This book explores how the alt-right has appropriated human rights rhetoric – once rooted in progressive ideals – to resist public health measures during the COVID-19 pandemic. Phrases like “My body, my choice” have been retooled to challenge vaccination and state intervention.
This book explores how the alt-right has appropriated human rights rhetoric – once rooted in progressive ideals – to resist public health measures during the COVID-19 pandemic. Phrases like “My body, my choice” have been retooled to challenge vaccination and state intervention. The author interrogates the historical and ideological malleability of human rights, revealing how their universalist claims are often compromised by exclusionary and reactionary forces. Central to this analysis is the pandemic’s role in exposing science as an emerging political cleavage. Through the lens of political mistrust, pseudoscience, conspiracy thinking, and neoliberal crisis, the book examines the conditions that gave rise to right-wing human rights discourse – and asks whether the concept of rights can still hold emancipatory promise in an era of ecological breakdown and rising technopolitical conflicts.
Introduction PART ONE: THE OBSOLESCENCE OF HUMAN RIGHTS
Chapter 1: Human
Rights: Historical Perspective
Chapter 2: Rethinking the Universality of
Human Rights
Chapter 3: Ideologization of Human Rights PART TWO: THE
ALT-RIGHT, THE PANDEMIC AND SCIENCE AS AN EMERGING POLITICAL CLEAVAGE
Chapter
4: Science as a New Line of Political Divisions
Chapter 5: The Role of
Distrust and Conspiracy Theories Conclusion Bibliography Index
Filip Balunovic (1987, Belgrade) is a research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy and Social Theory at the University of Belgrade and an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Media and Communication at Singidunum University.
