Emergencies clarify. At an interpersonal level, the coronavirus pandemic has exposed our values and assumptions, the state of relationships, our judgments of responsibility and risk. Politically, it has thrown our social and economic priorities into painfully sharp relief. The language we use to make sense of this public health emergency is revealing, too. Pandemic rhetoric shows us how we imagine ourselves politically: not as mere populations, passive and subject to disease, but as publics, ready to take action together.

In recent years, democracies around the world have been buckling under pressure from illiberal populists and right-wing authoritarians. Yet with one notable exception, Western leaders have not met Covid-19 with the explicit language of democratic citizenship. Instead, they’ve relied upon the tried and true rhetoric of national solidarity. This might be effective in the short term, but it’s a missed opportunity. After all, from climate to migration, privacy to unchecked capitalism, all the challenges awaiting us once the pandemic recedes extend well beyond national borders—and call our democratic lives uncomfortably into question.

At first glance, the leaders of Western democracies have chosen broadly similar language to speak to anxious citizens: burden-sharing, sacrifice, responsibility, neighborly concern, resilience—words delivered with warmth but resolve. But that’s where the similarities end. Global as we have become, our leaders have been drawing upon specific national histories and conceptual repertoires to make their calls to action meaningful.

“We are at war”: Like a drumbeat, this repeated line structured French President Emmanuel Macron’s video address from the Élysée Palace. His narration conjured the trench warfare that twice marked French territory during the twentieth century. “We are not fighting an army or another nation. But the enemy is there: invisible, elusive, and advancing,” Macron said. “All of our commitment, all of our energy, all of our strength must be concentrated upon a single objective: slowing the forward movement of the virus.” Casting health care workers as frontline soldiers, Macron also recalled the stoic civilian leaders of wars past by urging citizens to remain calm and resist the temptation “to believe in various false rumors, half-experts, or know-nothings.” In a country rich with public memories of the Second World War and storied (albeit romanticized) resistance to Nazism, these were words directed less to citizens and more to comrades—or even subordinates.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has likewise called the virus an “enemy” to be beaten and styled his ministry an emergency “wartime government.” He has informed Britons that “each and every one of us is directly enlisted.” But at the center of his wartime pandemic rhetoric lies, specifically, the spirit of the Blitz: the grit shown by British soldiers and civilians in 1940 as they fought a lonesome war against the Third Reich. It is language to justify deprivation and demand sacrifice. British Health Secretary Matt Hancock reminded voters that their forebears, “despite the pounding every night, the rationing, the loss of life … pulled together in one gigantic national effort. Today our generation is facing its own test, fighting a very real and new disease.” The wrinkle, of course, is that Brexiteers like Johnson favored this vocabulary long before the coronavirus surfaced. One wonders how much more resonant it would seem today had they kept their rhetorical powder dry.