The Totalitarian Shadow of COVID-19

The spread of COVID-19 has brought major changes not only to our way of life, but also to our way of thinking. Not only has awareness of hygiene increased, but wariness toward others has also intensified. Amid these various shifts in mindset, the most striking change is that people have come to place greater value on the “community.” Many quarantine measures, including the public health authorities’ social distancing orders, clearly infringe on individual freedom. Yet many citizens have accepted these measures without much resistance, meaning they have accepted, without objection, situations in which individuals are infringed upon for the sake of the community’s goals.

This tendency to lean toward the community appears natural when one considers the course of COVID-19’s spread. A small number of super-spreaders who did not follow quarantine measures were largely responsible for the explosive spread of COVID-19, and the recent crisis sparked by infections linked to Itaewon clubs was likewise caused by “selfish individuals” who failed to observe social distancing and used crowded facilities such as clubs. Anyone who watched this process could easily conclude that prioritizing individual freedom over the interests of the community led to a situation in which the community itself was threatened through the spread of the virus.

Still, it is troubling that, in the process of emphasizing the community, decisions are being made that undermine the rules of our society. In particular, Gyeonggi Province Governor Jaemyung Lee’s investigation of Shincheonji had strong extralegal elements, and Seoul Mayor Wonsoon Park’s ban on downtown rallies infringed on the freedom of assembly and association guaranteed by the Constitution. More recently, public health authorities collected telecommunications records from the area around the Itaewon clubs where COVID-19 had spread, raising concerns about violations of personal privacy. Yet rather than focusing on the erosion of principle or the infringement of human rights in these decisions, the public gave them overwhelming support, concentrating instead on the benefits to the community that could be gained from them. The fact that even constitutionally guaranteed individual rights were taken away for the sake of the community’s interests—and that the public supported this—can be interpreted as not only a serious tilt toward the community, but even as the opening signal of totalitarian rule.

Another troubling point is that the community the public claims to value is in fact the “national community.” When Koreans think of the word “community,” they tend unconsciously to picture the national community. The daily checking of the number of new COVID-19 cases in South Korea, comparing it with the figures in the United States, Japan, and Europe, and praising so-called K-quarantine all confirm that the community people sought to protect was the national community. At the same time, amid this national disaster, the position of small-scale communities outside the state is steadily weakening, which is particularly concerning because the dismantling of small-scale communities is a typical method of totalitarian rule.

Totalitarianism seeks to unify all community under the state by dismantling small-scale communities. Its purpose is to prevent people from having multiple identities within diverse communities and to ensure that they possess only the identity of being members of the state. After establishing a vertical power relationship between the state apparatus and the people, the typical totalitarian method of rule is to use various totalitarian mechanisms to turn individuals into components that move according to the interests of the state.

In this situation, we must step forward to revitalize small-scale communities. Individuals are not atomized beings; they inevitably require some form of community and order. For such individuals to lead free lives, what is needed is not the spread of artificial and vertical communities like the state, but the expansion of spontaneous and free communities. The unification of community has already progressed considerably, and we are now in a situation where even unconstitutional and extralegal levels of human rights violations are being carried out for the sake of the community’s interests. Perhaps the crisis of totalitarianism has already begun. We must bear in mind that the path to preventing this totalitarian crisis begins with being faithful to our families and friends.

Original title: 코로나19가 불러온 전체주의의 그림자

Author: Jae-min Park

Date: 2020-06-01

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=free_opinion&pn=14&idx=22784