By Arden Henley
Whether it is in BC where a right-wing populist party just about overturned the governing centre-left, New Democratic Party, in France where Marine Le Pen’s right-wing party recently ousted the Prime Minister, or the United States where Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans swept to power in the November 2024 elections, right-wing populism with its authoritarian predilections is on the rise. Somehow, integral to this package is pooh-poohing the climate crisis as if it was a wokish fabrication of the academic elite.
In How to Lose a Country Turkish writer, Ece Temulkuran describes with breath-taking vividness Erdogan’s ascendance, remarkably similar in basic outline to Trump’s hegemony in the US. It all begins as a movement of the real people, the working people, the people who keep the day-to-day functioning of the society going, at least, that is how it is defined by the strongman (or woman, as in France). Because it is a movement that addresses the grievances and woes of real people, it transcends, well actually disregards, the norms and guardrails of the political system, arguably already bowed by years of servicing an economic system that is increasingly dysfunctional. Ironically, as Temulkuran wryly points out, the post-modern impulse that rippled through the intelligentsia inadvertently coincided with the next chapter of the authoritarian’s playbook: Twist the use of language and establish that truth is solely in the eyes of the beholder. It is the world of alternate facts and conspiracy theories amplified by the bullhorn of unregulated social media. Freedom of speech and bullshit merge in a juicy compost. In this messy milieu, people start holding on to the incessant and authoritative voice of the dear leader, the master of branding who knows that when the din is jangling, repetition prevails.
One of the effects of this cacophony is to bewilder the opposition still playing by out of date rules. Meanwhile, real people are paying too much for groceries and housing. So the dear leader who knows promises to address this issue. One night a friend of mine invited me to dinner at a Chinese restaurant with a conservative cabinet minister and her aid who were inviting my friend to run for office. They laid out the recipe for a successful campaign. You just promise to cut taxes and pay for it by cutting programs being sure to identify the bureaucrats who run these programs as on the take and inherently wasteful. The Chinese food on the table began to look smarmy. But what do you say to this, really? Fortunately, we were able to walk out into the cool night air having declined the offer to play the game. We still had that luxury. So in the end the liberal opposition ends up whining about the threat to democracy all this poses when most people are trying to figure out if they can pay the bills. The irony of a guy centre stage who has been making huge profits from a set up in which income disparity at feudal levels is tolerated becomes the proverbial bitter pill to swallow. And notice how reluctant I am to just say it: This is how fascism works.
Maybe the next card will make it clearer. The next card in the fascist game is identifying the enemy or enemies. There has to be someone to blame for this mess. Immigrants are a great candidate, illegal immigrants all the more so. They didn’t do it properly, the way we or our ancestors did and they’re taking our jobs. Besides, many of them are undesirable, murderers, rapists and pet eaters, not to speak of fleeing climate change compromised ecologies or failing states. The way psychologists put this is that aggression towards outgroups creates ingroup solidarity. It’s a very old game. Machiavelli would tell you so. In most instances it goes on and on, first its immigrants, opposing political parties, wokish elites, then it’s the press and then it’s the deep state and, before you know it, it’s you, the enemy within.
Other than heading for the hills, what is to be done? I am not sure in the US, but Canada is at an earlier stage in this process so it might be worth asking how a country can be saved from such a fate. Is it even possible to think in such terms? Or are we better to accept that an unraveling is taking place and the best project is really to save a few pockets of people, expertise and traditions, a kind of islands of sanity approach. My feeling is that we’d be well advised to start having this conversation rather than hiding out in our social bubbles and clinging to the illusion that future is going to replicate the past.
Read articles on climate change, sustainability, education, and more from GTEC’s Communication & Media (formally GTEC Blog)!
Adaptation is absolutely key to surviving the impacts of climate change. This is why GTEC has developed the Community-based Collaborative Model and implemented the Building Climate Change Resilience program to educate, activate and support communities in the face of climate change.