A SILVER LINING IN RIGHT-WING POPULISM
In pushing their xenophobic nationalism, could these populists bring about its opposite: cosmopolitanism?
Boris Johnson’s election victory means that Brexit will happen. Polls had indicated all along that Johnson would win. It was the margin of the landslide that surprised people.
Less attended to was the landslide of the Scottish National Party. They won 48 seats and exceeded the expectations even of Nicola Sturgeon, the party leader. Sturgeon has already pledged to send a letter to Johnson requesting the power to hold another Scottish independence vote.
Scottish independence, as well as loosening ties between the UK and Northern Ireland, is another price that Boris Johnson and his fellow Brexiteers might well have to pay. This is the silver lining of the swing in several countries toward populism: the dissolution of divided nations.
How is this a silver lining? How can the dissolution of the UK and, say, the secession of blue states within the United States be seen as something good? Because these nations can no longer stand united when rifts exist and grow over the core values their people hold. For example, right-wing populists such as Johnson, Trump, Morrison (Australia), Orbán (Hungary), and Bolsonaro (Brazil) not only champion anti-immigrant nationalism, but they also deny climate change and therefore deny the science behind it. Morrison denies that climate change has much to do with the bushfires ravaging Australia, just as Bolsonaro spouts the same denial about the fires devastating the Amazon.
Such denials jeopardize their countries’ future, the future of our civilization, and the future of our species and planet. To deny the science is to deny evidence and facts. To deny those is to create an alternate worldview based on false narratives and outright lies.
The result is that we face two separate realities. In one reality the central values revolve around facts, evidence, science, the rule of law, constitutions, democracy, guaranteed rights applying equally to all. In the other reality the central value appears to be the need and drive for power. That need and drive turn into establishing rules that enrich those in power; provide liberty predominantly for the white males wishing to retain and expand their power; and underwrite equality for the rich, their enablers, and their cronies.
It is easy, and lazy, to divide these two realities in the United States into two camps: Republicans and Democrats. Republicans and Trump are the prime deniers of climate change. Theirs is the party gutting the Constitution by shifting power to the Executive Branch by undermining separation of powers; theirs is the party willing, some might say “eager,” to invite foreign interference into our elections. Still, many Democrats serve corporate America, Wall Street, and Big Pharma that too often overlook the workingmen and workingwomen of this country. Dark money and corruption live within the DNC and Democratic Party as surely as they do within the RNC and Republicans.
No, the reality divide is not simply tribal, people clinging to their political affiliation and identity at the cost of reason and truth. Many Republican public intellectuals and political commentators have left or at least rebuked their party for the abandonment of facts, science, decency, and common sense. The list includes David Brooks, Bret Stephens, Jennifer Rubin, Kathleen Parker, David Frum, Max Boot, George Will, and Bill Kristol.
Perhaps they hold out hope that reform will bring to the Republican Party a renewed commitment to rule of law, separation of powers, democracy, and evidence. I hold out a related hope that the Democratic Party will wake up to the severity of the climate crisis and cease the fandango with centrist and corporate interests that push for incremental change in the face of national and worldwide climate catastrophe.
But a separation of realities is not a breech easily overcome. Because the time to save our planet, species, and civilization is limited, so too is the time for developing and living out the values that can do the work.
Therefore national dissolution, the breakup of the UK and the United States, is actually the way forward. Any organization of states or regions that values facts, truth, science, and the like is one that sees the threat of extinction. Through such an organization we need to advance our actions and relationships to protect the Earth and save our species. As long as the European Union adheres to and builds on those values, it is an organization to be supported. So, too, would be an alliance between, say, Canada, Mexico, and the blue-states of America.
Meanwhile, the red-states of America, a right-wing Brazil, a Brexited England, and the rest of national-populist Europe can try to cobble together their own fantasy world based on xenophobia, misogyny, racism, and extractive economics.
The blue-state alliance points toward increased global cooperation, though not toward increased neoliberal globalization. The latter rests on the primacy of “free” markets, which are themselves heavily reliant on ongoing extractive enterprises and oligopolistic practices among giant corporations that use their money to buy political influence, if not outright governance.
Instead of this neoliberalism, I am talking about a movement, worldwide perhaps, toward a cosmopolitan outlook, as opposed to a globalized one. Stephen Miller, Trump’s senior-policy adviser, excoriates those who have what he calls “a cosmopolitan bias.”
He does so, because to Miller and his fellow-travelers on the far right “cosmopolitan” bespeaks an outlook favoring worldwide attachments, if not identities, as opposed to a nationalist outlook. Miller is right about that. A person with a cosmopolitan outlook, even bias, is one who shares values with those, regardless of nationality, who seek to unite around a common worldview of cooperation; generosity; mutual appreciation; and deep affection for people, for their rights and aspirations, and for our planet.
Unlike Miller’s sneer when he rebuked a reporter for being cosmopolitan — insinuating by doing so that the reporter was an out-of-touch elitist — cosmopolitanism is better summed up by one of America’s first and greatest statesmen, Benjamin Franklin:
“God, grant that not only the Love of Liberty, but a thorough Knowledge of the Rights of Man, may pervade all the Nations of the Earth, so that a Philosopher may set his Foot anywhere on its surface, and say, ‘This is my Country.’”
By “Man” Franklin meant “person,” and by “Philosopher” he meant “anyone.” Every nation on Earth might pretend to love liberty, but too often that liberty is defined in ways that pertain only to a select group. So too might those nations pay lip service to the rights of humans, but those rights cannot interfere with the select group’s practices of liberty.
To extend liberty and rights to all persons regardless of nationality, religious views, race, ethnicity and to work on behalf of all people — strangers, even, from far-off places — requires building a sense of a common good through a global civic culture. That depends on creating a shared identity, which is a cosmopolitan identity.
Only such an identity can save our planet. We could then join together in mutual action and through shared values to unite against the climate catastrophe. Notice the centrality of values here. I am not suggesting that a rootless corporation, perfunctorily headquartered in some Western city or capital but with branches throughout the world and with loyalty to no place, reflects cosmopolitanism. Such corporations reflect globalism instead. Their centrality is profit, not workers’ rights, human rights, people empowerment, or the planet’s health.
Creating a cosmopolitan identity might seem easy enough to do, given that we share a common humanity and thus should be able to perceive through that lens a common good. But the recognition of that shared humanity is often lost in the welter of divergent cultural practices; religious beliefs; political ideologies; and seared and searing histories, grudges, lies, and propaganda that keep us divided. We too often look for and see only the seeming gulfs that keep us apart.
Shifts in identity are important here, because identity is tied, however indirectly, to the will, in what people are willing to do. Such shifts can be accomplished and need to be accomplished. Otherwise, I fear for the future of our civilization, our species, and our planet.
This is not to say that policies are not important. They clearly are, not the least reason for which is that policies reflect values. I suggest building coalitions within and among those regions of the globe that already share a sense of urgency about climate change and about following the science (reason, evidence, and inquiry) behind it into domestic and international policy recommendations. Ralph Waldo Emerson observed that “governments have their origin in the moral identity of men.” Global governance should be no different. It can be built around the moral imperative to save our planet and ourselves. Such governance builds on the identities of those who already recognize this imperative and, as it spreads, can help affect the identities and will of those not yet convinced.
Building these coalitions may very well undercut national boundaries. Red-states and blue-states in the US are one such example. So, too, are divisions between the west coasts of California, Oregon, and Washington and the eastern and central parts of those states. Again, we cannot pretend any longer that we share a United States of America when we live in separate and quite distinct realities informed by quite different value sets.
A blue-region alliance would rest and build on a democratic constitution. A constitutional convention, as I’ve described elsewhere, could make that a reality, a unifying reality not just for our citizens but for simpatico persons around the globe in regions who share cosmopolitan (the well-being of and respect for all persons) values and the policies emanating from them.
Yes, you say, but what about the well-being and respect of those in red regions that adhere to such values as limited government, unregulated business practices, expansive capitalism, extractive economics, and white patriarchy? Bear in mind that these are Republican-steeped states. The Republican Party is the party of Reagan, not Lincoln. Reagan saw government as the problem, not as a source of solutions to problems. Congressman Ken Buck, Republican of Colorado, summarizes this predominant Republican attitude today. Buck, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, said that the president should not be impeached for obstructing Congress, because “we were sent here to obstruct this Congress…It’s a campaign promise.”
So, when Republican leaders and politicians in these red states express their beliefs and values, we honor them by believing them. Leave them to live out those beliefs and values, to pursue the kinds of lives they have chosen, even as they poison our communities, young minds, and the planet.
The blue-region alliance will serve as a counter-example to those lives. And our cosmopolitan constitution will be available to all those who can and will live according to its values, laws, and principles.
The centerpiece of the blue-region alliance must be something like the Green New Deal. Not only will this lessen the outpouring of carbon into our atmosphere, but it will also stimulate our economy as we transform our sources of energy, rebuild our infrastructure in a green economy, and reconstitute our electric grid.
This is not some fanciful promise of a brighter tomorrow. The Green New Deal is grounded by science and in economic reality. Consider, for example, that 38 percent of America’s electricity already comes from low-emission sources. Moving dramatically into renewable energy for the rest of our energy needs will require a commitment on the scale of the interstate highway project or Roosevelt’s rural electrification program that put up 250,000 miles of power lines in five years. “American workers would have to build about 120,000 new wind turbines and about 44,000 large solar power plants in a decade…and more than 60,000 miles of new power transmission lines.” All of that requires additional workers making the components, hauling them throughout the nation, installing them, and the rest. Now imagine that happening worldwide. Obviously we still need lots of extractable resources. We aren’t, however, releasing their byproducts into the atmosphere or wasting or poisoning our water to get them.
Of course, corporations and their political apparatchiks can see ways to make a buck through such a green economy. Holding them back is their own value set: the costs of shifting from one energy sector to another and, in the meantime, the desire to earn the maximum return by continuing to extract and burn resources from the ground. It’s like trying to get the gourmand to stop eating at the open breakfast buffet by pointing out that a fabulous lunch is soon to come. A worldwide blue-region alliance will try to push them away from the table by luring them with a healthier alternative.
Reagan once joked that only an alien invasion could unite the world. Today far-right nationalists across the globe are united in stopping, in their words, “the alien invasion” of immigrants and refugees, not some other-worldly force. Those rightists worry about what nations must do with these hordes of vagabonds, forgetting to ask what has driven people to risk their lives and the lives of their loved ones to journey to a new, and often hostile, environment. Understanding the forces driving them to these extremes can unite the planet. They travel because climate change has led to a global crisis that is exacerbated by disruptive neoliberal economic practices throughout the globe, all in search of greater growth and profit. Mass migration through displacement is now and increasingly will be the result.
Ralph Lemkin, a Polish Jew, linguist, and international lawyer, was the father of the Genocide Convention. In the spring of 1941, at an academic conference at Duke University, Lemkin asked those gathered: “If women, children, and old people would be murdered a 100 miles from here, wouldn’t you run to help? Then why do you stop this decision of your heart when the distance is 3,000 miles instead of 100?”
Our moral makeup and our shared values construct national boundaries. Lemkin summarized that with the phrase “decision of your heart” — the human-to-human connection characteristic of cosmopolitanism. Such decisions are at the core of redrawing and transcending those boundaries. That can only happen when we exercise the political will to undertake these enormous tasks. Such political will, I believe, rests on dual aspects: 1) explaining in stark terms how dire our situation is and 2) painting a positive portrait of the future to come if we make this decision of the heart.
Right-wing populists are headed in the opposite direction: Ignore the science, disregard the evidence, and build up nations that divide, scare, and exclude. But national boundaries — all national boundaries — need to be transcended if we are to save our species and our planet. I have no faith that my generation, the Boomers, will do much to undo the damage that we have inflicted on this planet, on the young, and on future generations. So my call is to the young like Greta Thunberg who have the political will because they are more realistic about the corruption within our politics and about the severity of the crisis facing our planet and their future. The young can’t really count on us. Instead, we must count on them to march, vote, rebel, protest, create. Seize the reins…the sooner, the better.
