The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed the limits of the dominant postwar ideologies. Liberals continue to champion the spread of liberty and greater global technocracy, while populist and authoritarian rulers – from the US to Brazil, eastern Europe, Russia and China – pursue nationalist retreat and isolation.
Both world-views – the liberal and the nationalist-authoritarian – are utopias with dystopian consequences. Their endeavours to restore economic prosperity and public health in the wake of the coronavirus crisis rest on either a return to liberal capitalism, discredited since the 2008 financial crash, or by developing methods of advanced bio-surveillance.
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