How Authoritarians Are Exploiting the COVID-19 Crisis to Grab Power

Expand People wearing masks, attend a vigil for Chinese doctor Li Wenliang, in Hong Kong, February 7, 2020. © 2020 AP Photo/Kin Cheung For authoritarian-minded leaders, the coronavirus crisis is offering a convenient pretext to silence critics and consolidate power. Censorship in China and elsewhere has fed the pandemic, helping to turn a potentially containable threat into a global calamity. The health crisis will inevitably subside, but autocratic governments’ dangerous expansion of power may be one of the pandemic’s most enduring legacies. In times of crisis, people’s health depends at…

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