The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic was exploited by dominant economic and political forces as a pretext for further authoritarianism and the commodification of social policy. After a decade of successive crises (economic, refugee, climate), the health threat was instrumentalized to upgrade the neoliberal political priorities.

Through individual responsibility, practices of repression were legitimized, instead of strengthening the welfare state, to manage an unprecedented and undiagnosed social condition. In Greece, the forced confinement at home, the social stigmatization of youth, the ban on protests, the overall police-centered management of the pandemic, and the beatings of citizens, along with the cynical management of the refugee crisis, accompanied the promotion of unprecedented social deregulations.

The privatization of supplementary insurance, the abolition of the eight-hour workday, the enactment of the “Bankruptcy Law,” the inadequate strengthening of public transportation, health and education systems, and the establishment of a university police force are characteristic features of this phenomenon. A version of authoritarian neoliberalism seems to be steadily gaining ground, attempting to establish the law and order of the markets as the omnipotent doctrine of our times.