The significance of the MST in Brazil has been most noticeable during the pandemic. In a country that lost more than 684.000 people to a disease brought by plane through the wealthy elite, in a society where racialized and sexualized bodies are always the most vulnerable, it was (and still is) extremely important to find solidarity between the country and the city
The attack on science and knowledge production is known to be one of the main elements of the rise of the authoritarian right in the past decade. As one of the main global expressions of contemporary authoritarianism, Jair Bolsonaro is no exception to that. His government has been an important part of the context of difficulties for the higher education sector in Brazil, especially since research is highly dependent on public universities and funding agencies in the country. On top of that, the COVID pandemic in 2020 created difficulties for universities all around the world. If such a global crisis is expected to generate differentiated pressures across the Global North and South, the impact of authoritarian politics is surely prone to making the situation particularly delicate for universities.
Pedro Magalhães (Brazil) discusses with Boaventura Monjane (Mozambique), Sabrina Fernandes (Brazil), and Saker El Nour (Egypt) from the International Research Group on Authoritarianism and Counter-Strategies (IRGAC) on food systems, environmental activism and climate denialism in the Global South.
The novel coronavirus has been emphasizing and exacerbating the effects of a widening wealth gap, years of policies of austerity, and the extent of social inequality all over the world. The uncertainty over what the future will look like increases concerns surrounding the future of crucial matters such as labour, the housing market, and higher education. This piece focuses on the practices of solidarity, how this has shaped people’s experiences of the lockdown in Istanbul, Turkey, and the ways in which the local and national state can—and did—exploit public concerns and confusion that have been evoked by the pandemic to fast-track their controversial urban projects and decisions.
More than 6,400 families have been evicted from their homes and another 19,000 remain threatened with eviction in Brazil since March 2020, when the coronavirus outbreak started in the country. In the state of São Paulo, 1,681 evictions were carried out and up to 5,000 families can be evicted from their homes at any one time. This startling data relates to informal settlements—evictions for non-payment of rent are not included—and numbers may be even higher, as this reflects only the cases identified by popular movements and the organizations participating in the “Zero Eviction” campaign.
Many influential voices have pointed out, with different degrees of optimism, that the COVID-19 pandemic might finally have ushered in the final days of neoliberalism. However, if we understand neoliberalism as a set of practices and institutional mechanisms that shield market relations from popular deliberation, we reach a different conclusion. In these terms, neoliberalism is not dying. If emergency measures are aimed more at safeguarding the profits of banks and large corporations than securing wages and welfare programmes, then this crisis is in fact an opportunity to increase wealth inequality, and not to address it as a problem.
Does the pandemic state of exception pave the way for further undemocratization—and if so, is this process happening on a global scale, or are there meaningful differences between regional developments? Are there identifiable patterns regarding a specifically authoritarian-populist, way of dealing with the pandemic and the resulting social and economic crisis? What is, in short, the specifically authoritarian dimension of the world´s responses to the pandemic?
Even though the current crisis astonished most of us, it also came as no surprise. During the last decade, we have witnessed a densification of what Alex Demirovic calls “crises of denormalization”, i.e. crises that profoundly undermine the hegemonic neoliberal security dispositive. From the financial crisis in 2008–9, through to Europe´s so-called “migrant crisis” (in fact, a momentary collapse of Europe´s inhumane border regime), up to the climate crisis, world capitalism seems ever more prone to destroying its economic, social, and natural basis, and less and less capable of dealing with the consequences.
While governments across southern Africa have been imposing State of Emergency-type COVID-19 regulations, a number of ‘people’s coalitions’ have emerged in several countries, including community structures, trade unions, informal workers’ organizations, civics, social movements, rural groups, and national and provincial NGOs across all social sectors.
Turkey has been experiencing difficult times in the last several years. On the one hand, after the failed coup attempt in 2016, authoritarian politics have intensified at the hands of the AKP (Justice and Development Party) government that has been in power since 2002. On the other, the economy entered into a currency and debt crisis in 2018 and suffers under excessive current account deficits and household indebtedness. Correspondingly, social polarization and the erosion of democratic norms have been growing in tandem with financial fragility and high unemployment rates.
