Reaction, Progression and Vaccination, or: What can Squid Game tell us about pandemics?

This article analyzes the condition of possibility for hitherto apolitical phenomena, such as vaccination, to be politicized and articulated as determinants of “belonging” to a worldview. It takes the polarization through symbols during COVID as a symptom of a competition to secure one’s own share of narrowing global resources, appearing as a symbolic clash of belonging to the middle class. Drawing on the popular show of the pandemic period, "Squid Game", it shows that the strict logic of equivalence in the show serves as a perfect allegory for modern equality in late capitalist times: an equal validity of the unequal only perfects competition and stiffens indifference toward inequality. The article argues that it is the indifference of commodities that turns apolitical phenomena into a Kampfplatz of competition for self-distinction. Crystallized in the clash of so-called “reactionaries” and “progressives” during the pandemic, both attitudes can be understood as opposing camps of winning the competition for a narrowing share of global resources, vis-à-vis the fact that, just like in the brutal indifference of the "Squid Game", none of them counts more than the other.