"Where are we now? The epidemic as politics"
New collection of essays by Giorgio Agamben breaks important new ground but does not go nearly far enough in its critique
I just finished reading Where are we now? The epidemic as politics by Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben. It’s a slim 97-page collection of 21 short essays (I tend to prefer these shorter polemics instead of longer non-fiction books these days). The thesis of the book is sobering. Agamben argues that “bourgeois democracy with its rights, its constitutions, and its parliaments” is ending and the pandemic “state of exception” with its totalitarian diktats by unelected bureaucrats is our politics now.
Overall the essays are hit and miss. I highlight with a pencil as I read and some of the essays are heavily marked up and others pass without a single scratch in the margins at all.
However, chapter 14, Polemos Epidemios (starting on page 59 in the book), is transcendent. It’s an interview with Dimitra Pouliopoulou for the Greek political magazine Babylonia originally published last spring (early in the pandemic). Ms. Pouliopoulou has clearly done her homework and read all of Agamben’s work and she is able to draw from him the best articulation of his ideas. I want to quote a long passage from the interview and then share some additional reflections:
An epidemic, as is suggested by its etymological roots in the Greek term demos (which designates the people as a political body), is first and foremost a political concept. In Homer, polemos epidemios is the civil war. What we see today is that the epidemic is becoming the new terrain of politics, the battleground of a global civil war — because a civil war is a war against an internal enemy, one which lives inside of ourselves.
We are experiencing the end of an era in the political history of the West, the era of bourgeois democracy founded on constitutions, on rights, on parliaments, and on the division of powers. This model was already facing a crisis: constitutional principles were increasingly being ignored, and the executive power had almost entirely replaced the legislative by operating — as it now does exclusively — through legislative decrees.
With the so-called pandemic, things went further: what American political analysts called the ‘Security State’ — which was established in response to terrorism — has now given way to a health-based paradigm of governance that we term ‘biosecurity’. It is important to understand that biosecurity, both in its efficacy and in its pervasiveness, outdoes every form of governance that we have hitherto known. As we have been able to see in Italy — but not only here — as soon as a threat to health is declared, people unresistingly consent to limitations on their freedom that they would never have accepted in the past. We are facing a paradox: the end of all social relations and political activity is presented as the exemplary form of civic participation.
I believe that just a single example clearly shows how deeply the biosecurity regime has transformed all of our democratic political paradigms. In bourgeois democracy, every citizen had a ‘right to health’. This right has now been transformed, without anyone noticing, into a legal obligation to be healthy — an obligation that must be fulfilled at all costs.
That’s brilliant on so many levels.
But here’s what’s strange — and this is what Agamben misses — almost no one is actually healthy. If one does exactly what the W.H.O., C.D.C., or the A.M.A. recommend, one’s health outcomes will be dramatically worse than if one had ignored them completely and just used common sense.
The pharmaceutical industry has captured our political system, regulatory institutions, and the mainstream media (see chapter 5 of my thesis) — and the pharmaceutical business model is now based on keeping as many people as possible as sick as possible for as long as possible in order to maximize their profits.
Under the “state of exemption”, predatory elites with the help of bought and brainwashed bourgeois technocrats are implementing a global system of totalitarianism that resembles “The Matrix”. Going forward, all decisions will be made by the Davos crowd and the rest of us will be enslaved in the metaverse because we are too sick to get our of our beds.
So the “legal obligation” of this new political regime is in fact to be chronically ill “as the exemplary form of civic participation”. Surrendering one’s body to corporate control is “the obligation that must be fulfilled at all costs”. If the Pharma cartel has its way, you will never be healthy again and you will tearfully thank them for this bondage. That’s what we are fighting against and why we must push all in to overthrow this tyrannical regime.
Conclusion: I got a lot out of the book and I’m grateful to Agamben for posing the right question. But as grim as it is, his analysis does not go nearly far enough. If you want to understand the current conjecture and all its implications I highly recommend subscribing to Berenson, eugyppius, el gato malo, Aaron Siri, Mark Crispin Miller, Steve Kirsch, Jessica Rose, James Lyons-Weiler, and Mathew Crawford on Substack — because that’s where the conversation is happening. If you have not done so already, I hope you will subscribe to my Substack as well.
Blessings to all the warriors. 🙏
Hi Dr Toby. You are amazing at keeping us rallied and I enjoy reading your posts... I just wanted to say I am not sure Berenson is running on all cylinders right now. I agree he was an earlier a resource but lately I think he is overwhelmed by the reality we all face; as well he criticized RFKJr‘s book but without saying specifically why. It seemed basically the same reasons as during their interview together where he felt only the COVID shot was bad and all others were fine. But in reality all are bad. But he just couldn’t believe it. Even though the data was right there. I feel he is proof that some of us are captured by the cult even if we seem to be trying to get out.
First off Toby I want to give a heartfelt thank you to all that you have done and said over these last 18 months.
I first came across your musings on twitter quite by accident as I never looked at twitter before "The Covid" and do not and will not have an account myself.
Of the numerous twitter accounts that I began looking at yours was one of the dozen or so that consistently struck at the core of this massive fraud that we are being subjected to. Of the 200 or so accounts that I have in my "twitter library" easily a third of them have been inactivated by the censors- yours included. It is blatantly obvious that the accounts that hit the closest to the truth must be eliminated. That's called a badge of honor.
I cut my teeth on the massive amount of corruption and profiteering and Pharma con jobs back in 2004 with the Avian Flu hoax. Once you gone into the details of these things it is easy to identify the scam as it is happening. The playbook is pretty much the same they simply refine the techniques.
Not so easy to convince others of the scam as they are bombarded with fear porn 24/7. I have to say that the "messaging" is far more comprehensive, insidious and sophisticated with Operation Covidius than all others before by quantum leaps. That and they produced the cadavers this time through an array of medical democides (remdesivir, neglect, midazolam, ventilators, etc.) which solidified the fear mechanisms in the masses.
It's breathtaking really to witness the grip of fear this had and still has on millions and a vast number of these people will be damaged for life. The shadow of this psychosis will follow them to their graves. This is particularly true among the "educated" classes who now have a warped sense of purpose beyond the dull, aimless wanderings of Academia.
As for the the Covid fable of 2020 itself, it was and is a nasty lie- all of it from top to bottom.
All of the exaggerated and repeated fear-based messages from the media and government agencies this past year were just part of the advertising campaign for the pharmaceutical industry’s newest lucrative product- mRNA “vaccines” which they plan to roll out as new medical “miracle cures” for a variety of “ailments”, e.g. new line of “cancer vaccines.”
Every single one of the media bullhorns that were blasting the Covid fiction for the past year have direct financial ties to Pharma Inc.
It’s not exactly accurate to say Pharma uses its power to influence the news- more to the point it is Pharma that writes the script. Pharma and it’s investors own “the news” and you will speak the Pharma gospel if you wish to maintain your position of privilege- it goes without saying.
And when we speak about Pharma this cannot be separated out from the investor class who rakes in oceans of taxpayer wealth through numerous Pandemic Ponzi Schemes with Pharma as it’s “offering” and its Trojan Horse.
Covid-19 is a business plan not a medical situation.
Now more than ever it’s important to understand the economics of vaccines. Traditional systems of vaccine procurement and distribution are rapidly giving way to vast public–private supply chains. Despite annual revenues approaching US$1 trillion, the industry has been unable to reverse a declining rate of profit and finds itself in a perpetual state of crisis.
In Fall/Winter of 2019 all stocks of Big Pharma companies were in steep decline. This changed dramatically in Spring 2020 as we know.
The experimental gene therapy mRNA drugs are set to become the most lucrative drugs in medical history. Pharma depends on its “blockbuster drugs” to remain profitable and appealing to investors. It is not an exaggeration to say that without these “blockbuster drugs” the Pharma industry implodes.
What happened in 2020 was simply that the flu was re-branded and repurposed- the term Covid-19 was invented to turn the seasonal virus into the equivalent of the mythical “Al-Qaeda” meaning to terrorize the population with the false construct of a boogeyman.
This was done as the Western economies were in total free fall in late 2019 and the plan to digitize the economies of The West had to be rushed through lest the collapse be seen for what it was- the by-product of decades of Ponzi schemes by the Wall St. parasites and their allies.
The Virus™ is superfluous, just like the Swine Flu scamdemic of 2009. All they needed to do was create the perception of a pandemic/mass panic with staged Hollywood productions, doomsday models, and the fraudulent PCR test to manufacture the cases/falsely attributed as “Covid deaths.”
Covid-19 deaths follow the same age/risk stratification and seasonal curve of flu/pneumonia at the same time that flu inexplicably vanished from the face of the earth while all pneumonia deaths were suddenly called “Covid” using mass death certification fraud.
Without the fear-mongering propaganda campaign no one would’ve noticed anything unusual about the last two flu seasons because there was nothing unusual, except for the criminal, murderous, and utterly unscientific lockdown policies in response to the non- existent threat.