Battle of Narratives: Discursive Responses to the Coronavirus Pandemic

In this time of pandemic, there have been heated debates surrounding the Coronavirus (COVID-19), from its high infection rate to the measures mitigating it and the availability of tests. Among these fiercely debated topics, the virus’ origin has prevailed as one of the most contested ones, provoking frustration and assertion of blame on “others.” This blame game has emerged from top officials to the average person posting on social media. The question therefore arises: What are these discourses and narratives created?

Throughout human history, pandemics have come and gone, from the Black Death (1347-51; 200 million dead), the Smallpox (1520; 56 million dead) to the Spanish Flu (1918-19; 50 million dead) (LePan 2020). Each of these pandemics has either left their mark on humans and history, helping a certain group conquer another or helped humanity in creating new scientific knowledge to prepare us for the next super virus. This can be seen in how humans have gained immunity to certain viruses over time, and how society has learned to mitigate or contain superbugs. However, what humans are not immune to are fear and panic. These are the driving forces that lead humans to turn on each other, to assign blame or, in more socio-political terms, creating the enemy.

Creating the Enemy

In times of uncertainty and shock, it is a human reaction to place blame for something, especially if “it” threatens, as Stanley Cohen referred to it in his theory of moral panic, “a condition, episode, person or group that emerges to become or defined as a threat to societal values (Cohen, Stanley 2011).” Historically, such groups have been or still are the Jewish people, the Roma people, the African-Americans, and many others (Pettigrew and Tropp 2008). However, in the case of the Coronavirus, the enemy is a virus, which is hard to conceptualize and understand. People tend to find a tangible and visible enemy, which, in the current situation, is being determined between two domineering nations: China and the US.

Discourse Patterns: Panic and Blame at the Macro Level

Once the global spread of COVID-19 became apparent, many countries reacted to the evolution of the pandemic differently. While European countries went into lockdown to try to mitigate the virus, the US took the opposite approach. On March 16th, President Trump took the step to create an enemy that people could accept via a tweet. In this tweet, he placed the blame on China by dubbing COVID-19 as a foreign virus. Later that day, during a press conference, he asserted that the virus was a “Chinese virus.” This comment sparked fierce debates on social media platforms over whether the comment was racist or xenophobic.

In turn, the Chinese government issued statements on social media and state television, attempting to reframe and control the narrative by shifting the blame back to the US. In those statements, they asserted that “the US brought the virus to China during military exercises”. This claim was further highlighted on Twitter by a Chinese government official. Other officials claimed that the virus was created in a military lab, as stated by the Chinese ambassador to the US, Cui Tiankai. The battle over controlling the narratives on the origins of the virus is ongoing (Anon 2020).

Securing Power Instead of Empowering Security Measures

Similar responses to the virus occurred in Hungary. On March 13th, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán declared to the press that the virus made its way into Hungary because of migration and foreigners. He asserted that “our experience is that primarily foreigners brought in the disease and that it is spreading amongst foreigners” and added later: “It’s no coincidence that the virus first showed up among Iranians.” This resulted in the expelling of two Iranian students from Hungary because they had “violated quarantine and left the hospital without protective gear.” That same day Hungary closed its borders. The rationale of the Prime Minister was that “we are fighting a two-front war, one front is called migration and the other is the coronavirus. There is a logical connection between the two, which is that the virus is spread with the movement of migration (AFP 2020; Gall 2020).”

While the Prime Minister may not accept the reality that the world is globalized and that humans are mobile, he has not ignored the political opportunity that the crisis provides him to consolidate his power. As cases rose in Hungary, on March 21st, Orbán placed a bill before Parliament that would extend his emergency powers indefinitely which would allow him to rule by decree and administer punishments for the promotion of what his administration considers fake news (Edr 2020; Zalan 2020). Fake news, in this case, would include anyone who disagrees with Fidesz`s narrative would receive lengthy prison sentences. Unfortunately, this bill was accepted and approved by parliament end of March.

The tendency of certain political leaders to place blame and to find or create a scapegoat in times of crisis is not unusual. These cases illustrate well how moral panic occurs alongside the weaponization of anti-immigrant discourse to promote narratives of national belonging during times of uncertainty. This is what Michael Billig refers to as “Banal Nationalism,” whilst others, like Ruth Wodak, would refer to these types of discourses as the “Politics of Fear” or “the populist discourses of the far-right” (Billig 2010; Mudde 2019; Wodak 2013, 2015). Such discourses focus on national identity, seeing the world along national- and border-lines or, through the politics of “othering,” or who is part of the “in-group” and who is in the “out-group.” Both Trump and Orbán are perfect examples of these phenomena.

Pandemics are a Challenge to Human Solidarity

Regardless of age, class, nationality or creed, one can see that pandemics can bring the worst out of people, but these exceptional situations also highlight the “areas of improvement” for each country, whether it be in foreign policy, the nations’ healthcare system or their perspectives on immigration. As a global society, we can either let this virus get the better of us quicker by blaming others and hoarding resources; or work together to find solutions to prevent the virus from spreading.

Leslie Ader is a doctoral student and researcher in migration and mobility at the University of Neuchâtel associated to the nccr – on the move in the project on Historical Perspective on Mobility in Welfare States and focuses on History of Welfare States, Discourse, Claims-Making, and Welfare Policies.

References

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