Trumpists have been trying to say that the coronavirus restrictions are an attempt at an authoritarian takeover by the left. They use arguments like "the government telling people how they can gather and what they have to wear (masks) is a complete infringement on civil liberties". Well first of all as for telling people how they can gather, we have fire codes because of the public safety risk and as for the government telling people what they have to wear, we have indecent exposure laws. And there were similar restrictionsput in place during the Spanish Flu pandemic and as for the vaccine mandate being "unamerican", the first vaccine mandate in history was passed in 1809 in the US.
But more importantly, if the mandates were about control then they would not have gotten less restrictive when case numbers were lower (which they were). So when all of this blows through and life returns to normal, how do you think they'll justify their fear mongering? I think it will be in one of two ways: they'll concoct a fictitious narrative where they mobilized the people against government tyranny to stop the lockdown measures (even though the US hasn't been in lockdown since May '20). I also think that they'll call measures like new environmental regulations that prevent new emerging infectious diseases to jumping to humans "authoritarian". But let's be honest, without the benefit of hindsight, they would call a law that prevented endangered animals from being kept in wet markets "authoritarian" and would have said that the CCP was "lifting the regulatory burden off small businesses" when they amended the endangered species act to allow animals like pangolins to be kept in wet markets.
Once the pandemic is over and the restrictions are lifted, how will Trumpists justify their fear mongering about the "attempts at authoritarianism"?
well look at australia and most palces in Europe, where that actually is a reality. and it's not like biden isn't trying to infinitely extend the "state of pandemic" to continue enforcing restrictions on people.
Historically it hasn't. Yes there have been leftist authoritarian regimes but pretty much every time they were preceded by another authoritarian regime so tyranny didn't "come from" the left.
Stalin was far left totalitarian... so was Mao. so there's that. also hitler was far left in a "National" scope. he was only right on an "international" scope. the more you know.
the concepts of left and right are completely independend of the concepts of authoritarian and libertarian. you can be right and libertarian but also left and authoritarian or even totalitarian, which is just the extreme version of the latter. so there you go. the more you know...
also we're experiencing far left tryanny with that lgbtq gender pronoun nonsense, feminazis and with black live matters. it's the dictatorship of minorities by appeal to entilement and oppression that isn't factually real but ideologically constructed despite all evidence against it.
Like I said, they didn't bring authoritarianism to those countries; they had a long history of it before the rise of communism so don't pretend that threats to existing liberty come from the right. Also the political compass is misleading. While the left side appropriately describes the authoritarian-libertarian dichotomy this is not true of the right side. On the right side you would have state authoritarianism on one side with private authoritarianism on the other.
And while using natural disasters as a means to consolidate state power is virtually unprecedented (Orbans' rise was preceded by many authoritarian actions while stoking the fear of immigrants and what happened this year was just the final step), downplaying the severity of natural disasters and hindering collective action against them has a long history in being used to consolidate private power.
It was businesses (organizations that exist to consolidate wealth) that were most opposed to the restrictions while the majority of people supported it.
Also, when are you going to give the CCP props for "lifting the regulatory burden off small businesses"?
Home > Society & Politics > Questions > Once the pandemic is over and the restrictions are lifted, how will Trumpists justify their fear mongering about the "attempts at authoritarianism"?
