VIRUSES ARE A WEAPON OF THE COLONIZERS
Pandemics are a tool of the colonizer. Refuse to do the bloody work of empire.
From the fanzine “MASK UP, WE NEED YOU: Palestinian Solidarity, Covid-19, and the Struggle for Liberation”
By bomb or by pathogen, these attacks on Palestinian life are man-made, intentional policy choices, ones intended to further consolidate wealth for the mis-rulers of the world.
Like the genocide of Palestinians, the unmitigated spread of Covid-19 across our communities is a policy choice — not an inevitability. Viruses defy borders, and when we say We all breathe the same air, we too, are not speaking in metaphor. Gazans report having been infected with Covid multiple times over six months of siege and genocide. And the very strains of the virus that plague Palestinians today directly evolved and made their way to Gaza as a result of the global north’s policies of denial and normalization.
Wherever we are in the world, viruses reveal both our inextricable connection and our common enemy — not viruses themselves, nor even necessarily those who spread them, but the larger forces of capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism that take root in our psyches and spur us to be their foot soldiers.
While we must disavow the forces of individualism that encourage us to see others’ struggles as distinct and separate from our own, we must also recognize the ways that the US empire asks us daily, as individuals, to do its blood-stained work by participating in an entirely preventable, mass death and disabling event. What if we told you there was a tangible way you could refuse to take on the empire’s deadly work, every day?
THE STATE SAYS OUR LIVES ARE DISPOSABLE
We are all at risk for Covid, but Covid-minimizing propaganda sells us mask-off normalcy by assuring us that it is “only” disabled people who will get sick and die. The insistence on removing all Covid precautions in public space has accelerated the continued spread and mutation of the virus, making everyday life increasingly dangerous for everyone, especially disabled people.
Our government never told us Covid would be “mild” for disabled people. They have always told us that disabled people will get sick and die. What they have hidden from us is that Covid will disable and kill us all. With every infection, Covid weakens your immune system — putting every single person who’s had even a single bout of Covid in that so-called “encouraging,” “high-risk” category. They didn’t say if you’re not disabled yet, Covid will disable you, and once you are disabled, we’ll celebrate your death, too.
Refuse to normalize, obscure, and deny
“Genocide apathy / pandemic apathy / climate apathy / all have the same root.” - Entangled Roots Press
Zionists and eugenicists rely on you to be poorly informed to fall for their simplified, decontextualized, revisionist, racist and ableist takes. Zionist normalization encourages the acceptance and legitimacy of the occupation state and its settlers, in total disregard of Palestinian life, land, culture, history, and struggle.
Just as we resist Zionist normalization, we must say no to Covid-denying journalism that: describes the pandemic in the past tense, blames unvaccinated and disabled people for their own deaths, encourages individualistic behavior over public health, minimizes the virus’ danger, describes Covid as “seasonal,” offers scientifically unfounded optimism, depicts sickness as “mysterious,” or fails to mention Covid at all.
Like the genocide of Palestinians, the unmitigated spread of Covid-19 across our communities is a policy choice — not an inevitability. Viruses defy borders, and when we say We all breathe the same air, we too, are not speaking in metaphor.
To become conscious of the ongoing pandemic and take on the daily, militant practice of wearing a mask in public is to refuse to turn away from the violence our government inflicts upon those deemed disposable. From Turtle Island to Palestine, we must resist mass death and disablement.
Just as we must educate the masses about the truths of settler colonialism, imperialism, and the genocidal Zionist project, we must also insist that basic health education is essential for self-determination.
Masks are community care❤️🔥😷 free masks: maskbloc.org
• Remember: covid is not over, 50% of infections are asymptomatic, minimum 10% of infections end up in long COVID, re-infections wreck us, COVID spreads and moves like cigarette smoke, think of the people around you and you as people who are all day smoking, it becomes more visual to understand how COVID moves.
• There is no way to “train” the immune system because it is not a muscle. there is a common misconception that exposure to harmful germs strengthens the immune system. viral diseases like COVID, flu, measles weaken the immune system, leaving the possibility of lasting damage. The reality is that you don't build your immunity with repeated infections, vaccines strengthen the immune system by teaching it to recognize pathogens without all the risks. Focusing on infection prevention is key.
• Rapid antigen tests give many false negatives.
• Solving the pandemic was never in the cards for the capitalist world.
• Instead, the explicit goal of the ruling class has been to make the pandemic simply disappear from public perception. Any reminder of the existence of a highly-transmissible, highly-dangerous, mass-disabling disease could trigger panic, or worse: organized, militant labor action. Averting this crisis required a careful campaign of culture-crafting; the people themselves needed to become convinced that there was no reason to fight. Consent for protracted mass infection needed to be manufactured.
“The cold truth of the matter is that the motive behind COVID minimization is greed and social control. (…) Solving the pandemic was never in the cards for the capitalist world. Instead, the explicit goal of the ruling class has been to make the pandemic simply disappear from public perception.” Let Them Eat Plague! http://clarion.unity-struggle-unity.org/
#MaskUp #WearAMask #CovidRealist #CovidIsAirbone #LongCovid #YallMasking #DisabledLiberation #DisabilityJustice
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