Are authoritarians having a harder time with the pandemic?

[Hygro]

From the roots with truckers in Ottowa, to the top like Xi Jinping deciding to crack down on genderbending and video games, is this time of increased order, it seems like authoritarians are slipping deeper into wackadoodlism.

Is it all related, or just a nice confirmation bias from my terminal?

 

[thetrooper]

You get a like for the -ism

 

[Gorbles]

The truckers are a thing in of themselves; it's got a lot of factors in it that aren't just "authoritarian boot goes brrrrr".

A lot of things have come out of the pandemic, and it's hard to say on authoritarianism specifically whether or not it's something that would've happened anyway given the worldwide trend of various governments over the past few years. I'd say it's definitely arguable that the pandemic has given some an opportunity to capitalise on, but I'd argue it's likely something that was going to happen anyway at some point.

The UK government was on the path it's currently on already, for example. The US too. Canada, as I understand it, has been dealing with more and more of the "culture war" mess too, with politicians taking up the banner on various inane things. Australia too. These things are interconnected in ways they didn't used to be because of the shared global experience of the population of these (and more) countries being overwhelmingly online (as well as the tech industry consolidating and growing communication platforms without much care given to dealing with the problems this can bring).

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Governments rarely like to give up power they have, and the "emergency" of COVID has given them power they did not have previously.

 

[amadeus]

Governments rarely like to give up power they have, and the "emergency" of COVID has given them power they did not have previously.

What power?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Depends on country. But just as an example, look at what Biden admin tried to do with OSHA, or the landlord/tenant situation prior.

 

[amadeus]

Mandatory vaccination? That was ruled constitutional 100 years ago.

My point is the powers being exercised here are not, at least in the U.S., anything new. They might be unknown to our generation, but I mean look at what the U.S. did during WWII and its run-up; from conscription to internment to price controls and nationalizations, the power of the federal government at that time was extraordinary. Or WWI when even actively dissenting against that stupid war landed you in jail, now that's authoritarianism.

 

[João III]

I think the pandemic could've accelerated processes already occurring. Maybe. Although democracy tends to come and go in waves with the trend of democracies outlasting authoritarian regimes. See Huntington's The Third Wave.

Furthermore, Francis Fukuama postulates that established democracies in the West (i.e. the US) have come to take democracy for granted and forget how good they have

 

[Hygro]

I agree with amadeus these are not new powers. But I do agree with TMIT that Covid measures are authoritarian, even if they are good. With the science and industry pumped full of vitamins has resulted in a pretty dope partial command economy.

 

[Zardnaar]

Covids gonna test any government system. Democracies slide towards authoritarianism authoritarians crack down on dissent.

The big ones eg China, Russia kind of trade on the "you're getting richer" appeal. If that hits a bump they have to resort to more authoritarianism or foreign crisis.

Basically all types regimes become more unstable. Things gonna get worse before they get better as well imho.

 

[Lexicus]

Francis Fukuama

Funny how this dude keeps finding new ways to be wrong

 

[Gorbles]

I agree with amadeus these are not new powers. But I do agree with TMIT that Covid measures are authoritarian, even if they are good. With the science and industry pumped full of vitamins has resulted in a pretty dope partial command economy.

On a purely semantic scale, naturally any measures are. You can't describe something that limits a person in any way to be liberal, can you? It's semantically authoritarian by nature.

The problem is conflating that with real world political ideologies. Semantically authoritarian doesn't mean maliciously so, and this would need to be examined on a case by case basis. So far I haven't seen a single argument for malicious intent that's anything more than personal bias by the person making it.

What we're seeing more is political pressure to end restrictions, to "live with the virus", to get bodies back to work. This is a critique of capitalism. The fears of endless lockdowns are overblown, and often deliberately so. In fact here in the UK these fears are often aired by the supporters and benefactors of the ruling party. Someone's going to have to work hard to convince me that they simultaneously want the measures to continue

 

[Lexicus]

On a purely semantic scale, naturally any measures are. You can't describe something that limits a person in any way to be liberal, can you? It's semantically authoritarian by nature.

I am not convinced that forcing people with any sense to hide in their homes from plaguebearing morons is less "authoritarian" than making people wear masks in public buildings and get their shots.

 

[Gorbles]

I am not convinced that forcing people with any sense to hide in their homes from plaguebearing morons is less "authoritarian" than making people wear masks in public buildings and get their shots.

I mean I could be misunderstanding you, but I don't think I was trying to judge the actions on a scale.

I was trying to give some leeway to more lenient definitions of "authoritarian", as some folks seem to define it more zealously than any definition I'm familiar with, hah. But in any definition it's going to be hard to sell any Covid measure as not requiring obedience from any given person. Regardless of how solid the reasoning is, how obvious the cost-benefit, and so on.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Mandatory vaccination? That was ruled constitutional 100 years ago.

Not in this context, and that justification was the same used in forced sterilization, and by the actual Nazi party of Germany. I don't think that's the case law you want to prop up.

My point is the powers being exercised here are not, at least in the U.S., anything new. They might be unknown to our generation, but I mean look at what the U.S. did during WWII and its run-up; from conscription to internment to price controls and nationalizations, the power of the federal government at that time was extraordinary.

I'm not convinced COVID is comparable to WW2 in terms of emergency justification, and I don't think others should be convinced of that either given the evidence available. And even in WW2, the US government used that power to "justify" atrocities. You're probably well aware of what the US did to the Japanese population here. I'm not okay with that. It wasn't defensible even in the context of the time it occurred. I don't want to see more of it.

That expansion of power to do bad things isn't anything new is all the more reason to be vigilant against it. I don't WANT another generation to have judges that say "three generations of imbeciles is enough" and sterilize someone. I don't want more due process violations. Government overreach leading to adverse outcomes is going to happen anyway, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't see pushback where possible.

With the science and industry pumped full of vitamins has resulted in a pretty dope partial command economy.

I don't know where this confidence comes from, but it's not from history, and I don't share it.

 

[Hygro]

I don't know where this confidence comes from, but it's not from history, and I don't share it.

The Space Race never happened bro. Definitely not from history.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The Space Race never happened bro. Definitely not from history.

Might want to poke around the consequences of command economies and big pharma in general a little bit more.

 

[amadeus]

Not in this context, and that justification was the same used in forced sterilization, and by the actual Nazi party of Germany. I don't think that's the case law you want to prop up.

That's a ridiculous line of reasoning that doesn't hold at all; nobody is being forcibly sterilized and no one is making that as a proposal.

I'm not convinced COVID is comparable to WW2 in terms of emergency justification, and I don't think others should be convinced of that either given the evidence available.

That doesn't matter. What matters is that it contradicts your view that these powers are going to be irreversible.

 

[João III]

Funny how this dude keeps finding new ways to be wrong

I'll admit I was hesitant to mention him

 

[TheMeInTeam]

That's a ridiculous line of reasoning that doesn't hold at all; nobody is being forcibly sterilized and no one is making that as a proposal.

Nobody did those things when Jacobson passed through SCOTUS, either. Yet a few decades later...

That doesn't matter. What matters is that it contradicts your view that these powers are going to be irreversible.

I didn't claim powers are "irreversible". History shows that governments in their entirety tend to have a shelf life, regardless of their specifics. I claimed that governments rarely like giving up power. Sometimes, they give it up anyway, with costs depending on situation/context.