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Paper short abstract:

This paper conceptualizes the grassroots enactment of state functions during the pandemic. It argues that the failure of initiatives to create sustainable structures owes much to the adoption of an "anti-populist populism" that sought to supplement rather than create an alternative to the state.

Paper long abstract:

The Covid19 pandemic appeared to usher in a new era. Following decades of austerity, states began expanding their prerogatives to deal with the spread of the virus, while ramping up talk of new investments in infrastructure and even expropriations.

On the grassroots level, citizens in many countries began organizing, setting up online groups and neighborhood initiatives to assist vulenrable individuals, while engaging in prefigurative politics of solidarity. However, other citizens began mobilizing against the perceived curbing of individual liberties by the state. In this way, the state - the provision of social services - and an opposition to perceived excesses of the state were enacted at the grassroots level.

However, enactments emphasizing solidarity failed to build sustainable structures. This paper argues that the main reason for this was the widespread adoption of an "anti-populist"-populism that did not seek to challenge the capitalist state but to merely supplement it at the grassroots level. As such, the main political antagonism was constructed between "responsible citizens" on the one hand, and "misinformation", "anti-vaxxers" or "coronavirus deniers" on the other. Such an antagonism obscured the socioeconomic asymmetries as well as the racialized hierarchies hat characterized lockdown measures within the European and North American context. While the far right managed to hegemonize anti-lockdown protests in some European countries, some governments used lockdown measures as a way to marginalize vulnerable social groups and curb political dissent.