(Twenty-minute read)
Is democracy unravelled in the face of nationalism, racism, violence and populism? It seems even with the publicly supported compromise between countries and political parties are unable to cooperate to deliver anything.
If one takes a look at the world today 9/11 and the “war on terror” helped bring the idea of a “clash of civilisations” between Islam and the west to the forefront of political debate leaving all the rest in the dustbin of democracy.
As a result in the last few years, a new kind of far-right activism has emerged.
This new activism, comprised largely of online anger and offline protest, crosses borders, yet is heavily nationalist and growing.
In Britain, its icons tend to be entrepreneurial social media personalities, celebrities of a sort, who use their following to exert pressure on mainstream politics.
Nobody in England embodies the dynamics of this new movement more than Mr Fraieg with his tutor in the USA Mr Dump who both gave support to Yaxley-Lennon better known as Tommy Robinson. ( The founder of the founder and former leader of the English Defence League (EDL) now the voice of UKIP which was founded by Nigel Farage, has today more than 950,000 followers.)
We all know that Data-driven algorithms exert great influence on the political world by analyzing our voting potential. By logging what we do, where we do it, how we do it, with whom we do it, – Facebook- Twitter – Social Media, TV, U Tube, Google.
The marketplace of ideas, with the best arguments, no longer win out.
Even more worrying is the extent to which it is “normalising” extreme right-wing ideas and ideologies helping to form governments rooted in racism and fear of others – with anti-establishment crusader, online propagandists attracting large amounts of the wrong type of money and attention.
Throwing its opponents into a fierce disagreement about how to respond with the potential to have quite dangerous and dire consequences.
Indeed, one of the goals of right-wing extremists has always been to appear “normal”.
But all of this is not inevitable, and it can be stopped if we recognise that keeping the far right out of power is only one part of the problem.
We need a better understanding of what “free speech” is and is not.
There is still no public control or oversight of what we should regard as our platforms.
The logical consequence of free speech at any cost is that someone will soon be successful in rallying together enough impressionable voters to form an electable far-right party.
It has happened before and it will happen again.
The accusation of betrayal by the elites is central to the way that far-right movements operate with single-issue campaigns mostly conducted via social media without any commitment to wider political action.
For many years, far-right views were outside the acceptable bounds of debate and should be denied a platform.
But the breaking down of these boundaries presents a dilemma: what does the anti-fascist principle of “no platform” mean when a far-right activist has their own independent platform anyway?
The majority of their supporters, have no formal political affiliation and answered to no party hierarchy.
The ideas of extreme right-wing movements are dangerous, as they are not institutional actors.
While only a few years ago such groups would have been widely reviled, in today’s more populist atmosphere, such views are now more mainstream, sideling voters from the political movements that were originally created for their benefit.
For me Far Right is a slippery term and one that people should rarely if ever, apply to their own politics. In everyday use, it describes a range of extreme nationalist activity.
For instance: Stephen Bannon, a white nationalist who has said the west is at the start of a civilisational war with Islam.
Luckily different currents within the far right do not always get on and may also see one another as enemies.
So far it is not a cohesive movement. Their various aims are profoundly undemocratic: A majoritarianism defined by race, ethnicity or religion, and the violent exclusion of internal and external enemies.
The best defence is a political movement that has anti-racism at its core and seeks to give people greater democratic control over the way their society is organised and run.
However in recent years, pushed by the election of Donald Trump in the US, and political changes in Europe, we have seen the breaking down of the taboo that kept far-right political ideas largely outside mainstream culture.
This can be rectified. It is mostly the result of technological change, which can be fixed by regulating social media companies.
In order to win political power, for any group, it should first be necessary to push for wider cultural acceptance of the ideas that underpinned their movements.
This is not to say that the claims being made by activists and the views of people who might support the far right should be ignored – either in political debate or in everyday life.
But the question is how these issues are presented, and how they are challenged: who is speaking, and why, matters as much as whether or not an issue is in the news.
Big media organisations must be aware that legitimisation of the far right is not acceptable. They cannot normalise nor be seen to give permission to what are, in truth, hateful ideas and ideologies.
They are most effective when unaffiliated and unaccountable, disavowed by politicians and commentators who echo his views but wish to look respectable.
But the greater danger is in the cumulative effect of the various types of far-right activism – political parties, websites, social media personalities, funding and coordination from wealthy US thinktanks and entrepreneurs – on the political mainstream.
The problem is that ordinary joe soap is becoming more and more detached from the political area paying more and more taxes in order to live a decent life while feeling shut out of the system.
With the views of the far right how taking advantage of wider political failures all fueled by food banks, benefits cuts, homeless, job insecurity, pension erosion shifting the mainstream debate in its favour. Its public messages are focusing on popular fears about identity and economic security.
IE: Europe is overrun by Muslim immigrants; liberal elites have allowed all this to happen.
So far no alternative vision has won out.
Simply pointing out their factual mistakes is insufficient they must be challenged, locally and internationally, before it starts to do serious damage.
Why?
Because we are mechanistically sleepwalking towards an inability to effectively confront problems such as Brexit, Inequality and Climate Change.
There is only one way to get the voters to engage with the modern world and that is not by voting every five years as an expression of free will.
It is offering the citizens of a country to own some of its prosperity by:
ISSUING CITIZENS GUARANTEED (NON-TRANSFERABLE BONDS.)
These bonds could be bought for as little as a Dollar to as much as?
They could mature in as little as a year or?
They could be inherited but not sold.
They could be for every environmental, health, or whatever project that is not for profit for profit sake.
They will engage people in the direction of a country countermanding
negativity, allowing all citizens no matter what their political views,
creed, or colour to take pride in their nation.
They will countermand inequality and stop the rise of the far right.
THEY WOULD IF ADOPTED BY DIEM 25 FORFILL MOST IF NOT ALL OF ITS POLITICAL ASPERATION FOR EUROPE.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked and abuse chucked in the bin.
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