COVID-19 Crisis: Internal Document Reveals Austrian Government Plan to Spread Fear

 

A telling revelation on the political calculations of the ruling class

 

by Michael Pröbsting, International Secretary of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), 28 April 2020, www.thecommunists.net

 

 

 

Yesterday, Austria’s public broadcaster ORF published the minutes from an internal meeting of the so-called "Taskforce Corona". This is the key institution which currently decides on the COVID-19 policy of the government coalition of the Conservative and the Green party. This meeting, which took place on 12 March (three days before the government declared a state of emergency with a wide-ranging lockdown), was attended by Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, the vice-chancellor, the ministers of the interior and health plus 13 health experts and 8 high-ranking officials.

 

According to the minutes, Chancellor Kurz lamented that the population “does not take the danger of the virus seriously enough”. (Bear in mind that this was shortly before the beginning of the lockdown so the government had to consider ways how the population could accept such a draconic measure.) The Chancellor then said, according to the minutes: “Kurz makes clear that the people should be afraid of being infected respectively should be afraid that their parents or grandparents could die. On the other side, we should allay the fear of the population about food shortage, blackout, etc.”

 

One of the government health advisors, Herwig Kollaritsch, positively referred to the governmental policy in Britain during the measles epidemic in the 1990s. One can learn from this experience how the government “has played with fear” of the population. [1]

 

Based on such a political strategy of deliberately spreading fear and panic, the government launched a campaign of causing bewilderment among the population so that it accepts the lockdown and the suppression of democratic rights. On 30 March, for example, Chancellor Kurz said in a public speech: “We will have soon a situation in Austria where everyone will know somebody who has died because of the Corona Virus.” [2]

 

Meanwhile the existence of this internal minute has been confirmed by the government so there is no doubt about the substance of these quotes. Naturally, the outcry of the opposition parties is huge and the government tries to downplay the significance of these minutes.

 

 

 

The political calculation of the ruling classes

 

 

 

It would be silly to imagine that the Austrian government is an exception in elaborating plans how to spread fear among the population. All capitalist governments must find ways to justify the draconic lockdown policy and the suppression of democratic rights. Surely, there will be many more revelations in the near future about such anti-people conspiracies of the ruling classes.

 

These revelations do not come as a surprise for Marxists. From our first statements in early February the RCIT has pointed out that the ruling classes – from China to Europe and all other continents – consciously utilizes this pandemic in order to spread fear and panic. [3] Their response to the COVID-19 pandemic has not been based on health considerations but on political calculations in order to consolidate its power. As we elaborate in our new book “The COVID-19 Global Counterrevolution: What It Is and How to Fight It” and many other documents, the current pandemic is utilized by the capitalist class as a cover for a pre-emptive counterrevolution against the workers and popular masses. [4]

 

Naturally, we never denied the existence of this pandemic. But an increasing number of studies demonstrate that it is much less deadly than the ruling classes and their media claim in order to justify the creation of a chauvinist state bonapartist machinery with an rapidly expanding police and surveillance state and the massive limitation of democratic rights. While the lethality rate of Influenza is about 0.1%, various studies indicate that the lethality rate of the Corona Virus is between 0.2-0.6%.

 

In short, this is a serious pandemic which must be combated with a program of wide-ranging mass free testing, quarantine of those infected and a massive expansion of the public health service under workers and popular control. It can not and must not be combated with bourgeois state repression and atomization of the popular masses (“stay at home”, “social distancing”, etc.). It can not and must not serve under any circumstances as justification for the creation of authoritarian regimes and the destruction of democratic rights! [5]

 

 

 

Social-Bonapartist Lockdown Left

 

 

 

In itself, it is not surprising that the ruling class looks for an excuse to attack democracy in the current situation. As we have explained in a number of works, the capitalist world economy entered its Third Depression in late 2019. [6] At the same time, the bourgeois order was shattered by a global wave of class struggles and popular uprisings from Hong Kong to Chile, from Iraq to France and from India to Sudan. [7] Another important feature undermining political stability has been the accelerating rivalry between the imperialist Great Powers – in particular between the U.S: and China. [8] In such a situation, the ruling classes desperately needed an excuse to put down the people and to consolidate its power.

 

It is particularly shameful that the bureaucratic leaderships of the trade unions, popular organizations and the so-called left, in their vast majority, support the global lockdown. This is equivalent to serving the global counterrevolutionary offensive. These forces have become what we call the social-bonapartist Lockdown Left – an obstacle in the liberation struggle of the workers and oppressed.

 

The RCIT repeats its call to all authentic revolutionaries around the world to break with such opportunist left and to join forces in advancing the construction of a World Party of Socialist Revolution! [9]