The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

How to face the appearance of the new extreme right?

2022-12-07T11:11:03.380Z


It is amazing that there are millions of people in Brazil who, even aware of the violent aberrations of Bolsonaro's disposition, have elected him again


More and more the world spins in unison.

Everything ends up being universal, starting with politics.

We see, for example, the resurgence of the new extreme right with its various shades, not excluding those of Nazi and fascist tinge.

It began as something isolated and even outdated, but it immediately took shape and set the planet on fire.

And it is already reaching all corners.

To think that this new phenomenon that worries everyone can be limited to some countries is pure utopia.

It has come to stay and multiply like a virus.

Here in Brazil, this new right has dominated everything with serious consequences, not only political but also economic, which has led 30 million to suffer from hunger.

Lula, the new president who in weeks will take office as head of state, has understood this immediately with the political acuity that characterizes him.

He has recognized that in his third term, things will be different than in the past, since Bolsonaro's extreme right will continue to not settle for defeat and will do everything to prevent him from governing.

This time, it is not a question of a simple change of power, but of having to face those who deny the values ​​of democracy and demonize freedoms and pursue democratic values.

The question that political analysts on the continents where this new extreme right is taking root is beginning to ask themselves is how to deal with it, since it presents itself as a new bacterium resistant to all its antidotes.

We are perhaps facing something new and still undeciphered.

Facing him with force would be of little use and would even please his hosts and followers, lovers of violence and an eye for an eye.

For this new ultra-right, the dialogue discourse sounds stale.

They prefer confrontation and even violence.

The dialogue thing sounds like something from other times that they despise.

In the midst of concern about this sudden rise of the world extreme right -with its mediocre leaders from all points of view but brave and who firmly believe in violence-, they begin to study what could be the best antidote against this new political plague that it is poisoning the very essence of democracy, which is dialogue, freedom and pluralism of ideas.

Some say that there still does not exist, as in other moments in history, a true prophet capable of understanding the new political phenomenon and analyzing it in its very essence, since nothing, not even in nature, is born by chance.

It is true that the work

How Democracies Die

, by Steven Lewitsky and Daniel Zibblatt, cleverly addresses the issue of democracies threatened by the new populism.

However, since then things have changed rapidly and the new ultra-right has escaped the canons of the past.

We are facing a new phenomenon that we will only be able to understand and face if we accept that it is an unprecedented way of attacking the very roots of the values ​​of freedom.

The case of Bolsonarism in Brazil, perhaps more than that of Trumpism in the United States, could serve to try to understand the possible "novelty" of this new radical and extreme right, violent and allergic to all the freedoms and innovations offered by modern times and that supposes the antipolitics to the pure state.

Having said that, what has not yet been seriously addressed is why this phenomenon has been born right now and with such force that it seems like a fire that is difficult to put out.

Undoubtedly, much of it is directly related to the crisis, also global, of the values ​​of democracy and of politics as such which, to put it in simple words, which everyone understands, has impoverished and has ceased to be a way of organizing in a fair and plural way the way of coexistence and organization of society and peoples, to become in the eyes of all an economic business and personal privileges.

One enters politics, or so it appears, for personal gain, a game without even hiding it, carried out in the light of the sun and that no longer embarrasses those who use it.

This commodification of politics and the abuse of it for personal gain is no longer hidden, it is visible to all and is carried out even at the level of the National Congress, as has just happened here in Brazil with the shameful and shameless “ secret budget”, thanks to which the deputies receive millions from a fund to use in works in their country with clearly electoral purposes.

And it is secret because no one should know who receives and how much.

The Supreme Court is trying to annul said budget and even Lula has already admitted that if it continued in force he would have to count on it if he wants to govern.

This situation of the degeneration of democracy that is remaining like a nut empty of its true initial meaning could explain why there are millions today in all countries who vote for the new extreme right not because they are fascists, enemies of freedom, violent by nature or unaware of the novelties that science is preparing.

Many of them do it, as has happened here in Brazil, not because they are naturally contrary to freedoms.

It's something more.

Analyzing the result of the last Brazilian elections that led to victory for Lula, what is astonishing is that there were millions of people who, even aware of the violent aberrations of Bolsonaro's attitude and the desolation he created in the country, would have elected him again. .

What begins to appear clear is that there are millions of people in the world, more numerous every day, who perhaps without excessive political analysis, feel not only discontent but ashamed and indignant of the uses and abuses that so many politicians who claim to be democratic carry carried out in the light of the sun, without even hiding it and not infrequently with the connivance of justice itself that participates and without shame in the same feast.

That leads the simplest people to say with disdain that "everyone is equal."

They are not, but it is true that the growth of the new extreme right is beginning to appear as a response to the universal discredit to which the true values ​​of democracy and individual and collective freedoms have slipped, without which societies end up not only disheartened they dust off their worst instincts for violence.

They are those instincts that we all carry with us since the appearance of

Homo sapiens

and before which only the values ​​of culture, dialogue and universal solidarity can serve as a safe dam against this wave of violence, of all shades, that threatens to our little planet invisible and end up poisoning our coexistence, dusting off tragic and bloody threats from the past that we thought were eliminated forever.

Subscribe here to the EL PAÍS America

newsletter

and receive all the latest news from the region

Subscribe to continue reading

Read without limits

Keep reading

I'm already a subscriber

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-12-07

You may like

News/Politics 2024-03-14T10:05:32.177Z
News/Politics 2024-03-14T18:38:45.087Z

Trends 24h

News/Politics 2024-04-17T18:08:17.125Z

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.