Ideological Extremism or Far-Right Attitudes? The Role of Ideology for COVID-19 Scepticism

Abstract

Whereas previous social science scholarship on the COVID-19 pandemic has primarily focused on health behaviour, social distancing, or pandemic-related conspiracy beliefs, we investigate the drivers of COVID-19 scepticism. COVID-19 sceptics view the virus as harmless (i.e., not worse than a casual flu). Using data from a representative survey conducted in the East German region of Thuringia in autumn 2020, we show that farright political attitudes and low trust in political institutions are crucial drivers of COVID-19 scepticism.

Covid-19 Conspiracy Belief and Conceptualizations of Democracy

“…The positive bivariate association (see Figure 1) seems to be influenced mainly by Covid-19 conspiracy believers' authoritarianism as well as their far-right political ideology (see also Table S.1 in the supplementary material). This is in line with findings that show strong ties between far-right ideology and Covid-19 beliefs (e.g., Eberl et al, 2021;Küppers & Reiser, 2022).…”

“…Conspiracy theories were, moreover, described as the common link connecting a heterogeneous group of anti-Covid protesters. While the followers of these anti-Covid protests characterize themselves as the defenders of democracy, freedoms, and civil right, they are perceived as a serious challenge to representative democracy due to their links to right-wing ideology, ideological extremism, and low trust in political institutions (Bruder & Kunert, 2022;Küppers & Reiser, 2022;Uscinski et al, 2020). Despite this contradiction, little is known about the associations between conspiracy belief and democracy (see, e.g., Albertson & Guiler, 2020;Pantazi et al, 2021;Pickel et al, 2020 for exceptions).…”

“…However, the support of technocratic mode of decision-making is surprising given that it does not empower citizens and cannot reduce the feeling of powerlessness and lack of control (Pantazi et al, 2021). In addition, Covid-19 conspiracy believers heavily criticized the legitimacy of the scientific experts and of technocratic institutions being responsible for monitoring the disease during the pandemic (Pantenburg & Sepp, 2021;Küppers & Reiser, 2022). But on the other side, conspiracy believers do not reject expertise per se.…”

“…In contrast to direct democracy, it does not empower citizens and cannot reduce the feeling of powerlessness and lack of control (see Pantazi et al, 2021). Furthermore, anti-Covid protesters and Covid-19 conspiracy believers criticized the legitimacy of scientific experts during the pandemic (Pantenburg & Sepp, 2021), denied the accuracy of scientific findings and criticized technocratic institutions which have been responsible for monitoring the pandemic (e.g., Küppers & Reiser, 2022;Latkin et al, 2021).We therefore propose the following hypothesis:…”

The print press and its politicization of public health: The case of COVID-19

“…Others have argued that in the Western European context it is ideological extremism on both ends of the political spectrum that is of significance, especially if there is political mistrust (Debus and Tosun, 2021) as is the case with anti-elite populists, with right-wing political ideology only playing ‘a subordinate role’ to populism (Eberl et al, 2021). On balance, far-right political attitudes are argued to be stronger predictors of Covid scepticism (Küppers and Reiser, 2022) especially when there is a combination of right-wing attitudes and populism (Juen et al, 2023). In the UK however, partisan politics does not appear to have any significant influence on Covid compliance measures (Harper et al, 2021; Pennycook et al, 2022).…”