The wide-ranging crackdown on political speech is being framed as a means of combatting antisemitism
The virus of fascism only ever lay dormant in the West after its apparent destruction during the Second World War.
Early indicators are everywhere that fascism - an ideology that espouses racist hierarchies of human value, of who should have rights and who must not - is reasserting itself in the United States and across large parts of Europe.
There is an intensifying distrust and fear of foreigners. Immigrants are seen as destroying the West from within - irreconcilable with, and antagonistic to, a “superior” civilisation and culture. In the US, a permanent resident - apparently the first of many - has been disappeared into the US prison system, pending his deportation.
Political speech in opposition to western governments and their crimes is being stigmatised and crushed with old laws and new. Supposedly liberal academic institutions are rolling over as they are menaced with legal and financial sanctions. There is little reason to assume that judicial systems will provide any meaningful check on executive power.
The West is taking the first formal steps down a different political path - one whose final destination we know from our own relatively recent history.
The far right is now setting the agenda with the same Cheshire Cat grin, whether it’s billionaire TV star Donald Trump in the US, or Westminster’s glorified used-car salesman Nigel Farage in the UK.
There are fascist-leaning parties inside the governments of Italy, Hungary, Finland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, the Netherlands and Croatia. Openly far-right parties are jostling for power in France, Germany, Austria, Sweden and, for the first time, Britain. That trend was reflected in a surge of ultra-nationalist delegates elected to the European Parliament last year.
The only available bulwarks are bloodless technocrats like Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Britain, President Emmanuel Macron in France, and former Vice President Kamala Harris in the US, offering more of the same failed policies that opened the door to the fascists in the first place. (more...)
The new fascism: Israel is the template for Trump and Europe’s war on freedom
No comments:
Post a Comment