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(In response to: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/16/belittling-the-canberra-convoy-protesters-will-just-push-ostracised-people-further-into-their-bunkers)
I read this article, and I thought "gee, it's nice Simon Copland is able to feel some sympathy for the various protesters out there." But I rather disagree with his premise that "We must seek to understand and address their feelings".
Mr Copland talks about these protesters having formed an "intimate public" group as part of the camp and the protest, and yeah, I can understand that. Heck, I've been part of "intimate public" groups myself - I've gone to science fiction and fantasy conventions, and I've camped out at the Canberra show-grounds myself as part of the National Folk Festival. So I can sympathise with the protesters feeling disappointed, even despairing, when the event breaks up, and they have to go home, resume their everyday life, and deal with being an ordinary part of society again, after a few days (or weeks) of being something extra-ordinary. It's a bit of a let-down, and it's not the most enjoyable situation to be in.
But I think while we're busy looking so hard at the humanity of these protesters, we need to also pay attention to the thing which has united them together. This isn't just a gathering of people who have got together to celebrate a relatively harmless hobby (like folk music, or enjoyment of a genre of entertainment). This is a group of people who got together in defence of an ideology of "liberation" which rests very solidly on the idea that their personal freedom to perform certain activities over-rides the right of anyone else in the country to enjoy a safe, healthy life.
The people in this convoy who "lost friends over [their] views" lost those friends, almost certainly, because of their ideological stance.
Their ideological stance, in a lot of cases, involves effectively telling a lot of other people that they are dispensable. That they are not as human as the holders of this particular stance, and therefore do not merit the same level of consideration. For example, as an autistic person, I'm not considered by many anti-vaccination thinkers to be as human as they are - my existence, to them, is something to be feared, to be dreaded, and something that should not be. To a lot of anti-vaxxers, I am a monster, and I belong dead.
Forgive me for disagreeing with them on that one.
For the sovereign citizens, and the other extreme glibertarians in the crowd, there is nobody on the planet who is as human as they are, and they are fighting hard for their right not to be bound by the dictates of wider society. Mind you, when you stop and talk to a lot of them, you find out what they're actually fighting for (once you strip out the rhetoric, and boil things down to their core notions) is that they should share in the benefits of society (things like infrastructure, services and so on) but not have to deal with any of the costs of society. There's a reason a lot of billionaires in the USA describe themselves as "libertarians", after all. To these people, as a person who has relied on social security to survive at times, and who is going to be looking for support from the NDIS in order to be able to live a slightly fuller (and healthier) life than I do at present, I am anathema. Again, I belong dead, because I am a "parasite" who needs a bit of help from other people in order to be able to contribute fully to society (like a lot of people with disabilities).
Again, I disagree with them as well.
The neo-Nazis in the crowd think I should be dead because I'm a person with a disability (and even more so because I'm a white woman who has reached the end of her reproductive life and not bred good little white children for the nation). Of course, I'm part of a very long list of people they think belong dead, starting with the indigenous owners of this continent, and moving on from there covering things like "people who aren't white enough", "people who aren't Christian", "people who aren't Australian enough", right the way along to "people who don't entirely agree with their every thought".
Do I need to say I disagree with their point of view? Or can we take this as read?
Now, I agree with Mr Copland that it's good these people found a sense of community in their convoy. Community is a human thing, a thing everyone who is human wants and needs to be part of. But let's not lose sight of the fact that these people, this community, want to deny a lot of other people the opportunity to be part of any community at all (much less theirs). There are the immunocompromised and people with "pre-existing conditions" (by which, apparently, the health authorities mean "anyone in less than 100% health, both physical and psychological") who currently aren't able to take part in community events, because it isn't safe for them to risk infection - and let's note this group skews strongly toward those who are on lower incomes, those who are in rural areas rather than urban areas, those who are indigenous, those who are disabled and so on. There are the elderly, who are both vulnerable to things like COVID due to issues of age-related physical and mental deterioration, and also vulnerable because their living systems mean they're unable to move away from sources of potential exposure. The same applies to persons with disability who are living in supported accommodation.
I'm sure a lot of us can talk about people who very literally haven't left their houses if they could possibly avoid it since the pandemic started spreading back in February 2020, simply because they don't want to risk their lives. I'm sure there's a lot of us who fall into that group ourselves.
According to these protesters, we deserve to die, so long as they can carry on acting as though the bad things in the world won't touch them. While the protesters are "expressing genuinely held feelings", as per Mr Copland, I'm sure Mr Copland can also understand that quite frankly, if these people want me to meet them half-way, then they have to start by acknowledging my genuinely held feeling that I am as human as they are, possessed of the same essential humanity, and stop upholding ideologies which say I'm expendable. I'm more than happy to form a community with any of the protesters. Whether they can say the same about me is on them. But I'm more than happy to meet them half-way. It's just the half-way point where I'm prepared to meet them is one where they recognise I don't deserve to die simply because of who I am. If they have a lot of travelling to do to get there, then that is on them, not on me.
I read this article, and I thought "gee, it's nice Simon Copland is able to feel some sympathy for the various protesters out there." But I rather disagree with his premise that "We must seek to understand and address their feelings".
Mr Copland talks about these protesters having formed an "intimate public" group as part of the camp and the protest, and yeah, I can understand that. Heck, I've been part of "intimate public" groups myself - I've gone to science fiction and fantasy conventions, and I've camped out at the Canberra show-grounds myself as part of the National Folk Festival. So I can sympathise with the protesters feeling disappointed, even despairing, when the event breaks up, and they have to go home, resume their everyday life, and deal with being an ordinary part of society again, after a few days (or weeks) of being something extra-ordinary. It's a bit of a let-down, and it's not the most enjoyable situation to be in.
But I think while we're busy looking so hard at the humanity of these protesters, we need to also pay attention to the thing which has united them together. This isn't just a gathering of people who have got together to celebrate a relatively harmless hobby (like folk music, or enjoyment of a genre of entertainment). This is a group of people who got together in defence of an ideology of "liberation" which rests very solidly on the idea that their personal freedom to perform certain activities over-rides the right of anyone else in the country to enjoy a safe, healthy life.
The people in this convoy who "lost friends over [their] views" lost those friends, almost certainly, because of their ideological stance.
Their ideological stance, in a lot of cases, involves effectively telling a lot of other people that they are dispensable. That they are not as human as the holders of this particular stance, and therefore do not merit the same level of consideration. For example, as an autistic person, I'm not considered by many anti-vaccination thinkers to be as human as they are - my existence, to them, is something to be feared, to be dreaded, and something that should not be. To a lot of anti-vaxxers, I am a monster, and I belong dead.
Forgive me for disagreeing with them on that one.
For the sovereign citizens, and the other extreme glibertarians in the crowd, there is nobody on the planet who is as human as they are, and they are fighting hard for their right not to be bound by the dictates of wider society. Mind you, when you stop and talk to a lot of them, you find out what they're actually fighting for (once you strip out the rhetoric, and boil things down to their core notions) is that they should share in the benefits of society (things like infrastructure, services and so on) but not have to deal with any of the costs of society. There's a reason a lot of billionaires in the USA describe themselves as "libertarians", after all. To these people, as a person who has relied on social security to survive at times, and who is going to be looking for support from the NDIS in order to be able to live a slightly fuller (and healthier) life than I do at present, I am anathema. Again, I belong dead, because I am a "parasite" who needs a bit of help from other people in order to be able to contribute fully to society (like a lot of people with disabilities).
Again, I disagree with them as well.
The neo-Nazis in the crowd think I should be dead because I'm a person with a disability (and even more so because I'm a white woman who has reached the end of her reproductive life and not bred good little white children for the nation). Of course, I'm part of a very long list of people they think belong dead, starting with the indigenous owners of this continent, and moving on from there covering things like "people who aren't white enough", "people who aren't Christian", "people who aren't Australian enough", right the way along to "people who don't entirely agree with their every thought".
Do I need to say I disagree with their point of view? Or can we take this as read?
Now, I agree with Mr Copland that it's good these people found a sense of community in their convoy. Community is a human thing, a thing everyone who is human wants and needs to be part of. But let's not lose sight of the fact that these people, this community, want to deny a lot of other people the opportunity to be part of any community at all (much less theirs). There are the immunocompromised and people with "pre-existing conditions" (by which, apparently, the health authorities mean "anyone in less than 100% health, both physical and psychological") who currently aren't able to take part in community events, because it isn't safe for them to risk infection - and let's note this group skews strongly toward those who are on lower incomes, those who are in rural areas rather than urban areas, those who are indigenous, those who are disabled and so on. There are the elderly, who are both vulnerable to things like COVID due to issues of age-related physical and mental deterioration, and also vulnerable because their living systems mean they're unable to move away from sources of potential exposure. The same applies to persons with disability who are living in supported accommodation.
I'm sure a lot of us can talk about people who very literally haven't left their houses if they could possibly avoid it since the pandemic started spreading back in February 2020, simply because they don't want to risk their lives. I'm sure there's a lot of us who fall into that group ourselves.
According to these protesters, we deserve to die, so long as they can carry on acting as though the bad things in the world won't touch them. While the protesters are "expressing genuinely held feelings", as per Mr Copland, I'm sure Mr Copland can also understand that quite frankly, if these people want me to meet them half-way, then they have to start by acknowledging my genuinely held feeling that I am as human as they are, possessed of the same essential humanity, and stop upholding ideologies which say I'm expendable. I'm more than happy to form a community with any of the protesters. Whether they can say the same about me is on them. But I'm more than happy to meet them half-way. It's just the half-way point where I'm prepared to meet them is one where they recognise I don't deserve to die simply because of who I am. If they have a lot of travelling to do to get there, then that is on them, not on me.
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