The great divide - polarization in politics and how it leads to fascism

Politics & Elections
1

(opinion)

The term political correctness isn’t new and it hasn’t always meant what it means now. It can be argued that it’s current origins come from a plea of “can we please not attack minority groups to gain political capital?” - a simple and understandable plea because political movements around the world that have gained power by uniting people against a common (minority group) enemy have never ever done anything good for the community as a whole. (Here I am referring to political tactics frequently used by fascists, targeting race, immigrants or religious groups)

Instead of answering “yes, that’s a great idea” the story went something like this:
Fascist: No, that impedes our freedom of speech
PC: Yes, if we would start burning books and punishing you for doing that.
F: Everybody crossing the borders are thieves and rapists!
PC: Now, hold on there …
F: … and the PC’s are fake media
PC: …

And so it continues until eventually someone gets offended enough to do something about it. Protest, or something. Things escalate in both directions, effectively bringing the PC bunch towards fascism from the other end of the spectrum.

To take examples from my community, a couple of politicians were recorded saying some awful things about women, disabled people and nepotism in goverment. Instead of acknowleding their blunder they double down and sued the person recording them. Claiming they were the wronged party.

Another example was when a comment about reasonable cause to investigate a politician for corruption, for claiming undue expenses, was reported to the ethics committee which found that the comment breached the code of ethics. The amazing thing was that the politician that had claimed undue expenses had acknowledged to having done so on live TV when asked about those expenses and then reimbursed the amount (it was not known that he had reimbursed the expenses when the comment was made).

These things are trivial compared to what is happening in the US and various other countries following the same trend. Attack, double down, refuse and blame fake media. Raise strawmen all over the place and put anyone who points out corruption or lies on the defensive.

The effect? The attack on the Capitol. Gunshots fired at party headquarters. Gunshots fired at the mayor’s car. Who is to blame? The rioters share the blame of course. But if your president raises the flag that democracy is being stolen I sure hope people would react and protest. When police brutality results in death after death, I sure hope the community reacts. In that light, is the attack on the capitol understandable? Yes. Is it excusable? No? Who is to blame? Not the people that protested. They were acting in good belief. It’s the person that lied to them.

This is where the great divide in modern politics is taking us. Towards fascism. Either from the radical right or radical left. This will be the result of continued efforts to deny that we really should not attack minority groups to gain political support.

(/opinion)

2

False equivalence, kettle logic.

I’m sorry, were we not playing Logical Fallacy Bingo?

Stranger

3

Disagree, when the right behaves in a certain way, the middle does not then move inevitably toward the extreme far left - not true.

Misbehaviour by one grouping does not mean that other groups must then react just as badly in the other way and does not justify such a move either, and in the recent case of the attempted Coup by rightist supporters - they are the ones who went to extremism all on their own, with no push or driving force from anyone but themselves -

They are solely responsible for the political polarisation, and the reason for it is because they fear the possibility of sharing power with others and are prepared to do anything at all to retain it, including denying votes, rigging votes, rigging electoral systems, gerrymandering, packing the judiciary with their sympathisers and being as absolutely obstructive as possible in every concievable way to any proposals of any sort that they have not submitted - including creating complete fabrication of information and using mass media as a propaganda tool.

In that whole list amounts to a fascism shopping list

The reason that they are trying to supress votes from anyone not in their mindset is that they do not have popular support, they have not had popular support for years and they know it.

The right in the US behaves in a way that is of their own choice and their own making - nobody has pushed them there, they are not reacting to the actions of any other political grouping.

4

I clearly stated “opinion” at the start of the post didn’t I?

5

I agree, but it can happen. And there are hints that it is happening.

The more extreme the right becomes, the more people from the middle they will push towards retaliation. This is their goal too, because they view any kind of retaliation as validation for their views. The “see, I told you so” while of course blatantly ignoring the fact that they are the cause. The problem is that it works. The retaliation and false victimization will wake up another part of the middle towards supporting the extreme right - under those false pretenses of them being victimized.

It is a possible future. Not a certain one. The question is, how can we prevent it - because you can’t just leave what the extreme right is doing alone. You have to speak up …

6

What moves do you see that are being made by the centrist political groupings that give rise to concern.

So far everything I have seen from the political classes has involved the use of law.

7

It’s not made by centrist political groups. It’s radicalizing people from the center to either left or right.

I don’t live in the US btw, so my examples might not be generally known. But there is a general trend from the extreme right to blatantly attack freedom of speech, for example branding the media as fake news. The fact that fake news exists doesn’t help, only makes the fallacy that much easier to swallow.

When countermoves are made to tackle fake news the extreme right uses that as examples of the left using fascist methods of blocking freedom of speech … and they are not wholly wrong.

A lot of people sitting at home then fall prey to the fallacy that either one of them has to be right (ignore the fact that both can be right or both can be wrong) and pick a side. Thus the trip down the rabbit hole starts.

8

It is clearly an opinion as it contains almost nothing approaching a fact. it is also a thesis based upon the false equivalence that the “radical left” and “radical right” are using the same tactics to achieve the same ends, and in trying to prove this point throws more differing assertions into the pot than there are different types of fish and shellfish in bouillabaisse, and then cranks the heat up to boiling in an attempt to disguise the fact that the contentions don’t really support the premise.

Please consult you Larousse Gastronomique, obtain some fresher ingredients, and try again.

Stranger

9

You cannot compare the US to UK,France, Spain, Denmark, Sweden or Canada so on. Those countries have country unity.

The US had been in a bloody culture civil war for years. The Midwest and South have always been conservative hub that have a different culture, religion, laws and politics and should not be group has one group.

You can point to map and say this is the UK or this is Canada thus one country and that is well not the case in the US. The US had two very distinctive cultures.

The south and Midwest views on immigration be it legal and non legal are major core of political foundation along with abortion to some what degree.

The west coast and north east part of the US are very different culture when comes to religion and immigration.

It is very clear if this immigration legal or not legal is not solved the US with out any doubt will lead to civil war or fascism or break apart.

The problem is in the US there is no country unity and it is well next to impossible with the US having a very different history than UK, Canada, Denmark , Sweden and France so on.

And I don’t see this getting any better but much worse. As there is major divide in the US for long time and is getting worse now.

Trump got in because of views on immigration that no party ever talked about. In way there was boiling point in the US that was locked in and Trump got it out. That no president as ever dare gone.

So I feel the major political divide is major problem and issue like immigration, Abortion, LGBT and racism will have to be solved or riots and civil wars could start soon.

10

This is correct, but I think the OP does have a point. Whether it organically sprouts from long-standing fissures within society or it is manufactured and exploited on purpose by the political class (often, it’s both), polarization is a feature of, and precursor to, authoritarianism. A politically strong segment of the population exploits these fissures, causing an immediate backlash, which can then be perceived as a threat and justification for more extreme provocation.

As an example, consider the growing culture war between the largely Democratic/progressive caucuses and law enforcement (especially local-level law enforcement) in the United States. Let’s start with the reality that, historically speaking, law enforcement has been among the most obvious and immediate manifestations of white dominance in American society. White police departments were created to manage free blacks and to control immigrant communities - to keep them in their place. So fast-forward to today, and you still see that American police forces, even in many communities where blacks are the majority, are still largely white.

So now in the age of iPhones, FB, and YouTube, we have clear documented evidence of civil rights abuses by officers of the law, but instead of acknowledging fault, they double down and insist that they’re the thin blue line between civility and anarchy, and they’ll be damned if any suit-and-tie or pantsuit-wearing liberals are going to tell them how to do their jobs. This causes more backlash from the left, who criticize them even more harshly. The reaction by many white cops isn’t contrition; it’s just the opposite - even more extreme defiance. In fact they’re so defiant they’re willing to beat, stomp, and kill other fellow police officers on the steps of the U.S. Capitol to get an opportunity to confront their liberal ‘tormenters’ in congress. In turn, this creates even more tension between these groups. We’ve already had calls for defunding police departments. We’re also hearing more about how police departments need to be scrutinized more, how we need to cleanse and disinfect these departments of racist or bad cops, and that of course creates even more resentment on the side of officers, who will almost surely defy these efforts with even more intense hostility.

That’s just an example of how polarization can work. The fact is that liberal democracy, living up to a set of values and ensuring that these values are applied evenly across all groups is extremely challenging work. It’s extremely challenging to ask a privileged class to sacrifice some of that privilege. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but that, quite frequently, efforts to elevate and improve a democracy often end up destabilizing it, which is not the fault of those who are trying to make democracy better, but rather the reaction of those who are resistant to giving up power. I think the era of Obama, and now with the possibility of a Madam President Harris waiting in the wings, is a reckoning of sorts for many white Americans who never realized how uncomfortable they were with the possibility of having to ‘endure’ in an increasingly egalitarian society.

And authoritarianism is not something that the far-right as a monopoly on; communism and ‘Bolivarianism’ are far-left ideological forms of populist authoritarianism. Whether authoritarianism is right or left will vary from country to country depending on the history and political culture.

11

Cultural divides are a feature of any large, diverse society. Urban versus rural, immigrant versus nativist, wealthy versus poor et cetera; all nations have these (and yes, they exist even in the most egalitarian societies like Sweden and Denmark). Other nations have often sharp disagreements over these divisions, but when Scotland elects to have a referendum over whether to dissolve their connection to the United Kingdom, they abide by the slim will of the majority rather than take up arms and try to siege Whitehall to redress their feeling of being wronged.

The Culture War®, on the other hand, is a manufactured movement created by Rupert Murdoch, Newt Gingrich, Jerry Falwell, et al, where they’ve cast themselves as the victims of progressive change even though they haven’t actually lost anything other than their own sense that their superiority is no longer an entitlement that the rest of society recognizes. There is no War On Christmas® except in the minds of Fox News propagandists seeking to stir up some outrage so they can sell ad space to the MyPillow guy and various quack nutritional supplements. “Antifa” is not a giant, well organized conspiracy that somehow incites self-identified “militia groups”, white nationalist, and literal neo-Nazis to spontaneously gather and riot. Black Lives Matter is not some hyperprogressive cover to impose Soviet-style Marxism on the United States.

That these beliefs have permeated large swaths of society and have been used to re-energize long-smouldering feelings of resentment over the “Lost Cause”—which itself is a manufactured fairy tale that the Southern sates somehow had righteous victory stolen from them and eliminated their rights of self-determination instead of as a result of the inept conduct of an unwinnable civil war fought to perpetuate the then nearly universally-condemned institution of human slavery—is a result of this social manipulation to the political and fiscal ends of a handful of would-be oligarchs who seek exclusive and uncontested control over both the government and culture of the US. This, not “Political Correctness” or insistence by a minority in recognizing and correcting historical wrongs that have impacts continuing through the modern day, is what leads to fascism and coordinated attacks on civil institutions.

Stranger

12

I’m reminded of the saying, “Extremism begets extremism.” Who started something can be really difficult to pinpoint. But once the ball gets rolling, it only gets more and more extreme. You wouldn’t have seen someone like George W. Bush get banned from Facebook or Twitter in his presidency’s last days, for instance.

13

Agreed - extremism on the Right begets extremely moderate politicians like Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton on the Left, which begets even more extremism on the Right. Is that what you meant?

14

This theory that, if one side goes wacko it means the other side will go wacko-What causes it?
Cosmic rays?
Voodoo curses?
Alien mind control?
Please explain.

15

At present this seems to be the situation in the US to me - the centre tends to follow the system, maybe it legislates to enable changes, especially social changes.

The right tries emotion, which works because it offers a boost of various chemicals as part of the primitive human flight response reaction - which then has to be dissipated.

Personally I think that this manufactured outrage that currently emanates from the right generates the stress chemicals and these are addictive.

My view about addiction to stress chemicals and endorphins is simply personal experience from being a cyclist who would think nothing of riding 350 miles a week and competing two or three times in time trials, road races and grass track races in the same period. When you go from full on hard training to very little, you can get pretty depressed, and you need that hit of stress again just to keep normal - I think the Right in the US has become addicted to outrage and stress.

Keeping calm and level headed does not sell advertising space - so the likes of Rupert Murdoch with unfettered Capitalism plays a part - the rightist propaganda/advertising machine is addicted to its money fountain and will not give it up easily.

Seems to me the US has a heady mix of Capitalist driven outrage that affects the less stable, more reactionary rightist and self aggrandising pretend pioneers.

That’s a lot of opinion there, without any evidence, all the same though, the US does have this attitude of personal freedom from any sort of control which - when mixed with self interested naked Capitalism - is a pretty toxic mix.

I guess other posters will be able to point out other advanced nations that have similarly poor social support legislation, where the low paid are free to go bankrupt if they are unfortunate enough to need medical assistance and are generally thrown to the wolves when it comes to employment rights, but at the moment I can’t think of any.

16

You have clearly not looked too hard at Canada. There is Quebec off in its own cloud. Alberta is widely known as Texas North and seems wholly dependent on dirty oil. Not a single member of the governing Liberals from Alberta, even from the major cities Then there are the flyover provinces. No Canada is not unified.

17

Well, you wouldn’t have seen George W. Bush inciting an insurrection in his last days or spreading inflammatory falsehoods about “stolen elections”, either. (Not that GWB could have been a candidate in a Presidential election after his second term, of course.)

18

Good post, Stranger, but wanted to comment on this specifically:

You probably know this already but the “Lost Cause” was originally a regional thing; in reality, white supremacy has been alive and well in the rest of the Union since this country’s beginnings. The “lost cause” now is perceived displacement and loss of white political and cultural capital, which is something that is felt by whites in all 50 states. That’s what makes the movement a little harder to stop this time; it’s not a regional political separatist movement in the name of a region’s cultural identity and economic independence; it’s an entire ethnic majority across all 50 states who, having gone from one generation to the next in a society based on a race-based social, economic, and political hierarchy, now finds itself anxious about signing the dotted line on a power sharing agreement with other demographics. Privilege is hard to give up.

19

IMHO, there is always an impatience for things that ought to be getting done but aren’t. This is what drove a lot of the fanaticism for Bernie - Bernie was promising “at long last” things that many progressives, especially young progressives, had craved for a long time but the traditional centrist Democrats weren’t giving - things like single-payer universal health care, democratic socialism, etc.

With Trump, too, many hardcore righties had craved some things that they were never getting, and Trump finally talked straight and plainly.

20

I know that I’m shocked to see how many people in firmly Northern states are waving around the Confederate battle flag, or else the Gadsden flag with no sense of irony. The delusional persecution complex is strong with these people. It is no wonder they adore Trump who was the ultimate self-identified martyr, constantly whining about how unfair everybody was to him.

I’ve long opined that Bernie was the flip side of Trump; not in his aims, but in his expectation that once paraded into office he could just wave his executive privilege like a regents scepter and direct everything to be so. In fact, even a strong president with good backing in the legislature is still pretty hemmed in in the things he can legitimately do (shades of Iran-Contra, again), so being able to negotiate and compromise are crucial characteristics in an effective president. Bernie Sanders has never demonstrated these abilities in his entire career as a senator (he is known by the nickname, “Amendment King” for how often he gets items passed by tagging them onto other omnibus bills packages and important bills), whereas Biden knows the ropes of legislative compromise. That he has taken to the ground running with executive orders despite how much ammunition that gives opponents to claim that he is being imperious indicates just how much he knows such negotiation is fruitless in dealing with the immediate problems.

How well this pans out, especially with federal judiciary stacked against him in any legal challenge is another issue but at least “Sleepy Joe” with his “dwindling cognitive faculties”, et cetera, ad nauseam is awake at the wheel. I was frankly expecting some dithering as he tried to get a handle on the mess he was left with but I guess that Peloton bike ride first thing in the morning really gets his blood pumping.

Stranger