“Cohesion”, “solidarity”, and “unity in diversity” are popular phrases used by woke politicians. The strengthening of societal cohesion is particularly demanded in times of crisis. Rising dissatisfaction is to be countered with more cohesion.
It is often promised that a utopian future will occur as soon as all (or enough) people support the right policy. The real reason for problems (or catastrophes) is said to be those who refuse the alleged consensus. Existing crises are threatening but solvable if only enough people support the official government policy.
The narrative of cohesion divides society into three groups: one part that trusts the government policy, another part that is undecided, and a third part that distrusts the official consensus. The goal of a policy of cohesion is to instrumentalise as many people as possible from the first group against the others. The narrative requires massive media propaganda: all important authorities must say the same thing, for example all recognised experts and scientists; all dissidents must be eliminated through cancel culture.
The campaigns during the Covid pandemic are an illustrative example: at the beginning, a short lockdown of two weeks was promised to break the wave of spread. People were to wear masks and isolate themselves to combat the virus. When this political strategy did not bring the promised improvement and the measures were extended month after month, this was not due to a wrong strategy but to the fact that not enough people behaved correctly.516 The division into Covid supporters and “Covid deniers” was intensified once again by the vaccination campaigns: restrictions were allegedly necessary because not enough people were getting vaccinated. Every unvaccinated person was said to bear responsibility for the pandemic continuing to be relevant, while the vaccinated had already done their part to end the pandemic with the vaccination.517
The communist Chinese dictator Mao Zedong described his rule strategy with the motto “Unity, criticism, unity”: one should start from the “desire for unity”, resolve contradictions through criticism, and thereby arrive at a “new unity on a new basis”.518
In Maoism, contradiction was seen as everything that did not correspond to the ideas of the communist leadership. This totalitarian strategy with the goal of a new society led to the catastrophes of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.519 Contradiction is, however, also necessary when cohesion is demanded in order to distract from the effects of wrong government policy.
In a restricted way, this approach can be transferred to Covid policy. New rules for public health are to be achieved on a new basis after the end of the pandemic: the UN World Health Organisation (WHO) is to receive more global control over health emergencies (see Well-being).520 In the meantime, a genuine review of the WHO’s role in the Covid period is being prevented.521