Posted on 06/21/2010 8:38:41 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
An unusual faux-populism is widespread in the United States, where standing up for "the people" seems to mean cowing to corporate interests, big oil (including apologizing to BP, the perpetrators of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill), and fighting against universal health care coverage that would benefit millions of Americans.
Sarah Palin's "drill baby drill" mantra, which supports oil industry goals of increased drilling in protected areas - including offshore - is symptomatic of this faux populism, as is her uninformed condemnation, during the health-care reform debate, of "death panels" that would kill seniors, when in reality this was just end-of-life consultation.
Another political leader in this vein, Kentucky Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul, advocates the dismantling of government programs that help Americans while taking apologetic stances for companies like BP. Minnesota Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, another one of these leaders, even warned against a "fleecing" of BP for money to cover the costs of the oil spill disaster. Is it really fleecing to make them pay for their blunder?
More recently, Republican Congressman Joe Barton, at a Capitol Hill hearing, actually apologized to BP executives for being made to pay for the disaster, claiming it was "un-American." He was forced to retract this later on because of the blatant nature and timing of his statements, though the others mentioned above have not retracted.
While right-wing supporters include more affluent sections of American society, many of them are poorer working-class Americans. They see someone such as Sarah Palin, for instance, as being "folksy," as standing up for the people and against "liberal elites." These followers do not see that these very leaders, while professing to be against "elites," are very much playing into the agenda of business elites such as big oil and the health insurance industry, and have an agenda that often goes against the interest of the masses.
While misguided, the above in and of themselves represent a relatively benign element of the right in America - and in fairness, many followers do stop there, at advocating smaller government and freer reign to corporate interests. However, there are elements of the right that are more malicious and dangerous, that foster bigotry and hatred and, in extreme cases, even violence.
A new wave of right-wing activism, in many instances not directly linked to the Republican Party is based not only on antipathy to the public sector, but is also on a reaction against America's first black president.
So-called "birthers" try to call into question Mr. Obama's legitimacy as president by claiming he was not born in the United States, despite the overwhelming documentation showing that he was. Birther talk is no doubt fuelled by the fact that the president is both non-white and has a non-Anglo-Saxon name, Barack Hussein Obama. Mr. Obama is referred to, by many right-wing and Tea Party supporters, as being a "Muslim" (which he is not), as if that should be a disqualifier for being president.
We have come a long way when it comes to civil rights, but strong reactionary elements show there is still a long way to go. Also, we cannot assume that the direction is necessarily towards more tolerance, as backlashes are very much possible. In Europe, xenophobic, anti-immigrant, and anti-Muslim sentiment is on the rise in many countries.
An even more troubling element of the new right in the United States is the steep rise in the numbers of militia groups following Barack Obama's election. The Oklahoma City bombing of 1995 represented a particularly extreme and destructive example of the militia movement, raising troubling questions about what may be possible now and in the near future, given this new wave of reactionary sentiment.
The views of the new right - from small government to thinly veiled expressions of bigotry - find ready air time on the right-wing Fox News Network. Worrisome in this regard is that a Canadian version of this news network is soon coming, SUN TV. While SUN TV may possibly be more moderate than Fox News, given the more moderate views of Canadians at large, it is also worrisome about what this new platform for right wingers will mean for our political culture and for our society.
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Hassan Arif resides in Fredericton. He can be reached by email at arif. telegraphjournal@gmail.com
The reason for the conservative "resurgence" is fewer people are buying this cliched crap anymore.
The main problem I have the this “resurgence of the RIGHT WING” crap from Chris Matthew to Arif is the fact that we are NOT right wing..WE ARE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD tax paying everyday Americans.
We only SEEM right wing because they are actually FAR LEFT.
He was probably too busy beating his insolent wives or demonstrating against Christians to do much research, so he just cut-n-pasted most of the popular talking points together.
The leftist media has controlled words & their context for far too long.
I like this last line. Liberals never get it. Fox thrives because people like the content, agree with it and watch it.
Fox and Rush are a reflection of society and not purveyors of it. Few watch liberal t.v. or listens to liberal radio because few people agree with liberalism.
What's un-American is being intimidated and brow beaten into establishing this fund. In the old America, you had courts where people went to determine what damages were to be paid and how. Now we just have one fascist bully that decrees from on high, and it is so.
Hey, Hassan!
Take a Dudley.
Wouldn’t fake (or faux) populism be illustrated by stamping one’s foot, threatening others and extorting money from private enterprise withoue due process? Geez, here I thought I knew what fake populism looked like. Who knew?
Either, he is a knucklehead. Why can’t these “it helps BIG Oil” shrill screamers realize that drilling our oil keeps prices of everything us little people need, low?
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