WATCH: The Gift of the Covid Event: A Revelation of the Illusion of Popular Sovereignty

Open Society Session by Chris Waldburger

Carl Schmitt famously criticized liberal democracy as illusory: the state is in fact always theological, top-down, and unitary. This is made most evident in the state of emergency or exception.

The Covid event has seemingly vindicated this critique, and shows us the futility of anything less than political assault on our ruling class. Appealing to liberal mores, in the face of 'health fascism', will accomplish nothing. A new 'theology', a new state, is the only solution.

Chris Waldburger attempted to criticize a modern turn to nihilism as a lowly, small-scale scholar for years, both in literature and philosophy. Alongside this, he has had a somewhat bumpy ride as a school teacher, knocking his head against political correctness, egalitarianism, and latterly, the abuse of children by authoritarian nanny-types with social distancing and face coverings and vaccine pressures.

His writing began to reach a wider audience via Substack as he reported on the horrors of lockdowns and the failures of vaccines. (You can find his work at chriswaldburger.substack.com.)

His work with PANDA includes some writing and thinking the philosophical underpinnings of the emergence of the Covid event from the wrong-turns of the postwar west.

The pandemic has revealed that it was about more than just public health and the political, economic and societal aspects of the response are of far greater significance than the virus itself. There remains a continued drive toward the transformation of our societies in ways that threaten democracy and our existing ways of life. Open Society Sessions aim to examine the political, societal and economic dimensions of our recent experience and analyse developments in the future.

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