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What is wrong with The Right?
by Mohamed Elmasry
For the past
three decades, global politics and
religion have moved relentlessly toward an
increasing conservatism, and in many cases,
to the extreme far right. This is true not
only in Canada, the U.S., the European
Community, Israel, Australia, and New
Zealand, for example, but also through most
of the developing world, including many Arab
and Muslim nations.
Today, centrist
and left-of-centre political parties and
policy making are almost non-existent. And
with a correspondingly high concentration
of international media in the hands of
a powerful few, news and editorial resources
in both developing and developed countries
have also taken an extreme turn to the right.
Where liberal or moderate reform movements
once held the high ground in politics and
religion, dangerous fanaticism and
extremism are now the order of the day. These
changes are not making our world a better
place and should be of great concern to all
who care about the meaning of civil society
and basic human decency.
The mounting
influence of the extreme right has been
particularly evident in the U.S. and all
across Europe -- Italy and Austria being
obvious examples of a swelling regional
neo-conservatism. Even in the U.K., the
once-activist Labour party is sliding fast to
the right.
Similarly, in
Europe the influence of the extreme right has
edged its way to centre-stage prominence from
the political fringes, fuelled by a
recent wave of hostility toward immigrants,
particularly those from the developing, or
Third World. Among them, Arabs and Muslims
have been singled out for growing negative
attention. Extreme right political parties
have cynically blamed rising European
unemployment on all non-Caucasian immigrants.
As well,
right-wingers have been working overtime and
at astonishing speed, to marginalize
indigenous and aboriginal people everywhere,
along with the poor, the needy, the sick, the
disabled, the elderly, the uneducated, and
the unskilled. With each passing day, there
seems less and less room in society for
old-fashioned virtues such as tolerance,
acceptance, and compassion. Full-blown
tribalism is back and it is not a credit to
modern humanity.
In our so-called
democratic West, right-wingers use
propaganda, expensive public relations firms,
intimidation, coercion, and even outright
lies, to achieve their goals. The political
right, which continually invests in refining
its multi-media image, is bolstered every
time a centrist critic is silenced and
"cleansed" out of the system.
Why has
neo-conservatism developed such an appeal
among the influential middle and upper-middle
classes? It has been simply by cutting taxes
to lure support in the short term -- even at
the expense of greatly increasing government
deficits, as has happened recently in the
U.S. The conservative far right has even
drawn in working class people and
poverty-liners by blaming immigrants for
their low income and unemployment conditions.
Take one serious
national issue facing both Canada and the
U.S., as a potent example -- the future care
of our steadily aging,
longer-living populations. You'd think that
public health care would be enhanced and the
immigration of young, skilled
workers promoted as a logical investment in
everyone's future. You might even ask why
there is no proactive immigration policy
aimed at doubling Canada's skilled working
population over the next two decades when the
boomer "age crunch" is sure to hit. Yet in
both health care and immigration, powerful
right-wing politics have resulted in
regressive measures.
In the U.S., care
of the elderly is left for the most part to
charities -- despite the fact that the
majority of donated American dollars do not
go into direct services for the
country's poor and needy. American churches
receive about 43 per cent of all
national charitable contributions, which in
1999 totaled $190 billion. A surprisingly
large proportion of those funds are spent on
traditional (some would say outdated)
evangelism -- trying to convert countries
like Iraq to Christianity, while
neglecting the work of Christ among
nominally Christian American inner-city
neighborhoods.
Immersed in the
individualistic and competitive gospel of
"the American way," the political and
religious right are proud that in the coming
century, the U.S. government will no longer
take responsibility for providing quality
elder care, economic assistance to the
impoverished, or basic shelter for
the homeless. Tragically, the selfish and
elitist myth of "the American way" has
attracted a growing number of right
wingers, even within historically
liberal Canadian politics.
The
neo-conservative right rejects any government
mandate to provide basic economic security to
its citizens through the models of the social
safety net or the universal provider (welfare
state). In the U.S. today, the role
of government is increasingly restricted to
that of providing material security, both
economically and militarily -- not for the
individual citizen, but for rich and powerful
multinational corporations. American
right-wingers worry far more about
rising Social Security, Medicare,
and environmental costs, than about the
vastly greater costs of the country's
escalating national defense budget.
These
neo-conservative trends must be reversed
before it's too late. The dangers of the
political and religious right to the
well-being of all North Americans must
be exposed. Our collective apathy, especially
among young adults (both Canadian and
American), cannot continue. Only 2 per
cent of all Canadians belong to a political
party; the percentage is even lower among the
young. Among Canadians who do not practice
any religion, many more will have to become
active in helping to manage and
support religious institutions that care for
the most vulnerable and needy members of
society.
It is up to
centrist Canadians to act in preserving every
liberal party and government policy in this
country from the relentless onslaught of the
right. The battle will be daunting and long,
for the right-wingers have money, media
and influence on their side. But it can --
and must -- be won, for the good of this
country and its future.
Mohamed Elmasry
is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of
Waterloo and national president of the
Canadian Islamic Congress.
He contributed above article to Media Monitors Network (MMN) from
Ontario, Canada.
Source:
by the same author:
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