doublethink

A call for unity or ‘rituals of authoritarianism’?  The surging figures of death induced the people in Italy to go to their balconies, and sing and clap for their health workers who face the toughest challenge everywhere. Subsequently, similar sporadic events happened elsewhere in different countries. Amidst the growing deployment of the war metaphor by many world leaders , communities invent their rituals of thanksgiving for people they imaginatively feel bonded with within the national territory. It is not so ironic that in the severest time of global crisis, world leaders from Trump and Macron to Modi, have called for an aggressive reassertion of national unity. The language of unity whips up the emotional register of solidarity but it inevitably requires tangible forms of action. It is exactly at this point of intersection between apparent well-intentioned messages of unity and the choice of actions that leaders and their followers propound, that the perils of politic...