By: Yusuf Serunkuma Kajura
Ever thought that your government could be telling lies about a disaster – a pandemic, floods, plague or mudslides – while its countrymen are agonizing in pain? That your government is using every bit of a pandemic – cases of infection, numbers dead, nature of transmission, the presence or absence of a cure – for profit or politics? Let’s take count: The communicated threat of the Covid-19 pandemic has brought onto humanity an oppressive lockdown, with serious ramifications. In Uganda specifically, millions of learners confined to their homes and are languishing in hopelessness. Teenage girls have been impregnated, and their lives altered permanently. Many families have been broken due to a spike in domestic violence, and small and medium size businesses (and several big ones) are under immense stress threatened by permanent closure. Enforcement of lockdown and other measures have had prisons filled up, and mitigation enforcers have killed those suspected to be “risking” the lives of others. In the midst of all this pain, is it possible to countenance the idea that our governments – especially where lockdowns are tightly in place – are actually sustaining lockdown for selfish ends?
This essay offers some historico-theoretical reflections on the possibility of governments vending fake news for other selfish ends. It springs from the understanding that the biggest vendors of fake news remains the state, and the label fake news, often given to other regimes of knowledge, is itself a method of controlling alternative discourses meant to challenge the officially sanctioned fake news vending. I use the controversy of hydroxychloroquine to explore the complex world of science, its interaction with power, and the oppressive label, fake news. I offer some reflection on counterpublics and the ways in which the constant push and pull between power and counterpublic are central in regulating the excesses of power.
Between Gates and Immanuel
There is a viral meme doing the rounds on social media where a humorist invites his followers to laugh at the irony of rich man, Bill Gates being publicly welcomed to comment about public health, and not Dr. Stella Immanuel, the “coronavirus” doctor of Houston, Texas. Both persons are passionate about public health, but while Gates is welcome to comment on vaccination and viruses, Immanuel has been on the chopping block ever since she recommended hydroxychloroquine as a cure for Covid-19. Profiling them cinematically side-by-side, the humorist wonders why a board-certified physician, with over 20 years of experience, could be dismissed, maligned and heavily scrutinized while a college dropout software billionaire is a welcome voice in matters health. Well, he is Bill Gates, the joker seems to suggest with a tone of irony.
My intention is not to endorse the message in the meme, but critically appreciate the intellectual and aesthetic value of the joke. By their nature, jokes are never directly or necessarily true. They aren’t appreciated neither crosschecked for their veracity. They thrive on exaggeration, incongruence, which often involves turning the normative on its head. But the absence of veracity does not deny them mediational power, nor does it render them foreign to their audiences. Indeed, they can make us laugh only if they speak to our lived realty – and challenge us to see it in different light. The fact that we shared this meme en-masse, and found it hilarious, however grim, reveals something accurate about our world captured in the joke. By bringing them in sharp contrast, one is struck by the class difference between these two individuals. Whilst one is rich and connected to power, the other is simply a trained medic. We are invited to appreciate how class determines eloquence and truthfulness. We are then challenged to see the place of power and money in what is often consumed as truth or science.
Science, evidence and power
Do states lie? They do. And on a grand scale. It is true, but a rather an unpopular position that the biggest, proudest, but ironically unchallenged vendor of fake news remains the state. What we consume as news, official statistics and reports, officially sanctioned science on nutrition and personal health or even the weather, is often the position of power/state, and has nothing to do with the truth. This is an old Foucauldian position on power and knowledge. There is no knowledge free from or uninformed by political/power interests. Even something as seemingly innocent as road distances. The world knows now that if it were not for Juliane Assange, Edward Snowden, and Chelsea Manning – whom Slovenian theorist, Slavoj Žižek called “our new heroes,” we would never have appreciated the extent of deception and manipulation that our states are involved in. States do not only lie on a grand scale, they also commit egregious crimes in the name of the people. Indeed, media scholars know that Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s classic, Manufacturing Consent, grapples with the complex processes of vending deception as states and media often conspire and deceive their subjects. Ali Mazrui’s 1997 essay “Islamic and Western values,” which sought to juxtapose western and non-western societies, demonstrated that consent is never only “manufactured,” as Herman and Chomsky demonstrated, but was also oftentimes coerced, which meant working outside the market processes of persuasion and manipulation to open threats and outright violence. [Well, the market is violent, too].
By the state, my reference borrows Marx’s view that the state is often composed of lawyers and merchants who will pursue their interests however grievous these interests are to the rest of their compatriots. State deception is often unquestioned because states are built on the assumption that they are the vanguards of public interest. It is the Hobbesian assumption that individuals left on their own, as individual sovereigns – without arbitration from the state – life would be “brutish, nasty and short.” But who then is supposed to control the excesses of the state if all its communication, its supposedly benign truth, carries the air of absolute veracity, and is often unquestioned? What happens when states – the power-blessed lawyers and merchants – lie in the pursuit of their interests? How does power hold itself accountable? That there are neither direct nor indirect answers to these questions is scary itself.
America provides some frightening encounters of state deception, which have come with far devastating consequences across the world. In 2003, the United States of America went to war in Iraq, killed millions, and destroyed property on fake intelligence. There were no weapons of mass destruction. Again, the world also never went to war in Afghanistan because of terrorism, or because of the imperative to liberate women, but rather, oil and “the avoid-Iran, avoid-Russia,” Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan gas pipeline coming to Europe from Turkmenistan. This pipe was designed to go through Afghanistan but it needed a safer and cooperative country. The war against the Taliban leadership – covered under the guise of fighting terror – sought to achieve this objective. Does it not surprise us that even after the death of Osama Bin Laden America is not leaving Afghanistan!
There are more cases of state deception or propaganda including the drug war in America – which Michelle Alexander deftly exposes in her The New Jim Crow – as a method to disenfranchise black Americans; the war in Vietnam in the 1960s, colonialism, and slave trade, all were executed on deliberately falsified material. In a more recent history, African countries are still recovering from the devastating ruins of HIV/AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s. The shocker is in knowing – as Dr. Peter Mugenyi documented in his gripping Genocide by Denial, that for the sole interest of profiteering, big pharmaceutical companies manufactured all sorts of lies, some of them bordering on outright racism, to deny African patients anti-retroviral therapy. With many of its people condemned to death, the South African government even sought to introduce price reduction legislation for drugs, and also produce/import generics, a thing that attracted law suits from over 40 pharmaceuticals. Many South Africans died as the legal battles took twists and turns. The point I am laboring in pointing out these many examples of officially sanctioned deception is that states lie, and they do so on a grand scale.
I need to define power moving forward: while merchants and lawyers have always worked together under the umbrella of the state, these two form distinct units. They can actually go separate ways or even challenge each other. Indeed, for the periodic changes in democratic regimes, political heads are changed. But the merchants on the other hand, have come to establish a firmer stronghold on the state. Business interests are unencumbered by democratic norms of termly change of leaderships. As the smoldering and oftentimes open hostility between President Donald Trump, and scientists led by Dr. Anthony Fauci have showed us – over hydroxychloroquine – these two sides of the same coin tend to disagree. To this end, the real holders of power are the business side of the state. Not surprising, lobby groups – guns, meat, special interests and super pacs – hold a great deal of power in seemingly more advanced democracies – especially because of their permanence in the corridors of power. I need to caveat here: Do not be fooled by this internal wrangling between the political and business side of the state. they live and breed together and are often constantly transforming themselves. Let me return to Dr. Stella Immanuel to demonstrate this deceptive internal strife more vividly.
Hydroxychloroquine
There was a viral video of one Dr. Stella Immanuel over the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19. She was simply unknown before her energetic performance hit the online outlets. In slightly above three minutes of energetic performance – which the Internet captured and widely shared – Dr. Immanuel’s fame grew like a bushfire in the Harmattan. Even American president, Donald Trump – who had earlier on endorsed the drug but received a lot of backlash – had to chip in to the doctor’s endorsement of the renowned anti-malarial drug. With several other white-gowned doctors standing behind this Cameroonian-born and Nigerian trained physician, Immanuel killed it for hydroxychloroquine. She was sharp and precise. At some points, her voice was wrought with emotion as she appealed to the American people that none had to get sick or even die:
I have personally treated over 350 patients with Covid-19. Patients that have diabetes; patients that have high blood pressure; patients that have asthma; old people, my oldest patient is 92… and they are all well. I put them on hydroxychloroquine, I put them on zinc, I put them on Zithromax. For the past three months I have taken care of over 350 patients, we have not lost one… and on top of that, I have put myself, my staff and many doctors that I know on hydroxychloroquine for prevention. By the very mechanism of prevention, it works well as a prophylaxis.
Immanuel started by putting out her profile – trained in Africa, with plentiful cases of malaria – before going over her practice, in America. While emphasizing that hydroxychloroquine was actually a confirmed cure for Covid-19, in combination with other drugs, Immanuel also stressed that it was a commendable prophylaxis. This contest should be understood as one located in the marketplace. Drugs are sold not given, and hydroxychloroquine is a cheap drug. The idea of prophylaxis, if endorsed would simply kill the market for vaccines, in which many pharmaceutical companies have already invested. But also, the listening audience gets introduced to a combination of drugs that could be used as a cure. Again, the market is inconvenienced. From talking cure and prevention, the two main things the world has been left without, Immanuel went on to attack, opening war with the drug industry, which she labels rightly as her adversaries:
So, if some fake science, some person sponsored by all these fake pharma companies comes and says we have done studies and they have found that it [hydroxychloroquine] doesn’t work, I can tell you categorically, it is fake science. I wanna know who is sponsoring that study, I wanna know who is behind it. Because there is no way I can treat 350 and counting and nobody is dead, and they all did better. I have come to Washington to tell America that no one has to die (emphasis added).
It is interesting how Immanuel uses the cliché, “fake science,” the commonest slur that would be thrown at her as the world – or more precisely, medical industry – grasped the full implications of her act. In calling out “fake science,” Immanuel also named its cousin, “fake pharma companies.” Indeed, this was to remind Americans of the big elephant not present in the Covid-19 room, the pharmaceutical companies. These are often seeking to profit from any natural calamity (see, Mugenyi cited earlier). Is it possible that Donald Trump, Dr. Stella Immanuel, Judy Mikovits, and all other medics cited in the Plandemic documentary are deluded psychopaths interested in misleading the world over hydroxychloroquine? What is in it for them? Although President Trump’s crises have been widely documented and are indisputable, what is in it for him to pedal hydroxychloroquine as a cure? Is the claim of incompetence on Donald Trump sufficient explanation considering that he is no medic? How about Dr. Immanuel? How about Uncle Gates? But perhaps we need to refocus this question: If America’s National Institute of Health (NIH) has argued that there is simply insufficient evidence[1] to recommend for or against its use, who stands to lose if science confirmed hydroxychloroquine as efficient cure? Has it been a fake drug all along in Africa despite continued use – both as a cure and prophylaxis?
Betrayal in the City
Responses to Dr. Immanuel’s crazy proclamations are reminiscent of some of the most quoted lines in Francis Imbuga’s play, Betrayal in the City. After some tumultuous events, a character in Imbuga concludes pensively, “when the madness of an entire nation disturbs a solitary mind, it is not enough to say the man is mad.” The response to Immanuel was overwhelming. Well, Imbuga’s play is also about power that disguises under the follies of individuals. As soon as the clip went viral, the entire world was up in arms. It was intense, sustained, lethal and uniform: Medical groups from South Africa to the UK discussed the clip. The medical association in Nigeria issued statements, while Texas Medical Board had her warned. While American media tasked Trump to respond, to which he said she had been “very impressive,” the clip and the responses to it opened more questions than it answered. Why all the backlash to a fringe crazy woman? Suddenly, her religious beliefs were brought to the fore as reason to have her discredited. It was outright character assassination. News story after story made reference to her religious beliefs and pronouncements as grounds to refute her knowledge of science. Mobilizing religion to delegitimize ones opinion not only borders on racist profiling, but also turned this standoff into a fight between religion and science. This returned us full square to old racist, orientalist discourses that equated religion to barbarism. It is the belief in western discourse that the religious cannot be scientific. But beyond or behind this orientalizing discourse is the pursuit for profit. Slave trading and colonial discourse orientalised so as to enable exploitation and stealing from the barbarous.
Does power have a conscience?
For ordinary folks standing or watching on the sidelines, consuming science, or watching scientists wrestle and call each other names, it is natural to embrace the scientist from the position of authority – of their democratically elected government – the state. This script has been challenged by Fauci-Trump standoff in America, but remains fairly intact. It is unthinkable that their states/governments could deny them cure – just simply for profits – such as the combination by Dr. Immanuel spelled out if it were really effective. The often naïve and exploited belief is that states have a conscience and are always working in the best interests of their compatriots. They have the public interest since it is from the public that they earned their mandate. Besides, these Covid-19 times, the pain and horror is too much – many people have died – to the point that even the meanest, the crudest of merchants would soften at the sight of this carnage. This is a position that comes naturally to ordinary folks that are yet to be dehumanized by profits and power. To believe otherwise is to commit the most sacrilegious of sins. And power structures itself in ways that allow it to produce the dominant narrative. The holders public opinion – producers of knowledge – have to speak the language of power, and this quickly becomes the ‘common sense’ if not the most “educated” position.
My contention is that power has a shaky conscience – with an acute weakness for more power and profits. Left to thrive uninterrupted, this conscience can go wild. This shaky conscience of power needs to be constantly checked by protests, radical activism, what could be termed as subaltern counterpublics. These processes – protests, counterpublics, activism – constantly mobilize alternative science, knowledge systems that challenge dominant normalizing discourses. Sadly, counterpublics have been called fake news to deny them potence. In truth, the ugly label, “fake news,” masks the liberating power of alternative knowledge forms and protest discourses.
The pursuit for power and profit is absolute. If power’s conscience were steady and permanent, we would never have had slave trade, colonialism, nor Belgian Congo under King Leopold. We would never have had Iraq, Afghanistan, and more recently, Libya – all of which were engaged in false intelligence and science. For the capitalists, emboldened and consequently dehumanized by power, there is no amount of pain that can take them away from profits. The story of HIV/AIDS in Africa, which actually involved all the world’s powers is testimony that merchants have a terribly profit-weakened conscience. It should not be expected to have changed under Covid-19.
Yusuf Serunkuma Kajura is a PhD Fellow, Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR)
