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bamboobones_rory's review
This was an interesting one. At first I was worried it would be a covid-skeptic book, based on the publisher, but the author goes on to highlight an increasing desire of the masses globally to trust technology or governments instead of thinking with nuance but does not deny that COVID is real. He doesn't claim that this is new- but that it's a concerning recent trend that probably foreshadows totalitarianism on the rise. Desmet mentions reliance on technology, blind trust of government in the pandemic, and lack of nuance in social justice movements. In my own opinion, I think he misses some major points of #MeToo and BLM movements. He is a European scholar looking at the reactions and bandwagoning, and it's clear from his writing he has a liberal view of these issues, and it doesn't come through that intersectionality and feminism has been warped and distorted by neoliberal ideas. I think it's not responsible of him to reflect on those movements while equating them with the liberal reactions, and not mentioning or considering how they arose, and what intersectional and racial justice activism looks like to organizers and others on the left (not liberals). While the way the general public interprets it is important for how he talks about the masses wanting everything to be simpler in a move towards accepting being told what to do- it's not ethical journalism or writing to not fully cover what a movement is at the beginning, and only what the pop culture interpretation became. Good points about the trends of rising fascism and more importantly people's acceptance of it. But I would recommend many articles (which are much shorter) making the same point before this book.
eliza_55's review against another edition
2.0
Dieses Buch hatte sehr viel weniger mit Totalitarismus, dafür aber sehr viel mehr mit dem Coronavirus (genauer genommen mit der Kritik an den Maßnahmen) zu tun als erwartet.
olityr's review against another edition
informative
medium-paced
4.0
Parts 1 & 2 of this book are absolutely brilliant! Worth five stars for sure. Part 3 was somewhat disappointing. It felt a little bit like he used in part 3 some of the sloppy science and lazy reasoning he accuses many in the scientific community of using in part 1.
heikelefevre's review against another edition
3.0
Read it for school (cultuur en maatschappijkritiek), wel een must read!