France in March 2020 was 1 of the countries that adopted the most restrictive lockdown rules to halt the Covid-19 pandemic. Historian and sociologist Nicolas Mariot took a look at this experimentation of mass obedience:
In the spring of 2020, all governments were in the same situation at the same time – as the Dutch Prime Minister said at the time, they had to make 100% decisions based on 50% of information. However, associate States have adopted radically different policies. In Europe, 5 confederate countries — France, Italy, Spain, Greece and Cyprus — have taken any of the strictest measures, including certifications, subjecting all movements of their population to strict rules, monitored by the order force. At the same time, the Nordic countries, specified as Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands, as well as Switzerland and Bulgaria, adopted the same wellness measures as in another countries (masks, convention bans, handwashing recommendations, etc.) have left citizens free to move. As a result, in France, the number of people visiting green areas in the spring of 2020 was half as much as in the winter, while in Denmark it doubled during the same period.
In the approach to the population, the speech was besides different. While president Emmanuel Macron repeated 4 times on 16 March in his speech to the French the celebrated phrase “We are at war” against “the sanitary enemy, indeed” but “the elusive and progressive”, president Frank-Walter Steinmeier of the national Republic of Germany stated that “no, this pandemic is not war.” The Dutch authorities have, on the another hand, published a communication manual on the virus prohibiting the usage of the war language for a message highlighting the collective dimension of the fight against Covid.
In France, by a decree of 23 March, prefects and mayors were encouraged to "use their full police powers" and "put in place more restrictive measures than those taken at national level erstwhile legal circumstances so require". And they did not hesitate to exercise that power. Seventeen prefectures introduced curfews for citizens, 30 for shops, 9 departments chose both options; more than 2 100 municipalities besides introduced their own curfews that imposed – or not – on these prefectures. The regulation on movement has been tightened: eighty-three departments imposed restrictions on access to nature and relaxation sites, sometimes with absurd reasons, specified as: ‘lockdown is not a holiday!’, or with bizarre records, specified as ‘no baguette or 1 paper at a time’, or ‘no sitting on city benches’. These various additional measures frequently led to a break with 1 of the fundamental principles of the rationale for lockdown: equality of all against prohibitions.
Although Italy was the first European country to be exposed to the virus to take drastic measures, the countries that subsequently adopted the most restrictive rules were not more at hazard in terms of wellness than others. The difference in consequence is clearly linked to the habit of coercion by governments: we show that the more the European state has policemen per capita, or the more accustomed it is to violating public freedoms, the more it has closed its population. Hence, the old habits of punishing the population have revived due to the pandemic. For France, this policy is besides likely to show a deficiency of assurance in the authorities in the ability of residents to follow the recommended policy. The country emerged from a crisis of "yellow vests" and manifestations against pension reform, so the rulers most likely feared a hostile reaction.
France was 1 of the fewer countries that introduced the celebrated approval of itself to leave the place of residence (Attestation de sortie), which was presented as a means of encouraging people to take work and which rapidly became a tool of mass control. Turning everyone into his own policeman, it was this strategy (borrowed from Italy) that allowed to depopulate public space. 21 million inspections were carried out in France at that time. In any departments, the number of inspections was equal to the number of adult residents.
How can we explain the fact that the population has mostly followed these very restrictive rules? There are 2 hypotheses that explain why 80% of the population agreed to stay home: fear of virus and fear of police. The survey (Vico) showed that during this period no more than 50% of people followed wellness recommendations (masking, washing hands, etc.). So the fear of the virus itself is not adequate to explain mass adherence to the rules.
We must besides emphasise the more horizontal dimension of obedience, which is comparison with others. The fact is that many people wanted to set an example and/or make certain that their neighbors did not enjoy privileges, even the smallest ones. The detonation of the number of reports during this period (directed to mayors, police stations or local radio stations) is simply a sign of this fundamental concern: the rules are not contested unless their application seems to leave no area for arbitrariness. Finally, it is crucial to item the removal of all human presence from public spaces: bars and parks were closed, beaches and forest prohibited, and night lighting frequently turned off. All these measures have led to what we have called “a bean before being outside”. In particular, for women, going to an abandoned place has become a disturbing experience for fear of the outside world, which has become unfriendly.
We have all seen frightening images of Chinese imprisoned or brutally thrown out of their homes, but we must pay attention to the crucial difference between China and France: in China it is always a wellness motive that decides to establish fresh rules. Lockdown is utilized in different provinces successively depending on the spread of the epidemic and different depending on the position of persons – ‘negative’, ‘contact’ or ‘infected’. Unlike France, it never affects all citizens at the same time and in the same dimension.
I was very amazed to see that not only no major media, but besides no investigation squad in France, and even if I am not mistaken, in Europe, was not curious in a summary of this period, not from a wellness point of view, but from a regulatory point of view. And there are many lessons from this experience – we are not immune to another pandemic. Moreover, in retrospect, we see that the lockdown, which was accepted due to the fact that it afraid all, regardless of the social class, age, level of income or residence, was in fact comparatively unequal in the way it was applied, due to the large freedom given to local authorities and the order force. Finally, as a historian specializing in the war 1914-1918, I have studied specified a large-scale obedience experiment. And I was amazed that a fresh form of holy union justifying the suspension of freedom and uncontrollable government could be repeated almost identically a 100 years later.
Source: https://lejournal.cnrs.fr/articles/covid-19-bilan-dune-surveillance-massive
She developed and translated Anna Chrołowska
za: https://annachrolowska.substack.com
