Coercive compliance in the age of coronavirus
Sociologist Evan Stark, PhD, once said, “Compliance is fear-based. If there’s no fear, there’s no coercive control. And that fear is very real.” With another wave of lockdowns and restrictions hitting many parts of the world, and protests erupting in response to these lockdowns, there is a moral imperative to revisit the word “compliance” and the way it’s being used in the age of coronavirus.
Since the #MeToo movement – a movement at the heart of the issue of compliance and consent – has been put on the back burner in favor of the fight against COVID-19, there is a truth that needs to be brought back into public consciousness: Compliance is not consent. A person’s right to clear and informed consent does not end where crises, wars or disease begin.
Compliance in its extreme form – coercion – has been studied in contexts ranging from domestic abuse, to the manipulative methods used by religious cults to disarm their followers and render them submissive, to the physical and psychological torture used against prisoners of war. In the late 1950’s American psychologist Albert Biderman wrote about the tactics used by Communist regimes to elicit false confessions from US Air Force prisoners of war. He developed a chart of coercion that includes isolation, monopolization of perception, induced debilitation and exhaustion, threats, occasional indulgences, demonstration of omnipotence and omniscience, degradation, and the enforcing of trivial demands.
Biderman’s chart of coercion, seen in the context of the response to coronavirus, raises important questions on how far the general public, along with empowered governments, can go to enforce group compliance in the name of a cause, and when exactly that compliance crosses the line into coercion, brute force, harassment, psychological warfare and abuse on a mass, societal level.
It is no coincidence that every method analyzed and categorized in Biderman’s chart of coercion has been used in varying degrees to impose public health measures in the age of the coronavirus.
Isolation of entire populations over the past year has “deprived people of all social support and of their ability to resist.” Monopolization of perception in the age of corona has caused people to affix their attention upon the “immediate predicament” and to “frustrate all actions not consistent with compliance.”
Induced debilitation, exhaustion and fatigue has been a major health crisis in 2020-2021, through the total control of people’s most basic activities – breathing, personal hygiene, freedom of movement – daily routines, the ability to carry out essential activities for well-being and morale. This has included restriction of social contact on a real human level: exercise; free access to beaches, gardens and parks; the freedom to work, go to school and get an education; and to experience arts and culture on a human level and not exclusively through a computer screen.
Threats have been used this year on a mass level to achieve global compliance, from threats of legal repercussions ranging from million-dollar fines to three years imprisonment for breaking forced quarantine, to unexpected visits from public health “compliance officers” to ensure full compliance during forced quarantine, to threats of being denied entry into one’s own country during travel restrictions, to being denied physical contact with one’s own family, to the threat of being apprehended by authorities, and the threat of being physically or verbally assaulted by self-policing factions of the general public for the crime of non-compliance. In the age of coronavirus, living under constant threat of legal consequences and social persecution for non-compliance has become the new way of life.
Occasional indulgences or “positive motivation for compliance” in the age of corona have been used in the form of impossible promises to get populations to comply with unreasonable, irresponsible demands; for example, promising the mitigation of a virus through mask compliance while at the same time creating a public health and environmental crisis of gigantic proportions, with millions of used bio-hazard masks being thrown out into the environment every minute of every day.
Demonstration of omnipotence and omniscience has been achieved in the year 2020-2021 through “complete
control over [people’s] fate” and the “futility of resistance.” Other than people who still have control over their own fate because they are deemed “essential,” the fate of all other “non-essential” humans has been under the complete control of the ruling authorities, and of the self-policing factions of the general public for over a year.
GOING HAND in hand with the demonstration of omnipotence and omniscience, degradation and humiliation has been one of the most prevalent methods of coercive control during the pandemic: Humans are now all considered potential carriers of death and disease and little else. The civil rights that come with personhood and adulthood have been replaced with coercive compliance through the notion that everybody must bend to the greater social will without question, in an effort to mitigate the spread of an infinitesimally microscopic virus that constantly mutates to survive.
Questioning, doubt and skepticism has been replaced by a new era of scientific absolutism, a world of pseudoscience disguised as academia and rendered dangerously infallible where the statistical margin for error is enormous; a new era where the God complex prevails and is sustained by the notion that “non-experts” – the mere mortals of this world – have no right to educate themselves, ask questions, get answers, object, protest, refuse to comply under coercion, or to choose for themselves. The coronavirus has given way to a world where freedom of thought, freedom of knowledge and the power of decision is somehow only bestowed unto the anointed few, a new ruling class: the public health official. Everyone else need not question, or think, or choose, or exist, or decide beyond the measures of compliance imposed by that new ruling class and its collaborators. The “non-essentials” need not apply.
The final method in Biderman’s chart of coercion – enforcing trivial demands – has been proven effective in the age of coronavirus. The large arrows on the floors of grocery stores used during 2020 to show people the direction in which they should be walking in an effort to socially distance remains one of the most poignantly trivial and yet horrifyingly dystopian measures of the past year. It goes hand in hand with degradation and humiliation, controlling people’s every step, their every direction, their breathing, their hands, the minutiae of their everyday existence and their fate. The dehumanization is thereby complete, stripping every person on Earth of their humanity by systematically dismantling their ability to think and act beyond the immediate mandate of coercive compliance, in the name of public health, in the name of safety and in the name of fear.
When coercive compliance and brute force are used in the name of a cause, no matter how noble the cause, the initial goal of that cause is overshadowed and nullified by the immoral, unethical, violent means to an end. If every war, if every pandemic continues to be used as reasons to violate people’s lives and free will, justice and equality will never exist. If the Universal Charter of Human Rights and the Geneva Conventions are continuously overlooked and ignored in times of war, in times of crisis, in times of disease or even in times of peace, justice and equality will be nothing but a dream that will remain just that.
Social injustice and inequality are – without question – the most long-lasting global crises that have plagued the world for far too long. They should never be left on the back burner; not in times of war, not in times of disease, not ever.
Manipulating coercive compliance and using brute force to control the fate of entire populations is never OK; not in times of war, not in times of disease, not ever.
The element of choice is essential to a person’s physical, mental and emotional well-being, and it needs to remain a fundamental right for every human on Earth. Therein lies the greater good, in the fact that every human on Earth is born free, has agency, has free will, has the right to choose the course of his or her own life, has personhood, has the power of decision and the right to clear and informed consent. Where there is choice, there is consent. Where there is consent, humanity can achieve great things, including the eradication of war, poverty and disease.