The COVID Gestapo– Storm Troopers In America

Daniel Goldhagen in his book Hitler’s Willing Executioners wrote about the complicity of ordinary Germans in the Holocaust.  They knew, contended Goldhagen, about the roundup, internment, and mass murder of Jews under Hitler, but did nothing about it.  Their silence was tantamount to murder.  They witnessed the disappearance of Jews, the increasing militarization of German society, the institutionalization of racial nationalism and radical socialism, but did nothing.  As a result, Nazi Germany became a military, fascist state, and millions of Jews were exterminated

Marcie Bernstein had relatives who had died in the camps, and she had an ineradicable hatred for authoritarianism and social militarism.  Never again, she vowed, would the State ever arrogate to itself so much power, and never again would its people be so complaisant, so willing, and so weak.

However, like many older American Jews, Marcie ironically turned to Communism – an equally repressive and murderous system -  as an anodyne to fascism and to the arrogation of unchecked power.  While it too had its authoritarian side, such Communist punitive ‘correction’ of naysayers and doubters was justified for its goal was the creation of a pure, harmonious, and equal society.  The ends justify the means, as she was taught to believe.

Her Jewish experience – the horrors of the camps, the inhuman, murderous brutality of fascism, and the Communism which replaced it were part and parcel of her being.  She had that peculiar Jewish disease borne of the Holocaust – an irreconcilable belief in the annealing power of socialism and a willingness to forgo individual liberty for the sake of its social ends.  

Her reaction to those who flouted progressive government edicts and restrictions designed to slow the spread of COVID were ironically as fascist as the Gestapo and as arbitrary as the gulags.  In her desire to establish a pure state she was an unholy amalgam of Fascism and Communism; and she and her colleagues helped to promote both.

Marcie Bernstein had been a masker since the early days of COVID.  She took it upon herself to call out those who were not wearing masks and social distancing.  She felt good about her new role and saw herself as a guardian of the common good.  She lived in a leafy, well-to-do neighborhood of a major American city, most of whose residents, used to good health and well-being,were scared witless over this new, insidious, and deadly virus.  They would do anything to avoid infection.  They had groceries and medications delivered, installed air purifiers and exhaust fans in their homes, went out only in emergencies, and led a sequestered, isolated, sheltered life.

There were outliers, however - libertarians and naysayers, radical Republicans, and ornery, antisocial rebels – who refused to listen to reason.  Calling upon her vivid recollections of her relatives’ camp experience and her devout belief in Communist reform, Marcie took it upon herself to call out these ignoramuses and see that they were punished.

For months after the first outbreak of COVID, Marcie was in her element.  She patrolled the streets of her neighborhood, pulling over unmasked pedestrians for negligence and antisocial ignorance, shaming them into compliance.  She stood volunteer guard in front of those few establishments that were allowed to remain open, assuring obedience with mask and social distancing requirements.  She was bold and undaunted in her policing, intimidating and righteous. 

As the virus came under increasing control thanks to the vaccine, Marcie found herself adrift and purposeless.  She had become the Avenging Angel of Righteousness, and now she found herself a forgotten, useless, former saint.  

Then came the Delta Variant, a mutant strain of COVID which was many times more infectious than the original virus.  Unless it was stopped, all unvaccinated people and many of the already vaccinated would become sick and die.  The thought of his epidemic nightmare was frightening but it signaled a new and even more purposeful activism for her. 

It mattered not that vaccinated people rarely got sick and if they did it was with a mild, attenuated form of the disease.  It mattered little that few young and healthy would, even under the worst conditions, get seriously ill or die; and it mattered not at all that children dealt easily and well with the virus.

COVID was a scourge, a Biblical plague, and a social undoing.  It was capitalism and raw, untethered political conservatism which was responsible for the disease’s rapid expansion.  Communist China had early on shut the country down, enforced police-monitored home internments and draconian quarantines, prosecuted and penalized any citizen who did not respect the law and slowed the virus to a crawl.  This is the way, neo-Fascist, Communist Marcie believed.  The American public, ignorant, wayward, seduced by fallacious arguments of personal freedom and government authority, could never be trusted to its own devices.

It was time to act.  This time there would be no give in the regulations, no tolerance or flexibility concerning claims to individual rights. 

Now that Joe Biden and his supporters ruled the White House and both houses of Congress, the imposition of absolute, inflexible regulations on social behavior to control the virus would be possible.  Such an imposition would enable the country to continue on its new, progressive path to social harmony and communal peace.

It was surprising how willing her neighbors were, rolling over to COVID restrictions as they never had before.  The government had succeeded in casting the Delta variant as an unstoppable, irremediable force that threatened the entire country, its citizenry, and its economy.  Only through draconian action could the nation be saved.  While many states of the union rejected this call for what amounted to an authoritarian, autocratic takeover of American society, Marcie’s neighbors and millions like them in other areas of the country agreed.

This complaisance was no different than that of the German people during 30s and 40s.  Ordinary citizens, noted Goldhagen, unquestioningly accepted the rise of fascism, the abrogation of individual rights, and the absolute arrogation of state authority.  Ordinary Soviet citizens, out of false belief, social timorousness, and moral lassitude, went along with Stalin’s gulags, murders, and autocratic rule. Marcie’s friends, neighbors, and colleagues on both coasts quickly, willingly, and knowingly supported the Biden government’s call to lockdown, shutdown, and enforced silence.

In this modern, COVID case, however, it was not a question of complaisance.  Marcie and her friends rushed to the barricades.  They became Stasi-like informers.  J’accuse! was their mantra.  As their numbers grew the state became more emboldened and passed even more restrictive legislation.  Private enterprises – sports clubs, restaurants, and other private venues – quickly followed suit.  One county created an Office Of Citizen Compliance; and in conjunction and collaboration with major gym and restaurant chains, sent out ‘Inspectors’ to assure compliance with its laws.  It was the perfect storm – the county, supported by the liberal governor of the state, with full compliance on the part of club managers and administrators, and with almost universal support of patrons, became a de facto internment camp – a gulag.

Marcie, a member of a sports club in her neighborhood, volunteered to organize a compliance team.  They would identify patrons who did not comply with state regulations, take their names, and report them not only to club Membership, but to the county’s Office of Citizen Compliance.  They would not confront miscreants, but simply report them to the authorities who, under charter, needed no more proof than the word of the accuser to remove them. 

As the East Germans found under Communism, the insidious informing on citizens by children, family members, friends, and relatives was far more efficient and successful than deploying official inspectors.  The county’s Office of Citizen Compliance did indeed deploy its inspectors, but the system of informal informing had proven so successful, that visits were rare.

Once this juggernaut got underway there was no stopping it, and branch after branch of government found it easy to intervene.  Surprise inspections of suspected establishments became routine, the Internet became increasingly policed and restrictive.  No speech even indirectly criticizing government COVID policy, procedures, or regulations would be allowed.  Only if there was complete, uncontested, universal agreement with public COVID policy could the pandemic be controlled.

Sports Club managers were summarily dismissed if their facilities did not comply with government regulations.  Restaurant maître d’s were surveilled and patrons closely watched.  Government had never been happy with the ‘Masks at all times except when eating or drinking’ rule, and informed restaurant owners that if the policy was not strictly enforced, they would have to go back to 25 percent capacity, social distancing, and industrial strength air purifiers.  The county government was in its heyday.  Never before had it had so much unrestricted authority.

Although conservative citizens groups demanded some objective guidelines for masking and social distancing – e.g. rolling jurisdictional totals not to exceed 50 new cases per week – county supervisors and city councils refused to listen.  “We will open things up in due time and when we deem it appropriate” was the reply.

Marcie was in her element.  She ignored the inconsistencies of her philosophy and approach –internment and concentration camps, re-education, gulags, socialist Utopias, an ‘ends justify the means’ reformist philosophy – and pursued COVID perfection with harshness, intolerance, and righteous certainty.

There are Marcies everywhere, apparently, since citizens compliance groups can be found throughout the United States – or at least in heavily Democratic blue ones; but there is good news on the horizon.  Equally common now are resistance groups who refuse to knuckle under to government fiat and increasing government usurpation of individual freedoms and civil rights. 

The Left of course condemns them as reactionary, backward, ignorant dupes of Donald Trump and his shills; but they are growing and gaining in influence and respectability.  The 2022 mid-term elections will be the first step in an official, democratic rollback of the camps and the progressive gulags.   They are certain to go Republican, for most of the nearly 50 percent of Americans who voted against Joe Biden and his ‘progressive’ policies are now convinced they did the right thing.  Enough is enough say even the most respectful, patriotic Americans, and the downfall and early exit of Biden supporters is a sure thing.