Tag Archives: COVID-19

Between the Peak and the Abyss: Conspiracy and Superstition

20 Thursday Aug 2020

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Albert Camus wrote The Plague in 1947, as an allegory of French society under German occupation. Reading from 2020, however, it also describes with some accuracy the social impact of an actual epidemic. The sense of time suspended, of activity deferred, of relationships interrupted: “As it was a case of marking time, many hundreds of thousands of people were still kicking their heels for endless weeks […] nothing more important happened than this great marking of time.”

And into this space come comparisons, analogies and theories, to fill the empty time and make sense of the chaos and disruption, invented by the mendacious to manipulate the confused. Camus lists the different types and it is impossible not to recognise the stories in the newspapers that blow down our streets, their relevance superseded by new developments.

Some predictions were based on bizarre calculations involving the number of the year, the number of deaths and the number of months already spent under the plague. Others established comparisons with the great plagues of history, bringing out the similarities (which these prophecies called ‘constants’) and, by means of no less peculiar calculations, claimed to extract information relative to the present outbreak. But the ones that the public liked best were undoubtedly those which, in apocalyptic language, announced a series of events, any one of which might be the one that the town was currently enduring, their complexity allowing for any interpretation. Nostradamus and Saint Odile were thus consulted daily and never in vain. What remained common to all the prophecies was that, in the last resort, they were reassuring. The plague, however, was not.

I wrote a while ago about the parallel infodemic coursing through society, as we all struggle to make sense of the senseless, to order the chaotic. Graphs, charts, dashboards, bulletins, maps, timelines: every manner of device intended to help synthesise and distill the rush of events into orderly narrative and discrete data sets. And as Camus said, these are reassuring: not because of their content but because of their form. A viral contagion can be truly controlled only on the page or the screen: every graphic contributes to our sense that because the situation can be described, it can be (or is being) managed. Every rumour, false hope or faked accusation contributes to a sense that the sky is falling.

For this reason, it is unsurprising that conspiracy theories have been part of the year. In March and April, telephone engineers were assaulted and mobile masts set on fire by people who believed the virus was connected to the 5G network upgrade. Paradoxically, they also think that the electronic media is a good place to promote this: I suspect these people are (because things are their opposite) the most fevered users of electronic devices. They seem to patrol the virtual world as they might have once walked the streets, howling about Armageddon and inveighing against the shadows.

I have seen the low-tech versions too, though. Walking through a locked-down Kentish Town, I saw a flyer pushed through the letterbox of a charity shop, its quality print daring the reader to dismiss it for the ravings it contained. I have seen other slogans and warnings, scrawled on signs and bus shelters, painted on doors. They are the inevitable detritus spawned by confusion and despair. And just as surely as the maps of where the virus has taken the greatest toll, they are indicators of deprivation: warnings and fears given venom by resentment. They are the signs (as in Camus) of “those who are looking for reasons and who are afraid.”

In such a context, it was inevitable that antisemitic conspiracy theories should have a resurgence. The Community Security Trust has published a report on the antisemitic tropes and canards revivified by the pandemic. From positing a Jewish conspiracy behind the virus, to using the virus to celebrating Jewish deaths, to using the virus to kill Jews, all the classic elements of the oldest hatred are present. Whether from the right (QAnon) or the left (AntiVaxx) the elements are tiresomely predictable, and make it hard to tell one from the other. As Robert Eaglestone has observed about varieties of Holocaust denial: “these distinctions are rarely fixed, as they demand too much consistency from the world of bigotry and false argument that these people inhabit.”

A survey of the Twitter feed of Piers Corbyn, a notable member of the conspiratorial elite, shows the usual distinctions of politics breaking down. Combining the family pastimes of preaching to the choir and never changing his mind, he at once quotes Toby Young and his band of right-wing “Lockdown Sceptics”, argues that Black Lives Matter is a conspiracy funded by big business, claims that man-made climate change is a myth, and that vaccines are designed to control us; and that George Soros, “Rockefeller” or Bill Gates is behind it all.

The left-wing “commentator” Kerry-Anne Mendoza yesterday peddled a more belt-and-braces version of the way the Holocaust can be folded into these discourses of hatred. Not as a conspiracy theory, but just as a lazy juxtaposition. As though the death camps were a punchline rather than an atrocity.

Similarly, the mural Freedom for Humanity by the artist Mear One has been doing the rounds in meme form. This is an image even Piers Corbyn’s brother Jeremy belatedly acknowledged as “deeply disturbing and anti-Semitic” – some years after invoking “Rockerfeller’s” [sic] attack on Diego de Rivera in its defence. Like Mein Kampf, (a major source text for Jewish conspiracy theories) these ideas always find Jews responsible for the evils of the day, placing grimly-eroticised spectres and fantasies of “Jewish influence” where the facts should go.

Into this volatile mixture of paranoia, half-truth and pure fantasy, the FBI yesterday decided to publish its records on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the antisemitic conspiracy ur-text, without commentary or qualification. When I last checked, the material had been retweeted 16,700 times. By comparison, its belated clarifications (below) had barely been noticed. A lie is, as ever, twice round the world before the truth gets its boots on.

The resurgence of conspiracy theories and panic in a period of intense anxiety and confusion is not a surprise. If you want a funny and informative introduction to why this is the case, follow Marlon Solomon (@supergutman) whose monologue “A Lizard’s Tale” is a chilling and hilarious primer in the back-and forth between claim and counter-claim. Dave Rich (@daverich1) noted in an article published earlier this year that “if it is true that Jews play a central role in conspiracy theories, it is also true that the concept of a conspiracy plays a central role in the history of antisemitism”. Conspiracies and antisemitism are linked by methodology, purpose and personnel.

But nor, it should be underlined, do these theories and fantasies restrict themselves to antisemitism. As documented by the charity TellMama, COVID-19 has prompted attacks and libels on Muslim communities. Stonewall documents the impact of the pandemic on LGBT individuals and communities. As so often, the events of this year show that hatred knows few distinctions and appeals to no logic other than the belief that since the individual is powerless in the face of events, those events must be controlled by the powerful. And since there is nothing more powerful than that which provokes fear, the two must be identical. “It is very tiring to be a plague victim,” wrote Camus, “but it is still more tiring not to want to be one.” And given time to brood, the most illogical solutions acquire the clarity of mathematical proofs. But for the conspiracist, as for their cousin, the perfect Orwellian product of totalitarianism, if the right person says it, 2+2=5.

So what can we do against this tide of reckless hate and thoughtless invective? As Camus recognised, the purpose of these ravings is to provide reassurance against the unpredictable and invisible workings of fate. And like his hero (and unreliable narrator) Rieux, we have to recognise that the answers are not glamorous: “this whole thing is not about heroism. It’s about decency. It may seem a ridiculous idea, but the only way to fight the plague is with decency.” We carry on, we do our best, we remember that common humanity and common confusion are often the same thing, and we do our jobs, however small, to make the world better.

A Tragedy of Errors

15 Saturday Aug 2020

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Autumn leaves on a social distancing sign in Alexandra Palace, London. Photo: Jaime Ashworth, August 2020. More of my photography can now be seen at http://www.framingthemoment.gallery

The chaotic and careless handling of this summer’s exam results has illustrated (along with so much else), the rank inequality of our society and the almost comatose carelessness of our government. If you want expert and incisive analysis on this particular tragedy of errors, then you should follow either (but ideally both) @debrakidd or @teacherhead on Twitter and read their recent posts (they also have WordPress sites – see links below). The piece by Tom Sherrington in particular is a rare sighting on the internet: measured and thoughtful reconsideration of a view in light of developments. Debra Kidd offers a passionate analysis of why the disaster really wasn’t much different from business as usual, and why therefore it needs to change.

I don’t have the standing to criticise either of them, nor would I wish to. Their insights and advice have been inspiring and helpful in my journey as an educator. On this occasion, though, their writing and thinking has prompted a few thoughts in response.

Firstly, the piece by Tom Sherrington. As he makes frequent reference to in the piece, he assumed that common sense would prevail, or at least be applied at some point. This is an alluring thought but, since “They can’t be that stupid, can they?” has been close to infallible as a predictor of this government’s actions, perhaps slightly misplaced.

Sherrington’s uncharacteristic lapse is understandable: my brother’s drum practice this week may have knocked him off his game. (I’m not joking: see my Twitter for the exchange.) Also, as a highly intelligent and informed expert, his expectation that basic common sense would be applied was, well, reasonable. It turns out, of course, that not only was common sense and expertise apparently not sought, it wasn’t applied when literally delivered to those who needed to act on it. See the devastating critique of the OFQUAL algorithm by Dr Huy Duong, submitted in evidence to Parliament earlier this year, here.

Two meta-thoughts. First, when the historians of the future come to write the history of 2020, there may be a debate about the degree to which ministers listened to expert advice from SAGE. I would suggest that the decision to ignore Dr Duong’s analysis may be instructive in understanding the governing culture. This government, despite being presented with progressively more complex problems, is still “tired of experts” and only allows them a voice if they are docile. The disappearance from view of openly dissenting scientists from the daily press briefings if they ventured opinions in line with medical training, published law and common sense, is a chilling insight into the degree to which the government cannot brook dissent. For professors of medicine and public health committed to the public good, outward conformity may be an acceptable (if high) price to pay for ensuring they retain some purchase on events, but it is not a choice they should be asked to make.

Secondly, I wonder if a meta-understanding of our current plight is also bound up with the notion of common sense. It is certainly bound up with the sense that panic is always an inappropriate reaction and that everything is manageable. But, if quickly mastered, panic is a very useful indication that events are either imminently or actually out of control. Someone who doesn’t panic a little in the face of a global pandemic or blighting a generation’s life-chances perhaps has yet to fully get their arms around the problem. As Basil Fawlty responds when told by Polly not to panic: “What else is there to do?!”

I’m not suggesting, by the way, that Fawlty Towers is a model for responsible government. Governments led by chancers, sociopaths and inadequates (though the vogue in global leadership) rarely make good decisions. The chronically dissociated always think in terms of brutality, and those struggling to win approval care more about appearance than outcome.

In Debra Kidd’s case, my objection is slightly more technical. She suggests that a return to modular exams and AS levels would have averted this crisis. This is true, but the price of a cohort with (some) concrete results this year would be a cohort next year with nothing: after all, their AS levels would have to have been cancelled and calculated by algorithm – along with next year’s results, which are unlikely to escape the effects of COVID. The government response has been to multiply problems rather than solve them, but another “peacetime” solution would have had different problems. The basic problem with exams as currently constituted is that they are in general simply a final chance for students to prove spreadsheets wrong. When that final chance was removed, disaster was always a strong possibility.

More broadly, the consequences of AS levels were not all positive. I would suggest that the stress of three consecutive years of important assessments contributed materially to the sharp rise in mental health problems among British young people in the first fifteen years of this century. I am also not sure that increased testing is an answer to a failure of grading. But her central point about the negligence and cruelty of the current system is inarguable.

We need – as in so many areas – a more interesting and comprehensive rethink than endlessly switching between linear and modular qualifications. I’d like to see, in my own subject of History, a more actively collaborative externally marked coursework process. But everyone has a wishlist.

Whatever the repercussions of #alevels2020, I hope that both Tom Sherrington and Debra Kidd are among the experts who lead that process of change. Hopefully with a very different government, committed to finding sensible, informed answers to the problems that COVID exposes with such grim regularity.

Meme Fever

22 Wednesday Jul 2020

Posted by in Culture and Politics, The Holocaust: Representations and Meanings, Uncategorized

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Photo: Jaime Ashworth, 2020.

The era of COVID-19 has seen two processes of contagion. The first is, of course, the disease itself, with its terrible toll on individuals, communities and nations. The second, however, is what the WHO and others have termed an infodemic: defined very precisely a couple of weeks ago by a working group.

An infodemic is an overabundance of information—some accurate and some not—that occurs during an epidemic. In a similar manner to an epidemic, it spreads between humans via digital and physical information systems. It makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it. (Tangcharoensathien et al., 2020)

I’m working on a more detailed piece about the infodemic, to go alongside a collection of my photos from this year. In the meantime, however, I’ve been looking at the memes shared in my social media echo chambers. Sometimes they make me laugh but as a class of discourse they make me profoundly uneasy.

Memes are directly compared to viruses by the epidemiologist Adam Kucharski in his book, The Rules of Contagion (2020). He notes the problems posed by “simplistic anecdotes and ineffective solutions” for disease control and begins the book with an account of how he (accidentally) caused “a small outbreak of misinformation.”

The irony is that memes are simplistic anecdotes masquerading as panaceas. Like viruses, memes have no function but their own reproduction with no regard for the health of the host. Matters are further complicated by the fact that social media offer a perfect environment for them to thrive. Back in the day, “Frankie Says” was a meme, but it’s harder to edit a t-shirt than it is to share something online. One meme in particular recently caught my eye.

This meme is part of longer and bigger debates about education, race and identity. I do not claim any priority for this meme’s importance other than the fact I’ve spent my adult life teaching and learning about the Holocaust and for that reason find it deeply problematic, educationally and philosophically. My experience allows me to locate the sources of my ire because I have expertise: itself a suggestion that the reduction of history to lessons without content is not very practical. But I digress.

Firstly, the idea that the second and third parts of the statement can be accomplished without the first is problematic. Without the murder of six million Jews being remembered, the second statement makes no sense: what is the “it” that was required? And in the third statement, the “history repeating itself” is the murder of six million Jews that apparently the author thinks is optional to remember.

Second, and much more problematic, is the weasel formulation of the first statement. If the word “only” or “just” were added, the sentiment might make more sense (though as I’ve just explained I don’t think it really does). But as written it comes very close not to suggesting that education cannot be reduced to simply memorising (which of course is true and something that all good teachers work hard to ensure) but that education equals not remembering the murder of six million Jews.

This ambiguity is difficult because with a negative reading of an oddly formed sentence, the meme seems to be suggesting that instead of anchoring our understanding of the world to historical facts and debates, it should instead come from belief in an unstated mechanism that led “ordinary Germans” to be “convinced that it was required”. Setting aside the complex historical debate about degrees of knowledge, cooperation, acceptance and resistance this dismisses (the author of the meme can’t be bothered so why should I?), the implication is that children should be “educated” in some unstated monocausal view. Another word for this is indoctrination.

One of the key aspects of indoctrination is ignoring facts in the interests of clarity: such as, for example, downplaying the importance of the victim group of “what happened”. The sleight-of-hand with which this example severs meaning from content (thus rendering it meaningless) is the primary source of my anger.

Ironically, the indoctrinated have historically been very bad at spotting the writing on the wall because, well, they were indoctrinated to believe it wasn’t important. Such a process seems to have taken place very imperfectly in Nazi Germany, chiefly because the Third Reich only lasted twelve years. The debate about why and how this happened, which the author of this meme either doesn’t understand or doesn’t care about, is ongoing. But the desire to present children with “lessons” without evidence is certainly among the phenomena involved: along with ensuring that the benefits of oppression and murder were widely shared, and that perpetrators were placed in stressful, confusing situations with alcohol to dull the senses when reality could no longer be explained but simply avoided. But reiterating the nature of that reality is crucial, educationally, because without it, the question “Why is this important?” is hard to really answer.

Because, finally, let’s not forget that forgetting victims is only in the interests of the perpetrators. Himmler termed the murder of European Jewry “a glorious page in our history that can never be written”. Hitler asked “Who now remembers the Armenians?” This meme asks us to forget the Jews and replace them with an amorphous “victim” group that makes the “lessons” meaningless. The Nazis oppressed and murdered a whole range of groups and individuals, but to try and remove their primary victim group is an assault on memory and an abuse of education. Subject (the Nazis) verb (murdered) and object (six million Jews) are all required for any conclusions to have any relevance. This is true, by the way, in teaching anybody about anything. The nature of the offence is a fundamental part of teaching to understand the past and (hopefully) avoid its repetition.

This is just one meme in an ocean of memes. As in Hamlet’s soliloquy, it is tempting to think we can “take arms against a sea of troubles and, by opposing, end them.” But this is a metaphor for futility. We are adrift and lost: what we can do (all we can do, perhaps) is sound out the ideas beneath the surface of individual examples in the hope we will find solid ground underneath.

Three Stories: Reflections on Lessons from Auschwitz

29 Sunday Mar 2020

Posted by in The Holocaust: Representations and Meanings

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Working as a Freelance Educator on the Holocaust Educational Trust’s Lessons from Auschwitz project is probably the most rewarding and important thing I do. When COVID-19 interrupted all our lives, I was part of the way through an exceptionally busy term with two visits completed and two to come. While this letter is addressed to one group in particular (with whom I was hoping to do a follow-up seminar) it is also meant for all the groups I’ve worked with.

The main gate to Auschwitz II-Birkenau, March 2020. Photo: Jaime Ashworth

Dear Group Five,

First, let me say that you were lovely. Bright, curious, open to learning new things, as groups so often are. It’s just one of the reasons I love working as an Educator on the project. But you had something else in addition: an emotional grasp of what the trip meant that I’ve only rarely encountered and a willingness to share that with me and each other that was beautiful and inspiring to work with.

I am, quite simply, gutted that I haven’t been able to complete my sections of your LFA journey. I was looking forward to hearing your reflections and insights and getting a glimpse of your next steps. I don’t think anyone knows when or how that may happen – though I’m sure the logistics team that do everything to manage the seminars and trips are working to answer that question. In advance of that possibility I want to share some ideas about the possibilities and challenges that lie ahead in your next steps. 

On a personal level I am wary of the idea of lessons. Michael Marrus, a distinguished scholar of the Holocaust and its history, wrote in his memoir that lessons are problematic, often telling us more about the person drawing the lesson than the past itself. I agree. But if we don’t try to draw lessons all we are left with is horror. So we have to strike a balance.

Certainly the idea that we can easily draw inspirational lessons is to be approached with caution. After hearing the testimony of Steven Frank, you identified that the most important factor in his survival was luck. Yes, he was young and healthy. Yes, he was resilient. Yes, he enjoyed the support of a parent who was also spared. But so did many others. As we are discovering, there is by definition no logic to catastrophe. Kings and beggars, villains and saints – all perished, the remainder saved only by capricious chance. As Primo Levi reminded us in his final book, The Drowned and the Saved:

We, the survivors, are not only a tiny but also an anomalous minority. We are those who, through prevarication, skill or luck, never touched bottom. Those who have, and who have seen the face of the Gorgon, did not return, or returned wordless.

Shortly after finishing the book, Levi died, falling down the lift shaft of his apartment building in Turin. There is a debate about whether he fell or jumped. I’m not sure it matters: he had spent a lifetime contesting the verdict on himself he had pronounced in the camp, convicted in his own mind by the fact of his survival. He had acted as best he could, but remained concerned that this had still been at the cost of others’ survival. As the Polish writer (and Auschwitz inmate) Tadeusz Borowski described so well, the camp experience involved everyone in the crime. One could not emerge from it without, however inadvertently, being tarnished. Because if you survived, someone else hadn’t. This is why understandings of survivors now focus more on shame than guilt. Guilt might be contested, shame enters the skin, as indelible as a tattoo.

Lessons need to be approached carefully, mindful of the facts and their complexity. Perhaps the only lesson that really matters is to see humanity and potential in everyone. That’s why the emphasis is on rehumanising the victims: because you can’t see the humanity in a statistic. But you might glimpse it in a market square or the site of a synagogue. Or in the objects brought by deportees, proclaiming their faith in the simple belief that life would go on, with prayers to be said, meals to be cooked and teeth to be brushed. And the reassurance of house keys in their pocket.

And what of the perpetrators? Should we see them as human? The Polish epigram Ludzie ludziom zgotowali ten los, coined by the writer Zofia Nałkowska while investigating Nazi crimes, is often translated as “man prepared this fate for man”. Which I suppose has a certain cadence in English. But in fact it is literally “People prepared this fate for people.” The first translation may look better carved in a stone tablet but it detaches the actors from their actions. People did this: people like you, people like me. And as Jonathan Littell notes in his novel The Kindly Ones:

If you were born in a country or at a time not only when nobody comes to kill your wife and your children, but also nobody comes to ask you to kill the wives and children of others, then render thanks to God and go in peace. But always keep this thought in mind: you might be luckier than I, but you’re not a better person.

So where do we go from here? Primo Levi wrote of the shame of the liberators as they entered the camp, their eyes downcast because this had happened, that such crimes had entered the world of existing things. A sense of shame at humanity is a common response to Auschwitz even today, 75 years later. And it is both correct and just the beginning of the story. You are it’s next step.

I often tell three stories when saying goodbye to groups.

The first is by Elie Wiesel and concerns the trial of God. A trial in the barracks of Birkenau where the inmates found God either guilty or absent. But then it was time for prayers, so they prayed. Sometimes we carry on despite our conviction that things are worthless – because sometimes that’s all there is to do.

Elie Wiesel was liberated in Buchenwald, aged sixteen. He spent a lifetime trying to explain Auschwitz but often resorted to the aphorism that “The truth of Auschwitz lies in silence”. It’s another good phrase that looks very impressive carved in stone. But here’s my question: if the truth of Auschwitz lies in silence, how do we tell it? 

The final story is from the late Clive James. On a visit to Munich on assignment for the Observer in 1983, he visited Dachau. His description is characteristically both beautiful and learned.

There is a place in Virgil’s Aeneid called the broken-hearted fields. Standing in that snow-covered space I could think of no better description. Nor was there any point in reproaching oneself for being unable to shed tears: if we could truly imagine what it was like, we would die of grief.

I often think of these words when I talk to students worrying about whether their next steps will be enough or hear educators fret about whether they covered everything, whether they did justice to the facts. Of course they didn’t, because nobody can. We ask you to bear witness to Auschwitz, knowing that it’s really beyond description; because it’s the attempt that matters.

And so I suggest one final lesson from Auschwitz: it is better to speak than to remain silent. And you must trust that whatever you say will be perfect – because the alternative is saying nothing at all. The rest, as Rabbi Hillel said, is commentary: now go study. 

Wishing you safe passage and a prosperous voyage in these troubled times. 

Jaime

London, March 2020