A number of far-right extremists have recently taken to social media platforms to spread conspiratorial content about COVID-19. Such conspiracy theories range from the virus being a biological weapon created by the Chinese government, to the predictable anti-Semitic tropes of ‘globalism’ claiming it was developed by the tech philanthropist Bill Gates in collaboration with the Jewish investor George Soros (a favourite target of the far-right).

The proliferation of such disinformation, circulated with the assistance of bot accounts, has been coupled with offline manifestations of authoritarian actions by government leaders. Take, for instance, Hungary under Viktor Orbán, who has recently capitalised on the opportunity to consolidate power and rule by decree with effectively no opposition according to the newly passed ‘Act on the containment of coronavirus’. As my colleague Cathrine Thorleifsson notes, this ‘makes yet another contribution to the erosion of democracy in Hungary’, a country which has been witnessing the effects of a radical right government in power, including the systematic censoring of the media and dismantling of education institutions.

What has largely gone unnoticed is the response of the far-right to the coronavirus in the world’s largest democracy—India…