key: cord-0060111-db9u7agw
authors: Pratt, John
title: The End
date: 2020-08-06
journal: Law, Insecurity and Risk Control
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-48872-7_9
sha: 7d1cf1bc4573ecb12f833d5eb0ec1028fc951b54
doc_id: 60111
cord_uid: db9u7agw

This, then, represents the end. The end, at least, of the journey from post-war reconstruction to the final junction on the neo-liberal highway, a journey that had been facilitated and serviced by the appearance and subsequent development of the security sanction along the way. This societal journey also reflects, in multi-magnified scale, the journeys of so many individuals who have been taken along it: right from the beginning in some cases; others variously joining it at later intervals; journeys that began in sunlight that did not shine for long enough; that began with hopes for security and safety that went unfulfilled; and which then took a sharp turning, cushioned by enticements of boundless prosperity and indulgence (at least for the risk-takers and the enterprising), but which simultaneously brought misfortune and disaster beyond repair for numbers that grew and grew. Now this journey has reached its terminus. The rules of the game that market forces dictated have been torn up and its casino economies providing opportunities for both riches and penury have been largely closed down.

This, then, represents the end. The end, at least, of the journey from postwar reconstruction to the final junction on the neo-liberal highway, a journey that had been facilitated and serviced by the appearance and subsequent development of the security sanction along the way. This societal journey also reflects, in multi-magnified scale, the journeys of so many individuals who have been taken along it: right from the beginning in some cases; others variously joining it at later intervals; journeys that began in sunlight that did not shine for long enough; that began with hopes for security and safety that went unfulfilled; and which then took a sharp turning, cushioned by enticements of boundless prosperity and indulgence (at least for the risk-takers and the enterprising), but which simultaneously brought misfortune and disaster beyond repair for numbers that grew and grew. Now this journey has reached its terminus. The rules of the game that market forces dictated have been torn up and its casino economies providing opportunities for both riches and penury have been largely closed down.

Nonetheless, the social transformations and mechanisms of control that were put in place during the course of this journey are still in existence. One of these characteristics has been the fortification of security and the divisions this has enforced between the included (the risk-takers, the enterprising, the self-employed etc.) and the excluded (those constituting an unacceptable risk-from street people to potential terrorists). And while recourse to the security sanction ultimately proved insufficient to indefinitely shore up social cohesion in neo-liberal society, populism, in its relentless quest to find enemies on which it can gorge itself, further exaggerates and distorts these divisions that the security sanction was implemented to control. By so doing, the rule of law, already weakened by the recourse to preventive measures of control, comes under renewed attack. Moreover, given the way in which this principle stands in front of populism's aspirations for non-accountable power, it deliberately intensifies this attack. In the UK, there are plans to bring a more quiescent judiciary into existence, with ministers having a say in judicial appointments. These plans also intend to ensure that "parts of the royal prerogative are put off limits to judicial review" (Guardian Editorial 2020). As regards Trump, "he campaigned on putting his unindicted opponent in jail. He has attacked judges individually and as an institution. He allegedly asked his FBI director for loyalty and to lay off a top aide. He tried to get his first attorney general to launch politically expedient investigations" (Blake 2019) . And so it would be possible to continue-at length. Indeed, there are occasions when Trump seems to envisage the rule of law being dispensed with altogether and being replaced by the rule of the strongest, as he explained in an interview with Breitbart in March 2019: "I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump-I have the tough people, but they don't play it tough, until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad" (Sargent 2019) .

And what of human rights? It is important to recognise that this concept no longer provides the unbreachable defence against preventive criminal law that it had been able to do in the past. The development of the security sanction has brought about its redefinition, irrespective of the critics who cling to its pre-1980 understandings and obligations. In general terms, "protecting the public" from those who represent intolerable risks to its members has become more important than protecting individuals from excessive state powers of control. It was this transformation in the understanding of rights that helped to legitimise the immobilisation of those sections of the population that threatened the mobility of the rest. Furthermore, it seems that the Trump administration is looking to formalise something like this de facto transformation, with the establishment of a "Commission on Unalienable Rights," the purpose being to determine "which rights are entitled to gain respect" (Cohen 2019) .

"Go Back to Your Own Country"/"Get Out of My Country" At the same time, the ascendancy of populist politics has both legitimised and accentuated expressions of intolerance and hatred towards those whose difference makes them seem threatening in some unacceptable way or other. It provides the justification for an insistence that the presence of such differences must be immediately halted, repulsed and shut out-a kind of reinforced mode of immobilisation, committed as if the rule of law has become too weak to stand in the way of such actions, or that some sort of "natural justice" overrides it. Research on newspaper content across these five societies from 2004 indicates "an overall increase in reporting on racial hate crime, hate speech and hate conduct" (Simons 2020, 5) . However, since the Brexit referendum and the election of Trump, the number of these incidents has accelerated. In the UK, where its version of populist governance promises to "level things up" by reaching out to communities and regions that neo-liberalism had left behind, it only does this through reassertions of national identity that come at the expense of the growing categories of enemies now thought to imperil this. Here, the number of hate crimes nearly doubled between 2011-2012 and 2017-2018; between 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 , they increased by fourteen per cent.

The range of hostilities-from casual insults to mass murder-illustrates that the categories of intolerable difference continue to expand. The targets include all ethnic minorities: "Muslim woman 'could barely breathe' after hijab ripped off in London hate crime attack" (Elefttheriou-Smith 2016); in New York, "a Muslim woman wearing a hijab had her blouse set on fire … another was accosted in an airport bathroom … and two were attacked whilst pushing their babies in strollers and were told to 'Get the [expletive] out of America'" (Elmir 2016) ; "an Auckland man and his family was racially attacked by a man [who] yelled racist and obscene comments about Chinese people and Asians, told them to go back to their country before punching his car window and door" (Tokalau 2017) ; in Australia, "gangs have been targeting Chinese international students near Monash University [Melbourne], with 13 separate violent attacks at knifepoint reported over the past 18 days" (van Onselen 2019). They can also include a range of non-Christian religious groups. In the US, "Drunken bigot attacks Jewish mom [and] daughter he mistook for Muslims at Queens subway station [New York]: 'Get out of my country'" (Parascandola 2017); "the shooting at the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue, the violent rampage at a Jersey City kosher supermarket, and the stabbing at a Hanukkah party in New York [occurred] during 2018-2019. Many attacks occurred during Jewish holidays. While many resulted in death, other times both Jewish men and women were punched, kicked or slapped" (Simons 2020, 11) . In the UK, anti-Semitic attacks have included "Jewish shoppers in north London being pelted with gas canisters by young men who shouted 'Hitler is on the way'" (Carlstrom 2016) .

They can include members of the LGBT community. The Orlando, Florida, gay night club shooting in the US resulted in the murder of forty-nine people in June 2016. More generally, homophobic graffiti is often placed alongside racist graffiti. In other respects, a gay couple were denied a shared dessert, and another were accosted by a pizzeria staff member and told, "You better get used to this, this is Trump's America" (Judkis 2017) . In London, BBC News (2019) reported that "a boy aged 16 has been arrested over a homophobic attack which left two women covered in blood after refusing to kiss on a bus. Melania Geymonat, 28, said the attack on her and partner Chris happened on the top deck of a London night bus. A group of young men began harassing them when they discovered the women were a couple, asking them to kiss while making sexual gestures." In Sydney, "several gay bashings have occurred in 2015, 2016 and 2018, both male and female victims, targetted by groups of men" (Simons 2020, 14) .

And they even include those heard speaking a language other than English-this, too, has become an unacceptable indicator of difference, demanding forthright silencing, unless its noise shatters the visions of a new racial purity that is being conjured. Threats, insults and physical attacks have become the way to immobilise these enemies: "woman 'brutally punched' for speaking Spanish in racist attack on London Overground train … the second time this year someone has been assaulted on the city's transport system for using the European language" (Forrest 2018) ; "two American women sue the US claiming they were detained after speaking Spanish in Montana" (Silva 2019) ; in Canada, "a number of high-profile racist videos shot in British Columbia surfaced online, showing angry white people demanding that non-white residents speak English" (Xu 2019); "Woman attacked for speaking foreign language at Applebee's [restaurant, Minnesota] . … Asma Mohammed Jama's face now carries the scars from what she says was an unprovoked attack … [because] she was speaking in her native language, Swahili, with her cousins. … [A 43 year old woman] became upset because they were not speaking English" (Collin 2015) ; "British police have launched an investigation after a 'Happy Brexit Day' sign was posted in a block of flats telling residents that 'we do not tolerate' people speaking languages other than English. The unsigned note was found in Winchester Tower in Norwich, eastern England, on Friday morning, hours before the UK officially left the European Union at 2300 GMT after 47 years of membership" (Euronews 2020) .

It is as if many of the previous cultural constraints that had previously been in place to suppress such conduct have been torn down, often by the actions and words of national leaders themselves. Some of the perpetrators of the attacks seem to have taken their cues from, or found justification in, statements and comments made by both Johnson and Trump: as if what they say on matters such as immigration and difference then vindicates them. After Johnson referred to veiled Muslim women as "letterboxes" in a newspaper article in August 2018, Islamophobic incidents rose by 375 per cent in the following week (Dearden 2019). After Trump told four Democrat congresswomen of colour to "go back to their own countries" in 2019, a US citizen of Latino heritage had acid thrown in his face and was told to "go back to [his] country" (Silverman and Watts 2019). The man who murdered the worshippers in the Pittsburgh synagogue justified his actions on the grounds that "The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society … likes to bring intruders that kill our people. I can't sit by and watch my people get slaughtered" (Anbinder 2019) . Drawing on some of Trump's phraseology, the man who murdered twenty-two Latinos at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in August 2019 issued a "manifesto" justifying his actions against "the Hispanic invasion of Texas." Nor is it the case that these anti-immigration messages from national leaders remain within their own countries. The murderer of fifty-one Muslims at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March 2019 saw Trump as a symbol of "renewed white identity and common purpose" in his own online "manifesto."

Of course, some national leaders (especially Premiers Justin Trudeau in Canada and Jacinda Ardern) 1 have forthrightly condemned white nationalist terror attacks and described them as such. Trump, though, seems more likely to write them off as the work of people who are "mentally ill" and "it was necessary to consider building new institutions" for them (Reuters 2019) . Rather than tighter gun controls, he demands tighter immigration restrictions as a means of preventing future attacks. However, when there are Islamic terror attacks he scapegoats entire immigrant groups for the actions of one or two criminals, calling for "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States" after Syed Rizwan Farook (who was not even an immigrant) and his wife killed fourteen people in San Bernardino, California (Taylor 2015) .

Nonetheless, it is important to recognise that amidst this torrent of hate, barriers and forms of resistance are still in existence at every level of these societies-against both the operation of the security sanction, the breaches it has made to the rule of law and its redefinition of human rights and against the ambitions of populist politicians. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, by the nature of its enforceability (in contrast to its counterparts in Australia and New Zealand), has limited the growth of the security sanction in that country. It thus blocks initiatives that dramatically contravene pre-1980s understandings of human rights. There can be no "civil detention" measures at the end of a finite prison term in this country, for example. Equally, US constitutional rights still stand in front of attempts to restrict free speech and movement (even if this then means that white nationalist terror groups have been able to shelter behind them).

And while the judiciary has regularly been compliant with the implementation of many of these forms of preventive criminal law, there are limits to their compliance. One of the most contested areas of legal legitimacy for preventive controls has been the anti-homeless ordinances in the US. Meanwhile, since the 2008 crash, new social movements have emerged in opposition to the trajectories being taken in these societies. The Occupy movement, for example, was formed in response to the crash and the glaring social inequalities this exposed. Others have since included #MeToo, against the sexual harassment and assault of women, Black Lives Matter, protesting systemic police racism, and Schoolchildren Against Guns, a response to mass shootings in the US. Extinction Rebellion has become the most potent of these movements, with its widespread international appeal and resonance regarding climate change. The social media innovations that have been exploited by populists have also been put to effective use by these movements.

There has also been resistance from local communities against some of the security initiatives. "Defensive architecture" can provoke public disquiet and anger-particularly the way it penalises and further excludes the homeless. In London, Hackney Council attempted to make rough sleeping a criminal offence within a designated area, but withdrew the proposal because of local opposition. In another example, the Guardian (2014) reported that:

Anti-homeless studs at London residential block prompts uproar. Metal studs have been installed outside a block of flats in central London to deter rough sleepers. The installation of the studs outside the flats on Southwark Bridge Road provoked widespread condemnation on Twitter with users claiming homeless people were being treated like vermin because similar metal spikes are used to deter pigeons.

In other instances, communities have been able to shame businesses that have taken action against the homeless: "Portsmouth store replaces [homeless man's] belongings after water poured out on him from inside the shop as he slept in doorway" (Ross 2016) . There are also examples of inclusive local state architecture. In Vancouver, for example, there are benches in public parks that unfold into shelters and read "This a bench" during the day then light up to reveal "This is a bedroom" at night.

And there are also innumerable acts, the vast majority of which will not be reported in the media, but which occur on an everyday basis, where individuals face down and reject the hatred and intolerance inspired by populism. One example involved a train conductor in New Zealand who, in 2018, ejected one of his passengers for racially abusing an Indian man. He had been speaking Hindi on his cell phone when he was told by a girl of sixteen to "go back to your country. Don't speak that language here." The conductor said: "we are here as one people in this country, we should all share things equally. We're all living in this country for a purpose, treat every person with the same respect that you'd like to be treated with-total respect, no matter what race you are" (RNZ 2019).

Of course, then, there are acts of resistance, as there always are in any society. Even in Hitler's Germany, there were at least six assassination attempts on his life between 1933 and 1945. However, as this opposition has fermented, populist forces, gaining strength, have been attempting to cement themselves into the structures of political power, or to at least manoeuvre their way into doing so, thereby both reducing and minimising the potency of resistance. Hence the determination of the Trump presidency to staff the Supreme Court and the federal courts with its nominees whenever the opportunity arises. Furthermore, the tabloid press continues to prove a great ally to populism. Having already commandeered and reshaped the framework of public discourse, it is able to routinely carry headline reports on the latest "enemies of the people"including recalcitrant judges-in a bid to shock and shame them into subservience and silence. In so doing, it further inflames and stokes support for populist leaders as they prepare to repel these new threats to public well-being.

These forces have also become skilled at spreading lies and conspiracy theories that variously attempt to undermine the structure of democratic society itself. They use social media for these purposes, where Google, Twitter, Instagram and so on are still allowed to act largely as free agents. In such ways, the mainstream media can be drowned out of public discourse, or left to chase these lies and conspiracies and in so doing give more publicity to them.

However, if developments such as these signal the onward march of populism, the unexpected arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic in the early months of 2020 might yet provide a different ending to this story. This is one that could involve the end of populism as a political force. The strategy of immobilisation intended to protect the enterprising and the risktakers from the risky has been dramatically extended as nations have responded to the virus. The indefinite (in most cases) immobilisation of entire populations now, rather than risky individuals, is intended to protect whole societies from it. For citizens already consumed by, preoccupied with, vulnerable to and apprehensive of all kinds of risks, the virus and all the uncertainty associated with it have come to dominate every aspect of existence. All other risks-real or imagined-seem to have been shut out of everyday discourse: risks of paedophiles, predators, terrorists and the like have suddenly vanished from it since such people, like everyone else, have been immobilised as the virus has moved around the world. While its dimensions are still unknowable, the likelihood of infection is rated very high-Angela Merkel has estimated that around seventy per cent of the German population may become so.

Here, then, is a new enemy for the heroes of populism to put to the sword. This one, though, is microbial in form: it cannot be cowed into silence by a Twitter outburst; it cannot be held back by a wall, however "big" and "beautiful" this might be; it cannot be publicly scapegoated and shamed out of existence; it cannot be driven out of communities by local vigilante groups; it is, though, an enemy capable of causing unquantifiable, irreparable harm, both to individuals and societies. While some of its victims seem to suffer virtually no harmful effects at all from it, the virus has proved fatal for many others. Who are the most vulnerable?

Originally this was those who were aged over eighty; it then came down to seventy-plus; then it came down again to those who are sixty-plus; thereafter, there are reports that some of its forty-plus victims have had to be put on ventilators. Teenagers have died from it, as have infants. After largely ignoring it as it gained force, the levels of national immobilisation have kept intensifying: borders are closed; returning citizens must selfisolate if they return beyond a certain date; then retrospective selfisolation is imposed for those who managed to return before the due date; then bars and restaurants are closed; then schools and universities; then all except emergency movement from home is prohibited-"enjoy your living room," President Trump has said.

However, while the virus is a risk to all, the exact nature of the risk remains uncertain and indeterminable. This in itself continues to feed rumour, speculation and anecdote that in turn add to its mystery and power: is fourteen days of isolation really enough for those who have been in contact with its victims?; what if it reoccurs in those who have already had it? And so on and so forth-the uncertainties grow. Because there is no limit to the risk, it is the infinite dimensions of its worst possibilities that most governments have tried to give protection against. But because its worst possibilities seem limitless, so the protective levels of control exponentially increase and, in turn, only seem to intensify the risk. By imposing a lockdown on the whole of New Zealand for four weeks, Jacinda Ardern has claimed that, by so doing, she would be saving "thousands of lives" (RNZ 2020). The next day, she claimed this would be saving "tens of thousands of lives" (Cheng 2020) . Two days later, a news organisation claimed that, without the lockdown, 80,000 New Zealand lives would be lost (Cooke 2020) .

Even when the virus does make its retreat from the world, the likely global recession that will follow as a result of the attempts to control it will continue to immobilise new sections of these societies. Those that had hitherto appeared to be thriving most in the era of neo-liberal governance-those working in tourism and leisure industries, for exampleproviding all the thrills and excitement that the mobile and the enterprising had come to expect as of right-found that their market had evaporated in the course of a few days in the middle of March 2020. And mobility, as both the means to win all the prizes on offer in casino economies and one of the prizes itself has screeched to a halt.

However, a further consequence of the level of anxiety brought about by the virus has been a resurgence of interest in and support for-amongst much of the public at least-public broadcasting organisations and their regular news bulletins. "Truth"-not "alternative facts," not "different impressions of truth"-but "the truth"-about the virus and a longing to know what this new risk that has enveloped the whole world actually means for them and their well-being-is back in fashion. Where is truth to be found? In public broadcasting. People listen and watch these outlets to hear and see the truth about the virus and how their risk standing in relation to it might be changing. Most of them have no interest in hearing about snake oil cures and other such forms of genuinely "fake news." Truth is truth after all. And in pursuit of the truth, they no longer seem to "have had enough of experts." On the contrary, they anxiously wait on the words and opinions of a variety of epidemiologists, public health professors, virologists, immunologists and so on. Notwithstanding some differences in their perspectives, 2 these experts in their respective fields have been brought into sudden and unexpected public prominence. They saturate news programmes as new kinds of celebrities, famous not for their wealth, or their appearance or their physical endowments or other exotic qualities but because of their knowledge and analytical and diagnostic capabilities. Even the most flamboyant and narcissistic of populist politicians finds it difficult not to share the stage with them. Writing of the UK, John Harris (2020) has made the point that "only weeks ago, people close to Boris Johnson were declaring war on the civil service and the BBC; now, both institutions are surely at the heart of however we collectively proceed. … Johnson is now at pains to be seen deferring to the chief medical officer and the government's chief scientific adviser."

This desire for truth in news broadcasting and the reappearance of respect for expert opinion may also reflect a yearning for strong, central government again; a yearning for government that can give clear, direct, accurate information about the virus and its dangers; a yearning for government to provide extensive public health care facilities rather than indulging in expensive vanity projects or simply stepping aside and allowing the private sector to redevelop urban society as it sees fit; as well as a yearning for government that will work with others in the form of a united, global response that will ultimately put an end to the virus. Here, then, governments can once again be "the solution" and not "the problem." Citizens want, expect, their governments to perform their essential task of protecting the public against this particularly noxious enemy. And this protective obligation extends to all citizens, not just those who can purchase an appropriate level of security, or those who swarm around the latest cluster of enemies thought to put them at risk and demand that they be immobilised while their own mobility is allowed to continue unimpeded. Now, if all are not protected, this is only likely to lead to more infection.

In these respects, as mobility has ceased, so it seems that social cohesion-however temporarily-may be increasing. Retired doctors and nurses rush back to health services. Volunteers assist with relaying provisions to the elderly and the infirm. The special vulnerability of the homeless has led to hotel doors being thrown open to them free of charge, along with a sudden insistence by central government that the local state must now resolve within days the problem of homelessness that had become a taken-for-granted feature of urban life. Rather than risk-taking entrepreneurs, those working in health care, pharmacies, supermarkets, taxi services, what remains of public transport and the like have become the heroes of the Covid-19 crisis.

Nonetheless, these pictures of caring populations and central governments embracing all their citizens within a protective cocoon are not universal. In some societies, or sections of them, populist distrust of the central state, of expertise and of science remains deeply embedded. In Trump's America, where gun stores are allowed to stay open as an "essential service" and where the homeless in Las Vegas are allowed to sleep in a vacant parking lot spaced six feet from each other (despite there being 150,000 plus empty hotel rooms there), the virus in its early stages was variously dismissed as "a fake Democrat plot," or a "fake North Korea plot" or a "Chinese plot." Trump's administration had anyway closed down the National Security Council office responsible for co-ordinating the response to pandemics in 2018 (when later asked about this, Trump said "he didn't know anything about it"). This had been at one with his administration's strategy of "draining the swamp" of central government professionalism and expertise-that is, of those individuals and organisations that provide "inconvenient" public information, such as "who has really been helped by his tax cuts, how climate change might affect agriculture or how his trade wars hurt farmers" (Rampell 2019) . Instead, listeners, viewers and all Trump supporters were advised to ignore dire warnings about the virus from "the mainstream media" (it was "a plot to discredit the president") and continue their lives as normal.

However, growing public alarm at the irrefutable presence of the virus and its menacing capabilities has since prompted levels of "doublespeak" that George Orwell (1949) , writing in Nineteen Eighty-Four mode, would have been proud of. Trump himself provides some of the best illustrations of this (as charted by Leonhardt 2020) . At the end of January 2020, after the existence of the virus had become well known for several weeks, Trump stated in a speech in Michigan that "we have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at the moment-five [cases] . And those people are all recuperating successfully"; on January 31, "Well, we pretty much shut it down coming in from China. We have a tremendous relationship with China, which is a very positive thing. Getting along with China, getting along with Russia, getting along with these countries"; on February 10, "Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away"; on February 19: "I think the numbers are going to get progressively better as we go along"; on February 23: "we had 12 [cases], at one point. And now they've gotten very much better"; on February 27: "It's going to disappear. One day-its like a miracle-it will disappear"; in an interview on March 4, with Sean Hannity on the Fox News Channel, in response to WHO estimate that 3.4 per cent of those infected would die: "Well, I think [this] is really a false number. Now, this is just my hunch, but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people who do this … personally, I would say the number is way under one per cent"; on March 6, "I like this stuff [medical science]. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it. Everyone of these doctors said, 'How do you know so much about this?' Maybe I have a natural ability. May be I should have done that instead of running for president." On March 17, he then made the claim that "I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic" (Rogers 2020 (Waldman 2020) Rather than helping to build a national consensus to fight the virus, these populist forces exaggerate existing divisions and thrive on the dissent, confusion and turbulence they are able to create. There have thus been new denunciations of the mainstream media-primarily because one of its tasks in democratic society is to bring to public attention the differences between what governments say they are doing and what they are manifestly not doing. Its journalists accordingly raise questions about the potency of Trump's "hunches" and his self-proclaimed "natural ability." When asked by an NBC reporter what he would say to Americans who were at home watching and scared, Trump was "steamed and snapped, 'I say that you're a terrible reporter. That's what I say'" (Baker and Haberman 2020) . By the same token, the origins of the virus in China provide the opportunity for new outbursts of race hatred: "amid criticism that repeated use of the phrase 'China virus' to refer to coronavirus by Mr Trump and some of his top officials was racist, activists said they had seen violent attacks on Asian Americans increase in 'leaps and bound' over the last three weeks" (Buncombe 2020 ). In the UK, two teenagers were arrested on suspicion of attacking a student who was told: "We don't want your coronavirus in our country. Jonathan Mok, 23, was attacked as he walked down Oxford Street at about 21:15 GMT on 24 February when a group of four males began shouting. Mr Mok, from Singapore, said the group beat him up when he confronted them" (BBC News 2020); and "an [Asian] nurse has been assaulted and racially abused as she walked to work for an overtime shift" (Staples 2020) .

Not only this, but Trump seemed to be revelling, for a while, in what he saw as his new assignation of "wartime president," enjoying the public attention that his regular pronouncements and press conferences on the virus gave him. What might lie behind this, here and elsewhere, is the realisation that the emergency powers that governments have invoked to combat the virus raise all kinds of new possibilities for extending the rule of would-be autocrats: President Orbán in Hungary seems to be leading the way here, with plans to govern by presidential decree. Nonetheless; nonetheless: the expectation in the Western democracies remains that governments cannot simply stand by as their citizens die in the streets, or that the nation's leader should not simply say, as President Bolsonaro has done in Brazil, "we'll all die one day," as a justification for their nonresponse (Phillips 2020) . For these reasons, the virus may ultimately bring an end to populism as a political force since the Trump administration in particular, despite all the snake oil promises of a swift recovery, all the lies and pretence that the problem was under control, has manifestly failed in this most basic of governmental obligations. Bravado and bluster might work against supposed "caravans" of Latin American refugees supposedly massing at the Mexican border, but not against microbes.

Populism, though, can never concede defeat. This would mean relinquishing political power (something that only happens in effete democracies). It would also bring accountablity: it would also bring accountability. Instead, then the failure of its magic, the exposure of its pitiful incompetence in governing, only provokes frenzied attempts to pinpoint new enemies that can be made to take responsibility for all its shortcomings. The reason why there is a shortage of facemasks in New York hospitals, Trump implies, is because healthcare workers have been stealing them ("the masks have been going out the back door") or "using them in an inappropriate manner" (Levine 2020) . At the same time, Dr Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, who has regularly shared news briefings on the virus with Trump, publicly contradicting him on occasions and demonstrating his own very different understanding and assessment of the problem, has provoked intense suspicion and hostility from this strong man's supporters. After he counselled against Trump's sudden enthusiasm for untested experimental drugs to counter the virus, Lou Dobbs, Fox Business Network host, stated "the president was right and frankly Fauci was wrong" (Wilstein 2020). Thereafter, "an analysis by the New York Times found over 70 accounts on Twitter that have promoted the hashtag #FauciFraud, with some tweeting as frequently as 795 times a day" (Alba and Frenkel 2020) .

And so populism's suspicion of scientific expertise that undermines the magic of strong men leaders, and its hunt for such enemies gathers familiar steam and momentum. There are screams that Fauci, precisely because of his knowledge, experience and qualifications (which mean that he has little regard for policy based on "hunches,") is ipso facto only "a deepstate Hillary Clinton-loving stooge" (Stanley-Becker 2020). Thereafter, CNN reported that Fauci "is facing threats to his personal safety and now requires personal security from law enforcement at all times, including at his home" (Bennett and Perez 2020) . As for the virus itself and all its damage, then blame the Democrats because of their impeachment proceedings against Trump that "distracted" the Republican administration. Blame Obama; blame Nancy Pelosi; blame journalists; blame judges; blame the FBI; blame the Establishment; blame the New York elite; blame hospital workers; blame the Governor of the Federal Reserve; blame state governors; blame the WHO; blame Europe; blame Iran; blame China. * * * Let us leave behind all this screaming, screeching, shrieking noise, all this chaos, all this uncertainty, all the failed magic, all the empty bravado, all the specious promises. Let us instead hear and listen to and remember the words of Joe Biden, Democrat presidential contender 2020: "We'll lead with science. We'll listen to the experts. We'll heed their advice. We'll build American leadership and rebuild it, to rally the world to meet the global threats that we're likely to face again. And I'll always tell you the truth. This is the responsibility of a president" (Sargent 2020) .

Indeed, perhaps these words will be heard, and listened to, and remembered beyond the US and all around those societies that, after allowing themselves to be seduced by risk have been tempted to look to clowns masquerading as strong men to lead them along a fantasy road to renewed glories. As should now be evident, the place for clowns is the circus, not government. Meanwhile, if words such as Biden's are indeed heard, and listened to, and remembered, then the ultimate triumph of science and expertise over the virus may lead to the re-establishment and respect for such capabilities in other areas of government as well, such as the economy and climate change; they may even find their way back to guiding penal policy, which had been the first port of call for the populist resurgence. But if this is not so, then it truly is the end.

1. Particularly in the aftermath of the Quebec City mosque shooting that left six worshippers dead in January 2017; and the Christchurch mosque shootings that left fifty-one dead in March 2019. 2. For example, those (in the minority) who advocate for "herd immunity," as opposed to those favouring virtually total lockdown.

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