Abstract

While the COVID-19 pandemic draws attention to the vulnerability of the neoliberal economic and political complex, the general dynamic of numerous crises in the last forty years reminds us that neoliberalism managed every time not only to avoid serious backlashes, but also to take advantage of emergency situations to strengthen itself, in particular with the implementation of de-democratizing policies. In this paper the impact of the pandemic on neoliberal rationality is assessed, on the one hand showing the novelty of the present situation in the history of neoliberal capitalism, while on the other hand pointing out the similarities with past crises and, through them, warning about the antidemocratical dynamics that COVID-19 could trigger.