Now, under conditions of the pandemic, we are too preoccupied with our own survival to pay attention to erosions of democracy in other countries. If the “us” refers to the old established centrist parties and voters, then, yes, there was a degree of apathy in not taking the rising populist threat seriously at first. However, it could be that the pandemic has been good for liberals and bad for populists. The poll ratings of leaders like Angela Merkel and Jacinda Ardern have gone up as a result of their good performance, and bad leaders like Trump, Bolsonaro, and Lopez Obrador have seen
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