Monday 15 February 2021

Populist Government and Necropolitics

For an upcoming conference on populism I've sent in this abstract. No idea if it'll get picked up. Regular readers familiar with the output of this place will know the arguments the proposal is drawing on, but the purpose of the presentation and paper is to put them on firmer foundations.

Populist Government and Necropolitics: The UK Conservative Party's Management of Europe's Worst Covid Crisis
The Conservative Party convincingly won the 2019 UK General Election because it faced a split opposition, an unpopular Labour leader, and because the party had united Leave voters behind their campaign. Boris Johnson was able to do so by mobilising classic populist tropes commonly associated with the UK Independence Party and the Brexit Party, most notably opposing the democratic will of the British people to EU-friendly/remain-minded liberal elites determined to reverse Brexit. With a thin manifesto, it appeared his government were going to carry on governing in a populist vein, but then the Covid-19 pandemic hit. Johnson has since presided over the worst death toll in Europe, and yet, at the time of writing, consistently posts polling leads and has escaped censure for the calamity. This paper introduces the notion of necropolitics as developed by Mbembe (2019) in relation to the state's power over life and death issues, albeit modified from the conflict situations to which the concept was originally applied. It argues the Conservatives have escaped accountability for their Covid management because these necropolitics are imbued with populist logics of scapegoating, which are intentionally framed to depoliticise the crisis. This puts the party in a good position for reaping the political credit of the vaccine and the end to quarantine measures.

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3 comments:

Dipper said...

'the Conservatives have escaped accountability for their Covid management because these necropolitics are imbued with populist logics of scapegoating, which are intentionally framed to depoliticise the crisis.'

Perhaps the fact the UK has a large number of old sick people, a large number of overweight people with type II diabetes, and we live in crowded cities is a critical factor.

Take the USA here https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covid19-death-rates-us-by-state/

The list of deaths per 100,000 people goes New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, .... Maine, Alaska, Hawaii, Vermont.

Do you think this list is a ranked list of state competences in facing Covid? Or a ranked list of densely populated states?

Dipper said...

For those arguing that the UK has been awful, the UK number is 170 per 100K. Which is about 16th in the list of US states. New Jersey is 253. Belgium is 190.

CCCAAC said...

The Committee for the Campaign Against American Culture

Annual Updates, human health section:

Only puppets or cartoon characters reading poetry to be allowed in adverts

Newspaper headlines to be banned

Free Newspapers to be removed from all buses

Death penalty for any search engine owner that places the Daily Mail on page 1

All social media to be shutdown, turned into learning zones.

Ordinary People to be prevented from speaking in public, unless given special permission by the Human purity department, campaign against tabloid debasement section

Ordinary people to be forced to wear face masks even if the all viruses go away forever

Ordinary people only allowed to speak when given permission in government buildings

Ordinary people to be electrocuted if they speak on public transport (Sneezing or coughing not included). Three strikes and you are fried amendment under review.

Ordinary people to be defined as anyone who is not a professor

People who have already booked summer holidays to be sent to genetic purification farms

Genetic purification farms to now include human organ extraction facilities (brains excluded other than for scientific research)

“The only way to ensure free speech is to severely restrict it”

Signed the Chairman of the Committee for the Campaign Against American Culture