Sri Lankan government activates lie machine to cover up prison killings

Pradeep Ramanayake

The Rajapakse government has responded to popular anger over last Sunday’s cold-blooded killing of inmates at Mahara Prison with crude lies to try to cover up the massacre. Heavily-armed prison guards assisted by Police Special Task Force (STF) officers opened fire on protesting prisoners, who were demanding protection from COVID-19, which is spreading rapidly through the prison system.

The number of prisoners killed has risen by three since Sunday, taking the official death toll to 11. According to hospital sources, 117 people are still being treated, with several in critical conditions.

STF commandos patrolling Mahara, north of Colombo, after attack on prison inmates (Photo: Shehan Gunasekara)

The Rajapakse government has stepped up its repression, deploying 200 STF soldiers and 600 policemen inside and outside the prison, 15 kilometres from Colombo. On Monday evening, two helicopters carrying gunmen circled over the prison in an attempt to intimidate inmates and on Wednesday prison guards and STF officers cracked down as tensions mounted inside the facility.

Prison Reform Minister Sudarshini Fernandopolle set the tone for the government’s lie machine, telling parliament the incident was caused by an “invisible hand which activated suddenly.” She claimed that the guards had no choice but to open fire in order to prevent a breakout.

Industries Minister Wimal Weerawansa claimed that a pill used to treat mental illnesses, but which produced violence and a desire to see blood when used by normal people, had been given to prisoners by a drug dealer inside the facility.

Deputy Inspector General of Police Ajith Rohana told a press conference that some 21,000 psychiatric pills were stored in the Mahara prison’s infirmary. He said police would investigate why such a large number had been ordered and claimed that heroin addicts used the pills as alternative drugs.

Likewise, Media Minister Keheliya Rambukwella argued that the inmates could have been under the influence of unnamed psychiatric pills. He said measures by intelligence operatives and prison officials to prevent drugs getting into the prison appeared to have been circumvented.

A December 2 press release by the Sri Lanka College of Psychiatrists (SLCP) debunked these assertions. The claimed connection “between the violent and aggressive behaviour of prisoners and the abuse of the drugs used in psychiatric practice,” was “without any rational basis… None of these drugs are responsible for violent or aggressive behaviour and, in fact, many of these drugs promote calmness.”

Industries Minister Weerawansa also alleged that the prison protest was staged to discredit President Rajapakse. “This is a carefully executed attempt to show that when Gotabaya Rajapakse was defence secretary this happened and now that he is president the same thing is happening and is bringing him into international disrepute,” he declared.

These claims are laughable. Rajapakse, as defence secretary, and his brother, then-President Mahinda Rajapakse, are infamous for the war crimes carried out against the separatist Liberation Tigers and Tamil Eelam as well as civilians, and subsequent attacks on democratic rights. These included the kidnapping and killing of political opponents and journalists, as well as a similar prison massacre.

Gotabhaya Rajapakse was defence secretary when the following killings occurred.

• According to UN estimates, 40,000 Tamils were killed in the final months of the civil war that ended in May 2009.
  
  
• In December 2012, STF officers killed 27 inmates at Welikada prison after provoking a clash during a search of the facility.
  
  
• In May 2011, police shot dead a worker during a protest by Katunayake Free Trade Zone workers against the government’s contributory pension scheme.
  
  
• In 2012, police killed a protesting fisherman during a demonstration in Chilaw over higher fuel prices.
  
  
• In 2013, security forces shot dead three people at a protest demanding clean water in Rathupaswela, Gampaha.

In an attempt to deflect from the reality that Mahara inmates were demanding protection from COVID-19, Media Minister Rambukwella claimed there was no similarity with prison riots in countries like Italy where inmates have demonstrated over the lack of COVID-19 safety measures.

Sri Lankan prisons, which are holding approximately three times the number inmates they should, are coronavirus hotbeds. Over 1,100 COVID-19 infections have been reported from the prison system, more than 200 of them in the Mahara facility. More than half of the 117 injured in Sunday’s incident have tested positive.

Relatives of Mahara prison victims demanding information about their family members from STF soldiers (Credit: Shehan Gunasekara)

Anger over the prison killings has been expressed on social media and human rights organisations held a press briefing to condemn the government’s actions. Court cases have been filed against the authorities over the deaths.

The International Commission of Jurists said the events were a consequence of the failure of the authorities to effectively address prison conditions. Amnesty International said: “Prison authorities must ensure an end to the use of unlawful and excessive force against prisoners agitating against their detention conditions during the outbreak of COVID-19.”

The Rajapakse government is attempting to suppress protests. The police obtained a court injunction banning a protest organised by the Committee for the Protecting Rights of Prisoners outside Welikada Prison (also known as the Magazine Prison) in Colombo.

Under the guise of investigations by the Police Criminal Investigation Department and the Prisons Department, the government is subjecting the inmates to surveillance and interrogation.

Corporate media outlets have endorsed Colombo’s repressive response. A December 1 editorial in the right-wing Divaina newspaper warned the government about unrest spreading to other prisons. “The onset of most eruptions can be slow but the end result can be devastating, so proper mechanisms must be put in place to control this situation.”

Justice Minister Ali Sabri has established a five-member panel headed by a retired judge to investigate the prison incident. But as the historical record demonstrates, all such official investigations cover up the real reasons for incidents and justify the security forces’ violent actions.

Committee for the Protection of Prisoners president Senaka Perera told the WSWS the government had already taken steps to remove evidence and protect the shooters.

Perera said the government was attempting to cremate nine of the eleven people who were killed, invoking COVID-19 regulations and claiming they were infected with the virus, thus leaving no evidence for investigation. The committee has filed a petition against the authorities, saying they have violated basic criminal law.

Observations made by the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (HRCSL) following a visit to Mahara prison shed some light on the real conditions inside the facility. HRCSL commissioner Ramani Muttettuwegama told the BBC that remand prisoners selected 12 people to present their views to the commission.

Muttettuwegama said fear of COVID-19 was the reason for inmates’ protests. “All things considered, overcrowding is the biggest problem. I have been to many places like that but I have never seen such congestion anywhere… The capacity of the Mahara remand prison is 1,000, but there are 2,500 in it.”

The HRCSL commissioner complained that although the Rajapakse government took some measures to reduce the prison population by 30 percent by the end of April in response to the epidemic, following requests from HRCSL and various activists, it changed its mind in September.

Pointing to the disregard of authorities toward prisoners’ health and safety, she said: “Prison authorities said bluntly—no PCR [tests] to those who were there, no PCR to those who came in.”

Referring to last Sunday’s incident, she added: “Some detainees mentioned that inmates were shot at from the guard towers. We still do not know if that is true, so we are waiting for the post-mortem report.”

Under these conditions, the government’s attempt to cremate the bodies is suspected of being a move to destroy evidence.

In another indication of tightening repression in all prisons, on December 1, Rajapakse removed Fernandopulle as prison reforms minister. Her replacement, Lohan Ratwatte, was convicted of the murder of ten people during general elections in 2001 but acquitted on appeal.

The Mahara shootings and the government’s response are inseparable from Rajapakse’s moves toward dictatorial forms of rule to suppress growing opposition by the working class and the oppressed masses against austerity measures and the social disaster intensified by the pandemic.

FBI gathered US website visitor logs under the post-9/11 PATRIOT Act

Kevin Reed

An exchange of letters published on Thursday by the New York Times shows that the FBI has been using provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act to secretly collect information about visitors to specific US-based websites.

The three letters—one from Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat from Oregon, and two from Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe—discuss details of the permissions granted to the FBI under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, originally passed in the period following the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.

The J. Edgar Hoover FBI building in Washington, D.C. (Credit: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

According to the original terms of Section 215, the government must apply to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to gain access to tangible materials that assist in an investigation of international terrorism or other “clandestine intelligence activities.” The law specifically bars use of its provisions on US citizens.

However, following the revelations by Edward Snowden in 2013 that the US government was conducting unfettered electronic surveillance of everyone, Section 215 was reviewed and modified. In 2015, the new USA Freedom Act was voted on by Congress and signed by President Obama and all claimed that the illegal “bulk” data collection programs had been stopped even though the basic structure of Section 215 remained in place.

The letters between Wyden and Ratcliffe, which began in May of this year during congressional efforts to renew Section 215, show that the secret data collection activities of US law enforcement and intelligence have actually never stopped.

After the Senate voted 80 to 16 to extend the mechanisms that permit the US government to spy on people, including their internet browsing activity, Senator Wyden wrote to Ratcliffe asking a series of questions to clarify how US intelligence was monitoring the web search activity of a single targeted individual without also gathering information on others.

For example, Wyden asked, “If the target or ‘unique identifier’ is an IP address, would the government differentiate among multiple individuals using the same IP address, such as family members and roommates using the same Wi-Fi network, or could numerous users appear as a single target or ‘unique identifier’?”

In electronic surveillance, a unique identifier is a mobile phone number or an email address connected with a specific individual or organization. While an Internet Protocol (IP) address is unique to a specific computer or node on the internet, it is more difficult to associate it with a specific user or person because IP addresses are frequently dynamically assigned by routers and other internet hardware and may be associated with more than a single individual user.

In his reply of November 6 (more than five months later), Ratcliffe wrote that Section 215 was not being used to collect internet search records. He also went on to disclose that in 2019 there were 61 orders issued last year under FISC involving and none of them, “resulted in the

production of any information regarding web browsing or internet searches.”

However, according to the New York Times report, the paper pressed Ratcliffe and the FBI to “clarify whether it was defining ‘web browsing’ activity to encompass logging all visitors to a particular website, in addition to a particular person’s browsing among different sites.” The Times wrote that the next day, “the Justice Department sent a clarification to Mr. Ratcliffe’s office, according to a follow-up letter he sent to Mr. Wyden on Nov. 25.”

The second letter from Ratcliffe states that in fact one of the 61 orders, “directed the production of log entries for a single, identified U.S. web page reflecting connections from IP addresses registered in a specified foreign country that occurred during a defined period of time.”

In acknowledging his “error,” Ratcliffe wrote, “I regret that this additional information was not included in my earlier letter. I have directed my staff to consult with the Department of Justice and advise me of any necessary corrective action, to include any amendments to information previously reported in the Annual Statistical Transparency Report required under Section 603 of the FISA.”

Ratcliffe asking the Trump Justice Department to advise him “of any necessary corrective action” on the matter of the government’s illegal gathering of electronic communications and data is absurd on its face. Attorney General William Barr is the godfather of the US government’s bulk data collection program having helped to build the precursor to the present National Security Agency system while he served in the administration of George H. W. Bush in 1992.

Barr worked with his then-deputy Robert Mueller to erect a program under the direction of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) that ordered the telecom companies to turn over the records of all phone calls from the US to countries labeled as centers of drug trafficking. This platform was used as the foundation of the PATRIOT Act’s mass surveillance operation.

While the purpose of the New York Times report and release of the letters is to bolster the claim that the administration of President elect Joe Biden is preparing to revisit the ongoing violations of constitutionally protected rights against unreasonable searches and seizures embodied in the secret surveillance programs, no defense of democratic principles is forthcoming from the Democrats.

Far from it, the report in the Times shows that the blatant defenders of intelligence state surveillance within the Democratic Party worked with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi earlier this year to prevent Section 215 from being directly challenged in the House of Representatives. Pelosi worked with Representative Adam Schiff of California to water down language in an amendment from Representative Zoe Lofgren, also from California, that would bar the use of Section 215 to collect web browsing and search data.

The Times report says, “While privacy advocates initially supported the compromise, they withdrew their backing after Mr. Schiff put forward an interpretation suggesting that it would leave the government, while investigating foreign threats, able to gather Americans’ data as long as that was not its specific intention.”

The disingenuous maneuvering by the Democrats then opened the door for President Trump to intervene and posture about being against secret government surveillance, but only in relation to the Mueller investigation into the his campaign’s supposed collaboration with the asserted but never proven “Russian interference” in the 2016 elections.

The Times report concludes, “With support bleeding away from both the left and right flanks, Ms. Pelosi punted and sent the legislation to a House-Senate conference committee for further negotiations. ... permitting Section 215 to remain lapsed until negotiations resumed under a new president.” Nothing different will come from a Biden-Harris administration.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the global resurgence of class struggle

Keith Jones

As the last month of 2020 begins, working-class resistance is erupting throughout the world in opposition to the mercenary response of the ruling class to the COVID-19 pandemic, its concerted drive to intensify capitalist exploitation, and its evisceration of democratic rights.

Just in the past eleven days, tens of millions have joined strikes or mass protests:

• On November 26, workers across India staged a one-day general strike to protest the Hindu supremacist BJP government’s socially incendiary economic policies. The strikers also demanded emergency aid for the hundreds of millions of impoverished workers and toilers who have been left to fend for themselves amidst an unprecedented health and socioeconomic catastrophe.
  
  A 10-week COVID-19 lockdown last spring was accompanied by no serious mobilization of society’s resources to halt the spread of the virus, while the tens of millions of workers rendered jobless overnight were denied social support. This was followed by a premature return to work that has resulted in mass infections and deaths.
  
  In the name of “reviving” the economy, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has doubled down on the “pro-investor” policies that have made India one of the most socially unequal countries in the world. The BJP government has accelerated its privatization drive; rewritten India’s labor laws to promote precarious contract-labor employment, gut restrictions on mass layoffs, and illegalize most worker job action; and pushed through a “reform” of India’s agriculture sector that puts small farmers at the mercy of agrobusiness.
  
  Drawing support from workers across India, the one-day protest strike dealt a blow to the relentless campaign of Modi and his BJP to promote reaction and split the working class by inciting anti-Muslim communalism.
  
  
• Also on November 26, hundreds of thousands of Greek workers shut down much of the country’s public sector. The strikers, who included teachers, health care workers, doctors and transit workers, were protesting a law that will abolish the eight-hour day and significantly curtail the right to strike and demonstrate. To halt the spread of COVID-19, the strikers also demanded the mass hiring of health care staff and the confiscation of private clinics.
  
  
• Last Saturday, November 28, hundreds of thousands joined protests across France to oppose the Macron government’s law to criminalize filming the country’s police, who routinely employ violence to suppress worker and left-wing protests and to terrorize poor, predominantly immigrant, neighbourhoods. Staggered by the size of the protests, the government now claims that it will rethink the measure. The mass anger is driven by the impunity the police enjoy. Not a single officer has been charged for assaulting Yellow Vest protesters, including for attacks that left protesters maimed.
  
  
• In Spain, thousands of doctors and nurses protested in Madrid on November 29 against cuts to health care in the midst of a devastating “second wave” of the COVID-19 pandemic. Rejecting attempts to stoke nationalism, they chanted, “fewer flags and more nurses.” In neighbouring Portugal, child educators and primary and secondary school teachers have announced a national strike for Friday, December 11. Teachers are angry over the refusal of the government to protect them from infection in schools and years of austerity.
  
  
• In Chile, 60,000 public health workers, who have been on the front line of the fight against the pandemic, launched an indefinite strike Monday, November 30, to oppose threatened health care cuts and demand payment of long-promised bonuses and better working conditions. Decades of underfunding have left Chile’s public health system so dilapidated that at the height of the pandemic, last May and June, workers had to sew their own masks.
  
  The strike is part of a broader working-class mobilization against the country’s hated ultra-right billionaire president, Sebastián Piñera, for unleashing police-state violence against all forms of social protest.
  
  
• In the US, numerous strikes and demonstrations have been mounted by nurses and other workers at hospitals and nursing homes in recent days and weeks to fight for higher pay, increased staffing and personal protective equipment. In the Chicago-area, for example, 700 poorly paid caregivers and support staff have been striking for the past two weeks at 11 for-profit nursing homes. It is only the sabotage of the unions that has prevented the unification of these manifold struggles into a broader movement prioritising the fight against the pandemic and the protection of workers’ lives over the profits of the health care industry.
  
  
• Autoworkers are resisting the transnational auto giants’ drive to increase profits by slashing jobs, intensifying the pace of work, and forcing workers to maintain production at full throttle as the pandemic rages. Workers at GM and Kia plants in South Korea have mounted a series of four-hour strikes in recent weeks to demand higher wages and job security. Earlier this week, the GM workers rejected a union-endorsed agreement that would have maintained a years-long wage freeze and abandoned their other key demands.
  
  In India, 3,000 workers who walked off the job at Toyota’s Bidadi, Karnataka assembly plant on November 9 and were then locked out are continuing to defy a government back-to-work order. The workers are resisting the company’s demand that they increase monthly output and are fighting the victimization of 40 workers.
  
  In the US, autoworkers have formed a growing network of rank-and-file safety committees at major auto assembly and auto part plants to defeat the conspiracy between the automakers and the United Auto Workers to compel them to work under unsafe conditions amid the pandemic.

***

The years 2018 and 2019 witnessed a global resurgence of class struggle after decades in which it had been suppressed by the corporatist trade unions, social democrats, other establishment “left” parties and their pseudo-left accomplices. From France, Spain, Algeria, Iran and Sudan to South Africa, Mexico, Chile and Colombia, mass strikes and protest movements erupted, frequently in open rebellion against the unions and “left” parties. In the US, there was a wave of teacher strikes that pitted the rank and file against the union apparatuses, and in the fall of 2019 the first national strike of autoworkers in decades.

A key factor in precipitating last spring’s government-ordered COVID-19 lockdowns was ruling-class fear that wildcat worker job action, as in North America’s auto industry, to demand action to halt the spread of the virus would spark mass social unrest.

The Memorial Day police murder of George Floyd provoked mass protests across the US that united working people of all ethnicities and redounded around the world.

Now, ten months after the ruling classes’ criminally negligent response to the pandemic began to produce mass death in countries around the world, mass social struggles are erupting anew. But they do so under radically changed conditions.

The pandemic has vastly accelerated the global crisis of world capitalism. The wealth of the ruling elite has soared to unprecedented heights since March due to the endless supply of cash funneled into the markets by the central banks and other organs of the capitalist state. Workers’ incomes, meanwhile, have plunged due to massive job losses and the meager, and in many parts of the world nonexistent, relief programs governments promulgated in tandem with the initial COVID-19 lockdown measures. The resulting social misery is deliberate. It serves as a bludgeon to compel workers to return to work under unsafe conditions.

The pandemic has also fatally undermined the political and moral authority of the ruling elite and their governments. This is above all true in the United States, whose capitalist class is the wealthiest and most powerful of all. But the European bourgeoisie has no less brazenly prioritized profits over human lives. European governments, whatever their political complexion, whether avowedly right-wing like that headed by Boris Johnson in Britain or comprised, as in Spain, of social democrats and “left-populists” (Podemos), have pursued homicidal back-to-work and back-to-school policies.

It is the ruling-class fear of the incipient political radicalization of the working class that is causing it to turn ever more openly to authoritarian forms of rule and to rehabilitate the ultra-right. A major motivating factor in many of the struggles of the past 11 days was the imposition of new measures to criminalize workers’ struggles and expand the repressive powers of the state.

The breakdown of democracy is epitomized by developments in the US, where Trump is seeking to nullify the outcome of the presidential election and to build up a fascist movement. But this is a universal process. In Spain, recently retired army officers have been secretly urging the King to carry out a coup by illegally dismissing the elected government, a right-wing regime in phony left colours that is implementing austerity and pursuing herd immunity.

The critical question is the infusion of the growing global upsurge of the working class with a socialist and internationalist program.

Workers around the world face—as exemplified by the struggles enumerated above—common conditions and problems. Arrayed against them is a global financial oligarchy and its transnational corporations, which use the global labor market to systematically drive down wages and working conditions. They are determined to make working people pay for the crisis of world capitalism, beginning with the drive to keep them churning out profits amid the pandemic.

If workers are to prevail, they must transform their objective unity in the process of global production into a conscious strategy and coordinate their struggle in a global counteroffensive against the relentless assault on jobs, wages and public services and for workers’ powers.

As the International Committee of the Fourth International explained in a June statement “For International working-class action against the COVID-19 pandemic!” this begins today with the fight to take control of the response to the pandemic out of the hands of the capitalist class. “The massive sums accumulated by the wealthy must be seized and redirected to fund emergency measures to stop the pandemic and provide full income to those impacted. The gigantic banks and corporations must be placed under the democratic control of the working class, run on the basis of a rational and scientific plan. The enormous resources squandered on war and destruction must be diverted to finance health care, education and other social needs.”

To assert its independent interests both during and after the health emergency, workers must build new organizations of struggle entirely independent of and in opposition to the pro-capitalist trade unions, which for decades have worked hand in glove with corporate management and the state and today are herding workers into unsafe factories, schools and other workplaces.

The formation of rank-and-file safety committees by autoworkers and teachers in the US, transport workers and teachers in Britain and Germany, and teachers in Australia represents an important step forward in this regard.

November jobs report shows collapse of economic growth

Jacob Crosse

The release of the November jobs report by the US Bureau of Labor statistics (BLS) revealed the worst job growth since the spring, with only 245,000 additional jobs, less than half of the 638,000 jobs added in October and well below economists’ expectations.

The figures are based on reporting prior to the initiation of partial lockdowns and curfews in some states, such as California and Illinois, dimming prospects for job growth in the coming months, with business activity and spending in the real economy evaporating as coronavirus cases continue to top 200,000 a day and daily deaths hover near 3,000.

A shopper wears a face mask and he walks past a store displaying a hiring sign in Wheeling, Ill., Saturday, Nov. 28, 2020. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

Despite the dismal jobs report and the US pandemic death toll topping 285,000, Wall Street responded with euphoria, pushing all three major stock indexes to record heights. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 30,218, the S&P 500 index at 3,699 and the Nasdaq Composite at 12,464.

A major factor in the rise on the stock market in the face of mass death and near-Depression levels of unemployment is President-elect Joe Biden’s selection of an economic team including former BlackRock executives and Janet Yellen, the former chair of the Federal Reserve who presided over the “quantitative easing” bank bailout under Obama. Combined with repeated assurances from Biden that there will be no nationwide lockdown and schools will remain open under his administration, the financial oligarchs are assured that the new administration will continue the flood of free money to the markets and the back-to-work and back-to-school drives that guarantee uninterrupted profits from the exploitation of workers forced into virus-infected workplaces.

In a joint CNN interview Thursday evening, Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris emphasized the need to keep elementary schools open: “We can keep schools open. We can keep businesses open,” Biden declared. Harris concurred: “Everyone wants our kids to go back to school. Every parent wants their kids to go back to school.” Biden reiterated twice that there would be no lockdown and he would keep the economy open.

Feasting on death, between mid-March and mid-October, 644 US billionaires saw their total wealth increase from $2.95 trillion to $3.88 trillion, a rise of 31.6 percent. They are rubbing their hands in anticipation of more of the same.

The BLS report revealed that the unemployment rate fell from 6.9 percent to 6.7 percent. However, this was a reflection not of job growth, but rather a sharp increase in the number of “discouraged” workers who have given up looking for a job.

The number of long-term unemployed skyrocketed from 385,000 in October to 3.9 million in November. These workers, many from the retail, restaurant, construction, music and entertainment industries, are not counted in the official figures because they haven’t been in the labor force for 27 weeks or more.

If one counts “discouraged” workers along with the 2.1 million workers who are available and looking for work in the last 12 months, but haven’t applied for jobs in the last four weeks, the real unemployment rate jumps to 8.5 percent.

In addition to the staggering growth of the long-term unemployed, who as of November constitute 36.9 percent of all unemployed workers, 14.8 million people reported that they had been unable to work, or lost hours in the last four weeks due to pandemic-related closures.

Exemplifying this trend is the retail sector, which typically sees strong growth during the holidays. Instead the report found a sharp decrease in retail trade. Overall, there are 550,000 fewer people employed in the retail trade sector compared to February 2020.

Another vital sector of the economy that saw minimal job growth was the health care industry, which reported a modest 46,000 hires in November, with nursing homes losing 12,000 jobs. Overall, health care employment in the midst of a catastrophic public health crisis remains 527,000 below the level in February.

The labor force participation rate fell in November to 61.5 percent, 3.8 percentage points below the February rate.

The BLS reports that there are still officially 10.7 million unemployed persons, a slight decrease from the 11.1 million reported in October. However, this number is expected to increase over the winter after five months of government inaction on economic stimulus, which has forced hundreds of thousands of small businesses to close.

The decimation of jobs, along with COVID-19 infections and evictions, has been felt most sharply by lower-wage workers. According to data collected by Harvard and Brown University since January 19, workers making under $27,000 have seen a 19.2 percent reduction in employment as of November 16, while those making above $60,000 have seen a tiny 0.2 percent job growth. Workers making between $27,000 and $60,000 have seen a 4.7 percent reduction in job growth.

In a speech Friday, Biden characterized the BLS jobs report as “grim,” while calling on Congress and President Trump to “act now,” “come together” and pass legislation to avert a further collapse. He cited indicators of widespread distress—“One in six renters can’t pay rent,” “12 million will lose benefits” after Christmas—and declared his support for the “emergency relief framework” revealed earlier this week by a group of Republican and Democratic lawmakers.

Assuming the compromise bill makes it through Congress and is signed by Trump—by no means a sure thing given the last six months of political theater—the $908 billion legislation is nowhere near sufficient to address the scale of the economic and medical crisis befalling millions of people. Besides being half the size of the $1.7 trillion package the Trump White House had endorsed prior to the election, the new proposal does not include an additional $1,200 stimulus check or renew an eviction moratorium set to expire at the end of the month.

The latest US Census Household Pulse Survey showed staggering levels of distress throughout the country. In 13 states, including Texas, New York and Oregon, anywhere from 39.4 to 56.2 percent reported living in households where eviction or foreclosure in the next two months is either “very likely” or “somewhat likely.” Louisiana leads the country with 56.2 percent responding yes, followed by New Mexico, 52.7 percent, Missouri, 48.6 percent, Wyoming, 47.6 percent and Mississippi at 46.4 percent.

The proposed package sets aside only $160 billion in aid to state, local and tribal governments, a far cry from the $1 trillion House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted on in previous iterations of the bill, while only $180 billion is earmarked for additional unemployment benefits, the centerpiece being $300 in weekly unemployment pay through March 31, a 50 percent reduction from the $600-a-week supplement that expired at the end of July.

The most important part of the package in the eyes of the ruling class is an agreement on liability protection for businesses from customers and workers who have either gotten sick or died from COVID-19 due to inadequate safety procedures.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has maintained that liability protection is a “red line” on which he will not compromise. The Democrats, for their part, postured as opponents of such a free pass for corporations, knowing all along that they would eventually lend their support.

A bulk of the bill’s spending, $300 billion, is earmarked for the Paycheck Protection Program, a Small Business Administration (SBA)-controlled loan program, ostensibly created to keep small businesses owners afloat and keep their workers employed through the pandemic. The program has instead been used as slush fund for big businesses and the well-connected, while major Wall Street banks have reaped more than $18 billion in fees since its inception, according to a recent analysis by McCatchy and the Miami Herald based on figures released by the SBA.

Their analysis found that JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the US, collected over $1 billion in fees, followed closely by Bank of America, with $947 million, while Wells Fargo was a distant third at a “mere” $427 million.

Global Health Corps Paid Fellowship 2021/2022

Application Deadline: 13th January 2021

Eligible Countries: All African countries and other regions

To be taken at (country): USA

About the Award: Global Health Corps is building the next generation of diverse health leaders. We offer a range of paid fellowship positions with health organizations in Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda, the United States, and Zambia and the opportunity to develop as a transformative leader in the health equity movement. Everyone has a role to play in the health equity movement.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: Global Health Corps Fellowship is looking for a global and diverse group of passionate and talented emerging leaders who:

• Are willing to push themselves outside their comfort zones, to embrace failure, and to approach a personally transformative year – with many challenges in the day-to-day – with integrity, humility, and self-reflection.
• Are ready to strengthen and use their voice — the most powerful tool for change that you have — in order to engage others, create space for critical conversation, and effect meaningful social change in global health.
• Are excited by a design-thinking approach to building a better world, creatively embracing wicked problems and ready to embrace failure as learning.
• Are committed to bringing your best and doing the work in the day-to-day, showing up as a critical part of the global health equity movement.
• Are passionate about social justice in global health and about finding and building their voices to effect health impact.
• Are committed to inclusivity and collaboration across sectors, cultures, and borders of all kinds, while investing in and supporting others.

Selection Criteria: By the start of the fellowship,  fellows must:

• Be 30 years or younger.
• Hold a bachelor’s or undergraduate university degree.
• Be proficient in English.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Fellowship: Yearlong paid placements within partner organizations in Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda, the US, and Zambia to address real-time capacity gaps and strengthen health systems.

• In addition to on-the-job training, we engage fellows in a comprehensive leadership training curriculum to build effective, empathetic, and innovative leaders of tomorrow.
• Fellow receive additional logistical and financial support during the year, including:
  • Monthly living and utilities stipend
  • Housing
  • Health insurance
  • Professional development grant of $600 and completion award of $1500
  • Travel coverage to and from placement site, all trainings, and retreats

Duration of Fellowship: 1 year

How to Apply:

• Apply here
• It is important to go through the Application Requirements before applying.

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details

Time to Grow Up: Ending Divisions Creating Peace

Graham Peebles

There are said to be around 30 armed conflicts currently taking place in the world, some large, some small, all deadly. The warring factions of today are more likely to be insurgent groups – ‘rebels’ (sometimes fighting proxy wars for a regional or global power) or terrorists, extremists – right and left, battling with a federal army or police force – than nation squaring up to nation.

Research shows that less people are dying in such clashes than at any time in history. This is positive of course, but the number of deaths isn’t really the issue, although clearly less is better. What’s important is to unearth the reasons for violence, to create a world in which the causes of conflict are removed and allow peace, that long held ideal, to be realized.

In addition to armed battles, societies everywhere are violent, dangerous places in varying degrees, as are many personal relationships and homes. Then there is the vandalism mankind is inflicting on the natural world, on intricate ecosystems, on plant and animal species, on the air, the waterways and the earth itself. Although this form of abuse may appear separate from uniformed killings, stabbings or roadside bombs, it flows from the same destructive source – human consciousness and behavior.

Humanity appears to be incapable of living together in peace, or in harmony with the other kingdoms in nature; our long past is punctuated and in many ways shaped by war, by death, destruction and suffering, and by wholesale vandalism and exploitation, of one another, of groups that are (militarily/technologically) weaker, and of the environment.

Some argue that human beings are inherently brutal, others that we are conditioned into violence. This is the reductive nature versus nurture debate; a conversation that centers around the degree to which each aspect influences and colors the behavior of the individual: is humanity (or a specific individual) inherently violent and abusive for example, or is such behavior the result of conditioning, the way we are raised, nurtured, the type of atmosphere we are exposed to, the prominent values and modes of living that are promoted and unconsciously absorbed?

While people’s natures vary and we are all unique individuals – different yet the same – within each and every human being the potential for tremendous good exists (routinely demonstrated in times of need), as does the propensity towards great cruelty, to which some appear more at risk than others. The environment in which an individual lives, the conditioning factors he/she is exposed to, the values and beliefs, all influence the extent to which one or other innate tendency is expressed and or comes to dominate.

Although some forms of conditioning are more damaging than others, all conditioning inhibits, divides, and creates a false sense of self and a distorted view of others. Conditioning into competition, into tribalism/nationalism and adherence to any ideology – religious, political, economic – constructs a barrier, fueling division, facilitating violence; that which is inherent, the seed of the good, is stifled, consigned to the margins, merely an alarming echo, the voice of conscience. As a result of the current socio-economic system, which has found its way into all aspects of life, including education and health care, such conditioning is widespread.

It is a socially unjust model, a violent system founded on ideals that agitate the negative and breed violence. Competition, ambition, greed and desire are promoted, in fact they are essential for its survival; nationalism, via the agency of competition, encouraged. All perpetuate and strengthen separation, dividing humanity, one from another, and where division exists – within the individual and/or within society – conflict is inevitable.

Under the Doctrine of Greed everything and everyone is seen as a commodity, a consumer of relative value, or an obstacle to enrichment of some kind (indigenous people living in the Amazon rain forest for example), something or someone that can be used and profited from, and when drained of value, discarded. Inequality of all kinds, wealth, income, opportunity, influence, is built into its mechanics, which grind the goodness out of all but the strongest; social justice denied, injustice ensured.

Social injustice is a form of mass violence, perpetrated by the architects and devotees of the system, all of whom have profited well and are determined to maintain the cruel status quo and remain in power for as long as possible. Given the level of injustice, particularly between the rich global north and impoverished south (albeit with pockets of enormous wealth), it is surprising that riots don’t break out all the time. There is resentment and anger among people everywhere, but physical exhaustion, economic insecurity; fear and a conditioned sense of guilt and inadequacy coalesce to inhibit action.

Barriers to Peace

The concept of peace has been held in our collective consciousness for at least two thousands years, probably longer. Peace between nations, peace within countries and regions, peace in our communities, longed for by people everywhere and routinely promised by politicians and leaders of all colors, while they invest in the machinery of war, trade in arms and follow the ideology of conflict. Hollow hypocritical words uttered without intent like a mechanically recited prayer, and so (for the most part), like other noble constructs, peace has remained an ideal. And believing in the ideal alone, the conditions for its realization have not been created, systems that ensure conflict are maintained, and so, inevitably violence has erupted, again and again and again.

Despite this fact, and contrary to our history of brutality and cruelty, peace and harmony are the natural order of life. They are aspects of life that are eternally present – like the sun, which even when obscured by cloud or darkness remains in the heavens. All that is required is that the obstacles to their manifestation be identified and removed.

The principle obstruction is division, followed by selfishness and greed. The notion that we are separate, from one another, from the environment and from that which we call God; divisions based on tribal/nation affiliations, ideologies of all kinds (including religions), race and or ethnicity; inequality and social injustice in its myriad forms. Greed and the focus on material wealth, and with it political influence, is itself divisive and has led to the violent exploitation of people (the slave trade being perhaps the greatest and most abhorrent example) and the natural world.

In order to rid the world of violence an understanding and rejection of those modes of living that create environments of conflict and fuel discord is needed; a shift in consciousness away from selfishness, greed and tribalism; and recognition that humanity is one. We are living in extraordinary times, transitional times, and such a realignment is well underway; there is a growing awareness that if humanity is to overcome the issues of the day and save the planet we must come together, cooperate and share. In the pursuit of peace sharing is essential, for without it there can never be social justice, and social justice is critical in creating trust and community harmony.

Together with justice and freedom, peace is no longer simply a dormant ideal, a cherished aspiration, it is a living force flowing through the hearts of men and women throughout the world, inspiring collective action, demanding change and an end to all forms of violence. Its time for humanity to come of age, to reject all that divides us, to unite and create a space in which peace and harmony can ring out across the world.

Spirituality in a Postmodern Age

Michael Welton

These days it seems that people have plenty of trouble with “religion”, but rather adore the idea of “spirituality.” It pervades the consumerist culture, and one cannot travel the contemporary cultural landscape without encountering it. Businesses promote spirituality in their, one supposes, dispiriting workplaces. Meditation and yoga classes abound. Spiritual therapies offer health and wholeness. Alternative bookstores, scented with the sweet perfume of incense, offer up a stunning display of endless ways of traveling inward or way out beyond the petty self. Explicitly Christian bookstores, good ones, have entire walls devoted to works on spirituality, meditation, contemplation and mysticism. Even the Academy has opened its doors to studying spirituality and education. Perhaps even more surprising, the hard-headed left has recently taken considerable interest in the impelling connection between spirituality and the quest for social justice.

Something is definitely up and needs investigating. Skeptics take note. You will not be able to write “spirituality” off as the pastime of quacks or flat-earth advocates or Ouija board conjurors. In fact, I will argue that a compelling linkage between the postmodern times we inhabit and the explosion of interest in spirituality exists. Our times are very dispiriting. The shadows of the scientific revolution and the enlightenment have grown very long. Materialism does not fill the bottomless pit of yearning. Orthodox religion seems behind the times or too ferociously involved in them. And the atheism pitched by Dawkins and his ilk is so distempered and devoid of depth that we are sent away reeling, hoping to see a rose garden or a gorgeous sunset to aright our gloomy mood. But the dubious certainties of evangelicals offer little consolation in return.

Interpenetrating worlds

Spirituality speaks to us of other worlds. Throughout the ages, believers in the Great Traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam have imagined God as the Invisible animator of the universe. As a great Spirit-being, this mighty force breathed the world into being and animates its continuing presence. Religion offered humankind a ritual container, routinized and localized in space and time, a place where glimpses of the sacred might be attained. But religion often ended up containing the spiritual, and restless Spirit broke free from its container in the early 16^th century, fragmenting Christendom and roaming wild over the world ever since.

The rather dispiriting performance of Churches down through the ages only accentuated people’s mistrust of religion. The post-enlightenment world of the 19^th and 20^th centuries indicated pretty powerfully that Christian churches could not stop the relentless evil that unfolded itself in the bosom of the civilization of Luther and Beethoven. As Max Horkheimer once claimed, both reason and God were eclipsed in the fires of Auschwitz.

Nonetheless, the eclipse of the God who is present with those who suffer did not turn us all into secular humanists. We went off in search of forms of spirituality that would enable us to celebrate the mystery of life that transcends our own limited selves and that would provide us with a “community of inquiry” to orient our way in a confusing world. Indeed, the world did seem to be “postmodern”, in the sense that our world was ineffably pluralistic and religiously multi-lingual. We were increasingly and intensely aware that one not only had to justify one’s faith-claims to other communities of faith, but one also had to live with these communities in a world alert to the power of the natural sciences to ground our way of knowing the world.

There are different spiritualities, and these spiritualities have taken form outside the monotheisms. We are spiritual beings who, once tossed into the world, search for direction, purpose and meaning. When traditional containers fail us, we keep on searching. We long for wholeness and transcendence. Perhaps our deepest spiritual moments are those where we experience unity, or oneness, with the natural world or through deep bonds with others. But there can be little doubt that self-transcendence is the core of spirituality. Without self-transcendence, we are locked into our own narrow worlds, cut off from sources of Spirit. Without self-transcendence, we cannot experience the depth-experience of compassion for and with others. Without self-transcendence, we do not see ourselves as integral parts of the mystery that transcends our limited existence (limited in perception, understanding and time).

The call of Spirit

One of the meanings of “spirit” is that of animating presence. When the animating presence is absent, we speak of deadness, of lifelessness, of inertness. A school lacks school spirit; a community lacks solidarity and vibrant relations of trust. A person seems listless, spiritless as we say. Thus, spirituality is a fundamental reference point for the vital source of our human activity. Spirituality may be nurtured by communities of faith and inquiry, drawing upon wells of wisdom teachings and forms of knowing from the great religious traditions as well as the wonder of the natural and human sciences.

As Elena Lugo says, “Spirituality is the pursuit of meaning, of an intimation of purpose and sense of vital connection to one’s ultimate environment—the dimension of depth in all of life’s endeavours and institutions. In short, spirituality functions as a principle of enlightenment, integration and finality without which our self-reflection, self-realization and self-surrender would become superficial, chaotic and aimless.”

In the Judaic tradition, which has profoundly formed the western mind, Spirit (named Yahweh by the Hebrews) was understood as calling us as human beings to “do justice” in the corrupt world. The story of Moses and the Exodus, though ambivalent for contemporary Palestinians, has been interpreted as paradigmatic for liberation movements of slaves against their masters. Let justice flow down like a river! Translated into contemporary, secular imagery, the ancients recognized that Spirit, if heeded, if listened to, called us to act justly in the world. There is purpose built into the world. To live well is not arbitrary; it is our calling as human beings. We, and all creation, are to flourish; and flourishing cannot happen if orphans and widows and strangers are neglected and mistreated. Let justice flow down like a river!

Multiple meanings of spirituality

Modernity brings a loss of spiritual life. The disenchanted world, as Max Weber so named it, expels spirits from the world. They leave their old haunting grounds and disappear into the dark woods somewhere. The famous article by Lynn White in 1967 on “The historic roots of the ecological crisis” laid the blame for contemporary western society’s degradation of nature at the feet of the Judeo-Christian de-spiriting of nature (that is, God was not in nature, but above it, and counseled his tribe to go into the groves and destroy the idols). Theologians dispute this and offer the caretaker role as counter-narrative. Be that as it may, theology does not necessarily stop the bull dozers from doing their dirty work. Judeo-Christian images of the high god who is not in nature (he may have made it, but he left it to run on its own) certainly smashed one barrier to treating nature as a thing. If it is alive, then one treads lightly, carefully, attentively. If it just a thing, then cut it down! But we can blame the scientific revolution’s treatment of nature as an analytical object for also disenchanting nature (even though some scientists and their astonishing work precipitates a sense of wonder and awe).

It did not help, either, that Christian spirituality (as well as others, like Buddhism), located the “spiritual” in the interior of the person. Since the Protestant Reformation, spirituality had been privatized; with exterior life, be it nature or social life, perceived as devoid of spirituality. Thus, spirituality was set off against the material realm, creating one of the great dualisms, or divides, in western society. The fencing off of the spiritual in the interior of the human being contributed to the disenchantment of the world.

Monasticism certainly may have preserved precious texts and opened up mystical realms to the few. But the light was shone inward, and the outer realm remained in darkness. We can say, I think, that traditional spiritualities were very individualistic. The truly spiritual medieval life was lived in monasteries; this was as true for Tibetan Buddhists as it was for European adepts. Many of today’s “New Age” searchers are, we may also say, in this line of retreat into the inner world, but without the depth achieved in bygone times. The spiritual has often been trivialized in the contemporary spiritual bazaar. This fact interweaves with widespread “religious illiteracy” in our woebegone age.

The search for an integral and inclusive definition

How does one break with dualism? Not easily! We need a more integral and inclusive definition of spirituality. Spirit, conceived of as the call to human flourishing, must infuse all domains of our lives. Here, we can draw upon one of the fundamental sources of spirit, namely, the humanist tradition. What Renaissance humanists and, later, the enlightenment humanists (Kant and others), discovered was that religion often blocked human beings from reaching their fullest potential. Kant spoke of people lingering in immaturity, never freeing themselves from dependency on priests and politicians and masters of every sort. The animating presence towards fullness of being lay within the potential of the human being and the cosmological order itself. Spirit was wooing us to transcend ourselves and experience an expansive opening-up to the world of the suffering other. Opening-up to the suffering of others, the cracking of our cocoons, and interlocking with those who are vulnerable and defenseless, places doing justice and loving mercy at the animating heart of the project to free ourselves from all forms of oppression, religious and other. Spirit is with us, here, in the midst of our suffering and longing. Spirit is here with us, goading us towards depth and fullness.

The sacred cannot be sequestered from the mundane, or the profane. Apprehension of the miraculous must dwell within the ordinary. Those of us who grew up considering the sacred as localized, and cordoned off in the church, must be educated to new forms of awareness. We can open up to Spirit-being in new awareness. Spirit shines through many windows; the world is now our cathedral. The light is shining from Spirit through the cathedral multi-coloured windows. Look up and see. Let the scales fall off from our eyes. Sallie McFague, the feminist eco-theologian, speaks of the world as the “body of God” and the Spirit as its life-giving and maintaining and propelling force.

That is a powerful and attractive metaphor. The sense of awe before the Holy, captured by Rudolf Otto in his work, The idea of the holy, is intensified as scientists take us into worlds of wonder. The psalmist was right to shout that the “heavens declared the glory of God.” They do, even if we post-moderns are reluctant to speak of God. The best we can do is to acknowledge that we are before the mysterious presence that transcends our little selves. Like the romantic poets, we look at rainbows and know we are before the mystery. But Blake does not have to exclude Newton.

Spirit loves flourishing and vitality. Humanists can rightfully insist that spirit dwells within us all, pressing and nudging us towards creating the conditions for human flourishing. Aristotle spoke of eudemonia (well-being and harmony); well-being can be accomplished in the way we craft our social and cultural and economic worlds. They, too, are containers of spirit. They can be spirit-infused; they can also be dispiriting. They can be open to those who are the least among us; they can be closed off, shut tight. Those who think that modernity, or post-modernity for that matter, is one-dimensional and least open to transcendence, a world marked by spiritual poverty and alienation, have got it right. Sociologist Peter Berger thinks of the “modern world as a culture with no windows on the wonders of life.” He too is right. But openness to Spirit can awaken us to a transcendent horizon, the shimmering kingdom of fullness of the not-yet, the depth dimensions possible to perceive in the ordinariness of life, and authentic interiority that eschews triviality and consumerism.

Fostering a culture of awareness

Our cultural evolution as a species with other species has unfolded to a turning point. Our degradation of the earth—who can deny this?–awakens in us its opposite, the growing sense of the interdependence and sacredness of all life, our special human relationship to the earth and the cosmos. This awakening is triggered in part by the world calling to us, but also by spirit impelling us through a dark moment of time. The earlier form of spirituality—Sam Raya calls it “distributive spirituality” (some follow a spiritual path for the sake of others who do not)—needs be replaced by an “interpenetrative model of spirituality”. All are engaged spiritually in all of our actions. All humans have a “divine spark”. This is a lovely metaphor for the Spirit-being is immanent in all of creation and present within us as a spark glinting toward the horizon.

Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories in Germany

Thomas Klikauer & Nadine Campbell

By the end of early December 2020, the coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 1½ million people worldwide as a large number of countries have entered into recession. In Germany, the economic downturn has let to an unprecedented 7.3 million people being laid off. There was a slump in Germany’s gross domestic product in the second quarter of 2020. It fell by more than 10%. Germany’s outlook is still relatively gloomy with more than 300,000 infections and around 15,500 deaths.

Notwithstanding the continuing significant health risks posed by the virus, more and more Germans seem to be largely dissatisfied with the government’s measures to contain the virus. Many are simply fed up. At the beginning of the pandemic, only a few critical voices appeared. In recent months, however, the people who have doubts about the existence of the virus and who believe in obscure conspiracy myths have grown. They show a very serious dissatisfaction with the politically prescribed restrictions and the impact it has on them and public life.

Last August, this dissatisfaction culminated in a massive rally in Germany’s capital Berlin. An estimated 40,000 people took part in an anti-government rally on 29^th August 2020. The attempted storming of Germany’s parliament had sent shockwaves through Germany. Some of the protesters were outright right-wing extremists and local Neo-Nazis while others just wore their tin-foil hats. The tin-foil hat remains an insignia of those believing in conspiracy theories. These rallies are organised under the popular heading of being so-called hygiene rallies. At times several hundred protesters including numerous right-wing extremists as well as AfD supporters and local Neo-Nazis blocked the entrance of the Reichstag – Germany’s parliament in Berlin – and thereby causing widespread horror on the democratic side of politics and society.

To understand the phenomenon of anti-coronavirus measure and the subsequent rallies against these government measures as well as the link to conspiracy theories spun about the coronavirus, Germany’s reputable Hans Böckler Foundation ran a survey. The survey found that there is a significant spread of right-wing ideology, conspiracy theories and sceptical attitudes towards the pandemic and the political handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

The foundation’s analysis is based on two surveys conducted by data analyser KANTAR for the Hans Böckler Foundation that surveyed Germany’s labour force. Kantar’s computer-aided online interviews were comprised of 7,677 respondents who represented Germany’s working population aged 16 and over between the 3^rd and 14^th April 2020 and again between the 18^th and 29^th June 2020.

The HBS/Kantar analysis showed the following. While 15% of Germany’s working population supported the anti-coronavirus protests against the government’s measures, approximately one-third of all respondents were dissatisfied with the crisis management of the Federal Government.

Yet, many Germans saw government restrictions – lockdowns, etc. – also as a threat to democracy. Others were concerned that Germany’s restrictions on constitutional rights might not be taken back once the coronavirus pandemic ended. Around 40% of the respondents did not believe that the virus is as dangerous as it is claimed to be. Meanwhile, more hard-core conspiracy theorists also believe that elites are using the pandemic to protect the interests of the rich and powerful.

People holding these attitudes were anything but insignificant. These ideas, ideologies, myths, and conspiracy theories were found in large sections of Germany’s population. One might also like to consider that Kantar’s analysis revealed an increased tendency in dissatisfaction with the government, as shown in many anti-government statements and posters carried at these rallies. Over time, numbers of people rejecting government measures had actually increased. No less relevant was the finding that attitudes of dissatisfaction, doubting the government, and conspiracy myths existed close together. Kantar’s empirical data showed a clear link between them. In other words, those who were dissatisfied with the government were also likely to believe in conspiracy theories and – even worse – they were also willing to share conspiracy myths about the coronavirus with others.

Overall, anti-government rallies – the so-called hygiene rallies – were strongly supported by Germans aged between 18 and 29 rather than those aged above 65. Younger Germans do perceive the coronavirus pandemic as less of a risk and therefore, are more willing to go out and rally against the government, often violating local rules on mask-wearing and social distancing. In Germany’s still existing east vs west cleavage, anti-government rallies found stronger support in the former East-Germany compared to the former West-Germany. HBS/Kantar believe this is reflective of three facts:

1) The former East-Germany has more people living in rural areas compared to the former West-Germany, which as higher levels of the population living in cities. There is still an urban west and a rural east;

2) Not unrelated, the former East-Germany also showed fewer cases of coronavirus infections compared to the former West-Germany. This means that the level of threat is perceived to be lower in the former East-Germany compared to the former West-Germany. As a consequence, East-Germans found it hard to accept the harsh anti-coronavirus measures of the government; and

3) Finally, there still is a somewhat lower level of educational attainment in the former East-Germany compared to the former West-Germany. There has been a 30-year long brain-drain from east to west. Simultaneously, economic recessions such as those from the post-unification shock (1990s) to the global financial crisis (2008/2009) to the current coronavirus crisis (2020) have hit people in the former East-Germany harder compared to people in the former West-Germany.

Overall, there was no distinguishable difference between German women and men. However, 43% of those aged between 18 and 29 and 23.4% of those older than 60 agreed with the statement – the coronavirus is not as bad as claimed. Next to age, education emerged as a relatively stable predictor. A whopping 70.5% of people who had basic schooling and no formal degree believed that the rich and powerful use the coronavirus pandemic to gain more power. In comparison, only 31.2% of those with a high-school degree or above believed that.

This somewhat mirrored income levels. Only 24.7% of those earning €4.500 per month believed the statement that the coronavirus is not as bad as claimed. While 40.3% of those earning between €900 and €1.500 per month believed the same. Interestingly, only 38.8% of those who earned less than €900 per month believed this. Overall, those who suffered a loss of income because of the coronavirus pandemic are more likely to support right-wing attitudes and hygiene rallies.

Simultaneously, 50.4% of Germany’s unemployed believe that the current restrictions on individual liberty will not end once the coronavirus pandemic ends. 30.3% of small business owners and 24.5% of the self-employed also think this will happen. On the upswing, only 16.4% of Germany’s civil service employees agreed with that. General agreement also increased when it came to white-collar workers and middle-managers (33.9%) and manual workers (46.7%).

Being a trade union organisation, the Hans Böckler Foundation was keen to see whether the existence of works councils – supported by law in Germany – and the presence of a collective bargaining agreement made a difference when it comes to believing in conspiracy theories. The surveying agency KANTAR found no recognisable difference between German workers employed in companies with an existing works council and those without. Equally, there was no difference when it came to believing in conspiracy theories between companies with or without a collective bargaining agreement.

The survey also showed that the belief in conspiracy theories remained relatively constant throughout early 2020. 60.7% of German workers did not change their minds when it came to viewing the government’s restrictions as a danger to individual liberties. Overall, the number of German workers who were satisfied with the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic also remained constant (61.1%).

Overall, the survey found that about 15% of workers support the hygiene rallies against the government’s anti-coronavirus pandemic measures, while 66% of all workers support the government’s measures. Yet, about 40% believe that the virus is not as dangerous as it is claimed to be. Interestingly, the survey found that those who doubt the severity of the coronavirus pandemic and those who reject the government’s approach were also those who were most likely to believe in conspiracy theories.

Remarkably, young workers are more likely to be found in this group rather than older workers. Two factors might explain this. Firstly, young workers are more likely to experience a direct impact of the coronavirus pandemic on their work (job loss) and income (unemployment). Secondly, young people appear to be somewhat distant to the factual realities of the coronavirus pandemic. Twenty-year old's seem to believe in their own invincibility – nothing can bother me!

A clear result was found with the link between conspiracy theories and education. The lower the educational achievements, the more likely people reject government measures, think that the coronavirus pandemic is not as severe as it actually is, and tend to believe in conspiracy theories.

Perhaps those Donald Trump calls “the poorly educated” exist not only in the USA but in Germany as well. These are also the people often suffering disproportionally from job insecurity, diminished incomes, and unemployment. In other words, as British economist, Guy Standing, identifies as the precariat.

Finally, and this comes thirty years after Germany’s reunification, there is a marked difference between the former East-Germany and the former West-Germany. This, in turn, is linked to the impact of the current crisis, which has hit former East-Germans harder compared to former West-Germans. Chancellor Merkel’s management of the coronavirus pandemic is more likely to be rejected in the former East-Germany and more likely to be accepted in the former West-Germany even though Angela Merkel grew up in the former East-Germany.

Overall, the survey shows that there is a significant level of conflict in Germany’s population about the government’s coronavirus measures. Secondly, general dissatisfaction and obscure conspiracy myths are inextricably related. This represents a rather corrosive decoupling of democratic discourse from Germany’s mainstream, as right-wing advocates of violence took over numerous hygiene rallies. Many of them rallying against the government are not – as often claimed – so-called concerned citizens. Instead, they follow conspiracy theories and myths often propagated by right-wing extremists and Neo-Nazis.