Thread (mainly addressed to my fellow lefties calling for a “harder” lockdown). Usual caveats apply, not an epidemiologist or a PH expert, and I’m well aware that the situation is absolutely dire.

However, I *am* a human rights professional, and some of the calls I’ve seen from people supposedly on the left recently have made my blood run cold.

People calling for a French-style lockdown where you need paperwork to leave the house – I would ask you to think very, very carefully about what that would mean for the most vulnerable people in our society who are the ones *already the most adversely impacted by Covid*.

The French already have a (horrible, demeaning) nickname for people who don’t have the “right” paperwork (‘Sans Papiers’) because they are *literally* treated as second class citizens because of this.

Not having paperwork dehumanises and criminalises people simply for being poor, for being migrants, for not speaking the official language, for being in poor mental health.

How would ppl access this magical paperwork? I’m native English speaker, access to £ etc, but not to a printer. But you’d just put it on a smartphone, right? Not everyone has access to one & if they do, need the data for something more pressing (accessing benefits for example).

Not everyone works a 9-5 where they can sit at home and have groceries delivered (by other humans btw, presumably it’s ok for them to still be out?). Not everyone can shop alone if they have small children or caring responsibilities.

Some people need to leave the house because they have no garden, no balcony, eight people inside and no sanity left. Some might just need some fresh air. I’m not really up for criminalising this tbh!

Do we really want to arrest people at all? The left need to think very hard about this newfound lust to even get the police involved in the first place. ACAB in bios screaming for a harder lockdown? Holy cognitive dissonance! Also, who do you think the police will arrest first?

“But lots of countries are doing this already, why can’t we?” Well lots of countries do things all the time, like enact the death penalty or ban religious attire - does this mean we should do the same thing?

We are all scared and exhausted and angry. We all want this to end. The govt has been complete dogshit throughout this, MSM not much better. But banning people from simply going outside, calling other members of the public “stupid” etc is, besides being grim, not even helpful

Instead of begging the police to arrest your neighbour for having a party, why not ask questions about the vaccine schedule? About proper financial support for essential workers? About why the NHS has been allowed to get into a not dissimilar state EVERY winter, for years?

There is a way to be hard left, to be socialist, to be pinko as they fucking come and not turn against each other. Infighting is what the right both expects and wants us to do, and they are probably rubbing their foul little paws with glee right now.

We have the vaccine, we have, genuinely, light at the end of this tunnel. We might well need a “harder” lockdown before we get there but in the meantime clamouring for measures which punish the people already being punished in and by this shitty society ain't it

Because if what you want looks, sounds, and feels more like fascism than socialism, then we have all lost.