A progressive future... or an opportunity for the radical right?

Let me here start a discussion that I hope to develop further in the future.  In recent weeks, many progressive academics and even journalists, politicians and/or policymakers have begun framing the current pandemic as a window of opportunity for a more humane and progressive development model. 

Here just a couple of examples.  First an article from the New Yorker about Bernie Sanders:

"To be sure, the Democratic Party’s embrace of equalizing economics remains a partial one, but the cataclysmic impact of the coronavirus could conceivably generate more political pressure to rebalance the economy. As the C.E.O.s, bankers, hedge-fund managers, and private-equity partners have retreated to their second homes, the shelf stockers, grocery clerks, subway conductors, bus drivers, delivery workers, nurses, doctors, E.M.S. workers, hospital orderlies, and public-health officials have emerged as indispensable gallants. Without their contribution, it turns out, there would be no functioning society to generate the rewards enjoyed by the overclass."

And here a really interesting article from Science Magazine:

"Other major global crises, such as climate change and biodiversity loss, demand cooperative global responses that don't leave out the poor. Once COVID-19 is under control, the world cannot return to business as usual. A thorough review of worldviews, lifestyles, and the problems of short-term economic valuation must be carried out. A more responsible, more sharing, more caring, more inclusive, and fairer society is required if we are to survive in the Anthropocene."

I fully agree that the crisis has revealed many weaknesses of the way we organize society: the costs of poverty and inequality, the lack of effective international collaboration, the need to strengthen local communities, the lack of proper attention to key workers.  The pandemic also proves many social-democratic ideas right: the importance of public services, the need to have a proper safety net, the central role of the state.  

Yet we run the risk of assuming that these are obvious facts and that most people will feel like we do. But will this really be the case?  Will people who have been in lockdown alone or with their families feel part of a larger community?  Will they have appetite for a revolution?  How will they respond to the lack of jobs, to huge uncertainty about the future? 

Maybe what most people end up supporting is a return to some kind of normality; just life as it was.  Maybe many others keep hoping for easy solutions and clear scapegoats, ending up supporting the radical right.  Let´s not forget that this is what happened in many countries after the Great Depression in 1929.

Of course, politics will matter--as my friend Ben Phillips argues here in an otherwise much more optimistic perspective than mine.  Different countries will go in different directions.  There will be agency from social movements and political parties to influence the agenda.  But I think we need to pay much more attention than we are doing to two issues:

1. How can we convince people that this is the time for progressive idea?  How can we do it in a way that is constructive and does not polarize?  Surely we cannot have faith in most politicians doing the job for us!

2. How can we understand and prepare for the real risk that a very dark kind of politics emerge out of all of this?