When the Covid pandemic began in early 2020, like many people I bought a copy of Albert Camus’ The Plague. It was for the pandemic what Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism was for the first months of Trump 1 in 2016: something to grasp onto as we tried to make sense of a tragedy unexpectedly thrust upon us.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I found Camus’ novel an enormous comfort as we dealt with our own plague. Plagues happen. They eventually end. Even the way that the people, experts and authorities dealt with Camus’ plague mirrored what was happening in our own societies: the reluctance to believe until the evidence becomes undeniable, the panic, the lockdowns, the people trying to get past the lockdowns, the heroic doctors trying to figure it out while comforting the dying. Also, the price gouging and the desperation of the people to pretend like everything’s normal, going to restaurants, enjoying the expensive wine, having a great time at the theatre. Until, of course, someone dies during the production, which casts a temporary pall on things.

For me, Camus helped to make the unknowable knowable. For me, this was enormously reassuring. It’s the not knowing that gets you. This is one reason I recommended the book to my parents, who I think found it similarly helpful.

But even more than the way it made the nightmare somewhat effable, I took from The Plague a way to live during a pandemic. There are many lessons one can take from this deeply philosophical and moral book. But for me none was more important than Camus’ assertion, through his point of view character, Dr. Rieux, that our job is not to spread the plague. Our job, in short, is not to do harm to others.

In acting so as not to do harm to others, we’re not only ensuring that we do not become a tool that hurt others. As Camus points out, we are also acting in a way that acknowledges reality. Because our other job is not to shy away from the reality of our situation. That other people don’t acknowledge reality doesn’t change our own individual, moral obligation to the truth, to our fellow humans. This is why my partner and I continue to mask, five years into a seemingly unending pandemic, even as everyone around us, including our workplaces and our governments, carry on as if doing so isn’t spreading the plague, maiming and killing literally countless people. Our governments, our societies, have also given up on counting, because to count is to acknowledge reality.

While others’ decisions have left us trapped in an unending plague, they have not changed the underlying moral calculus: to be true to reality, and not to spread disease. There is strength in a moral code.

Since last summer I’d been thinking of writing a longer piece along these lines to mark the upcoming fifth anniversary of the declaration of the global covid pandemic. Life intervened, but I may still flesh this out (with maybe actual direct quotes?). But I’m writing these notes today, Sunday, January 19, 2025, because of course Camus wrote The Plague as a political allegory for the rise of, and fight against, fascism in Europe. And tomorrow is the inauguration of Donald Trump.

Of Trump all we need say is what one of my Brock University colleagues noted at a public panel a couple of weeks ago: every reputable political scientist agrees that Trump is an authoritarian. The only question is whether he’s also a fascist.

Already, through unprecedented levels of donations to his inaugural ball or fishy legal settlements, media, tech and industry have signalled their fealty to Trump, with several tech oligarchs invited to ascend to his dais for the inauguration. US media has bent the knee. The Republican-controlled US Supreme Court has made him a king, placing him above the law. The Republican party has demonstrated no desire to stand up to him. Many Americans are holding out hope that possible losses in the upcoming 2026 midterms will curtail Trump, but the Democrats have been singularly unimpressive in rising to meet the magnitude of Trump’s challenge. And don’t forget that Trump is not just a cause, but a symptom of US authoritarianism, the culmination of a scorched-earth, anti-government and anti-Democratic politics that dates at least back to Newt Gingrich’s 1995 government shutdown.

While one wishes US citizens the best in their upcoming struggle to restore their Republic, the rest of us cannot count on their success. We must prepare for the US authoritarian, fascist plague to batter our shores for years to come.

Canadian failure and the coming fascist storm

In Canada, we can already see Camus’ allegory in play. Our leaders, without exception, wasted the last eight years under the assumption that Trump 1 was an aberration. No matter that the US under President Biden continued many of Trump’s openly protectionist policies, or that a never-to-be President Harris would have used the USMCA’s renegotiation clause to get Canada and Mexico to enact potentially long-reaching policy reforms in the two countries. To his lasting credit, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded forcefully to the first major outbreak of Trumpism in Canada – the February 2022 Ottawa Occupation – when Ottawa’s Mayor and Ontario’s Premier effectively deserted the city. But his government did precious little to otherwise protect the country. Bill C-18, the Online News Act, which attempts to provide sorely needed funding to Canadian news media, both recognizes the problem caused by a poorly informed public while also being utterly insufficient to deal with the magnitude of the problem.

Meanwhile, the Conservative Party’s current leader owes his leadership to the Occupation, the previous leader having been forced out for not being supportive enough of the occupiers. The current leader, in turn, has borrowed the grievances and language of the occupiers, seeing in them his path to power.

And even as Trump completed his vile political resurrection on November 5, Canadian leaders and pundits have been tortuously slow to recognize Trump II for the existential threat that political scientists, for our part, immediately recognized him for, years ago. Trudeau’s surprise trip to Mar a Lago, by displaying subservience rather than acting as the equal head of a sovereign state, humiliated both himself and Canada.

The government’s initial attempts at appeasement were no better: rented Black Hawk helicopters and proposed joint strike force have all the earmarks of an improvised response to an imaginary problem, designed to distract Trump with trinkets but not to actually improve Canadians’ security. They’re a bribe.

The problem here is that Trump doesn’t care about policy. He doesn’t care about the Canada-US border, where fentanyl and large scale illegal immigration aren’t big problems. He cares about domination. Most importantly, his (likely illegal) tariff threats signal, combined with his 51^st state rhetoric, that he’s interested in undermining Canadian sovereignty. Canadian independence and Canadian democracy are on the menu.

In a few recent pieces and presentations, I’ve outlined what I think Canadian leaders need to do in order to respond to the US threat. Our current and prospective leaders have, to date, failed to rise to meet the day. Former Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland has come closest in her resignation letter and recent Toronto Star oped, although I’ve yet to see a vision for Canada that reflects the strength of her view of Canada-US relations. Of our provincial and territorial premiers, their very position limits their ability to fill the federal leadership vacuum. In any case, the days of Bill Davis are long gone.

The politician who’s come closest to proposing a vision that fits the enormity of the challenge is former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. That a 91-year-old two decades out of power has best read the situation tells you all you need to know about how lacking Canada is in effective leadership.

Fascism and the truth

Which brings us back to Camus.

For all the death and devastation, The Plague is, ultimately, a hopeful story, both in terms of the plague and as an allegory for fascism. Despite initial resistance, the government comes through and works to fight the plague. The plague recedes.

The Covid pandemic has not followed the same playbook. Governments and their publics have decided to ignore the reality of the plague, condemning individuals to death and societies to continued disruptions and destabilization, from things such as long-term disabilities due to the still-mysterious Long Covid. We failed to meet the challenge.

A society can only alter the course of a pandemic (rather than letting it master us, burning through a population and reach its own, possibly devastating, equilibrium) by recognizing reality and choosing the moral path. Do our job: don’t spread the plague. That’s the lesson from The Plague.

The lesson from the Covid pandemic is: your efforts might not work. The plague may continue indefinitely. Enough people may decide to take leave of reality and live in denial.

The same is true of our current fascist moment, in the United States as in Canada. The United States may not recover its democracy. Or it may be transformed in ways that we can’t even currently imagine. Canada may end up as a 51^st state in all but name, subservient to the US power.

But whether or not our leaders are able to rise to the occasion doesn’t change our own, individual obligation: not to spread the disease, of covid, of authoritarianism, of fascism. In the novel, Dr. Rieux and his compatriots did not make their efforts conditional upon ultimate victory. They did what they did because it was their moral obligation to fight disease and to stop it from spreading.

I’m writing this mostly for myself, on the brink of what feels like an irreversible, epochal change that will touch the lives of every Canadian. For the first time in my lifetime – over 50 years – the institutions in which we’ve lived our lives, and which have given our lives structure and even meaning, are in flux. As someone who studied Canada-US relations at the doctoral level, I don’t know what’s coming. Only that when the underlying rules change, almost anything’s possible. And chances are the changes will end up ruining a lot of lives, a lot of communities.

But we understand this disease, fascism. It seeks to destroy knowledge and compassion. It scoffs at the rule of law. It disdains democracy. It will seek to turn us against one another, to divide and conquer. It believes that raw economic and military power should decide all. It sees us as little people, as means to others’ ends.

I don’t know what forms this disease will take. I don’t know what Trump will try to do, in the United States or to Canada. I only know that he, and the United States so long as the Republicans are in power, will seek only to dominate. But while these actions and reactions will cause much unneeded devastation and harm, our own obligation – our task – remains the same. As individuals, as citizens, as democrats, our job is to resist any efforts to dominate us, and to ensure that we in turn do not dominate others. We must honour the truth and be compassionate to our neighbours. These values must be reflected in our everyday lives, in our work and in our politics. Time to mask up.

Taking a cue from Paul Krugman, here’s Donny Benét, with a song that captures perfectly our awful moment. It goes hard.