The Post-Pandemic 'New Normal' Looks Awfully Authoritarian

Less-intrusive responses could preserve our health while leaving our freedom intact

See By J.D. Tuccille of Reason.

"We're told that life is never getting back to normal, so we need to suck it up and accept a world of mask-wearing, economic disruption, and social distancing. It's a denatured echo of the warnings we've heard before that government responses to COVID-19 are pushing the world toward authoritarianism—but dressed up as if that's a good thing.

That's unfortunate, given that less-intrusive responses to the pandemic are proving at least as effective as heavy-handed ones. And that's before we even discuss the inherent value of the freedom that looks destined to be pushed aside by public health concerns  and by disingenuous government officials.

"As 2020 slides into and probably infects 2021, try to take heart in one discomfiting fact: Things are most likely never going 'back to normal,'" wrote CNN International Security Editor Nick Paton Walsh last week. In his piece he discusses the likely permanency of mask mandates, telecommuting, reduced physical contact, and similar changes to life.

Some of the alterations Walsh mentions may be matters of personal choice, but a good many of them are imposed by "politicians who pretend that 'normal' is just around the corner," as Babson College's Thomas Davenport says in the article.

We're supposed to accept our newly constrained lives as "the new normal"—in a phrasing that's already very tired, indeed.

Actually, repeated references to a "new normal" aren't just tired; they're ominous.

"As the need for an extension of quarantine into the summer or beyond seems likelier, the new normal will certainly include unanticipated trade-offs," Andy Wang warned in May in the Harvard International Review. "The central irony of the crisis may be that the very methods that liberal democracies are currently using to effectively fight the virus are the same tactics that authoritarian leaders use to dominate their people. While the world is not sinking into authoritarianism, a post-quarantine world could be less democratic than its previous iteration; the tools that have been temporarily deployed in the fight against a once-in-a-lifetime disease may become permanent."

These authoritarian tools may become permanent because government officials are rarely punished for doing something, even if the something is awful and counterproductive. It's leaving things alone to be worked out by individuals according to their own priorities and preferences for which politicians get called out.

In addition, people who go into government tend to be the sort who naturally gravitate toward using power. And crises are excellent excuses for accumulating unprecedented authority and using it in novel ways.

"For authoritarian-minded leaders, the coronavirus crisis is offering a convenient pretext to silence critics and consolidate power," Human Rights Watch cautioned in April.

"The 'lockdown measures' adopted by many European states have disproportionately impacted racialized individuals and groups who were targeted with violence, discriminatory identity checks, forced quarantines and fines," Amnesty International reported in June.

"Governments around the world must take action to protect and promote freedom of expression during the COVID-19 pandemic, which many States have exploited to crack down on journalism and silence criticism," the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression noted in July.

The U.S. has hardly been immune to public health-driven authoritarianism during the pandemic."