The mainstream narrative in far-right politics made the COVID-19 pandemic nearly synonymous with anti-vax claims and conspiracy theorizing. Indeed, numerous far-right and right-wing populist leaders gained electoral support by appealing to the sensibilities of voters who were skeptical of vaccines or concerned about the introduced measures and their impact on work and sociability. To gain approval, they moved back and forth from support for the lockdown to calls for its suspension, casting themselves as the representatives of working people, and—in capitalizing on people’s fears and anxieties—filling pandemic discourse with xenophobic and nativist claims (Wondreys and Mudde 2022). At the outset, numerous accounts on social responses to the COVID-19 pandemic equated far-right politicians with the people—be it their voters or not—who likewise opposed COVID-19–related measures. They operated with dichotomies: responsible/irresponsible actions, altruistic/egoistic citizens, true/fake news. It took some time to begin interrogating social, political, and economic costs of the introduced measures and profound effects of both the pandemic and responses to it.

Work/labor remains one domain in which most dramatic transformations occurred—or rather, are still occurring. Here, I shed some light on how this transformation was experienced and perceived by members of youth far-right movements in Italy and Poland, demonstrating how ethnography enables us to find nuance (Pinheiro-Machado and Scalco 2021) and question dichotomic categorizations. The people I introduce below are all protagonists of my larger project on far-right activism in contemporary Europe (Pasieka 2024). What I share below are annotated fragments from three diary entries documenting various offline and online sites.

April 2020, Facebook 

Alberto: “Hi Aga! Yes, everything's fine. Fortunately, Puglia has been largely unaffected by the virus! How are things in Austria? Here, too, the economic and social situation will be devastating, with the difference that the Italian state is totally unprepared to deal with it. In the south, the situation could become explosive. And, among other things, I see the shocking suppression of every constitutional right in Italy, carried out in absolute silence, as very bad . . . In Poland, it's very similar . . . frightening. The “nice” thing about Italy is that the ‘liberal’ intelligentsia obediently applauds . . . ;)”

Staszek: “I follow socio-economic analyses related to the crisis (. . .) I would add to that a potential change in social psychology. We have a whole generation, for example in Poland, that knows no fear, knows no sacrifice, etc. This whole pandemic thing has the potential to be a turning point. (. . .) The key question is probably whether there will be any conclusions, any revolutionary changes in political and economic systems, economics, and social relations. And above all, does anyone have any idea what the future will look like after the pandemic and the realities of the crisis are over? Returning to what was seems like intellectual laziness and further proof of the irresponsibility of the elites. And here, to put it bluntly, I have much greater hopes for left-wing socio-political reflection than for right-wing reflection, which by its nature likes what it knows and does not think about what to change.”

October 2020, Florence 

During the second wave of the pandemic, when some of the restrictions are lifted, I manage to travel to Italy. Being in a deserted, free-of-tourists Florence is surreal. I travel there to participate in the delivery of food packages for the poor which the local headquarter of the movement I have been following organizes once a month.

We go to grab some food before performing the deliveries, and the conversation somewhat naturally tackles the situation of the people working in the gastronomy service. My interlocutor, Maffeo, considers the obligation to close restaurants by 6 P.M. to be absurd and threatening for their survival: “It’s in the evening that restaurants make money.” He tells me about two baristas who recently hanged themselves. One of them bought a bar in January (just before the pandemic began) and couldn't cope anymore with the growing debt. Then, Maffeo talks at length about how unfair exceptions made for delivery service are: who guarantees sanitary standards there? (As a food-lover, he also ponders how could anyone order a pasta al ragu as a takeout: “A pizza, I get it, but a pasta that should be served and eaten immediately?”)

Once at the headquarters, we meet three other activists, put our masks on, and load packages into the car. One of the young men tells me he’s glad he can volunteer as he has nothing to do at the (completely empty) hotel where he works; indeed, he fears he will soon be laid off. We drive to a poor area of the city and visit different apartments. It’s hard to say what people appreciate more: the food package, or an opportunity to talk. Many ask us if we know of any employment possibilities. Back in the car, activists tell me about the skyrocketing number of families asking for help after the pandemic began. One of the credos behind the movement’s social assistance project is “giving people tools”—helping to a write a CV, apply for jobs or social housing. This form of support becomes much harder to sustain the moment the economy shuts down.

We go back to the headquarters, which is as empty as the whole city. Activists don’t have permission to organize anything, and they struggle to pay rent—they usually manage to cover it thanks to the tickets from, and the food they cook for, their events. Sipping a beer, my research participants make fun of local and national authorities. On our way, we find streets surrounding the football stadium closed for traffic, even though the teams play in an empty stadium and the game is streamed. Street traffic is an eagerly discussed issue. Why do city mayors encourage people to buy scooters, which lead to many accidents, rather than increasing the number of buses, thereby reducing the number of people in each bus, and renting buses that are currently empty, supporting companies in trouble (such as travel companies)? In any example they give, they emphasize the concern with work and working people, contrasting themselves with other, supposedly indifferent, movements and NGOs. They also share various absurd experiences with testing, quarantines, and related bureaucratic hassles. One of them sneers: “It’s the bureaucracy and not the virus that kills us.”

September 2021, Milan

As a part of my research activities, each year I attended a summer gathering organized by Italian activists. In 2021, the group enjoyed the fact they were able to gather again and held a big event. Still, the pandemic was in the air, and when catching up with the activists I hadn’t seen for a while I would often hear whether they were vaccinated or not, and what kind of job prospects they saw for themselves. Some were relieved they could go to their old workplace, others expressed annoyance with home office and talked about hunger for social contact.

What they agreed on uniformly was the inability of the Italian state to deal with the crisis. A few months earlier, Italy introduced the so-called green pass which allowed its holders to access indoor restaurants, bars, and cultural venues. To my research participants, the state’s obsession with control was a cover up for its incapacity to address broader problems of the job market and proof of the state’s ignorance when it comes to people’s everyday realities. As one activist said, “The problem is that [Italian] people were long made to believe that washing the dishes in London is more valuable than being an entrepreneur-artisan in a small village.” The situation of local entrepreneurs—whose (shut down) commercial activities suffered during the pandemic due to a competition from (“always open”) big online retailers—was thus not seen by them as a merely economic problem, but also a moral and cultural one, a question regarding surviving the crisis and living a dignified life.

Further, activists mobilized the notion of solidarity to challenge the state’s “blind” approach. Toni, owner of a bar in the center of Milan, explained it to me in the following words: “I find the green pass to be very problematic. I’m not allowed to let inside a non-vaccinated man—the same man, who, when my bar could only do take-outs, came every day, stood outside and waited for an espresso.” Toni explained to me how absurd it was: going for a coffee to Italy is about socializing, about a daily ritual, that getting a cold espresso in a plastic cup cannot substitute. “When I asked him,” Toni continued, “He said he just wanted to support me and didn’t want me to go out of business.”

“It’s not about left-wing or right-wing parties,” another activist added, “nearly all the parties supported liberticidal measures, including the Lega [far-right party]—I’ll never vote any of them . . . As a matter of fact, the strongest virus is the virus of conformism.”

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How to reconcile the image of a “caring” far-right movement, genuinely preoccupied about the lots of co-inhabitants, with its strategic self-representation as the one and only defenders of working people’s interests? Far-right activism during the pandemic meant both; as a matter of fact, work/labor is the domain where care and political agitation dangerously intersect. However, the short glimpses of activists’ responses to pandemic unveil much more than the far-right ideological framing. In admitting that their skepticism towards right-wing sociopolitical “reflection,” the disappointment with all political parties, and the critique of “blind conformism” and tacit permission to curtail freedoms, activists express a desire for radical solutions and radical changes. While it’s highly like most of us would disagree with their reading of “solution” and “change,” a hope for something more than “a return to what was” does not have a political affiliation.