After Djokovic was released from detention and his visa cancellation quashed, the entire conversation has become about the immigration minister's 'god-like powers'. It's never been more clear what the COVID world is becoming.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The case Djokovic's lawyers presented to the court yesterday that succeeded in liberating him from detention in Australia and the quashing of his visa cancellation was pretty simple. Laid-out in their submission to the Court, Djokovic's lawyers argued that the tennis player had claimed a medical exemption based on a previous infection with COVID-19 within the past 6-months that, according to ATAGI(Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation) guidelines was grounds for exemption based in the fact that inoculation so soon after infection was pointless (because one will have natural immunity at that time) and an unnecessary risk (since vaccination is not risk-free and also that stimulating so many antibodies may itself pose a risk to health). During oral arguments, his lawyers documented the 10-hour timeline during which Djokovic was held for questioning at the airport border security during which time he was coerced repeatedly to finalize his statement so the delegate could render a decision. Needing to speak with his lawyers at 4am in the morning, Djokovic was forced into the absurd situation of being irrationally compelled by the border officials 'darting in and out of the room' to unsettle the player to cause him to not speaking to his lawyers and irrevocably undermining his case. Given to 8.30am to speak with them so that he could get clarity on what exactly was being asked of him, the delegate abruptly canceled his visa at around 7.42am. This, Judge Kelly found, meant that Djokovic had not had the opportunity to give a 'complete' statement to the border agent and, thus, that the agent (apart from acting irrationally and arguably coercively) hadn't had the authority to invalidate the visa at that time. And while there were other arguments circulating in the courtroom, these are the two principle facts upon which the visa was quashed.

What is interesting about the situation now is that, despite it being so conspicuously clear what the basis for Djokovic's visa reinstatement are, so much of the media still seems willfully unable to grasp it. Here, for instance, is the Guardian arguing incorrectly that the grounds are that 'recovery' from an infection invalidates the ability to claim a medical exemption based on a prior infection (a nonsensical argument). Here is the Guardian arguing the absurdity of allowing Djokovic inside the country despite that he admits being 'unvaccinated' (which he must do in order to claim an exemption based on prior infection), a level of cluelessness seemingly inexplicable at this point. And all across every article and on every website is the photo of Djokovic, one day after he tested positive for COVID, shaking hands at some award ceremony.

This was a photo that had already been circulating before the hearing, and that was being used to cast doubt on the veracity of Djokovic's claims to infection (if he was infected, how could he looked so healthy in public etc). After the hearing, it took on another, more specific use: forming the basis for Djokovic's reckless endangerment of others. Now, it was no longer sufficient to argue he was unvaccinated and thus not allowed into the country; forced to accept his admission into the country, the argument became what was only very obliquely referenced up until this point: that the government's real reason for denying Djokovic had not to do with any technicality stemming from his exemption application, but had to do, rather, with the wide Biosecurity discretion available to the immigration minister to protect the country from those posing a threat to the health and safety of Australians. In fact, this is what the border agent has actually attempted to rule when he canceled Djokovic's visa: he was just coincidentally undermined by his incorrect administration of the process.

Post-successful legal challenge, every article reporting on Djokovic's case now begins with the boilerplate warning that the immigration minister Mr. Hawke is faced with the decision of whether or not to once-again invalidate Djokovic's visa. According to the Guardian “Hawke will have to be satisfied: there is a ground to cancel the visa, in this case the alleged threat to public health; that Djokovic hasn’t dissuaded him of this; and that it is 'in the public interest to cancel the visa'”. According to the New York Times: “Restoring the visa does not, however, guarantee that Djokovic will be able to vie for his 10th Open title when the tournament begins next Monday. In court, the government’s lawyers warned that the immigration minister could still cancel his visa, which would lead to an automatic three-year ban.” Freed now of the pesky particulars of legal nuance and administrative procedure the rationale for cancellation returns to its naked truth and original form.

Consider what The New York Times reported about what the prime minister Scott Morrison had to say the day Djokovic was arrested upon entry at the airport in Melbourne: “Mr. Morrison said the ABF had acted on 'intelligence', intercepting Djokovic at Melbourne's Tullamarine Airport...'When you get people making public statements, of what they say they have, and what they are going to do, and what their claims are, they draw significant attention to themselves...anyone who does that, whether they are a celebrity, a politician, a tennis player, a journalist, whoever does that, they can expect to be asked questions more than others.”¹

Whether the 'intelligence' concerns these public statements, has to do only with his flight arrival, or whether or not it's some product of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) is not clear. What is clear, however, is that this establishes the fact that the apprehension and detention of Djokovic was, from the beginning, politically motivated, rather than having anything to do specifically with his visa application. And this locates the origins of the currently promulgated theory of Djokovic's detention: that it has to do with broad spectrum issues of public health and safety over which the executive branch of government maintains biosecurity authority. But what kind of public health and safety risk does Djokovic pose?

Reading the papers this morning, one would be forgiven for thinking it actually has something to do with the fact that Djokovic is unvaccinated, poses a risk of viral spread the vaccinated do not pose, and, because he has been documented to already have recklessly endangered others' health a day after testing positive for COVID. Yet, as we now know (and must keep establishing), vaccines don't prevent transmission²(the CDC now says this), protection from infection via vaccination wanes³, and masks don't make much difference to rates of viral spread⁴. Still, however, the belief that the unvaccinated still pose some kind of health risk to others persists. In fact, the more pervasive its refutation becomes, the more intransigent seemingly becomes this belief.

Long ago COVID policy became divorced from any kind of rational, scientific public health basis. For quite a while now what we have been witnessing is the birth of the COVID State and a liberal COVID culture that, having been abandoned to the pointlessness of existence now for quite some time, without any grand narrative in which to find meaning (no Space Race, no Cold War about the best form of government, no religion), liberalism has begun to mutate to breed a new form of meaning-seeking in a Politics of the State. Obedience to COVID policy, doing one's very best to do what they can to prevent viral spread, recycling their garbage, cleaning-up the environment, fighting racism, creating a multi-cultural globalized economy—all these sorts of political orientations have become the meaning for existing in liberal societies, particularly in North America where a form of mediated collective thought and philosophical emergence finds no basis in a media culture⁵ (which is dedicated exclusively to the senselessly sensational, phony-glamorous)). COVID for liberals has become a form of secular religion that itself represents a fundamental inversion of the relationship between the liberal state and private religious practice: now, rather than religion being an issue of private concern, it has become one of enforced public displays of belief. Oriented toward the pronouncements of government officials, liberal citizens now look towards their authorities for guidance on the proper performance of their religiousness towards the state: wear a mask, stand apart, don't shake hands, put your recycle bin outside. In this sense, it isn't only that among the citizenry a new form of globalized clique formation is emerging based in a global competition among liberal states to handle the pandemic 'properly'; it is also that in relationship to these clique-formed citizens public officials take on a new, clerical function.

It is in this context that the following, pervasively reported statement of Mary Crock, an Immigration law professor takes on new meaning: “Australian Migration gave the minister 'god-like powers' to cancel visas and, if 'they really decide to … the power is there.'” Because cliques arise through exclusion according to superficial traits, the real threat posed by Djokovic is to this new form of secular-religious COVID-State and the precarious clique belief upon which it is based. It isn't that he poses a greater risk of contagion (almost all spread in 90+% vaccinated Australia is now among the vaccinated, who are, by the way VACCINATED against serious illness and death); it is, rather, that no matter the countervailing science, that people, refusing to give-up their new-found reason for existing, look to an authority to make their fragile beliefs real again through the simple imposition of it by force. Removing Djokovic from the country means that he is a threat—'they' wouldn't be removing him if he weren't. To populations long-ago alienated from deep, introspective thought, whose minds have been fragmented by digital toys and 30-second slices of pop-cultural distraction, it is only now in the pervasiveness of information that one finds the legitimacy of their arguments: 'look, I saw this ten times this week on Twitter, how can you argue with that?' Deporting Djokovic in the context of this kind of society becomes precisely what it says it is: an act of God that intervenes into reality to re-establish its facticity and to prevent it from bleeding-off into fiction (i.e., the schizophrenia of a contingent world that no longer has clear organizing principle and within which one must use their brain and other human faculties to make sense of).

This is the public health threat Djokovic poses to mass-hysteria clique-formation: by being staunchly anti-vaccine and pro-personal choice, by being so famous and now, for the next weeks, at the center of Australian public life, it is his simple presence itself within such a social and cultural context that poses a risk to its stability. Who knows what he will say when he stands on that Center Court: there's risk he could enter into an anti-vax tirade and create an even greater debacle for an Open (and a country) already totally disgraced. Which is why this 'god-like power' warning serves a second function: as perverse form of religious coercion on Djokovic himself.

Djokovic is a religious person whose faith, every time he is on court, is central to his identity. Crossing himself, pointing to the sky, thanking God in words, kissing the court itself, Djokovic sees in his success some form of divinity. Not simply the religiousness of Anyone, Djokovic has good reason to believe that he, like Maradonna, is in some way channeling the divine as he inscribes himself into history as the greatest player to ever play the game of tennis. Djokovic is tennis: in his speech he reflects the precision and back-and-forth playfulness of the ball on court. In his philosophy of competition on the court, he is severely, adamantly a defender of the rules-based sanctity of the game that produces itself, through its very structure and dynamics, a will to exist.

It is precisely in this context that the bizarre-sounding self-professed 'god-like powers' of a government functionary appear as sociopathic and perverse address directly to Djokovic's faith. It's question is of the order of: 'Are you sure you well and truly believe your arc through life is divine ordained and conforms to your self-actualization project, or are you willing to consider that there is in fact a higher law that can intervene into your 'religious' process to undo it?' Essentially, the coercion on Djokovic is this: 'dare you to test your belief in God? And, if you aren't willing to risk it, will you still be able to find a way to persist in your authentic belief while pantomiming conformity?'

There is no more repellent form of coercive intervention into the private life and religious belief of another human-being than this. Not only has COVID produced of a perverted form of baseless secular State religion that should not exist and that should be at every moment fought; but, it also produces an entitlement to reach deep into the private heart of man and ask him to wager his belief against the proof of God's deeds witnessed everyday through the power and authority of the State.

The world, and Djokovic are currently on a knife-edge. As Judge Kelly has said: “The stakes have now risen rather than receded. I am very concerned.”⁶

Footnotes