Fear of cultural dilution. Fear of being left behind. Fear of loss of assumed identity. Fear of losing assumed privilege. Fear of change. Fear of “they’re different from us.” And almost always, there needs to be a clearly demographically identified cultural threat. Jews. Muslims. Catholics. Darker skinned people. Immigrants. “Radicals” (anyone who holds contrary views). Etc. Etc. Those blamed must be demonized and attacking them somehow justified by the autocrat in power. Facts are irrelevant, mythology and conspiracy reign supreme. Disagreement is not tolerated.
These are the consistent patterns that are growing around the world. Add the ability to distort on a mass basis, from traditional to contemporary social media… and in the United States, the feeling of power many now have by just holding a gun. Individuals are able to filter out from their sensory input any notions that disagree with their perspective. Given the complexity of the world today, many have simply outsourced their opinions to a loud-voiced cult leader. Democracy simply cannot survive in this rising toxic environment.
The new vector: The notion that one singular point of view is the only correct perspective (e.g., “right thinking” vs “woke” ideology or worse, “Whatever I say!”), and the complete annihilation of divergent opinions, actions or thoughts. Correct people vs demon others. This hardly an American phenomenon as the above photographs of “correct thinking” autocrats illustrates. A recent election in Indonesia placed Prabowo Subianto, a rightwing functionary with a checked past of brutality as a military commander, first in the presidential race. Even France is bristling with prospects of a rightwing takeover by ultra-rightist, Marine LePen. This has become a global trend, motivated for a long time by the seeming economic miracle of autocratic China (the “model for economic success”)… a nation whose economy is now plunging. Oddly in their eyes, today, that the United States is leading in comparative global prosperity is simply not reported.
Beginning with piece in the February 15th issue, UK’s The Economist addressed this spreading phenomenon: “In the 1980s Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher built a new conservatism around markets and freedom. Today Donald Trump, Viktor Orban and a motley crew of Western politicians have demolished that orthodoxy, constructing in its place a statist, “anti-woke” conservatism that puts national sovereignty before the individual. These national conservatives are increasingly part of a global movement with its own networks of thinkers and leaders bound by a common ideology. They sense that they own conservatism now—and they may be right.
“Despite its name, national conservatism could not be more different from the ideas of Reagan and Thatcher. Rather than being sceptical of big government, national conservatives think ordinary people are beset by impersonal global forces and that the state is their saviour. Unlike Reagan and Thatcher, they hate pooling sovereignty in multilateral organisations, they suspect free markets of being rigged by the elites and they are hostile to migration. They despise pluralism, especially the multicultural sort. National conservatives are obsessed with dismantling institutions they think are tainted by wokeness and globalism.
“Instead of a sunny belief in progress, national conservatives are seized by declinism. William Buckley, a thinker of the old school, once quipped that ‘A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling stop.’ By comparison, national conservatives are revolutionaries. They do not see the West as the shining city on the hill, but as Rome before the fall—decadent, depraved and about to collapse amid a barbarian invasion. Not content with resisting progress, they also want to destroy classical liberalism.
“Some people expect all this to blow over. National conservatives are too incoherent to pose a threat, they say. Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s prime minister, supports Ukraine; Mr Orban has a soft spot for Russia. The Polish Law and Justice party (PIS) is anti-gay; in France Marine Le Pen is permissive. Besides, the obsession with national sovereignty would make people worse off, as trade collapses, economic growth stalls and civil rights are curtailed. Voters would surely choose to restore the world liberalism made.
“That view is unforgivably complacent. National conservatism is the politics of grievance: if policies lead to bad outcomes, its leaders will shift the blame onto globalists and immigrants and claim this only proves how much is wrong with the world. For all their contradictions, national conservatives have been able to unite around their hostility towards common enemies, including migrants (especially Muslims), globalists and all their supposed abettors. Nine months before America’s election, Mr Trump is already undermining NATO.” Trump, embracing Russia, skipped over the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny in an isolated Siberian prison, far from any watchful eyes. Biden decried the obvious brutality of the Putin regime.
These growing trends lead to ungovernable nations or the very real prospect of the installation, perhaps by force, of a brutal autocrat even in the most democratic countries. As the removal of caps on campaign contributions under Citizens United vs FEC (US Supreme Court 2010) produced a significant shift, pushing extremism and extremist candidates mostly from the right, into elective office. They simply adopted the extremist views of mega-billionaires, now unleashed from spending caps, and money flowed to elect these abundantly unqualified candidates.
Want proof? The GOP-controlled US House of Representatives, currently dominated by an ultra-rightwing minority of Republicans who, with the help of a retribution-oriented Donald Trump, have pushed Congress to pass 90% fewer bills in this session that the average number of bills passed by immediately preceding generations of Congress. We are quite willing to dwell on age, forgetting that it is Republicans who approved and then changed their minds under directions from Trump, a legislative package that would have gone a long way to solve our immigration problems at our southern border. Reason: it might be interpreted as a Biden success.
I’m Peter Dekom, and for those who say that Americans will get the president they deserve, I question how valid an election can be when so many voters are basing their decision on truly fabricated facts… and feel terribly for the rest of us.
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