David Langwallner: The Unvaccinated Rebel

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From top: Albert Camus by Henri Cartier-Bresson (1944); David Langwallner

The world is now increasingly being divided between an ever-smaller, dominant, medieval plutocratic class. Between them and the excluded others. Let us call them The Unvaccinated. Only a metaphor, but an important one.

I have written hitherto about how we are descending or reverting to the 1930s in terms of austerity, the rise of fascism and the decline of rational discourse.

Perhaps the most influential text of the 1930’s is Oswald Spengler’s “The Decline of the West” (1926) and the suggestion that much of the blame for the decline of European civilisation could lie on the doorstep of Slavic and ‘degenerate races’.  The prior unvaccinated and impure. The prior degenerate other.

The counterpoint of the argument was that Aryan blue blood, whether Germanic or Anglo Saxon, was the emblem of purity and that the other races corrupted the gene pool. particularly Slavic and Hassidic races. Of course, Spengler influenced Hitler and the snowball of fascism led to the extermination of those undesirable races and the nightmare of the holocaust.

Such matters were hitherto of historic concern and until recently a distant epoch but regrettably this form of Social Darwinism is back in fashion and a new corporatised Shoah of economic liquidation and segmentation, as well as the cartelisation of humanity, beckons, accentuated by Coronavirus.

It will further lead to the demonisation and exclusion of the other and rather than humanise him or her many will not interact with other races and nationalities even in the melting pot. For safety fears, as a result of hysteria or only on specific terms and for specific reasons.

Or rather, all will have to conform to survive, become part of the vaccinated and thus enjoy vaccine data retention tourism. If allowed to travel.

This epidemic will, I predict, only lead to others as the science suggests and in tandem we are facing a depression greater in scope than the 1930s as well as environmental meltdown. In an age of chaos and uncertainty, the power grab of the strongman is evident for all to see.

Intellectual ideas that gain traction are not necessarily good ideas. Social Darwinism and Malthusian ideas are back in vogue. A Gatesian world that thinks in numbers. Where economists and scientists rule.

State authorities and populations are reacting to the present crisis in an overly authoritarian way, either though the direct election of fascists or through an insidious authoritarianism pandering to scaremongering and introducing, through executive action or legislation, an authoritarian creep. The walls are closing in.

We have reverted to what the great Austrian writer Stefan Zweig (who committed suicide as an emigrant from persecution) in his book “The World of Yesterday” (1942)”,  a summary of the 1930s indicated:

“I feel that Europe, in its state of degeneracy has passed its own death sentence.”

And not just Europe.  There is now no haven for the migrant, the dispossessed and the unvaccinated. No shelter from the storm certainly not in Ireland.
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Albert Camus is now crucial to our time and to the multi-cultural discourse. He was, in origin, a member of the French community in Algeria, doubly despised by the French mainland and by the Islamic majoritarian population in Algeria. He was a Pied-Noir, then, and now, a term of abuse. He had mixed race perspective as do I. and that is the crucial perspective of the outsider.

Camus, of course, was also above all else a product of the enlightenment and the French tradition of letters and reason. A product of Voltaire, with a prose style clipped and epigrammatic, much influenced by Pascal. It is a classic French prose style. Almost ridiculously tight. There is an austerity about it, but also a romantic lyricism born of his mongrel Algerian background. The twinkle was always in this lady’s man’s eyes, as is very evident in the famous picture by Cartier Bresson (at top).

In his writing on Algeria, as in his writings in “The Rebel” (1951) on extremism in the French Revolution, there is distaste for fundamentalism, secular and religious, which then and now is why he is relevant to our time as a cautionary critic of multiculturalism, but also an opponent of extremism such as authoritarian terrorism or state terrorism.

He would have no time for the compulsory imposition of vaccines which the European Court Of Human Rights (ECHR) has now implicitly sanctioned. He would see it as the destruction of freedom. A kind of corporate fascist creep.

It should be stressed in a balanced way that he advocated co-existence between the transplanted French and the native Islamic population and condemned the torture and the death penalty inflicted on the Islamic population by French authorities. Impeccable multiculturalism, but Camus saw clearly that there was going to be a bloodletting in Algeria arising from extremism and he was, of course, right then and indeed now, a new bloodletting is coming.

Those qualities of middle of the road temperance often get run over and railroaded by barbarism, whether fascist or communistic. Pleas for tolerance fall on deaf ears. But that is what is needed: the just man or woman, the legalist in fact, the moderate, the secular humanistic rationalist. The voice of courage and independence, the espousal of absolute human rights against the nonsense of relativism. The secular humanist intellect.

Edward Said, who criticised Camus, is, of course, the great intellect of anti-imperialism of recent vintage. He analyses, in his crucial texts Culture and Imperialism (1993) and Orientalism (1978), how the mission statement of an imperialist agenda is to civilise barbaric races and impose imperial subjection if necessary, by terror and barbarism.

He analyses texts such as Graham Greene’s The Quiet American (1955) and Naipaul’s Bend in the River (1979) to demonstrate how agents of imperialism work and how it morphs into murder, subversion, and the endless instabilities of so-called primitive societies. In a dispassionate way he also attacks virulent nationalism and tribalism. hallmarks of our age.

In a crucial passage at Page 22 of Culture and Imperialism he points out that:

‘Patriotism, chauvinism, ethnic, religious, and racial hatreds can lead to mass destructiveness.’

This perspective is crucial to our age, but now the logic of exclusion is international. Or as psychiatrist  Fritz Fanon put it:

“The Colonial world is a world cut in two.”

Now the entire world. Divided up, cut up and broken into fragments.

The classic colonial text is of course Hearts of Darkness (1899) by Conrad and the central character of the mad Kurtz where the civilising mission turns into barbarism and murder which Coppola recycles into his indictment of the American civilising mission in Vietnam with Brando doing his star turn as Kurtz in Apocalypse Now (1979).

Colonialism also caricatured the myth of the lazy native. Like the infamous Punch cartoons of the Irish at the end of the 19th century.

In The Wretched of the Earth (1961), Fanon is very insightful on degenerate essences and the portal of outsiders as degenerates, but his famous insight of how the wretched of the earth must pay the debts of the occupying powers is now the international model of austerity. Where vast sectors of even the developed world are now easy picking for a corporate colonialism emanating from transnational law firms, corporations and endorsed by governmental and inter-governmental entities such as the EU.

At Page 152 Fanon argues that:

“The people’s property and the people’s sovereignty are to be stripped from them.”

Well, that remark now applies to everybody of all nations. Fanon also demonstrates how mental illness; neurosis and de realisation are aspects of post-colonial subjugation or of austerity which coronavirus will now augment.

Both Fanon and Said have little hope as they internalise the norms of the state and in our Ted Talk universe sing for their supper. More likely they are bought and packaged. Or sponsored by Mr Gates or The Ford Foundation.

When the Black Death came to Europe in the 14th century, cities and towns shut themselves to outsiders – and assaulted, banished and killed “undesirable” people, mostly Jews. There has been a tsunami of racist taunts even in the UK recently and the status of non-nationals increasingly precarious. In fact, in a propagandistic way, the virus has been linked with multiculturalism.

The fascist Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Organ, recently announced:

“We are fighting a two-front war: one front is called migration, and the other one belongs to the corona virus. There is a logical connection between the two, as both spread with movement.”

Britain still is probably the last place that there will be rivers of blood and there are still residues of the qualities Camus espoused and that are desperately needed: rationality, rigour, tolerance, humanism.

But it is not just European civilisation that is falling apart. The wretched of the earth is the earth, as I have intimated. The insights of the post-colonial academics such as Fanon and Said gave a partial glimpse. Everybody is now in the same boat.

And now the vaccine passports to potentially monitor data and those who do not take the jab,  outsiders restricted in movement, will be confined to quarters in coronavirus panopticon.

But why should people consent, say, to the demonstrably unsafe Astra Zeneca vaccine and why are we having this dialogue anyway? Well, dummy, many want the world divided into their safe spaces and to be excluded from the others.

The unvaccinated is a metaphor for our time. Minds and borders are closing when they should be opening.

David Langwallner is a barrister specialising in public law, immigration, housing and criminal defence including miscarriages of justice. He is emeritus director of the Irish Innocence Project and was Irish Lawyer of the Year at the 2015 Irish Law Awards. His column appears here every Tuesday and Friday. Follow David on Twitter @DLangwallner

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59 thoughts on “David Langwallner: The Unvaccinated Rebel

  1. Daisy Chainsaw

    Vaccine passports have been in existence since the 1930s. If they’re such a danger to your freedom why haven’t you challenged their legality? Was it simply because up to now, it didn’t affect you?

      1. Daisy Chainsaw

        Shops etc have always had the right to refuse entry. And we don’t have a digital health ID system in place, that’s just your fevered paranoia.

        1. General Public

          Brilliant.

          A shop is privately owned with a code of conduct drafted by the owners.

          A state is generally a democracy, if there isn’t a law in place, it must be drafted and voted on by its citizens.

          1. Daisy Chainsaw

            Since when? Laws are drafted all the time without you being entitled to vote on them.

          2. General Public

            Wow, You obviously haven’t heard of the Oireactas so.

            Laws are brought in through bills, which are introduced to the Oireactas and voted on by citizens representatives. Governing and opposition.

          3. Daisy Chainsaw

            Oh now it’s citizens’ representatives who vote for the laws.

            Anything else you need to clarify?

          4. General Public

            Lol…

            Citizens vote for representatives, who then vote on their constituents behalf.

            What part are you having trouble with?

          5. General Public

            Where do I keep backtracking and what has this alleged transgression to do with you not knowing how laws are “passed”?

          6. Daisy Chainsaw

            “if there isn’t a law in place, it must be drafted and voted on by its citizens.”

            Then you backtracked to citizens’ representatives which is a totally different matter.

    1. K. Cavan

      So you imply that vax passports have no effect, then ask Mr Langwallner if he’s only challenging vax passports now because they’re effecting him. Eh? The stuff about them existing since the 30’s is the usual gibbering fascist nonsense.

  2. Shitferbrains

    Problem with Said is that his Orient begins and ends in the Middle East and with his pet preoccupation , the Palestinians.

  3. John

    “But why should people consent, say, to the demonstrably unsafe Astra Zeneca vaccine and why are we having this dialogue anyway?”
    People consent to the demonstrably unsafe all the time.
    Every time someone choses to; get out of bed, stay in bed, turn on the kettle, eat their cereal, walk out their front door, cross the street, get in the car, in fact do anything at all, they are consenting to something that is demonstrably unsafe and comes with a non zero risk of serious harm or death and yet they do it all the time! The do it without full knowledge of the scope of the risk they are subjecting themselves to.
    More relevant example would be everytime someone takes any sort of medicine whether it be over the counter or prescription, they are consuming something that is demonstrably unsafe. All you need to do is open the information sheet that comes with the product to see the laundry list of side effects including the disclaimer about the ones not even listed.

    As for the rest of the article I cant help but feel sorry for David. It appears that everyone in the world is seen as an anti-semitic fascist.

    1. E'Matty

      Your argument is disingenuous. Yes, people take on risk all of the time, but, it is up to that person if they wish to accept that risk. That is their human right as a sovereign individual. What you are talking about is compelling those who clearly do not wish to accept the risk of these particular vaccines where they personally have weighed up what risk they can accept between Covid or the vaccine. You seek to do this under the guise of “protecting others”. Now you are seeking to impose an obligation or duty upon others to take on a risk to themselves for a claimed benefit to others, which is quite different and far more dangerous territory. Once you start down this road, you set a precedent, one which will no doubt, as history shows repeatedly, expand.

      We know from over 14 months of data that this virus poses a mortal threat almost exclusively to the very elderly and those with serious underlying conditions. The overwhelming majority of these are being vaccinated. A very small proportion will be too frail to vaccinate, due to age related illness. The idea that all healthy people in this State should be compelled to receive the fastest ever developed vaccines in history, where all have known serious side effects already, and nobody can possibly know their medium or long term effects, to protect against a virus that poses almost no threat to the overwhelming majority for the claimed and as of yet unproven benefit to an exceptionally small number of people, who are already extremely vulnerable to ALL viruses, is absolute lunacy.

      None of this is particularly surprising given just how easily people have been willing to just give away so many of their hard fought for Constitutional rights and freedoms. An insane trust in Officialdom, a child like plea for parental protection in a scary world, and a naive failure to appreciate how power works, and always has.

      1. K. Cavan

        E’Matty, in fact it’s not Elderly people per se, the longer you are on this planet, the more likely you will have developed a serious illness & it’s highly likely that this is the reason that more Elderly people are dying. The Median Age of Covid victims is a year & a half more than our current average life expectancy, the average victim is statistically past death’s door, as are most Flu victims. It must also be remembered that we are undergoing an Obesity Epidemic, it’s so common we’ve become inured to it yet medically, every obese person is a seriously ill person. In the US, ground zero for obesity, average life expectancy has been falling, year on year, for some time.

    2. K. Cavan

      You saw that video of our current Health Minister, right?.You thought he came across well, made sense? Really?

  4. Junkface

    Interesting article, lots to absorb there. There are similarities to key themes that are also explored in Adam Curtis recent 5 part documentary series “Can’t get you out of my head.” While I might not agree with 100% percent of this, I have to say as someone who moved to Germany, I am not fond of the mandatory registration system here. Which hands over all consumer/individual power to big corporations and makes it very difficult to challenge if a company overcharges you (electricity, broadband, gas etc), or fails to live up to their contract with terrible service. It’s really time consuming and infuriating fighting these companies, even when you have all of the proof and you contacted the teeny, tiny consumer rights association for help and it always costs YOU money, always. Even if its a small amount. So in a contract system (of course Germans love this) once you sign, you are in for a fight later. The banking class increasingly wield all of the power, we need to be careful how far they push us into boxes. I’m talking about all EU countries, USA and UK.

    I forgot to add, you have to fight really hard to stop companies you have a dispute with from dipping into your account via direct debit systems. Also after 2 weeks these companies set the debt collectors on you, and they charge interest over time. So you have to get your case together quick!

  5. D-troll

    Nice article David. i hope this you don’t worry about this in your day to day life.

    History has always been littered with facists and bad people. But morals and acceptance of those different have improved over the last 150 years, albeit with some glitches.

    Refusing to take a vaccine will be akin to any criminal act. it damages society and against public policy and puts people at risk. people can live in society and the rules that entails. or they can be nomads and live off the grid.

    1. Junkface

      I think he said refusing a vaccine was only a metaphor. Vaccines are hugely important to public health.

      1. General Public

        They are indeed. In places like India and Yemen where open sewers sometimes containing week old corpses, human or animal, meet the municipal water supply unfiltered.

        Europe, not at all.

        1. Nigel

          Yup, everyone knows it was the massive Pulling The Corpses Out Of The Open Sewers Project that ended Polio and TB in ireland.

          1. General Public

            Can you cite anything that explains how vaccines are or have anything to do with sanitation.

        2. K. Cavan

          + 1, GP.
          Of the 11 killer disease that stalked humanity through the Middle Ages, one, Smallpox, was eliminated by Jenner’s work in the late 1700’s, the rest were eliminated by clean water & sewage systems. Short of taking over the water supply (right?) there’s very little money to made from that, though. Vaccines are far more profitable. Polio is a specialist virus, it has to infect the nervous system to have any effect, it’s very debilitating but never a killer disease. Sanitation also had a massive impact on TB, as public urination & expectoration were the major vectors for it’s transmission. Vaccines, despite the occasional scientific brilliance associated with some of them, are not & have never been a silver bullet to protect against viruses, a healthy Immune System is.

    2. K. Cavan

      If you actually, genuinely believe it’s a criminal act to maintain bodily autonomy, you are a Fascist. A very fascist Fascist. Well done, you.

  6. Clampers Outside

    Big fan of Camus, I.

    Putting it super briefly, “Integrity has no need of rules” was one of few rocks I laid the base upon which to rebuild myself after rehab.
    Always stops me, when I hear anyone speak of him and his ideas, thanks David.

    (Note to self…
    … buy more Camus :0) )

  7. D

    I suspect you have not read ‘Untergang des Abendlandes’ as it does not at all blame those you mention and you also have the date of publication wrong. Maybe Mein Kampf was what you were aiming for.

  8. E'Matty

    An excellent piece. Centralised supranational global governance awaits. A global response to global problems is necessary, they’ll say. A global society managed by technocrats, bases on algorithms and AI, where every aspect of one’s existence is monitored and directed. Where all your decisions are made for you, not by you.

    If this comment from Brzezinski doesn’t send a shiver down your spine, you’re not paying attention. Brzezinski was President Carters National Security Adviser, wrote the seminal modern book on global geostrategy “The Grand Chessboard” and was Obama’s foreign policy mentor from his days at Columbia University to his Presidency. The Democrats Kissinger. He was founder of the Trilateral Commission with David Rockefellar, one of the most significant men of our age.

    “The technotronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities.”
    Zbigniew Brzeziński, Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era (1970)

    People really should read Klaus Schwabs books to get some idea of where we’re going at an ever increasingly rapid pace. Chilling.

    1. Commenter #1

      Weird how you left out the first sentence of that paragraph: “Another threat, less overt but no less basic, confronts liberal democracy.”

      Or the passage that follows later:
      “The conservatives, preoccupied with public order and fascinated by modern gadgetry, would be tempted to use the new techniques as a response to unrest, since they would fail to recognize that social control is not the only way to deal with rapid social change.

      Such an outcome—were it to come to pass—would represent a profoundly pessimistic answer to the
      question whether American liberal democracy can assimilate and give philosophical meaning to the revolution it is undergoing. This matter not only has relevance for the United States; it has larger implications: American success or failure may provide a significant indication whether a modern democracy with highly educated citizens can successfully undergo an extensive social change without losing its essentially democratic character.

      Fortunately, the American transition also contains the potential for an American redemption.”

      Brzenzinski was not in favour of this technotronic tendency. He was against it, and saw it as a threat to liberal democracy. But why do I bother.

      1. General Public

        “Berzinsky was not in favour of this..”

        Lol, he just wrote a whole book praising it.

        1. Commenter #1

          “Another threat, less overt but no less basic, confronts liberal democracy.” That’s the opening of E’Matty’s paragraph above, which he weirdly left out. Take it up with him.

          And as opposed to endorsing the authority of the elite, consider this, from the same book:
          “Realism, however, forces us to recognize that the necessary political innovation will not come from
          direct constitutional reform, desirable as that would be. The needed change is more likely to develop
          incrementally and less overtly. Nonetheless, its eventual scope may be far-reaching,
          especially as the political
          process gradually assimilates scientific technological
          change. Thus, in the political sphere the increased flow of
          information and the development of more efficient techniques of coordination may make possible greater
          devolution of authority and responsibility to the lower levels of government and society. In the past the division
          of power has traditionally caused problems of inefficiency, poor coordination, and dispersal of authority, but
          today the new communications and computation techniques make possible both increased authority at the lower
          levels and almost instant national coordination.”

          1. General Public

            “Brzenzinski was not in favour of this technotronic tendency. He was against it, and saw it as a threat to liberal democracy. But why do I bother.”

            That silly comment is yours and has nothing to do with EM.

      2. E'Matty

        Yet, what he predicted is coming to fruition under supposed liberal rule. There is nothing liberal about the current ‘liberal order’. Is it that you don’t recognise the mass surveillance society developing around us, or that you don’t believe corporations and financial interests are seeing their wealth and power rise to nation state levels, though with far greater real world influence and power? Or is it that you believe the most competitive and elitist people in the world care deeply for your welfare and that of your family?

        The writer is absolutely spot in his recognition of social Darwinism and Malthusian ideology and the increasing prominence it has in debate. The supposed middle class liberals have also become rabid authoritarians in their state of fear and anxiety over the twin global terrors, climate change and Covid. It is this cohort in society who are unwittingly pushing us towards the precipice in a fanatical and zealous cloud of self righteous anger and arrogant belief in their right to dictate how everybody else on the planet lives.

        1. Nigel

          ‘middle class liberals have also become rabid authoritarians in their state of fear and anxiety over the twin global terrors, climate change and Covid’

          Have they now. What horrors are they inflicting on you? A bicycle lane? Cleaner air and water? More trees and bogs? Less pollution? The rabidity!

          ‘their right to dictate how everybody else on the planet lives.’

          I think they have the right to want the planet to be liveable.

        2. K. Cavan

          Liberalism is fine in it’s place, unfortunately, having made it’s peace with Neo-liberal Economic policies, it’s become hegemonic. It’s become Fundamentalist, a dictatorship of ideas, censorious of all other modes of thought, discarding it’s main universal value, Free Speech, in the process. It can no longer be called liberal, in the non-political meaning of the word. It also seems intent on it’s own destruction, being seemingly incapable of coming up with a rational response to Radical Islam, which will, given the opportunity, replace it with something even less liberal.

          1. Nigel

            LoL no. Conservatism embraced unreality and the destruction of regulation, social entitlements and the denial of public crises like climate change and covid leaving liberalism as the predominant political and cultural mode of engaging with basic reality. Conservatism spends most of it’s time whining about freedom of speech because nobody believes a word they say any more.

            Conservatism also gave us the second Iraq war leading us to the current state of conflict with a resurgent radical Islam.

          2. Nigel

            And of course neo-liberalism is a fusion of libertarianism and conservatism. You’ve misdiagnosed the problem all the way down.

    2. Unreal

      Can’t wait
      The end of illness and the warm cloying embrace of mass consumerism and quiet indolence for all our days

  9. Poodle

    What is this. Something as important as this does NOT need political metaphors, if that is what is going on here.
    I think what David was ( or should have been) trying to say was the unvaccinated are lacking in social responsibility. The rest of society should consider them the “unvaccinated” in a very dismissive and derogatory way. If we want our freedoms back, oh human rights lawyer you, have the vaccine with a little care for those around you. Please

    1. K. Cavan

      People who chose not to have experimental injections have no control over you, your rights are being limited by your Government, who are also engaged in an experiment, to see how easy it is to install a 21st Century Fascist State. Are you actually naive enough to believe that Lockdowns will end if everybody gets jabbed? Sorry, dawg, that’s not how it works, there’ll always be another virus, another jab, another excuse & you’ll still be saying “if people just have this 30th jab” or maybe you’re another shy Irish fascist?

      1. Nigel

        ‘Take that you fascist,’ says Cavan, breathing unvaccinated air on the guy at the till in Centra.

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