Revolt of the right, and the unrighteous too
It is the economy, stupid. At the end of the sixth decade of the last century, a huge swathe of land and their human contents had come under the control
It is the economy, stupid. At the end of the sixth decade of the last century, a huge swathe of land and their human contents had come under the control of leftwing governments proclaiming different versions of Socialism but united and unified by their populism and hostility to western style Liberal Democracy and freewheeling capitalist enterprise. Russia had managed to incorporate its vast holding of captive nations and satellite nationalities into a humongous empire-state known as the Soviet Union or USSR despite tremors and murmurs of dissent and resentment from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. China had weighed in 1949 with its mammoth People's Republic of China. India with its vast population even after being divested of Pakistan and ably guided by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the patrician and cultured Kashimiri aristocrat, became involved with the movement of non-aligned nations which was more socialist than capitalist in outlook and orientation. When it held its first gathering in Bandung, Indonesia, it included a stellar array of emerging leaders from the Third World. They were soon to be joined by the rambunctious and uncontainable Fidel Castro after the Cuban Revolution. Cuba was only a hundred miles from the coast of Miami which is as close to a boil in the wrong place as it can get. At that point, the entire world seemed destined for a Socialist future. Even the Americans panicked as significant sections of its leadership succumbed to witch hunting and anti-communist hysteria.
Fifty years on, the whole bubble had burst. The Soviet Empire had disappeared leaving in its wake a Russian rump which had lapsed into authoritarian rightwing nationalism and hyper-Slavic hysteria. Virtually all actually existing Socialist states had collapsed as they came under intense pressure from a local populace choking under the cruel yoke of Soviet tyranny and parlous living conditions. Population explosion compounded by misapplication of increasingly scarce resources or their outright misappropriation turned the people against Socialist central planning and their starry-eyed purveyors. China escaped by the whiskers after dumping the stifling and suffocating iron jacket of its founding father which turned out to be a collage of whimsical and authoritarian absurdities parading as socialist principles. The parlous plight of the habitants of the socialist orbit had not been helped by the phenomenon of globalization. New communication techniques disrupted its mono-narratives of progress as they beamed images of a western paradise of consumer goods and joyous citizens in a saturation bombardment the like of which has not been seen in the history of humanity.
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But it was not only socialist centralized planning that was in trouble. As a result of its own crisis of expectation arising from population explosion and increasing scarce resources after all known avenues of human exploitation and expropriation have been exhausted and bitter recriminations among its warring and exhausted political class, the west took a sharp lurch to the right even after the socialist threat had abated. This is the classic Malthusian quandary that has dogged the capitalist mode of production ever since its triumph over feudalism and other rudimentary models of production and planning. In A Modest Proposal, a bitter and mordantly irreverent piece of satirical writing famed for its joyous and incendiary propositions, Jonathan Swift, the eighteenth century British writer, philosopher and social gadfly, insisted that newly born children should be killed off and eaten for the culinary relish in order to reduce population.
This is as close to literary infanticide as it will ever get. But like all gifted writers, the old Anglo-Irish curmudgeon might have been demonstrating some apocalyptic clairvoyance into the future of humanity. Just take a look at the catastrophe of Gaza, Southern Lebanon and the biblical rubble of Tehran and you come away with the thought that the gap between actual reality and haunting fiction is no longer unbridgeable. The real thing may actually be upon us, much nearer than we ever imagined. As the west lunged to embrace a rightwing authoritarian populism, rabid xenophobia, racial intolerance, a disdain for and intolerance of the Other have become the new normal. In many nations, hapless immigrants dangling from limping vessels have been known to have been turned away to perish at high seas. Children are known to have been separated from parents and sent forth. It is a horrible vista of modern civilization. Has humanity become irredeemable in its wickedness and monstrous cruelty to its own species?
