Authors

Jitka Kralova¹;  ¹ UCL SSEES, UK

Discussion

This paper is based on a digital ethnographic fieldwork, which consisted of participant observation and interviews with research participants engaged in online debates about the pandemic and current political affairs in the Czech Republic. It was conducted as part of a larger project POPREBEL, which investigates the phenomenon of populist politics in Central and Eastern Europe. 

In this paper the author first addresses the process through which the new and unprecedented pandemic reality, characterised by various government-imposed restrictions and lockdowns, led to experiences of isolation, alienation, and fragmentation, as described by the participants. Based on thesefirst-hand accounts, the paper provides a brief background to the emergent conditions of the socio-economic precarity (aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic), which has become a pivotal component for many of the research participants’ everyday reality, shaping not only their lives but also political choices. It then traces some of the common patterns through which the participants became interested, engaged and actively involved in various anti-systemic and protest movements, which organised (both online and offline) around their opposition to the Covid-19 imposed measures and restrictions. The author discusses how such (re)politicization, in which some of her participants were involved, went hand in hand and was further bolstered by their declining trust in the conventional political, medical and media discourses and institutions in the country.

Secondly, the author sketches out some of the key features and mobilisation strategies utilized by those newly formed ‘anti-covid’ groups and movements. In this context, the concept of solidarity as conceptualised by the organisers of this panel is employed, in order to elaborate on the ‘anti-covid’ movement’s discursive strategies. More specifically, it will focus on the ways in which particular narratives of key historical periods have been employed to evoke collective affinity and affective attachments to the nation and its historical ability to resist external forces of domination and oppression.

This paper further interrogates the notion of solidarity as it was experienced by the participants, consisting of a newly found shared epistemology and identity, which were predicated on a strongly antagonistic position towards the mainstream political, media and scientific discourses. Based on these observations, the author of this paper discusses the potential limitations of such solidarity projects and debates the durability of their mutual ties, given the fairly heterogeneous composition of the ‘anti-covid’ movement’s members and the virtual and hybrid nature of their shared environment - the internet.