Apr 17
The Entire Planet Is Turning Far Right — And It Might Not Stop
This Is Becoming a Far Right Planet — And We Should All Be Very Worried, Because the 1930's Are Repeating Themselves
A few years ago, you might have thought to yourself — ah, this is going to be one of those times. A far right wave will sweep across the world, and then it will ebb. It happens, from time to time. Batten down the hatches and wait for the storm to pass. But something very different appears to be happening.
Hence, for quite some time now, I'd bet that many of us have been…waiting. For the pendulum to swing back the other way. As it so often has. The pendulum of politics. We've been waiting patiently for people to come back to their senses. It's just a phase, we've told ourselves. Sooner or later, this will pass, the way that our polities and societies have swung harder and harder to the far right.
Only it's not passing.
From East to West, North to South, what defines our planet today is that it's a far right planet. This trend doesn't seem to be a wave. It shows no signs of ebbing or abating. It seems to be a long-run change, a tectonic shift. And that is a chilling thought. It means that the pendulum might not swing back…at all.
I shouldn't have to give you many examples, but let me take a moment anyways, beginning with some you don't even suspect or may not have even heard of.
Brits and Australians are nationalistic people to the core, who think of themselves as democratic — and yet they've led the world in essentially human trafficking refugees to poor countries in breach of international law. Britain's PM broke his own lockdown laws…and Australia's is a climate change denier. Yet both of their parties appear to be in power for life. Brits are in such dire straits that people can't afford to heat their homes. They call it a "cost of living crisis," but it's really just a crisis of political mismanagement.
Britain and Australia illustrate one of the ways in which this is becoming a far right wing planet. There are no political consequences, at least for the hard right. In Britain, a decade and more of ultra right wing rule have plunged people into crisis — even its own government admits this. What would you do if grandma couldn't afford heating? You'd probably vote the bums out. But not so in Britain. The Tories now appear to have consolidated something very much like one party rule. There is nothing — and I mean nothing — they can do to incur political consequences, meaning "people stop voting for them." Nothing. The ongoing catastrophe of Brexit? Nope. Young people never being able to afford a home? Nope. Old people who can't afford heating? Nope.
Nothing seems to matter. Politics appear to have simply stopped working, because nothing seems to matter. Whatever they do, people won't stop voting for them. But at this point, Britain has a government which resembles a third world failed state — it can't provide its people basics like energy, medicine, a place to live. What do you when people become hostage to their own ruin? Sorry, Grandma, I know you're freezing every night, but hey, guess what, I'm still voting for these incompetents.
That's not really democracy. It's something else. Some weird, counterfeit version of it, its bastard child, Stepford democracy. You can't just keep voting for the very people who are dismantling democracy and call it democracy, or at least if you do, maybe take a second to see the contradiction.
This part of the trend goes like this: people have turned so far right that governments — even in the nations which formerly led the world — literally face no political consequences for mismanagement of the kind that would make Bernie Madoff shudder. As a result, one party rule is beginning to set in. There is no alternative possible. Whatever the right wing does is OK, because it's the right wing — but again, that's not democracy. It's just autocracy by any other name, as in "automatic."
Imagine what it takes to not dislodge a government that's failing your elderly, young, vulnerable, middle class, working class, economy, culture, society, democracy — but just keep on backing them no matter what, because, well, they're the hard right, and that's what goes. The same is true in Australia, by the way, whose nationalist people will proudly tell you how open and liberal and democratic they are…and brush the inconvenient facts of climate change and inequality and mistreatment of refugees and a barely functioning society under the table…which is exactly self-evident of what I'm talking about: it's another way of saying, hey, whatever the right wants goes.
Australia and Britain have turned so far right that none of these issues — which are very real ones — are seen as legitimate issues at all. They're seen as anything from weakness to nonsense to "scaremongering." In other words, the right has framed anything but what it wants as illegitimate — and the average person is only too happy to play along. Hence, governments face no consequences for ruinous mismanagement, like in Australia, which is now actually beginning to be ravaged by climate change.
The far right has managed to paint itself as the center, while defining the former centre as some kind of extreme left. The average person, having fallen for this sleight of hand, now seems to regard things that would have been abhorrent not so long ago — like, say human trafficking refugees to Rwanda, or coups, or violence, or a dead planet convulsing into war — as totally normal. And what's abnormal is wanting a decent planet, world, society, future for anyone. Want any of that, and it's criminalised — like in America, where "aiding and abetting"…women…is becoming a crime.
What do you do with that, exactly? When people have turned so far right that they've literally lost their…minds? When they don't grasp that democracy means "you vote out governments that only deliver poverty and ruin, so you get better ones"? What the hell do they even think democracy means?
All of that brings me to the next example, which is how the far right has pulled off this conjuring trick of taking over the world, and staying in power forever.
That's America, of course. To understand how bad things in America really are, consider the fact that the war in Ukraine hasn't changed politics one bit. Americans, by and large, still despise Joe Biden. And the Republicans are more extreme every passing day than the one before. You'd think that Vladimir Putin unleashing a genocide in Europe would have brought Americans back to their senses, but no, even that didn't work.
The American right at this point practically slavers openly at the death of democracy. Unlike, say, the British or Australian right, it doesn't even bother pretending. It doesn't even bother pretending to be interested in the rudiments of democracy. The idea is now open and naked for all to see — autocracy, one party rule, few if any real rights for women, minorities, anyone different, a society where the pure and true are supreme once again. Sounds a whole lot like…Russia.
The American right openly celebrates the end of democratic values — truth, freedom, equality, justice — and millions of Americans genuinely believe that these are threats to their families, kids, towns, communities. Hence, books are being banned, tip lines to inform on teachers and women have been set up, and so forth. Society is regressing at light speed — despite the fact that Putin's bloody war in Ukraine is stark evidence of where all this ends.
America illustrates the next point in the trend — there's no going back. No waking up. Game over. Millions upon millions of Americans have been radicalized. They believe fervently in New Age Fascism — religion plus oligarchy plus supremacy. Can you imagine anything that would deradicalize them? Some days, it seems like the universe has been trying. Here, have a pandemic. Still brainwashed? Whoops, OK — here, have a brewing World War. And even the universe is baffled. Americans can't seem to shake their descent into being a far right country.
That is because there probably is no way to deradicalize masses of people. Especially when they've been radicalised by propaganda which they reinforce to each other a thousand times a day. Hey, Bob, did you see this on Fox News? George! I saw it — did you see this on Facebook? Hillary drinks kids' blood! Putin's not a bad guy! The Ukrainians are faking it! Auschwitz was a summer camp!!
How do you undo all that? When millions of people are repeating the Big Lies demagogues have told them…to each other… tens of millions times a day…you probably can't deradicalize such societies. Hence, to this day, like many warned, Brexit's divisions define British politics — there are those who believe the Big Lies, not just about Brexit, but that, for example, doing cash-for-people deals with authoritarian nations like Rwanda is "democratic"….and then there are a much, much smaller number who believe in reality. Or in America's case, the Republicans haven't changed their beliefs — the election was stolen, Trump really won, it wasn't a coup, it was a wine tasting, etcetera — one bit.
This cancerous mass of Big Lies and demagogues and masses who believe them probably can't be changed much. Once it's there, it just…stays and grows. We haven't figured out a way, as humanity, to really excise it yet. We don't know how to do surgery of this kind.
Worse, the demagogues have a point — yesterday's systems and institutions have failed people. The scapegoats they offer, though, are hardly a solution.
So this is what politics on a far right planet have devolved to. Million upon millions — in nation after nation, America, France, Britain, Russia, China, India, take your pick — believe the Big Lies their demagogues tell. They repeat them tens of millions a day to each other, and social reality precedes political reality. The scapegoats are the problem — not the far right governments who consistently fail to deliver anything from higher living standards to confidence in the future. Get rid of the scapegoats — and if democracy stands in the way, get rid of it, too.
That is why it feels like we're beginning to live on a far right planet. We are. That's why it feels like this isn't a wave, but a sea change — like the shift towards the far right isn't cyclical, a season, but permanent, like climate change. It is. At least until the centre and left figure out how to — if it's possible at all — stop the vicious cycle of lies, hate, rage, stupidity, and fear at the heart of it all.
Umair
April 2022
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