After Coronavirus: “Nuda Vita” and the “Extraordinary Power” of the Modern State
... the crisis, rushed to their banks to withdraw money; while the people of Turkmenistan have been forbidden from saying the word “coronavirus” and wearing masks and may be sent to prison for ignoring the rules — in short, there is no such thing as coronavirus in Turkmenistan, and everyone agrees. All this “blooming complexity” in just a few months has laid bare the level of trust between citizens and the state, with each individual case demonstrating how far the state is prepared to go and how much society is prepared to tolerate. Many governments have started to seriously tighten information control against the backdrop of the fight against the pandemic. For example, a number of countries have introduced fines for spreading false information, and it is, of course, the government that ...