There is no doubt that the coronavirus pandemic and its devastating consequences present an existential challenge to the dominant trends in today’s right-wing politics.
Where right-wing neo-liberalism guts the state, the virus shows how much we need a stable democracy, built on a state bureaucracy that respects expertise. Where the populist right exults in irresponsibility, disconnection and competition, the virus exposes our intimate connections to each other and how care for the weakest is in all our interests.
Where the populist right rejects expertise and competence, the virus shows how much we need expertise and competent government. Where the right increasingly disdains global cooperation and (re)builds national boundaries, the virus mocks the notion that we can ever entirely isolate one human-created geopolitical entity from others.
