The COVID-19 plague cannot be separated from a broader plague of hyper-capitalism, right-wing populism and surging fascist politics around the globe. These forces represent the underside of the COVID-19 pandemic and relentlessly subject workers, the disabled, the homeless, the poor, children, people of color and, more recently, frontline hospital and emergency workers and all others considered at risk to lives of despair, precarity, massive danger and, in some cases, death. At the roots of this larger pandemic is an unbridled lawlessness and deep-seated disdain for critical thought, meaningful forms of education and any mode of analysis that holds power accountable. The pandemic has revealed the toxic underside of a form of neoliberal fascism with its assault on the welfare state, its undermining of public health, its attack on workers' rights and its prioritizing of the economy and the accumulation of capital over human needs and life itself.
The full-blown pandemic has revealed in all its ugliness the death-producing mechanisms of systemic inequality, deregulation, a culture of cruelty, the increasingly dangerous assault on the environment and an anti-intellectual culture that derides any notion of critical education. Beneath the massive failure of leadership from the Trump administration lies the long history of concentrated power in the hands of the one percent, shameless corporate welfare, political corruption, the legacy of racial violence, and the merging of money and politics to deny the most vulnerable access to health care, a living wage, worker protection and strong labor movements capable of challenging corporate power and the cruelty of austerity and right-wing policies that maim, cripple and kill hundreds of thousands, as is evident in the current pandemic.
The brutality of casino capitalism, with its hyped-up version of social Darwinism, is now openly defended by Trump and many Republican governors in their call to reopen the economy and undercut or eliminate protective measures that would slow the pace of the virus. Most at risk are those populations who have been considered disposable, such as poor people of color, undocumented immigrants, the racially incarcerated, the elderly warehoused in nursing homes and the working class. These populations are now told to sacrifice their lives in the interest of filling the coffers of the corporate elite.
At the same time, the claims of neoliberal capitalism have been broken and what was once unthinkable is now being said in public by large groups of people. Young people are calling for a new narrative to repair the safety net, provide free health care, child care, elder care and quality public schools for everyone. There are loud calls to address state violence and the plagues of poverty, homelessness and the pollution of the planet. The spirit of democratic socialism is in the air. The pandemic crisis has shattered the myth that each of us is defined exclusively by our self-interest and as individuals are solely responsible for the problems we face. Both myths run the risk of breaking down as it becomes obvious that, as the pandemic unfolds, shortages in crucial medical equipment, lack of testing, lack of public investments and failed public health services are largely due to right-wing neoliberal measures such as regressive tax policies and bloated military budgets that have drained resources from public health, public goods and other vital social institutions such as public and higher education.
The pandemic has torn away the cover of a neoliberal economic system marked by what Thomas Piketty calls "the violence of social inequality." Inequality is a toxin that destroys lives, democratic institutions and civic culture and it is normalized through politicians and a right-wing media culture reduced to sounding boards for the rich and powerful. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's infamous quip that "there's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families" no longer holds the status of neoliberal common sense in a society in which matters of social responsibility and strong, morally responsive government institutions are crucial in order to fight the pandemic and the economic and political conditions that worsen its effects.
If neoliberalism contributed to the unraveling of social connections and the institutions that support them, the pandemic has made clear how vital such connections are to both the public health of a society and its democratic institutions. As social spheres are privatized, commercialized and individualized, it becomes difficult to translate private issues into systemic considerations, inequality becomes normalized, and the pandemic crisis is isolated from the political, economic, social and cultural conditions that fuel it.
The ideological virus-plague has as one of its roots a politics of depoliticization and normalization. It attempts to rob people of their sense of agency, all the while making the unthinkable matters of alleged common sense. Through a variety of market-based assumptions and pedagogical practices, it works to undermine and normalize those ideas, values, modes of identification and desires that enable individuals to become critically engaged actors.
Crucial to any politics of resistance is the necessity to take seriously the notion that education is central to politics itself, and that social problems have to be critically understood before people can act as a force for empowerment and liberation. In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, matters of criticism, informed judgment and critical modes of understanding are crucial in making a choice between democracy and authoritarianism, life and death.
The stark choices regarding what the future might look like appear to hang between the forces of despotism and democracy. Yet as ominous as this foreboding appears, history is open, and how it will unfold hangs in the balance. The pandemic is a crisis that cannot be allowed to turn into a catastrophe in which all hope is lost. While this pandemic threatens democracy's ability to breathe, it should also offer up the possibility to rethink politics and the habits of critical education, human agency and elements of social responsibility crucial to any viable notion of what life would be like in a democratic socialist society. Amid the corpses produced by neoliberal capitalism and COVID-19, there are also flashes of hope, a chance to move beyond the contemporary resurgence of authoritarianism. Beyond the normalizing ideologies of a poisonous cynicism and a paralyzing conformity endemic to neoliberal capitalism, there is a growing movement to reclaim a collective political vision that is more compassionate, equitable, just and inclusive.
In spite of the ugly terror of a fascist abyss that lurks in the background of the COVID-19 crisis, the pandemic can teach us that democracy is fragile as "a way of life" and that if it is to survive, critical education, civic courage, historical consciousness, moral witnessing and political outrage must become central elements of a pedagogical practice capable of producing citizens who are informed, politically aware and willing to struggle to keep justice, equity and the principles of a socialist democracy alive. Rosa Luxemburg's once-celebrated claim that under capitalism humanity faces a choice between "socialism or barbarism" is more appropriate today than in her own time at the beginning of the 20th century.
The pandemic has done more than expose the cult of capitalism and its production of social inequities operating on a vast scale in the U.S. and around the globe. It has also revealed the inner workings of a Trump government that has been more concerned about the health of the economy than saving lives, especially the lives of those marginalized by color, class, age and pre-existing health conditions. Because of Trump's failure to address the crisis, the United States has been turned into a giant cemetery. Trump lied about the severity of the virus, calling it no more dangerous than the flu, even saying it would just disappear. He admitted to journalist Bob Woodward that the virus was deadly and airborne and that millions of people could get infected, sick and die. He flouted the advice of scientific experts and put incompetents in positions of power to shape health policies. Moreover, as the virus spread throughout the country, Trump disregarded the advice of medical and health experts and held indoor rallies in cities around the United States, impervious to the danger large group gatherings posed to his followers.
After downplaying the virus since its inception while modeling behavior that promotes it, going so far as to treat mask-wearing as a weakness while ridiculing his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, for wearing one, Trump and the first lady, Melania Trump, have now tested positive for COVID-19. For four years, this administration has lied, deceived the public and undermined the health and safety of the nation. Events have now caught up with Trump's world of deceit, lies and willful ignorance, and he has to bear the fate of his own hypocrisy and moral failing. What is crucial here is that Trump is not the only victim of his own inept leadership and the disdain of health experts and the laws of science. More importantly, because of his lack of leadership the economy tanked, millions lost their jobs, at least 208,000 people have died and more than 7.3 million are infected. Trump did not deserve this virus, but neither did the people who contracted it because of his irresponsible and vicious disregard for the lives of others. Trump has blood on his hands, and his failure to address the pandemic's reach, severity and danger is no longer an issue he can ignore.
Calls to remove Trump from office, raise the minimum wage, support decent and safe work, offer access to affordable housing, provide universal health care, lower prescription drug costs, provide free quality education to everyone, expand infrastructure, defund the police and military, and invest in community services are important. But they do not deal with the larger issue of eliminating a market-driven economic system structured in massive racial and economic inequalities. Renowned educator David Harvey is right to argue that the "immediate task is nothing more nor less than the self-conscious construction of a new political framework for approaching the question of inequality [and racism], through a deep and profound critique of our economic and social system." The battle against capitalism can only take place through a movement that unites its disparate movements for social justice, emancipation and economic equality.
This is a crisis in which different threads of oppression must be understood as part of the general crisis of capitalism. The various protests now evolving internationally at the popular level offer the promise of new global movements for the struggle for popular sovereignty and economic, racial and social justice. Central to this struggle is the challenge of destroying the neoliberal global order. In the current moment, democracy may be under a severe threat and appear frighteningly vulnerable, but with young people and others rising up across the globe inspired, energized and marching in the streets the future of a radical democracy is waiting to be reimagined, if not reborn. Democracy needs to breathe again, inspired by collective struggles to dismantle the machinery of social death at the heart of neoliberal fascist empire.
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