Wednesday 28 December 2016

Is The World Lurching Right?

A question that i have been asked more and more recently is if the World is taking a lurch towards the ideological right?
Britain certainly has a right wing party controlling things and from the irratic musings of Donald Trump the USA has also taken a turn that way as has India, Japan and Poland. France is seeing a wave in favour of right-wing parties with Marine Le Pen being considered a serious challenger to socialist president Francois Hollande in the 2017 presidential election.
Formerly Socialist paradises of Scandinavia are leaning right-wards with right of centre parties in Sweden and Denmark doing well in opinion polls and the Netherlands, Venezuela and Hungary too are witnessing an ideological turn to the right.
Some of the reasons for the rightwards political shift in countries are a combination of economics and security due to austerity measures, the rise of ISIS and the refugee influx which has made Europe more nationalistic and insular.
A decade of austerity measures across the globe has made many people more 'selfish' and less keen to spread the wealth to those less fortunate who receive benefits, a landscape favourable to right wing policies.  
Eastern Europe has closed its borders to refugees, citing fears over Islamist violence carried over from Syria, Iraq and Libya while Donald Trump wants to build a wall, ban Muslims amnd keep a register or database of Muslims in the USA.
My reply is that right wing policies do seem to be holding the upper hand due to the economic crash in 2008 creating a landscape that allows right wing ideology to flourish, that of the fear of others in terms of terrorism and the undeserving receiving 'something for nothing' such as benefits and tax relief.   
The right wing politicians keep their foot on the throttle, ramming home the same message that they are either coming to blow us up in our beds or clean out the national bank account by taking benefits and the electorate take it on board and vote for the side that promise to keep us and our money safe.
The left, ideologically less likely to inflict the harsh decisions on the population have no answer, hence a swing to the right.   
In short, yes, the World has taken a swing to the right because due to the Great Recession of 2008, the landscape is fertile ground for right-wing parties who continue to keep the landscape exactly where they need it to be by generating fear (economy, terrorist, scroungers) among the electorate.
As with right wing parties, the ground usually shifts back when they try to drag the electorate too far to the right and impose a policy which exposes the right for what they really are, nasty.  

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