Right-wing
extremists’ rhetoric has saturated the political conversation, spreading far
beyond its own minority parties and its bulwarks on the fringe. For a global
community already facing mass displacement, war, and critical underdevelopment,
their influence is preparing mainstream actors in the Global North to build
walls, expel migrants, and contribute to mass atrocities.
Our news cycles are flooded with stories of ongoing disasters.
Ecological decay, war and conflict, and mass displacement are the defining
issues of our contemporary history. While communities unravel in the face of these
crises, privileged elements such as the middle classes and economic elite in
the Global North live in comfortable isolation. Abstraction is unfortunately
the only way for many of us to imagine frontline communities’ circumstances.
Unfortunately, when that abstraction operates within mainstream ideological
environments, it is vulnerable to the same manipulation and obfuscation which
characterizes our relationships to the media and political propaganda.
It is that confusion which has inspired and enabled right-wing
extremists to advance dangerous narratives in the ideological environments
governing foreign policy. While their movements, such as that which is
emboldened under the administration of President Donald Trump in the United
States, may appear to be solely a domestic issue, the international
implications of their success are of dramatic importance. Already, mainstream
reactionary responses to humanitarian crisis reject the notion that the Global
North has a responsibility to at-risk societies beyond relatively meager
amounts of resource aid. Extremists have succeeded in advocating for even
further isolation from international responsibility, espousing nationalist
protectionism and exclusionary policy instead.
The success of right-wing extremists’ foreign policy influence
relies on the narratives which have dominated development theory for decades.
While billions of dollars in aid funding has flowed from the Global North to
the Global South since the 1950s, the inequities that aid was intended to alleviate
have remained similar, if not worsened. Prominent policy-makers explain that
corrupt and inept leadership in Global South governments has held their
societies back, or that a paradoxical “resource curse” limits their growth. However,
it is not that simple. As proponents of World Systems Theory explain, it is a
complex dynamic of international social and historical relations which has
produced these conditions: what they call underdevelopment. In their view, it is
not that the Global South has lagged in its trajectory along a singular path of
development. Rather, it is the abundant wealth
of the Global North, acquired over centuries of colonial, imperial, and
exploitative economic relations, which necessitates the underdevelopment of the
South. Humanitarian aid operates in the same way. Donors to aid organizations
come from those elite classes whose financial ability to contribute is a result
of global exploitation; therefore, they are just as dependent on the poverty of
billions of people as those billions are dependent on elite classes’ aid.
This need not be the case under globalization, but the hegemonic
grasp of neoliberalism prioritizes profit over the equitable distribution of
the world’s production. A minority of the working human population produces
sufficient food1, medicine, housing, and resources to afford all
people around the globe the opportunity to live a dignified life free from
poverty and underdevelopment (while ensuring the self-determination necessary
to preserve our diverse cultures). Yet the organization of our globalized economy
allows elites to shift the dividends of production ever upwards while restricting
access to basic human needs based on one’s ability to pay.
These points are essential to recognize if we are to combat the
fiercely xenophobic rhetoric of right-wing extremists. After all, as
atrocity-prevention scholar Jonathan Leader Maynard notes, the process of
rhetorical dehumanization is both dependent upon and used to reinforce the
material dehumanization of minoritized communities. Because the North has
failed to develop effective ways of sharing the wealth it enjoys, it has
rendered the entire field of humanitarianism vulnerable to reactionary attacks.
And although their conclusions are factually wrong and morally reprehensible,
right-wing extremists are correct that current aid models are a wasteful
disaster.
The dehumanizing rhetoric of extremists has grown influential in
nearly all Western European nations, as well as in the United States, interrupting
the liberal consensus which has dominated their respective countries’ politics
for decades. They have saturated their ideological environments with
nationalist, xenophobic, and exclusionary rhetoric, gaining electoral victories
and advancing policies which undermine or disrupt the efforts of humanitarians
to advocate for refugee and migrant rights.
It is important not to overstate the success of these groups; indeed,
there are still powerful forces opposing them. However, those in opposition
largely face the same pressures of humanitarian aid organizations. Calls by
centrist and liberal parties for international aid may come from a charitable
ethic but are limited by stagnant politics dependent upon the fickle support of
the wealthiest segments of society. No mainstream politician dares to challenge
the neoliberal paradigm.
The time has passed for these stale and unimaginative political
responses. So-called “creeping” crises such as climate change are now upon us,
fueling conflicts across the globe. The dramatic warnings of many activists are
deeply important, but the time for words of warning is long gone and the new
era of huge, transnational, and complex emergencies is here. The facts are
staggering: 65 million displaced3, 10 million stateless or at risk
of statelessness3, 29,000 children dying per day because of
preventable causes4. All of this in an age of plenty. When (not if)
ecological catastrophe increases mass displacement and refugee populations, it
may be too late to rethink our contemporary humanitarian strategies.
For those of us in the Global North who long to build a better
world in the face of these horrifying catastrophes, we are losing to those who
would rather shut out the frontline communities who will continue to suffer. By
heightening their alarmism, gaining mainstream influence, and aggressively
using online platforms to recruit disillusioned youth, the far right has been
working to prepare the Global North, emotionally and politically, for mass atrocity.
Yesterday, they banned minarets and headscarves. Today, they are drastically
limiting refugee and migrant entry. Tomorrow, they hope to build walls and arm
their watchmen. Once they have dehumanized enormous sections of the global
population and built walls to prevent their
entry, what will happen when larger and larger populations are forced to flee
their homes in response to rising sea levels or resource wars?
We are losing, it’s true – but we do not have to. The neoliberal
patchwork of minor solutions and NGO aid are no longer tenable in the new era
of complex humanitarian disasters. Instead, we have two options. We can
redistribute the ill-gotten gains of the Global North, or we can respond by
shutting the rest of the world out and enjoying our riches while millions die.
Right-wing extremists have chosen the latter, recruiting supporters from those who
reject neoliberalism amidst its decay. If we can eschew conservative
pragmatism, embracing instead compassion, solidarity, and creativity, we can
counter that hatefulness and transform the inequitable, dehumanizing circumstances
which reinforce it. We can turn the tides and win if we can only inspire a
moral reimagination of human society based upon justice, peace, and dignity for
all.
Notes
- “Unlocking the Water Potential of Agriculture” 2003 report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (accessible here)
- “Combating Atrocity-Justifying Ideologies”, by Jonathan Leader Maynard in The Responsibility to Prevent: Overcoming the Challenges of Atrocity Prevention (2015), edited by Serena K. Sharma and Jennifer M. Welsh
- “Peacebuilding Responses to Forced Migration” by Ruth Alminas, in Peace Studies Journal, Volume 11, Issue 1, February 2018 (accessible here)
- UNICEF Millennium Development Goals, number 4: Reducing Child Mortality (accessible here)
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