What's Up On The Right

If you want to understand right wing discontent, Elif Shafak writes, take a look at what he calls "the right wing intelligentsia:"

There is a new radical-right intelligentsia and they provide the missing link between the world of art and the margins, they give legitimacy to reactionary politics and to the backlash against progressive reforms; they systematically distort facts, unashamedly rewrite history, and use their words and social status to incite hostility and separation. And they manage to do all of this with a shiny veneer of intellectual sophistication.

They seek to rewrite history through their fiction. Shafak offers a few examples:

Few books in this new trend have been more influential than those written by the French novelist and essayist Renaud Camus. Camus, an ardent supporter of Marine Le Pen, claims a global elite is conspiring against the European white populations and culture. His views on “the great replacement” have been translated by far-right websites and used to reinforce the thesis that there is a “white genocide” at work.

That fear is also visible in Thilo Sarrazin’s 2010 book Germany Abolishes Itself, which topped German bestseller lists for 21 weeks and sold 1.5m copies. Sarrazin believes Muslim immigrants are less intelligent than Germans. Emboldened by his remarks, rightwing activists in Germany demand IQ tests for immigrants. In 2018 Sarrazin published Hostile Takeover, on more or less the same themes. This time, the political atmosphere has been even more welcoming with the far-right Alternative for Germany having entered parliament. In an interview, when asked whether he had anything positive to say about Islam, Sarrazin responded: “No, I believe the world would have been a better place if Islam had never existed.”

The new intelligentsia subtly spew hatred. And Canadian Jordan Peterson is among them:

The new radical right rhetoric deftly blends antisemitism and Islamophobia – but other forms of prejudice also share centre stage. Anti-feminism and gender bias echo throughout the works of the Canadian clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson. Packaging age-old reactionary machismo with sophisticated, academic language, he is the perfect intellectual icon for young, discontented men involved in the radical right. Peterson enjoys making grandiose claims and then watching people get upset. He is difficult to categorise, and that elusiveness is clearly cultivated. He walks an increasingly thin line between a scholar who rightly defends freedom of speech, and a demagogue who fuels discrimination. One wonders if this does not bother his conscience.

You have to wonder if any of these people have a conscience.

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