The coronavirus pandemic may be a time of uncertainty, but the Right’s reaction to it has been all-too-predictable. Despite a considerable body of scientific research showing that masks dramatically reduce the possibility of transmission, a less than negligible niche of conservative figures has agitated against them — in some cases resorting to theatrics that defy belief.
In June, a Republican councilman in Scottsdale, Arizona grabbed headlines by organizing a rally in protest against mask mandates throughout Maricopa County and shouting, “I can’t breathe” before tearing off his mask in front of the assembled crowd. Speaking at the rally, a Republican candidate for the US senate described local mask mandates as a “communist insurrection.” It’s just one example among many, but similar actions have regularly made the news thanks to the apparently widespread right-wing impulse to make mask-wearing yet another front in America’s perpetually exhausting culture war. A good deal of it has probably flowed in top-down fashion from Donald Trump himself, who only recently shifted his rhetoric on masks after months of trying to downplay their effectiveness.
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