Fear doesn’t have to divide us

A response to the anti-mask protesters

It’s been a long time since I have written a column here, on the theme of poetry and empathy. Oh boy, we sure need more of both in our lives. Especially the empathy.

In writing about the recent incident at the Ukiah Co-op, in which a group calling itself the Mendocino Patriots blocked aisles, opened and ate food packages, and confronted staff, I am damn sad about everything. Challenged by feeling and expressing empathy for as many living beings as possible (my ultimate goal), I am going to focus on the low-hanging fruit, and work my way upwards in future posts.

To unpack this and other current clashes,

I am going to focus on three “f” words (no, not that one): fear, fatigue and fascism. I will speculate that, because this episode happened one year and three-quarters after the epidemic started, people are in a state of fatigue. The relation between fear and fascism is well-documented, and so

I will start with that, and leave a discussion of fatigue for a future installment.

First, to clarify something. People belonging to this protest movement were claiming that the staff are Nazis. They were collaborating, they claimed, in a fascist movement. The protesters also compared mandatory mask-wearing and other quarantine requirements to the sufferings African Americans endured under Jim Crow.

I wish that, before making these claims, they would have checked with people who had actually survived these persecutions first-hand — or, since many of those people have passed on, with their descendants.

I am one of those people. My father was a survivor of two concentration camps. Many of his immediate and extended family members were killed. My mother’s family was also affected.

If I, as the direct descendant of a victim of fascism who has learned a reasonable amount about the Holocaust’s genesis and history, were asked to respond to the Mendocino Patriots’ action, I would say this:

“I am completely stupefied as to your bringing this issue up, in relation to mask-wearing. Jews in Nazi Europe had special sanctions imposed on them because of who they were — sanctions often so severe that they could not feed or clothe themselves. Other people who were not Jewish did not have these sanctions imposed on them. Mask-wearing, on the other hand, is imposed on everyone, regardless of religion or race. Where’s the discrimination?”

People who don’t wear masks in a public place may be refused service, true. They would also be refused service for other behavior that they might choose to engage in, such as entering the store buck-naked. (At this time of year, I can’t help but wish that someone would try it — just think of the creative uses you could make of dangling Christmas ornaments.) Even if refused service, they can still order products online, or have their food delivered, or make use of the curbside service the Co-op offers. As for the camps they believe they will be sent to, I don’t know of any signs that they are being built.

I do hope people who are also witnesses to or descendants of people who survived persecution for racial and/or religious reasons will speak up. Does this analogy made by the anti-maskers and antivaxxers hold? I would ask the protesters, if they are indeed serious about fighting fascism, to respectfully listen to us.

Now, let me turn to fear. No doubt fear is fueling the polarization on both sides, and is a prime driver of aggression. Just look at how your sweet pet can turn into a growling, teeth-baring fighting machine when a threat presents.

There are many aspects to fear that are too complex to get into here. What I want to highlight is how fascism weaponizes fear in order to drive people apart, with tragic consequences. These consequences are even more tragic when we consider that fear can also be a unifying factor, if and when we learn how to hear and respect each other’s fear, and use it as the basis for mutual support.

Fascist culture as epitomized in Italy, Germany and Japan of the 1930s and ’40s — collectively known as the Axis Powers — was obsessed with strength. Cultivating the image of a steely, unbreakable superman, they created art and images that often spilled over into sadism. Exemption from all the usual ills of humankind — illness, injury, hunger and emotional hurt — was guaranteed if one joined the movement and received its power and protection.

One requirement for this supposed protection (which actually brought these countries to ruin) was the surrender of rationality which allowed the overturning of conventional norms. Kindness was frowned upon. Mercy, care, compassion — out the window. Any quality that was soft and feminine was banned. People who supposedly embodied these qualities, Jews among them, were jeered at and persecuted.

Knowing this history, I wince when I hear people who wear masks being told that they do so out of fear. In reality, our motives are much more complicated. A mixture of fear, care and the simple accumulation of habit are more accurate descriptions. Further, if I and others act out of fear, what of it?

Here is the crux of the matter — the way the emotion of fear, which all parties are clearly acting out of, is used as a “gotcha” reflex. You’re fearful, therefore you’re guilty of being vulnerable, soft, contemptible. What I and others are really guilty of, I would propose, is our existence as full and complex beings.

While the Mendocino Patriots and others who don’t want to wear masks assert their individual rights, the hospital wards continue to fill up with people sick and dying of Covid. Like it or not, the air we breathe in and out creates a communal event, links us to each other in a bond that can be beautiful — the opposite of the hate-based bond that fascist societies employ.

We are vulnerable. We are subject to the whims of organisms that we can’t see and that live inside of us. People who oppose masking have as many loved ones sicken and die from Covid as the rest of us — probably more, as they are more likely to refuse vaccinations. There are some who cover up what their relative died of, or won’t admit what they themselves have, even as they succumb to it. This is a tragedy of our times.

We can only create courage when we understand each other’s fear. No one wants to be so caught up in their fear that they miss life’s golden opportunities. Yet I don’t see a chance we can do that without a more sophisticated and truer understanding of how to discuss, guide and support each other through this powerful emotion. Fear is only the first subway stop of a necessary journey.