social problems at the staff level. Pleasure, health, personal savings and business conditions are part of a single calculation where nothing has a clear priority and, as they are offered as a choice, it seems that each option is worth one one way or another. A strange logic can easily emerge: if the wrong choice (unhealthy, unethical) was really much worse, why would it be left to individuals in the first place?

Libertarianism finds a voice

This culture of individual responsibility means that governments have recently moved the guidelines on social distancing around COVID-19 from “Staying at home” to “Staying alert” as familiar as it is absurd.

Instead of banning or prioritizing certain measures, there are warnings and advice that tell the public just enough to divert future blame from the authorities. As with consumerism, there are only individual choices and their overall effect.

But as with consumerism, many people cannot afford the most desirable choices. The new rules tell people to consider going to work if the workplace is open and they cannot work from home, but if an employer requires someone to be present, what is to consider? The government has said that public transportation should be avoided, but if people have to go to work and don’t have a car, what is the alternative? The public is told that they can use private childcare, but does putting maternal assistants in close contact with children not undermine the social distancing precautions?

In this situation, many people would probably prefer to “stay at home”, but financial pressures will expel them. Of course, the economy is important and all countries find it difficult to juggle public health and public finances. But the British government has lost precious time and is now imposing dead end choices on the public. He tries to prioritize the economy without admitting it, assuming that many people will have no choice but to work. Indeed, teachers were immediately vilified for considering the contrary. The combination of their individual wishes through the organization is frowned upon because it gives them real agency. Choices like these are only provided if people select the correct answer.

The government also plays with a particular libertarian sensitivity, which finds its voice in the right press. It is this ideology that, in response to the blockade of the United Kingdom, has wrapped its concerns for the economy in alarmist rhetoric screaming in house arrest and end of liberty. It is also the ideology that has most successfully materialized through the message “Take back control” of the Brexit campaign, which has given voters deprived of their civil rights by decades of technocratic governance the opportunity to flex the muscles before rendering the Power of Deceptive Vote powerless.

Such libertarian ideas illustrated by the invocation by Johnsons of “solid British common sense” are particularly inappropriate in the face of a deadly pandemic, when it is crucial to act in concert. This notion of common sense suggests that we all have the capacity to know what to do, so if our actions have destructive results, this does not indicate a failure of leadership but individual deficiencies in competence (and Britishness). More than that, however, it is an appeal to those who speak out against their lost personal freedom to engage in their narrow self-interest.

Even with perfect information, people are unlikely to act in the best interest of the community or themselves, so no one can seriously expect a cocktail of vague, common sense directives. produce an optimal result. There is therefore something cynical or even nihilistic in this brand of libertarianism fueled by the tabloids.

Requiring personal freedoms above lock-in regulations in the midst of a deadly pandemic gives priority to pub visits and vacations above the risk of illness and death, and forces the vulnerable to avoid falls. By individualizing responsibility and presenting social distancing as simply desirable, the government tacitly encourages such thinking. Just like a consumer choice, its obscuration and its reversal work to equalize the options.

In response to all of this, it is easy to suggest that we should just listen to the experts. But the culture of expertise is in part what brought us to this point. For decades, we have been bombarded with too much expertise in everyday decisions, often from different perspectives and interests. We can try to locate and follow the best advice, but for the majority of us, things continue to get worse. And even if we felt that our decisions were significant, the experts who really moderate social conditions are beyond our reach, giving us responsibilities without power.

The financial crisis has shown that even high-level expertise may not be reliable, but this has not led to greater transparency or accountability, allowing right-wing populists to take advantage of the situation with a toxic mix of rights, of nationalism and mistrust. Now, with COVID-19, while there is medical expertise to follow, the government’s strategy emulates the conditions of consumer guilt and guilt.

A technocratic approach could be more effective, but it would still lack a common sense of purpose or social unity. It is not a question of denying freedom, but of accepting an inclusive collective responsibility for society, which consumer individualism and irresponsible leaders have long discouraged.

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