The Virus as Remedy: COVID-19 and the End of the Populist Meta-Crisis

Abstract

Understood not only as a challenge to democracy but as a crisis, populism has received widespread attention in both media and academic circles for the better part of the past decade. Yet the outbreak of COVID-19 and its escalation into a pandemic eclipsed the fear of rising populism within weeks: With lockdowns imposed and civil liberties suspended, it lost its menacing character and became a mere background nuisance. This, I argue in this article, is the consequence of a discursive constellation in which there is only room for one dominant crisis – a meta-crisis as I call it – at a time. Populism filled this meta-crisis role for a long while, but the COVID-19 shock redirected society’s attention to a more pervasive and immediate threat. While this does not spell the end of populism, it still marks a notable shift in the relative importance we attribute to it.