Technocratic Totalitarianism
Gunnar Kaiser and Dissident Discourse in Pandemic-Era Germany
Building on my obituary from last November, I have written a long article on Gunnar Kaiser, which has just appeared in the Journal of European Studies – an English-language academic publication. The essay is ‘open access’ and therefore freely available to anyone, anywhere in the world. The link to the piece, which along with Raymond Unger’s recent book is among the first formal analyses of Kaiser’s work, is here.
The article attempts to achieve three things. Firstly, to introduce Kaiser to an English-speaking readership, specifically to Anglophone academics. Secondly, to distill the essence of Kaiser’s opposition to lockdown politics, focusing on what he termed the ‘Great Inversion’ and ‘biopolitical technocracy’. Thirdly, to survey the broader landscape of pandemic-era dissent – that is, the pattern of persecution that emerges from the treatment of Michael Ballweg, Christiaan Dettmar, Sucharit Bhakdi and CJ Hopkins.
Ultimately, the essay is a contribution to the ongoing reckoning with lockdown – a policy which, for the most part, retains reflexive support in intellectual circles. At the same time, it represents another attempt to honour the life of Kaiser, whose work is so rich and whose social significance was so profound that he demands almost as much attention now as he did during the depths of the crisis.
If we are to arrest the development towards the anti-human world previewed by the so-called ‘pandemic’, how better to proceed than with those who recognised the meaning of that world, with such clarity, from the very beginning?
I hope you enjoy it.