“Close the borders? Today every country in Europe is doing it, but when the Lega [party] supported it, they said it was ‘racist’,” Matteo Salvini posted on his hyper-active Twitter page this month. (This is the guy who’s compared African migrants to ‘slaves’ and called Roma women ‘dirty gypsies’.)
The Italian far-Right leader makes a good but frightening point. Before coronavirus, hardline border closures were not on most political agendas. Now they’ve swept across the world, despite World Health Organization (WHO) warnings that they probably won’t work. And not everyone is upset about this.
Largely buried in the breathless churn of pandemic news is a startling fact. Some of the impacts of coronavirus are giving the far-Right, ultra-conservative and other anti-democratic movements that openDemocracy has been tracking for years plenty of cause for good cheer.
