For this interview series, Fabiana Natale and Gilles de Valk are interviewing experts from different backgrounds on the political implications of the COVID-19 pandemic and exploring the consequences the pandemic will have for (geo)political, security, and societal affairs.

After seven episodes, we have produced a succinct analysis of the trends observed so far.

For this seventh episode, we interviewed Francesco Trupia, Research Fellow at the Prague-based Center for Security Analyses and Prevention (CBAP). He has a PhD in Political Philosophy from the University of Sofia (Bulgaria) and works on the societal role of minority groups and democratisation in post-communist Eastern Europe, the Balkans (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, and Slovenia) and the Caucasus (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and south western Russia) in particular. In our conversation, we discussed the impact of the pandemic on the Balkans and the role of foreign actors in the region. 

‘On a national level, the pandemic began to expose pre-existing structural problems and accelerate democratic backsliding.’

‘Executive competences tend to be expanded and justified in the face of emergency situations.’

For this sixth episode, we interviewed Daniela Pisoiu, Senior Researcher at the Austrian Institute for International Affairs (OIIP) and expert of the Radicalisation Awareness Network. She has over fifteen years of experience in Islamist, right-wing and left-wing radicalisation, extremism, and terrorism, and is specialised in individual radicalisation processes. Her fieldwork includes interviews with (former) radicals and analyses of court files. In terms of regional focus, she works on Austria and Germany, as well as the Western Balkans and Europe more broadly. In our conversation, we first discussed radicalisation and deradicalisation mechanisms and then the exploitation of the pandemic by extremists. 

‘The pandemic has been exploited by jihadis, presenting the coronavirus as a punishment of Allah for the West, by right-wing extremist movements denouncing a Jewish plot, and by all sort of radicals fuelled with conspiracy theories, which are the first step into indoctrination.’

‘In the Middle East and Africa, the pandemic can increase the importance of terrorism. We often underestimate this, because we tend to be western-centric. In Europe, this crisis accelerating the empowerment of ring-wing radicals.’

‘Crises have always been good market opportunities for radicals to capitalise on.’

For this fifth episode, we interviewed Floris van Straaten, Middle East Editor at NRC Handelsblad, a Dutch daily newspaper. He was previously Asia Editor at the same newspaper and he worked in Pakistan as a freelancer during the 1980s, covering the war in Afghanistan, among other things. In our conversation, we discussed the political and economic consequences of the pandemic for the Middle East.

‘Many governments in the Middle East have used pandemic to increase their already considerable power over their population.’

‘The pandemic exposes inequality.’

‘Finally, the pandemic shows many Middle Eastern countries are even more dependent on oil than we thought and that they need to diversify their economies.’

In this third episode, we are interviewing Belén Rodríguez, Research Associate at the NATO StratCom COE. Rodríguez mainly focuses on Russian ‘information laundering’, a “process [in which] false or deceitful information is legitimised through a network of intermediaries that apply gradually a set of techniques in order to de-contextualise it and obscure the original source”. In our conversation with Rodríguez, we discussed different information laundering techniques, examples of information laundering during the corona crisis, and the future of the NATO-Russia relations. 

“With machine learning and artificial intelligence, disinformation will be even more complicated to debunk, but generally, the reciprocal aims of NATO and Russia should stay the same.”

“One of the biggest geopolitical risks of this crisis is the polarisation of public opinion towards democratic institutions.”

For this second episode, we interviewed Mikel Irizar, Operations Specialist at INTERPOL’s Command and Coordination Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In our conversation, we discussed the consequences of the pandemic for politics, economics, and organised crime in Latin America, and its impact on the work INTERPOL is doing.

“Criminal organisations are taking this opportunity to see who is in trouble, now that economic turmoil is coming to every household.”

“The cartels are solidifying their presence in areas where the state already had difficulties reaching out.”

In this first episode, we are interviewing Matthijs Lok, Senior Lecturer in Modern European History at the European Studies Department of the University of Amsterdam. He recently wrote a piece in which he examined the coronavirus from a historical perspective. As this is the first interview of a larger series, we think it is important to first look at the pandemic from a historical point of view, but also to bridge the gap between social sciences and humanities.

“The coronavirus is reinforcing existing trends, rather than constituting a break with the past”

“ This situation is extraordinary, but not unique. It helps to put it in a historical perspective”