Professor Susan Michie was appointed in 2022 as Chair of the "Technical Advisory Group on Behavioral Insights" for the World Health Organization. She was a psychologist at University College London, and a member of the British Communist Party. She set to work to "motivate" nations to adopt lockdowns, masks and comprehensive vaccination. In an interview she made some revealing statements about the mentality of the new public health that arose with Covid, based upon collectivism and state paternalism: "What I don't see a lot of amongst my colleagues maybe, but certainly the media, and especially the papers that you mentioned, would be much more emphasis on individual freedom, individual rights, rather than taking a sort of more collective population approach. But the reality is that this pandemic has shown everybody that no individual is an island, we are very interconnected, and no one community or no one socio-economic group within society can think that they can solve it for themselves and protect themselves, because it is not like that."
The philosophy of public health that emerged was one based upon collectivism which downplayed traditional public health values such as freedom of choice and autonomy, and the right to refuse medical treatments and procedures. Thus, with Covid in the early part of the plandemic, people refusing to take various diagnostic tests were faced with fines and/or jail sentences, draconian actions that were straight out of the USSR and Maoist communist play books. In this case and for other measures, the so-called social good was to over-ride personal bodily integrity, and safety.
Governments, including Australia's, have so far got away with this collectivism, which proved to be a social disaster, leading to suicides and the destruction of small businesses, with no demonstrated advantage over nations like Sweden, which surprisingly did not freak out over Covid. What was revealed by the Covid plandemic was the dark authoritarian under-belly of Australia, something that like organised crime, needs to be addressed.
https://cafeamericainmag.com/against-collectivism/
"In 2022, the World Health Organization appointed University College London professor Susan Michie as the new Chair of its "Technical Advisory Group on Behavioral Insights". A psychologist by profession with no medical training to her name, but specializing in manipulating social behavior, Michie has since been working to "nudge" states into rigorous vaccination, masking, and lockdown regimens, which are now contractual in the form of the WHO Pandemic Treaty …
A member of the British Communist Party, Susan Michie channels a particular legacy, which is now to be welded into technocratic elite institutions like the WHO. In an interview from the year of her WHO appointment, Michie responded to accusations of purposefully streamlining public discourse and opinion with her political leanings. But while she claims that "my politics are not anything to do with my scientific advice", she simultaneously offers a whiff of the mindset that her ilk—unelected leaders whose only purpose is to make the coming legal and factual expropriation of individuals look expedient—promotes: collectivism.
"What I don't see a lot of amongst my colleagues maybe, but certainly the media, and especially the papers that you mentioned, would be much more emphasis on individual freedom, individual rights, rather than taking a sort of more collective population approach. But the reality is that this pandemic has shown everybody that no individual is an island, we are very interconnected, and no one community or no one socio-economic group within society can think that they can solve it for themselves and protect themselves, because it is not like that".
According to Michie, the new science of Public Health is collectivist by nature, seeking to provide group-wide solutions to health challenges. It is only logical that it should downplay individual rights. The bigger problem seems that this view is obtaining increasing social acceptance.
Since Covid, so-called natural rights—rights intrinsic and inalienable to human nature, such as the right to dignity, life and liberty, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, recognition as a legal person, the prohibition of torture and slavery etc.—have been increasingly flattened by the executive power of the state, at the expense of the legislative and the judiciary. The political Left who has been the architect of this dramatic shift.
Since Covid, natural rights have been increasingly flattened by the executive power of the state, at the expense of the legislative and the judiciary. The political Left who has been the architect of this dramatic shift.
Note for example Judith Butler, whose Manicheaism has now fully replaced whatever was left of the political ideas of enlightenment in the Left's intellectual horizon. In a discussion with Cornel West, she said: "The intensification of state powers and surveillance mechanisms in particular—we are no longer able to have that conversation. Put both values [state power and individual liberty] on the table!" — West: "See that is exactly what I mean by licentiousness…the way personal liberty language is mobilized for licentiousness". — Butler: "We're linked in this living world, on this planet, which is why the interdependency that we need to understand to fight Covid is also the interdependency we need to understand to fight climate destruction". — West: "I agree, I agree!" — Butler: "We need a completely different ethics and a politics of care, so I'm pushing against the personal liberty folks right now". Butler goes on to propose a "communist ontology" to reach the goal of the complete subjugation to the State's—the collective's—interest. And Cornel West nods along like a geriatric altar boy.
In the history of radical Left thought, "collectivism" and "the collective" were always revered as desirable goals for a future "socialist" society (much to what would have been Marx's dismay). The individual became a public nuisance because of a dangerous interpretation of the idea of "society" on the Left, a Left now in charge of all dominant ideologies of power.
For example, when Marx said that a society consists not of individuals, but of the relations between them, the Left believed this meant one could just ditch the individual. But without the individual as prerequisite, there is no relation between individuals; without the unit of the person—his or her physical and psychological integrity and unity—we cannot enter social relations at all. Even the individual as the "ensemble of social relations"—though this formulation gives way to an idealist (!) denial of the physical existence of every human being—presupposes single bearers said social relations.
Without the individual as prerequisite, there is no relation between individuals that could form a society; without the unit of the person—his or her physical and psychological integrity and unity—we cannot enter social relations at all.
But it is precisely this rejection of the physical existence of every individual which gained so much currency during Covid. The bitter irony being, of course, that to "protect others", especially vulnerable groups, everyone was asked to violate their own bodily integrity: a practical self-contradiction, as the protection consisted in the violation. Ultimately, the "other" everyone was supposed to protect no longer existed, because everyone—and especially "vulnerable groups"—had to endure the state's encroachment. Yet this is what the political and activist Left promoted.
In order to "protect others", especially vulnerable groups, everyone was asked to violate their own bodily integrity: a practical self-contradiction, as the protection consisted in the violation.
One could see the fallout from this discursive transformation towards the "rights of the collective" in debates surrounding vaccine mandates. One of the instigators of the Great Barrington Declaration, Sunetra Gupta—a well-known critic of what she perceives as a "typically capitalist" (or "neoliberal", on which more later) reaction to Covid, namely lockdowns, but a supporter of mandatory vaccinations—is dismissive of bodily autonomy. But isn't this in fact in line with what lockdowns perpetuated? That not individual autonomy, but the state, decides the radius of my social interaction? With this doublethink at work, the lockdown critic's own blind spot has been revealed, namely that the lockdowns she publicly condemns in fact converge much more with her socialist ideal than a "capitalist" one, however that is defined.
One of the instigators of the Great Barrington Declaration is dismissive of bodily autonomy. But isn't this in fact in line with what lockdowns perpetuated? That not individual autonomy, but the state, decides the radius of my social interaction?
What is worrying about this tendency to renounce bodily integrity in the name of "solidarity" is the resurrection of a biopolitical concept from the National Socialist (and Japanese Imperial) cookbook: the "Volkskörper" (National Body; Kokutai in Japanese), where it is not individuals who own their own body, but the "Volk" (the People) who own a collective "body". This collective body that belongs to the State/the Party/the Emperor then needs to be nourished and protected at the cost of the individual one.
This National Socialist-type ideological claim also reverberated with German politicians who were firing up social division with vaccination mandates and claimed that "collective freedom"—a non-sensical term—ranked higher than individual freedom. As Hendrik Wüst, member of the CDU, said: "It's about showing the vaccinated … that we won't allow people to continue to put their individual freedom above the freedom of society as a whole".
The collective's anti-social traits were blatant: lockdowns in the name of "public health" killed all social activities and led to the widespread isolation of old, sick and young people, an epidemic we are still recovering from."