Green card
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, July 19, 2021
In a previous text we discussed the unjust discrimination of a class of citizens excluded from normal social life as an effect of the introduction of the so-called green pass. This discrimination is a necessary and calculated consequence, but not the main purpose of the introduction of the green card, which does not aim at the excluded citizens, but at the whole of the registered population. The finality that governments pursue through it is, in fact, a meticulous and unconditional control over any movement of citizens, completely analogous to the internal passport that everyone in the Soviet Union was required to carry in order to move from one city to another. But in this case control is even more absolute, because it concerns any movement of the citizen, who will have to show the green pass at all times, even to go to the cinema, attend a concert or sit at a restaurant. The unregistered citizen will be, paradoxically, freer than the registered one, and just the mass majority of registered ones should be protesting and rebelling, because from now on they will be monitored, supervised and checked to an extent unprecedented even in the most totalitarian regimes. It is telling that China has announced that it will maintain its tracking and control systems even after the end of the pandemic. Quite obviously it is not health protection they want, but people control — and sooner or later even the members of the green pass club will have the opportunity to understand it on their own.
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, July 19, 2021
In a previous text we discussed the unjust discrimination of a class of citizens excluded from normal social life as an effect of the introduction of the so-called green pass. This discrimination is a necessary and calculated consequence, but not the main purpose of the introduction of the green card, which does not aim at the excluded citizens, but at the whole of the registered population. The finality that governments pursue through it is, in fact, a meticulous and unconditional control over any movement of citizens, completely analogous to the internal passport that everyone in the Soviet Union was required to carry in order to move from one city to another. But in this case control is even more absolute, because it concerns any movement of the citizen, who will have to show the green pass at all times, even to go to the cinema, attend a concert or sit at a restaurant. The unregistered citizen will be, paradoxically, freer than the registered one, and just the mass majority of registered ones should be protesting and rebelling, because from now on they will be monitored, supervised and checked to an extent unprecedented even in the most totalitarian regimes. It is telling that China has announced that it will maintain its tracking and control systems even after the end of the pandemic. Quite obviously it is not health protection they want, but people control — and sooner or later even the members of the green pass club will have the opportunity to understand it on their own.
Elke Rehder, one of six woodcuts to The Royal Game (Schachnovelle) by Stefan Zweig. Credit: Trele/Wikimedia Commons.
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