Just as fascism led to World War II, communism has engendered the greatest global health catastrophe of our time. The Chinese Communist Party, by initially covering up the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, helped unleash the world’s worst pandemic in more than a century. Today’s paralyzing pandemic, in terms of the extent of economic and social disruptions, has no parallel in modern history.
This underscores that China’s political system is a mortal threat to the world, even though its greatest impact is borne by Chinese nationals, who have to withstand its Orwellian surveillance and untold repression, including “re-education” of Muslims in the gulag. The pandemic’s inestimable human and economic toll has shown how one country’s authoritarianism can ravage the entire world.
Accentuating the pandemic is another extremism — one grounded in religion. The role of two proselytizing fundamentalist organizations in spreading the deadly coronavirus has exemplified how religious extremism threatens public health and national security.