For years – I repeat, for years now – we have
been warning how the Left in Western countries has been digging its own grave
at a very fast rate by pursuing “ideals” – particularly around “the Third World”,
“the White Man’s Burden” colonialism, “Christianity”, and above all else “Identity
Politics” – that are going to end up with people like us – very sophisticated,
knowledgeable and older experienced left-wing activists, if not Marxists –
lined up against a wall and shot or sent to concentration camps. Because when
the Right triumphs, it is left-wing intellectuals who end up paying the highest
price!
Our left-wing friends reading this Blog must
learn that the world has changed tremendously in the last half century. There
are now nearly 8 billion humans on this planet. It is UNAVOIDABLE that many
humans will regard the rest of them as nothing more than maggots or rats or
whatever – because that is what human beings have become – pests to themselves
and to life on the planet. We had better take conscience of this and save what
we can.
Our labelling of Han Chinese as Rats has this
purpose: to bring to mind the need to confront head on fascist totalitarian
regimes AND THEIR PEOPLE who are clearly behind them and are out of control! If
we do not face this emergency, we shall simply be vanquished by it.
Here is a piece by Bret Stephens, whom we very
much like, that just appeared in The New York Times:
More
than 600 million Indians cast their ballots over the past six weeks in the
largest democratic election in the world. Donald Trump won.
A week
ago, several million Australians went to the polls in another
touchstone election. Trump won.
Citizens
of European Union member states are voting in elections for the mostly
toothless, but symbolically significant, European Parliament. Here, too,
Trumpism will mark its territory.
Legislative
elections in the Philippines this month, which further cemented the rule of
Rodrigo Duterte, were another win for Trumpism. Ditto for Benjamin Netanyahu’s
re-election in Israel last month, the election of Jair Bolsonaro as president
of Brazil last October, and Italy’s elevation of Matteo Salvini several months
before that.
If past is prologue,
expect the Trumpiest Tory — Boris Johnson — to succeed Theresa May as prime
minister of Britain, too.
In
2016, at a campaign rally in Albany, Trump warned: “We’re gonna win so much you may even get
tired of winning. And you’ll say, please, please, it’s too much winning, we
can’t take it anymore.”
Tell us
about it.
Trump’s
name, of course, was on none of the ballots in these recent elections. His
critics should take no comfort in that fact.
In
India, Narendra Modi won his re-election largely
on the strength of his appeals to Hindu nationalism and anti-Muslim
sentiment. In Australia, incumbent Scott Morrison ran against the high cost of climate action, including in lost jobs,
and won a stunning upset. In the U.K., Trump surrogate Nigel Farage looks like
he and his Brexit Party will be the runaway victors in
the European elections. In Brazil and the Philippines, the political appeal of
Bolsonaro and Duterte seems to be inversely correlated to their respect for human rights and the rule of law, to
say nothing of modern ethical pieties.
The common thread here isn’t just right-wing
populism. It’s contempt for the ideology of them before us: of the immigrant before the native-born; of
the global or transnational interest before the national or local one; of
racial or ethnic or sexual minorities before the majority; of the transgressive
before the normal. It’s a revolt against the people who say: Pay an immediate
and visible price for a long-term and invisible good. It’s hatred of those who
think they can define that good, while expecting someone else to pay for it.
When
protests erupted last year in France over Emmanuel Macron’s attempt to raise
gas prices for the sake of the climate, one gilets jaunes slogan captured the core complaint: “Macron is
concerned with the end of the world,” it went, while “we are concerned with the
end of the month.”
This is
a potent form of politics, and it’s why I suspect Trump will be re-elected next
year barring an economic meltdown or foreign-policy shock. You may think (as I
often do) that the administration is a daily carnival of shame. You may also
think that conservatives are even guiltier than liberals and progressives of
them-before-us politics: the 1-percenters before the 99 percent; the big
corporations before the little guy, and so on.
But the
left has the deeper problem. That’s partly because it self-consciously
approaches politics as a struggle against selfishness, and partly because it
has invested itself so deeply, and increasingly inflexibly, on issues such as
climate change or immigration. Whatever else might be said about this, it’s a
recipe for nonstop political defeat leavened only by a sensation of moral
superiority.
Progressives
are now speeding, Thelma and Louise style, toward the same cliff they went over
in the 1970s and ’80s. But unlike the ’80s, when conservatives held formidable
principles about economic freedom and Western unity, the left is flailing in
the face of a new right that is increasingly nativist, illiberal, lawless, and
buffoonish. It’s losing to losers.
It
needn’t be this way. The most successful left-of-center leaders of the past 30
years were Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. They believed in the benefits of free
markets, the importance of law and order, the superiority of Western values,
and a healthy respect for the moral reflexes of ordinary people. Within that
framework, they were able to achieve important liberal victories.
Political
blunders and personal shortcomings? Many. But neither man would ever have been
bested by someone like Trump.
Anyone
who thinks the most important political task of the next few years is to defeat
Trump in the United States and his epigones abroad must give an honest account
of their stunning electoral successes. Plenty has been said about the effects
of demagoguery and bigotry in driving these Trumpian victories, and
the cultural, social, and economic insecurities that fuel populist anxiety. Not
so often mentioned is that the secret of success lies also in having opponents
who are even less appealing.
In the
contest of ugly, the left keeps winning. To repurpose that line from Trump,
“Please, please, it’s too much winning.”
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