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I have always been a walker. This is my way of decompression. During the lockdown period, I think walking around my home is a therapeutic activity. but it is not the truth. On the contrary, my walks made me question my community ideals.
In the mostly white suburbs of Melbourne’s inner city where I live, I often witness violations of the lockdown regulations-people visit each other, don’t wear masks, and exercise in groups in the garage. All these activities seem to happen under the cloak of conviction-people seem to be convinced that they should not and will not bear any consequences for their actions.
As a long-time critic of law and order, criminal convictions, and state power, this epidemic puts me in an uncomfortable position. Seeing these flagrant violations of the basic restrictions imposed to prevent the spread of the virus makes me wonder if community members are indifferent to the safety of others, and without state intervention, how can we protect public health?
Australia’s two largest cities, Melbourne and Sydney, have witnessed a major resistance to COVID-19 restrictions and vaccine enforcement. There were protests and even riots.
This growing resistance marks a fusion of racism, class struggle, and conspiracy mentality. These forces are no strangers to each other, but long-term acquaintances-the long history of racial paranoia of white Australians proves this.
However, the state’s (erroneous) management of this pandemic has put us on a dangerous new path. Not only has it had a corrosive effect on community relations, but it has also become increasingly difficult to understand the nature of resistance to the expansion of state power.
In Australia, pandemic anxiety and policing are expressed in racial terms.
Between each lockdown, people often complain that new cases occur mainly in “multicultural suburbs”-which means that the usual suspects, i.e. immigrants, are those who fail to comply with the regulations and extend the life span of the pandemic.
From April to May 2020, due to the closure of mosques, large social gatherings were banned, and Australia’s Muslim community was restricted to spending at home during Ramadan, the holiest and most social month in the Islamic calendar. However, the increase in the number of infections in June and the news that a small group of Muslim families were affected by the new epidemic made the community a scapegoat and target.
Soon after, on July 4, nine public residential buildings in North Melbourne and Flemington were immediately sealed off. The residents of these towers, mostly immigrants and refugees, had no food, medicine or fresh air for several days. Five days later, eight of the nine towers were lifted, but the residents of the tower with the highest infection rate were detained for another nine days.
The Victorian Ombudsman later described the state’s handling of Melbourne’s residential blockade as a violation of human rights. But the state government disagreed and refused to apologize.
For the rest of the year, Victorian officials continued to advise minority communities to be the main spreaders of COVID-19.
In September, the Victorian Afghan Australian Community Organization accused the state’s chief health officer, Professor Brett Sutton, of blaming the Afghan community for the new outbreak in the Casey area of Melbourne’s local government. Sutton hinted in a public briefing that Afghans did not comply with COVID-19 restrictions, but did not show any evidence.
After the emergence of the Delta strain in 2021, Melbourne’s COVID-related minority attacks continue in full swing. For example, after a few Orthodox believers in the city violated COVID-19 restrictions, the Jewish community was threatened and abused.
This is not only happening in Melbourne. Racism in Sydney has also affected the response to the pandemic.
The indecision of the authorities led to a lockdown of New South Wales for several weeks in 2021. However, although the state’s own mishandling of the delta variant is at the core of the problem, the state still chose to scapegoat ethnic minorities living in the capital. Sydney, the number of infections continues to rise. It strictly monitors the multicultural areas in the western suburbs, while allowing fairer and wealthier residents living in the eastern part of the city to interpret these restrictions as they please.
Even when the data clearly showed that most cases originated in the eastern suburbs, hundreds of police officers came to the west. The Australian racial justice organization “Democracy of Colored People” described the policing strategy used by Sydney as “undisguised racism”. “This is not a public health response,” Neha Madhok, the organization’s national director, told Australian media in July 2021. “It specifically targets people of color and working-class communities in the western suburbs.”
The Delta variant destroyed Sydney. With the increase in the number of infections, the hospital has been operating at full capacity, and hundreds of people have died. Grief has pushed many communities to the brink of collapse while struggling to comply with the rules of the lockdown.
We may be able to temporarily suspend our lives to survive this epidemic, but the lives that have passed carry our burial obligations and rituals. How we treat the dead is a sign of who we are, and each culture represents the dead with its unique mark.
On September 15, the police interrupted a Muslim funeral in Sydney. Officials accused the mourners of violating COVID-19 social distancing regulations when trying to watch the ceremony from the car, and continued to arrest those who refused to leave. Considering that at about the same time, many white Australians blatantly violated the COVID-19 restrictions on Eastern Beaches without any police intervention, this is particularly shocking.
This incident shows that the Australian security forces, which have criminalized the Muslim community under the guise of national security for many years, are now trying to do the same under the guise of “pandemic control.”
The Australian government’s efforts to contain the pandemic have encountered major resistance. A large number of people took to the streets to protest. But it soon became clear that the protesters’ anger was not directed at the disproportionate security of the marginalized communities, or the country’s apparent failure to follow consistent public health and protection policies.
For example, in September, after the Victorian government decided to close the city’s construction industry and introduced new restrictions (including mandatory vaccination) to stop the virus from spreading among workers, widespread protests took place in Melbourne. The protesters clashed with the police, damaged public buildings and peeed on the monument. Hundreds of people were arrested and dozens of policemen were injured.
The overwhelming presence of the police in these protests has aroused much criticism. But it is impossible to regard these protests as workers’ struggles against oppressive conditions. Judging from the eyewitness accounts and news footage, it is clear that the protests did not have a leader, and there were many different groups participating with different motives and goals. However, the Trump logo and white supremacist slogans and images that dominated the rally showed the strong presence of the extreme right. At the same time, repeated “stop jabs” slogans indicate the existence of anti-vaccine people. Some of them are undoubtedly workers and union members, but these protests can hardly be classified as “workers’ struggles.”
The protesters claimed that freedom is in crisis. But where are these freedom fighters in the past 20 years? When the “war on terror” introduced a secure environment that eroded civil liberties and made privacy a concept of the past, those who attacked key workers and asked them to wear simple masks were not too worried.
Since 9/11, Australia has enacted more than 70 anti-terrorism laws. Each is pushing the boundaries of state power. I want to restrict the freedom of those with darker skin, not like the freedom lost by white Australians-it’s the freedom gained.
We can still try to treat these protests as signs of the destruction of Australians’ economic livelihoods caused by these blockades. But the demands of these protesters—resuming normal work activities, ending mandatory vaccination and mass distribution of ivermectin (an anthelmintic that has not yet proven to have an impact on COVID-19 recovery)—tell a different story. story. The protesters were mostly white and male, and they did not call for an end to racism, economic inequality or any other social ills that increased during the pandemic. They also did not ask the country to respond to the pandemic in a more effective and fair manner. On the contrary, they have been asking the authorities to completely ignore this global health crisis and protect all their freedoms at all costs.
As social theorist Judith Butler warned, dead bodies on the street are not in themselves a political interest. The “Make America Great Again” demonstration that broke out on Capitol Hill on January 6 has convincingly illustrated this point.
Australia’s recent protests are in many ways similar to pro-Trump demonstrations in the United States. Like their American counterparts, Australian protesters claimed that their appearance on the street was an expression of public character and collective rejection. But we need to stop and ask why they gathered and whether their demands will improve the lives of Australians in times of crisis.
We might use last year’s Black Lives Matter protests as a comparison point for different opinions during the pandemic. Thousands of people broke the blockade rules and gathered together to demand an end to racism and racialized police brutality. This is a gathering to express the character of the public in the most inclusive way. Just as the mourning of the dead cannot be suspended, so can the black struggle for social justice and recognition. Protesters still acknowledge the danger of COVID-19-most of them wear masks and try to maintain social distancing.
The BLM protests protected public health under unstable conditions. The anti-blockade protests ignore the privilege of public health.
In this pandemic, although communities that have been facing state intervention continue to be over-regulated, white Australians are facing what everyone else has always known: their freedom is restricted.
For those who feel that they have the right to do whatever they want at any time, the feeling of being restrained in any form is unbearable. White people now feel that their freedom is under attack, just like an autoimmune disease. They are fighting back. Their goal is to protect us from a deadly virus that kills millions of people around the world: masks and vaccine.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
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