As was pointed out on 23 April by the Economist, close to a dozen states, from Azerbaijan to Togo have used the Covid-19 pandemic to arrogate more power to themselves. Indeed, this development has been particularly evident in Washington, Budapest, and Delhi.
Trump has claimed “total authority” for the Oval Office in opposition to state governors who had sought to loosen lockdown measures earlier. While he quickly backtracked on this claim, he has nonetheless more recently called upon his supporters (“Very good people”) in blue states to resist lockdown measures and “liberate” themselves from the authority of Democratic governors in an effort to get the wheels of the economy turning again, and has closed US borders and suspended immigration for sixty days.
Hungary’s president, Viktor Orban, having previously curtailed the autonomy of the courts, has indefinitely suspended the legislative branch of government, eliminating in the process the key liberal-democratic principle of limits on executive authority; Orban now rules by decree. The RSS in India, the quasi-fascist Hindu nationalist (Hindutva) force behind Modi has, in a classically fascistic move, characterized its Islamic “enemy” as the abject carrier of the Covid-19 virus (hashtags #CoronaJihad and #BioJihad have spread virulently via Twitter) just as the Nazis used typhus as the pretext for excluding Jews, isolating them in ghettos and ultimately murdering them. The targeting of Muslims comes in the aftermath, of course, of the unconstitutional annexation of Kashmir and changes to the Citizenship Act that explicitly and unapologetically discriminate against this much reviled minority community.
