Over the past four years, we have witnessed the political right - TopicsExpress



          

Over the past four years, we have witnessed the political right using rhetoric that has increasingly transformed a global economic crisis into an apparently ethno-political one, and this also extends to include the general scapegoating and vilification of other groups and communities that have historically been the victims of prejudice and social exclusion: the poorest, the unemployed and the disabled. These far-right rhetorical flourishes define and portray the putative “outsider” as an economic threat. This is then used to justify active political exclusion of the constitutive Other. The poorest have been politically disenfranchised. Politically directed and constructed cultural and social boundaries, exclusionary discourses and practices create and define strangers. In Zygmunt Bauman’s analysis of the Holocaust, the Jews became “strangers” par excellence in Europe, the Final Solution was an extreme example of the attempts made by societies to excise the (politically defined) uncomfortable and indeterminate elements existing within them. Here in the UK, it’s evident that many citizens now feel like strangers in their own communities – they have been politically alienated. Definitions of citizenship and associated privileges have been reformulated and restricted here in the UK, and the current conservative neo-liberal framework of intensifying and aggressive competitive individualism is further motivated by far right reforms that embed social darwinism. This has provided opportunity for UKIP to become established as a populist part of the mainstream political conversation, the Tory rhetoric, founded on social divisions and established hierarchy, has created a space for UKIP’s subversive“insurgency”. UKIP has an extremist appeal that is based entirely on fear-mongering, and attempts to shape and perpetuate hatreds, social group phobias and deliberate attempts at further undermining social cohesion. UKIP try to make this extremely divisive approach somehow “respectable”, (by the frequent use of phrases such as “we say what many think”, “we speak our minds” and “it’s not racist to be worried about too many people coming here” are used to attempt to normalise and justify what are actually very objectionable, prejudice-laden opinions, for example) whilst offering nothing at all that might improve our living conditions and quality of life. UKIP is also manipulating an anti-politics, anti-establishment public mood. This is not just about gaining electoral success but in shifting the terms of debate. Farage admits that UKIP’s effect on the Tories is “psychological not numerical”. His success in this encourages the further right Tory backbenchers, encourages the populist strategies of Lynton Crosby, as it forces political and media focus on right wing concerns, like welfare and immigration. Boundaries are being pushed. How far right are we prepared to move before we recognise the political landscape of fascism? - therockandrolltimes/defining-features-of-fascism-and-authoritarianism/
Posted on: Tue, 20 May 2014 05:32:03 +0000

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