When informed observers & scholars began warning that the rise of the far-right in Western democracies would lead to both assaults on human rights & the rule of law many in media cried “alarmism!” Less than two yrs on look at the headlines in the US, UK, Austria, Italy.
Two yrs and we can barely keep track of the human rights abuses, the venomous rhetoric, the corruption scandals, the violations of norms and actual laws. Two yrs after more than a half century of insisting that fascism had been defeated, fully and forever, in 1945.
Obviously that claim was never true — factually or ideologically — but it certainly became a widely shared, feel-good narrative in the West. Yet in two yrs we’ve gone from “fascism is the personification of evil” to “it’s time to round up the immigrants”. Two yrs.
And one can legitimately argue that the current period had all manner of complex antecedents; end of Cold War, 9/11, Iraq, the financial crisis etc. Fair also to say aspects of current far-right agenda initiated, in parts, by earlier govts. But we’re thru the looking glass now.
Now it’s self-described far-right extremists setting or heavily influencing govt policy in the EU, US, UK. There has been a dramatic and rapid deterioration in democratic norms, civic discourse & the rule of law. That’s, again, in two very short yrs — with no end in sight.
Events cannot proceed at this rate w/o catastrophic climax. Where will these states be in another two yrs or four, six? Unless this pan-Atlantic far-right is defeated, decisively and quickly, there’ll be no”self-correction”; world you thought you knew will become unsalvageable.
Just take all the horror, scandal, and fear coursing through your community this very evening and add two more years. Is that a world you want to live in? That’s what is at stake, that’s what’s happening and that’s why it matters. Pay attention. Stay safe. /xxx
