Thomas Johnson - The Blog

Part 2 of Politicsweb's response to the coronavirus pandemic. Part 1 is here . In this post I give perspectives on its evolution to the far-right media space. Around the world the right has denied and downplayed the coronavirus pandemic. For two months reports circulated Donald Trump was warned in January but dismissed it. Newly released memos confirm former economic adviser Peter Navarro warned the “coronavirus had the potential to kill hundreds of thousands of Americans and derail the US economy unless tough action were taken immediately”. Now Trump's  looking for a scapegoat as US deaths grow, blaming WHO. (See here and here .) But as the catastrophe is evident with rising infections and deaths daily, the right propagate misinformation (it's a Chinese virus), conspiracies ( a Chinese plan for world domination ) and tout unproven remedies like  hydroxychloroquine  as a cure.  In South Africa the right and far-right are a marginal but noisy group almos...

I wrote here of South African media's response to the coronavirus pandemic. Here I state Politicsweb is pushing a dangerous denialism of the pandemic. Politicsweb, like other South African media, ignored the coronavirus pandemic until the last minute . While the world shuts down and is in a state of war with an unseen enemy, which doesn’t care about political ideology, it’s predictably using the virus to promote its far-right agenda and pushing a dangerous denialism of the coronavirus. (Disclosure: PW published my unsolicited articles until 2018.) Editor James Myburgh (PhD political science, Oxon ) seldom writes articles or editorials but in the past two weeks wrote two ( here and here ) questioning aspects of the world’s and South Africa’s strategy to fight the virus especially lockdowns. PW columnists, regulars and occasionals – Jeremy Gordin , Andrew Donaldson , John Kane-Berman , IRR CEO Frans Cronje and far-right denialist, conspiracy theorist and eccentric Ivo Vegte...

International media covered the coronavirus pandemic and the disease it causes, Covid-19, from the time it came to the attention of the west in January. I’ve been following the story since then. It was lead story, particularly in The Guardian and usually second lead in the New York Times, which like US media primarily focuses on local issues. However, since the virus took hold in the west to epidemic proportions it was the main lead. South African society, government and media – mainstream and independents – largely ignored it until late February when South African citizens in Wuhan were expatriated. Before this the virus and its spread around the world received little attention. Initially even the government considered the plight of citizens in wuhan and their pleas to be brought home as not important and said they were safe there in the Chinese’s care. That and the virus’ spread around the world from China was relegated it to foreign news. This was reflected in the attitude...