Main Edition
US
FR
October 25, 2021 - 7:00am
The Observer reported yesterday that the British government was consulting local authorities over plans to bring in vaccine passports, even though government ministers have repeatedly rejected claims to move to Plan B “for now”. What passes for the Left-leaning media has been among the most in favour of vaccine mandates, with articles often pointedly comparing the UK’s failure to adopt a tougher European “green pass” mode of mandates and Covid management. In the US, meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union has argued that “Covid-19 vaccination mandates can be consistent with civil liberties principles”.
The paradox here is obvious: the self-styled ‘Left’ is advocating a scheme that actively undermines its own goal of racial equality in society. Hence why last month, the leader of the Black Lives Matter movement in New York, Chivona Newsome, slammed vaccine mandates as racist. In many parts of the US, vaccine uptake has stalled among members of minority communities; in New York, 70% of Black Americans aged 18-44 have not had the Covid vaccine, while in Los Angeles county (where there are very strict mandates) only 54% of the black population and 62% of the “Latinx” population have had at least one dose of the Covid vaccine. If vaccine passports were to be introduced, then it’s not, as Newsome said, “gonna be white men in suits on Wall Street who are gonna get stopped”.
The support of many on the Left for vaccine mandates in the UK and US is thus incomprehensible. Wherever discrimination based on physical attributes has been empowered by law in Western history, it has been accompanied by racialisation and discrimination. It is unclear why liberals think that vaccine passports will be any different.
The delivery of the Covid-19 jabs themselves has also led to an increase in systemic global discrimination. The hoarding of vaccines, and the lack of a well-organised global rollout, has meant that billions of people worldwide in poorer countries are effectively barred from travel. Even where they have been vaccinated with globally recognised jabs, the UK has stated that no one who has received such a jab in many poor countries will be exempt from quarantine.
Adding vaccine passports to the mix is only going to intensify this discrimination both nationally and globally. This is hardly a shocking discovery, but what is surprising is the support people on the liberal Left have given to them. The existence of systemic discrimination is hardly news, but what is surprising is the support people on the liberal Left have given to policies which will exacerbate this. Given the consequences, and as there is nothing inevitable about the introduction of vaccine passports, we must do everything in our power to prevent it.
Toby Green is a Professor of African History at King’s College, London; and the author of The Covid Consensus: The New Politics of Global Inequality (Hurst).
Toby Green is a professor of History and associate of the Global Health Institute at King’s College, London. The updated edition of his book, The Covid Consensus, co-authored with Thomas Fazi, is published by Hurst.
toby00green
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeMaybe people of different skin colours and/or socio-demographic backgrounds are better placed to see through this ludicrous big Government idea of a vaccine passport.
How does FORCING healthy black people (or people of any skin colour) to have a vaccine help me if I have had the vaccine?
It does seem like white middle class folk (in particular) have lost any grasp of fairness and a willingness to live and let live. Instead, they want to create leper colonies for healthy people who spread ‘the virus’ at exactly the same rate as those who have had this experimental medical procedure.
It seems tolerance is something that some vaccinated people lack and they will not be happy until every sentient being on earth has been injected with this experimental concoction even if those sentient bring (such as young children) stand more chance of having an adverse reaction to the vaccine than of catching covid.
Of course it is experimental. It is ludicrous to even think it isn’t.
The short term adverse results are undeniable and that’s not even factoring in the medium to long term testing. Questions must be asked as to why the media is censoring posts relating to adverse effects. I have nothing against the vaccine but without honest and open reporting how can we really know what is going on?
Big pharma has a long and saddening recent history of criminally misreporting testing data, the record fines are all on public record, so why any intelligent person would assume that on this occasion they are telling the whole truth beggars belief.
When people are prevented from speaking out about such things one has to question why, as never in history have people been censored for speaking about adverse reactions. To me such draconian censorship is very scary. I prefer to live in a world where people feel their voice can be heard. Alas, it seems in this new normal people are only allowed to be heard if they have the right opinion, and there is no longer scientific debate there is just the one science that is bestowed upon us by the likes of Fauci and the unelected WHO.
The numbers show NO increase in death due to covid (offical gov stats by the way). The only thing that has happened is the labelling of the sick and elderly that died as being due to Covid not with covid. Now if there is no increase in “normal” death rates how can there possibly be a fewer deaths. DUH! Oh and if you want know about twisted stats and reality across the world hospitals have more sick vaccinated than unvaccinated except in the US. Oh hang on if you are jabbed less than 14 days ago and get sick you are labelled unvaccinated. Yet another lie/stat that has been uncovered.
You have fallen for twisted statistics in order to prove a point to the gullible so that pharma can make trillions with booster 3 then 4 (Isreal has started no. 4) and it will continue until people like you wake up and so no . Sorry but you are gullible and my patience for politeness is now zero since we seem to be moving ever closer to me having to wear a yellow star.
Oh , and by the way, if you go to big pharma’s website you will find the details that state that this vax program is currently in Phase 3 trials due to end in 2023. No doubt that’s a conspiracy that somebody has hacked onto their website……
£
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
USA, under Trump’s Operation Light-speed paid for the development of the vax
“The federal government has now invested about $6 billion in the COVID-19 vaccine from Moderna, the Cambridge biotech that few outside the scientific and investment worlds had heard of a couple of years ago.”
AND THEN gave them the full right to keep all the profit!!!!!!!!!!! And the license, and all kinds of profiteering not believable unless you admit all of them are a criminal organization. The Pharma Industrial Complex is as greedy, corrupt, corrupting, and evil as the Military Industrial Complex.
YES it is $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ and the Congress members that buys!!!!!!!!
“How Much Did The Government Spend To Promote The Development Of COVID-19 Vaccines? “
“Most recently the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the Biomedical Research and Development Authority (BARDA) alone has spent $19.3 billion on COVID-19 vaccine development. In addition, Lisa Cornish projected $39.5 billion in US spending.”
This is a mere drop in the bucket of $$$ Spent on covid vax research from tax and Fed borrowing and THEN gave freedom from lawsuits – AND all the royalties and Profiteering in the manufacturing and distribution!
Malcolm, I’m afraid that your first point is wrong in that the current official govt stats show that “ the number of deaths from the week ending 13 March 2020 to 8 October 2021 was 945,059 in England and Wales. Of these, 149,219 (15.8%) mentioned COVID-19 on the death certificate. During this period, the number of excess deaths above the five-year average was 118,498.” ref https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/8october2021
From these, I take the most accurate figure for excess deaths due to COVID to be the lower number of 118,498, the higher running total of 149k including approx 30k who would have died over the same period of something else.
You’re forgetting the people who died not due to Covid, but due to the cruel and abusive lockdowns and the neglect of a monomaniacal NHS.
What do you think you’ll get if you lock vulnerable, abusive, and abused people together in the homes, take away their income, their purpose in life, their social life and support networks, and confuse, disorient, and confuse them witless through months on end of aggressive manipulative propaganda?
One must also factor in the massive and unusual use of DNR notices over this period and the enormous increase in midazolam usage. The forced isolation alone was enough to finish off many frail elderly and stress is known to lower immunity to everything, including covid, so ruunng a 24/7 fear campaign was very damagng to the health f many people.
It does seem like white middle class folk (in particular) have lost any grasp of fairness and a willingness to live and let live.
They never have had any grasp of fairness and a willingness to live and let live. They play lip service and make all the right noises until things do not go their way then it all turns very nasty. Witness the response to Brexit or the election of Trump
Jim Crow Laws Part II
” In practice, Jim Crow laws mandated racial segregation in all public facilities”
Jim Cow Laws FORCED the business to NOT serve the people who tried to enter unless they ware the allowed race. The Laws FORCED the business owner to enforce the Law! Just like Vax Mandates. Then there is also the synchronicity that it means banning minorities, and the business is Forced to be the Police in this Unjust and illegal law!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A Pizza restaurant are not in the business of Law Enforcement – and even more of illegal under the Constitution laws. How about if they required a Vax Passport to Vote? Or to get your Medical care (Medicare, National Health) and gov pension?
I do not get your point
I went to a meeting at our club this morning. All of the attendees – most of whom are 60 and well over – were unmasked. And all of wait staff and other employees – most of whom are under 35 – were wearing masks. The whole thing is preposterous.
It is more likely that the under 35s were infected.
Another possible reason was that during the 2020 U.S. Presidential campaign the Biden/Harris team questioned the voracity of any vaccine produced under the Trump administration.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/kamala-harris-flips-from-vaccine-skeptic-to-vaccine-booster/ar-BB1eKHPJ
As if Trump himself was mixing the vaccine in his spare time. The minorities were told to look up to these people as their new economic saviors, so no wonder they listened.
But forget about the inconvenient fact that minority participation in the economy, via job and earnings growth, grew at historical rates under Trump, the evil racist.
I am dead against vaccine passports, but why would they be discriminatory? It is not like black people have been barred from having the vaccine.
I am dead for vaccine passports, but why would they be discriminatory?
Talking about them being discriminatory is probably missing the point.
They are Inhumane; ignorant of the warnings of history; reductive (reducing humans to nothing more than disease vectors); the lepers bell of the 21st century.
These are all more to the point. Then again, If you want to sum the splitting of humanity into categories of clean and unclean as discriminatory though, I think it churlish to object.
This all comes back to the notion of ‘Freedom Of The Individual’. This is a great notion as long as you include all individuals, not just certain individuals.
For example, if you include people over 75, say, as individuals – what would they say about vaccine passports as an electorate.? It seems to me that FOTI only works for some people, defined perhaps as middle class intellectuals – those who can speak and write eloquently. Why did Wales recently vote for an Assembly controlled by Labour? Answer – because of Margaret Thatcher. But the electorate comprises many individuals – don’t they have any freedom?
I’m really not the one who needs to get a grip. Pandemics are not game changers for humanity that necessitate the discarding of all other principles – the last one of comparable virulence and spread was 1968 (not 1918). If we had set the precedent then that we are setting now, you would have grown up (don’t know your age) in a much grimmer world with freedoms that were much more precarious.
Even if I believed the current government would not indulge in mission creep to deny access to even essential services to the unvaccinated/unproven (evidence from places like Germany is that they would); the precedent is already set and the infrastructure for it in place.
With all due respect, you need to think harder about what this means and what guarantor you have that they will not be misused.
Blind pro vaccine and vaccine passports is actually supported by the left. I’ve abandoned the left in the last couple of years because of their lunacy.
Why are you for them Chris? What benefit do you imagine they bring? What proof can you offer that the benefit is tangible?
I’m also curious Chris? Why are you so pro vaccine passports? Or do you just make your decision along group identity lines?
The case being made that in every other case, the Left would be arguing against measures having a disproportionate impact on ‘BAME’ communities. They would often claim ‘institutional racism’, but whether that is the case or not is not the point – they are, as so often being entirely inconsistent with their own claimed beliefs.
In my view the arguments made by the ‘identarian’ Left on many issues are more about virtue signalling and imposing social controls and opposing the people they hate, rather than any practical benefits for the social groups whose causes they so loudly espouse.
I was hoping that this article would explain why the passports are racial discriminatory; there may be reasons for opposing them but I can’t see this as one. Correct me if I’m wrong, but there have been campaigns after campaigns practically begging people from racial minorities to get vaccinated, and it’s free; they may choose not to for a variety of reasons, as is their right, but they are in no different a position from those of the racial majority who refuse the vaccination. It could be for a socio-economic reasons that people of all races fail to get vaccinated even if they want to, but again, not a racial issue. As I said there may be reasons to oppose the passports but I don’t see how racial discrimination is one of them.
Indeed.
This problem is always stated, but never explained.
I think I understand why BAME think that.
If discrimination has always been your pain in the past, it conditions you and your expectations. While I belong to that group, I do not feel discriminated but I do understand why the people (of all colour) are not mentally strong enough to distinguish between active racism and segregation of the past and the current fear of possible subliminal or actual discrimination.
As for why people do or don’t vaccinate, all I can say is , from my experience, my children have basically been coerced into vaccination because of restrictions. Young people don’t need it but they want to travel and don’t want restrictions in their young lives. I don’t have such desires so I can reject such incentives. So if you are BAME & are branded stupid or reduced opportunity or freedom, it harks of past prejudices.
You do make a reasonable point here, the question is – what can one do to assuage this, I suppose one might call it, expectation of racism in the BAME community? Or is it just not possible to do anything because of past experiences?
Of what you say is true, there is no escape, no matter what you do (and the same would apply to virtually any context, SO it shouldn’t be covid related).
It’s racist because someone said it is. No logic required.
“I was hoping that this article would explain why the passports are racial discriminatory; there may be reasons for opposing them but I can’t see this as one.”
Start with the premis that such vax passports are illegal in UK and USA where Executive orders are NOT sufficient to order such, and Legislature has not enacted them.
Then note that the Liberal White Sheep file along as instructed to get this alien RNA/DNA injected – and less Black people, and Right Wing people do.
It is an illegal law which disporpitionally harms Black and Right Wing folk, and one Passed by White Left folk who go along with it! One race and political group may not create Illegal Laws which harm people of a different race or political persuasion. That is discriminatory.
For a law to be illegal it has to contravene a law or agreement which has a higher authority and to which the country is a signatory e.g. the Geneva Convention. What law does any proposed law for Covid passports contravene? It might be a law with which one disagrees or which one considers immoral – but “illegal”?
Vaccination is against some religions – Christian Science, for instance.
I did post a reply here, but it seems to be awaiting approval, I can only think it is because I used a particular word in a completely non-discriminatory way – ah well it may appear in the future.
Copy and paste in a new comment. I had one in the moderation queue and there where no tricky words at all.
Why does Dr Green think health policy should be driven by the low uptake by certain sectors of the population with darker skin colour of a vaccine freely available to all in the US and UK, rather than seek to dig deeper to try to discover the reason for such comparatively low uptake? Is low uptake in fact correlated to low socio-economic status or some other inhibiting factor that has nothing to do with skin colour?
What is depressing is the superficial nature of this article from an academic.
Whether vaccine passports are are good idea generally is another question but the decision should not be influenced by this race analysis.
That people with ‘Natural Immunity’ from getting and recovering from covid are not included shows this is NOTHING TO DO WITH HEALTH. That the passports are only to further control the people. They are no different to the ‘Internal Passports’ of USSR and Mao’s China, or Hi *ler’s Germany. They are to control you, not for health.
The people he describes are not “liberal(s)”. either of the positive or the negative sort. They are “left authoritarian”. I am leftish liberal which is a contradiction of sorts but a nod to the reality of political ideas which is why it gets my heckles up to be even tangentally associated with them. There are multiple social instincts in tension and that’s as it should be. Being a lefty without a scintilla of regard to civil liberties or any worry at all about the untramelled power of the state is dangerous. It’s most definitely not liberal.
Snap. I find myself in that awkward space of having traditional left views but appalled by the current authoritarian left and agreeing with the views of the libertarian more associated with right wing US views. I think it is the split in politics that causes this. The old fashioned left-right views are gone. The old left with their centralised programs are much more aligned with the global corporate methods of control! The “authoritarian left” , I would argue, is due to them believing they are intellectually superior hence why their ideas must be imposed. You only have to look to China to see how these left leaning programs are brilliant for propping up a capitalist oligarchy. They work and in hand.
Everything needs de-centralising……..
Yes, the oligarchy has incorporated a leftist morality system in order to browbeat the masses into submission.
Having traditional left views does rather leave one in no-man’s land I’m afraid. I sometimes feel like the last woman standing desperately looking for allies.
Thank you – completely agree. I think the left have trapped themselves in tribal thinking where they simply cannot come to terms with agreeing with anyone deemed to be on their “right”. They would rather burn down the house than open up.
Why do you believe liberals care about anybody but themselves? They are the greatest racists the world has ever known. It is a paper thin ruse to wield power and influence over other people. How many brown skinned people did Blair’s Iraq war kill? These people are mass murderers. Passport IDs, Digital currency, social credit system. This is literally their dream come true. The elderly Blair is practically orgasmic that his wildest dreams are coming true.
Yes vaccine passports are illiberal. But for none of the reasons Mr Green lists here.
The only racialisation pedalled is by professional race merchants like Mr Green who make a living from it and see race and division even where none exists.
I don’t think that was the purpose behind the article. Clearly, arguments against vaccine passports that centre around personal liberty are only landing with one group of people – although i have no idea why there aren’t more of us. If you want to bring the liberals and the Left along with you in opposition to vaccine passports, you are going to need to wake them up to the only realities they care about – namely racial discrimination or its possibility.
The author merely points out that – given the potential for these measures to infringe on issues the Left care about (rather than just individual liberty, that they don’t) – it is remarkable that the Left still wholeheartedly supports them.
Get your point – but with this writer the shoe fits
Talking about “systemic” discrimination, talking about Western history as if it is somehow peculiarly illiberal.
But above all just asserting that vaccine mandates are discrimination on a racial basis again and again.
Precisely. Well made point.
I was thinking that BAME might be (inadvertently) walking with the unvaccinated in the marches regardless of left or right.
If that happens, it might reveal that maybe they are not really left leaning . They have a different agenda i.e. no segregation, no vaccine pp as it hurts their communities most.
Q: [the headline]
A: Because “liberals” aren’t actually liberal.
The Liberal Left are not really Communists, or Socialists, and not Capitalists. They are Fas *ists
Communism = state ownership of the means of production
Socialism = State control of the means of Production
Capitalism = Private ownership of the means of production.
Fas *istm = Government and Corporations jointly, and in partnership, owning the means of production.
They are Corporatists or Corporatocracy (Idea of government dominated by corporate business interests.)
They are all about Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft – and that 5 FIVE companies are responsible for USA food supply, that all industry is becoming monopolies by gov directing – that they break small businesses with unjust regulation and with-holding money loans and bailouts till only the Huge companies survive, and buy all their competitors out… Till, Like Highlander, Only One Remains – and they own YOU and everything! ‘You will own nothing and be happy’.
They believe in the corporations buying the political campaigns, and owning the Government, and all being one and the same.
This in fact was Hi *le r and Muss* ol ini and Toj o’s entire platform, the uniting of government and Corporations – and is called Fas *ism – and is EXACTLY what the Liberal/Left Neo-Marxist, Post Modernist elites who ran the covid response are. They are Fas *ists, and act like them, and will destroy the free world like they tried to do.
Academic wonders why lefties don’t have a problem with covid passports. Let’s take it in order.
1 – Almost all academics are leftists and
2 – Leftists believe in “inevitable progress”, which, if true would mean that
3 – Leftists are the supreme and final distillation of humanity because
4 – It’s the current year, therefore
5 – Leftists are themselves the standard of good, but
6 – They’re actually not because
7 – “Inevitable progress” is a myth, therefore
8 – Leftists are no smarter than anybody else, and often considerably stupider.
Now, with all this in mind, particularly 5 above, what do we glean? That leftists see covid passports as another control over society. It doesn’t matter if they go against civil liberties because they strengthen state power, and you can’t make an omelette and all that. That’s the why. How you get past this is to repeat #7 above at least 500 times a day, preferably out loud. #5 will eventually collapse and #8 will then become apparent. This is called “growing the hell up”.
The most obvious rationalization: Because the COVID passport puts us on the path to digital social credit systems, and progressives can use those to control everyone. They could then impose whatever notion of “equality” they want.
They love centralisation of power. They always have. This is not new. And they aren’t liberal.
Why are liberals blind to vaccine passport discrimination?
Because in the words of Michael Savage, “Liberalism is a mental disorder.” There is no other plausible explanation for the confounding liberal mind.
I’m sorry to be a pest, but my ignorance is annoying me now – you often reply with a single letter or character and my knowledge of on-line fora discussions is sadly lacking, so could you enlighten me as to what they mean. They are obviously unpopular on this site as I see they get a number of down votes, but it’s frustrating to not know what people are objecting to – I might agree if I knew what was meant.
“… In many parts of the US, vaccine uptake has stalled among members of minority communities; ..”
“Wherever discrimination based on physical attributes has been empowered by law in Western history, it has been accompanied by racialisation and discrimination.”
“… the lack of a well-organised global rollout, has meant that billions of people worldwide in poorer countries are effectively barred from travel.”
Three quotes to show why this article is a dog’s dinner of an argument. If uptake in minorities in the US has stalled I take it that this means that members of minorities have decided to forego vaccination, or at least, not decided to be vaccinated. This is individuals discriminating against themselves, not being discriminated against by others.
The discrimination of Covid passports is not on “physical attributes”, such as skin colour. It is discrimination, on behalf of the majority, against free-loaders, of any colour or group, who have not taken the opportunities to reduce the risk to themselves, and to others.
Yes, there is a failure to extend vaccine supplies to poor countries, but to make this a first-world problem, that the poor of the third-world cannot hop on a plane to visit the first-world is beyond parody. The problem is the risk of death: not the risk of frustrated travel plans!
“means that members of minorities have decided to forego vaccination, or at least, not decided to be vaccinated. This is individuals discriminating against themselves, not being discriminated against by others.”
WOW, you drank the Kool-Aid.
“It is discrimination, on behalf of the majority, against free-loaders, of any colour or group, who have not taken the opportunities to reduce the risk to themselves, and to others.”
hook, line, and sinker
For a start the whole responce is COMPLETELY ILLEGAL, secondly – the responce has caused MUCH greater harm that it did good.
To all you commenters that believe the pandemic controls are too much – could you hurry up and get the infection, pass it on to your vulnerable relatives (if minded to do so), so we can get herd immunity, please?
Then me and the wife (immune suppressed, so vaccine useless but still taken) can finally start going into pubs and restaurants again.
done that, you are welcome…..