Subject: [SocialistWorker.org] A system that breeds horrors
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http://socialistworker.org/2012/06/07/a-system-that-breeds-horrors
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======== A SYSTEM THAT BREEDS HORRORS ========================================
Brit Schulte and Matt Camp comment on the roots of some horrifying incidents.
June 7, 2012
RECENTLY, TWO gruesome incidents have sparked a tongue-in-cheek debate about
the outbreak of a "zombie apocalypse."
In Miami, Rudy Eugene was shot and killed by a police officer while chewing
the face of 65-year-old Ronald Puppo, a homeless man who survived the attack,
although he sustained severe injuries. According to Miami police, Eugene is
suspected to have been under the influence of a synthetic drug
euphemistically referred to as "bath salts," which acts as a strong
hallucinogenic when used as a narcotic.
In Hackensack, N.J., 43-year-old Wayne Carter allegedly disemboweled himself
in front of police and then cut, ate and threw pieces of his flesh and
entrails at the officers. The police were responding to a call from a witness
saying Carter had threatened to harm himself. Carter, who has a history of
mental illness was subdued and hospitalized.
Still other stories have been fueling the "zombie" hysteria. A mysterious
disease has been affecting children in Northern Uganda since the 1960s.
Dubbed the "Nodding Disease," some 3,000 children are suffering under a
strange affliction that leaves them "zombified," unresponsive and prone to
extreme acts of violence such as arson.
Treatment of the Nodding Disease is nonexistent. Desperate parents are
binding their children by their hands and feet in an effort to keep them
under control. According to the World Health Organization, specialists are
baffled as to what causes the sickness, though some experts speculate a
microscopic worm carried by the Tsetse fly causes the disease.
More thoughtful commentators have pointed out that these incidents are not
connected to a "zombie outbreak" at all, but are endemic examples of
deep-seated sociological problems where people turn to drugs as a means of
escapism, access to mental health is a social privilege, and the imperialist
rape of the African continent has left millions without access to sanitation
and clean water.
But in a larger sense, these events are indicative of a zombie outbreak
indeed. They are the characteristics of a vampyric economic system, refusing
to die, remaining undead to plague the barely living: This is capitalism in
no uncertain terms.
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THE RELATIONSHIP between zombies and capitalism is not new. The most
formidable films of the zombie-horror genre have exhibited strong allegories
to capitalism and social crises. Director George Romero filmed four seminal
zombie classics /Night of the Living Dead/ (1968), /Dawn of the Dead/ (1978),
/Day of the Dead/ (1985) and /Land of the Dead/ (2005) that are expositions
on racism, consumerism, militarism and classism respectively.
The film /28 Days Later/ (2002), a more contemporary rendition of the zombie
meme by director Danny Boyle, profiled militarism, pharmaceutical giants run
amuck and genetic modification. Still another, /Dead Snow/ (2009), a cult hit
by Norwegian director Tommy Wirkola, featured Nazi zombies rising from under
the snow of Scandinavia in a clear nod to the disquieted ghosts of fascism in
Europe.
Perhaps the most relevant theme was driven home in the 2004 film /Shaun of
the Dead/, in which the protagonist spends the first hours of the zombie
apocalypse stumbling through his daily routine, oblivious to the catastrophe
around him until it confronts him directly. The film begs the question of
whether the audience is aware of its own social setting, and what it may take
for them to react to it.
So who then are the real undead? Those gnawing away at the productive living
in new and terrifying ways. The ruling class of the world spreads greed,
alienation and terror much like a disease; infecting the world with their
profit wars and draining the planet of its vitals. If pop culture teaches us
anything, it's how to deal with a zombie.
The recent "zombie" incidents drive home the absurdity of the system we live
under. The tragic case of Rudy Eugene not only underscores the insanity of
abusing bath salts as an escapism, but also the unqualified failure of the
drug war that proffers bath salts as a easily obtainable alternative to
illegal narcotics. Eugene, who according to those who knew him was
mild-mannered, could have been subdued using non-deadly force to interrupt
his attack, but instead he was shot in the head, another victim of lethal
police force.
Wayne Carter is a victim of a social safety net left threadbare by decades of
neoliberalism in the United States. Carter, clearly suffering from mental
illness, remained unnoticed until his act of desperation brought him to the
headlines.
Shouting at police officers, "I'm going to die today...I'm sorry but I'm
going to heaven," Carter stabbed himself as many as 40 times during a
two-hour standoff before a SWAT team subdued him. In Carter's case, violent
self-harm is only the mirrored response to the systematic and equally violent
treatment that the poor and working class are subjected to daily by an
economic system prone to crisis.
Likewise in Uganda, where the bloodied rags around the hands of children
reflect the bloodied flags around those who kill for profit, an inhuman
system has plundered a continent and left swaths of humanity without
healthcare, jobs, basic resources or amenities.
The reality is that, despite the hype behind these events, they are not
unique. They are the alarm bells that sound daily in a world lashed by wars
and austerity. A world crying out for an alternative, where the needs of all
are met, and the abilities of all are fulfilled.
Aimless wandering children and adults inflicting harm on themselves and
others without regard, personifying the system that created them. This is the
hands of the dispossessed, reaching out and clawing for meaning in world that
wasn't built with them in mind. Mindless, rag-filled, starved, infected,
untreatable, without diagnosis, madness. These themes might make good fodder
for this year's Halloween blockbuster, but are in fact the hallmarks of the
capitalist system.
Capitalism breeds zombies. Welcome to the "apocalypse."
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