Medical Populism and Lockdownism

The COVID-19 pandemic came as the most crucial public health crisis of the twenty first century. It mandated immediate responses from the state authorities to appeal to the global anxieties and fears that ensued among local populations due to the contagion. However, the recent crisis became a fertile ground for populist politics to push through and achieve political agenda and advantages using medical populism – a term which carries a fundamental dichotomy on its bearing, “pure people” and “contagious others.” Taking on the COVID-19 pandemic as a political canvas, the political parties of both the left and right ideologies across the globe came together to enact their own “performance of crisis” (Moffitt 2015) under a unified umbrella term – Lockdown.