With the advent of a public health pandemic like COVID-19, the attacks on expertise, science, and truth that are the lifeblood of fascist politics imperil much more than just our political system. We can see the explicit dangers in the response to COVID-19 of the leaders of the United States, Brazil, and India, which was initially to dismiss the virus as an overblown hoax.*5 The response of these governments to the virus was not some accident—as I show in the pages to follow, fascist ideology conflicts in principle with expertise, science, and truth.
