06-02-2020, 10:38 AM
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/02/brief...aders.html
A provocative theory that "illiberal populists" are looking at a worsening burden of COVID-19 because a pandemic is a bad time to be badmouting experts. To be fair, earlier in the pandemic countries like Italy, France, and Spain were heavily affected though you wouldn't call their governments "illiberal populists", and countries like Turkey, Hungary, and Poland, are lower in the list despite having illiberal populist governments.
Still, the number of new cases (per 100,000) population over the last week:
Brazil (Jair Bolsonaro)
US (Donald Trump)
Russia (Vladimir Putin)
UK (Boris Johnson)
Iran (Ali Khamenei)
Mexico (Andres Luis Lopez Obrador)
Note the list includes both right populists (Bolsonaro) and left populists (AMLO). I'm also not sure how you would qualify Iran (certainly illiberal, but populist?), and while I consider Johnson a populist, at least inasmuch as Brexit is concerned, I haven't seen much in the way of illiberal tendencies in him. So, maybe the analysis is a bit strained, though as I said, it is a provocative theory.
BC
A provocative theory that "illiberal populists" are looking at a worsening burden of COVID-19 because a pandemic is a bad time to be badmouting experts. To be fair, earlier in the pandemic countries like Italy, France, and Spain were heavily affected though you wouldn't call their governments "illiberal populists", and countries like Turkey, Hungary, and Poland, are lower in the list despite having illiberal populist governments.
Still, the number of new cases (per 100,000) population over the last week:
Brazil (Jair Bolsonaro)
US (Donald Trump)
Russia (Vladimir Putin)
UK (Boris Johnson)
Iran (Ali Khamenei)
Mexico (Andres Luis Lopez Obrador)
Note the list includes both right populists (Bolsonaro) and left populists (AMLO). I'm also not sure how you would qualify Iran (certainly illiberal, but populist?), and while I consider Johnson a populist, at least inasmuch as Brexit is concerned, I haven't seen much in the way of illiberal tendencies in him. So, maybe the analysis is a bit strained, though as I said, it is a provocative theory.
BC