All over the world, the Right has gone to war against masks. Consider what has happened in Britain. Owen Jones writes in The Guardian:
“A monstrous imposition!” is how our modern-day Boudicca, the Tory backbencher Sir Desmond Swayne, decried the new law compelling customers to cover their faces before entering a shop. Sir Desmond does not have a blanket objection to covering his visage, you understand: he has previously described blackface as an “entirely acceptable bit of fun” after boasting of dressing up as the late soul singer James Brown. But while Sir Desmond may believe that all freeborn Englishmen have a sacred right to racist fancy dress, measures to stop the spread of a pandemic that has killed one in every 1,000 of his fellow citizens represent objectionable tyranny.
The American Right also sees the mask as an assault on liberty:
In Texas, anti-mask activists believe such an imposition belongs in a “communist country”, while the Oklahoma city of Stillwater backed off from imposing a compulsory mask order after threats of violence. On one level, this is just another expression of dog-eat-dog individualism: to hell with the common good if it requires sacrifice on my part, however minor. But it is entirely in keeping with another phenomenon: of the modern right’s embrace of victimhood.
That is what is at the core of all of this: the Right revels in its victimhood:
Here in Britain, we are ruled by a Tory government with an 80-seat majority; most of the press swear editorial allegiance to it, with the two dominant newspapers, the Daily Mail and the Sun, appointing themselves the protectors of the nation’s moral code. In the US, Trump is supported by nearly every Republican officeholder and has his own cable TV propaganda channel in Fox News. You would think that triumphalism alone would reign, but on both sides of the Atlantic, it is mixed with profound insecurity. The populist right fears that the ground it has conquered in the so-called “culture wars” and in the corridors of power could be lost, and abruptly so, with its progressive opponents using the first opportunity in power to go further than ever in asserting the rights of minorities and women.
Rightwingers’ insecurity is twofold. They point to what is described as the “long march through the institutions”, a concept inspired by the work of the late Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci: that the left has secured cultural hegemony, not least in universities. The BBC, in this narrative, is a primary antagonist, regarded as institutionally hardwired against the right’s aspirations, despite its flagship interviewer, Andrew Neil, chairing the rightwing magazine the Spectator, and the corporation having played a pivotal role in bolstering the careers of rightwing demagogues from Nigel Farage to Katie Hopkins. That the right can boast a network of lavishly funded and well-connected thinktanks is ignored, too, because it is inconvenient to a myth of victimhood.
The other is a straightforward fear of the younger generation, among whom progressive values are hegemonic. On issues ranging from LGBTQ and women’s rights to anti-racism and immigration, younger people are attempting to communicate their moral values on social media to the older generation who dominate the commanding heights of the nation’s media. This is at the root of the “culture war” or “cancel culture”: rising demands that the values of the nation’s institutions are aligned with the worldview of the under-40s have provoked a moral panic. Black Lives Matter is just one flashpoint in that struggle: another is trans rights, an article of faith among much of the country’s youth.
The old guard can see who will replace them. And they're doing their damnedest to stop them.
Image: CP24
8 comments:
As Bill Buckley wrote, "A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it." Note the victimhood implicit in that statement - people have no patience with us. The trope of privileged white men being "the real victims" has a long and ignoble history.
Cap
Conservatives have whined for decades now, Cap. They claim that the world has abandoned them. But they have not figured out why.
This possible explanation of why Trump and other prominent Republicans have refused to wear a mask under any circumstance makes some sense if you consider the views of their right-wing political base, and their need to appeal to it, doesn't it? Now that Trump and many Republican leaders seem to be relenting, I wonder if that may have some small effect on their election?
CED
I read, CED, that a small sliver of Trump's base is now peeling away from him. Remember, this is a man who declared bankruptcy six times before he was elected president. Clearly, he doesn't learn from his mistakes. But some of his voters do.
Victim-hood is a perennial tactic of organized religion. Judaism, Christianity and Islam have all used it (and still do) to great advantage.
And there is a particular element of organized religion, Toby, which holds that -- if you have been "washed in the blood of the Lamb" -- you are immune to COVID.
For the right, everything is subsumed into their gawddamned "culture war." There has always been a conservative/liberal divide on policy questions and that has largely been constructive. No side has a monopoly on good ideas. The culture war, however, is a voracious beast and it is being kept well fed by unscrupulous right wing pols and their enablers (think FOX). Today it consumes not just political and economic differences. Climate change, a scientific issue, is ensnarled in the culture war. This pandemic, a plainly medical problem, again is fed into the gaping maw of the culture war.
Bonnie Henry remarked that BC's coronavirus programme succeeded because the political caste stayed clear. They chose not to push it into their partisan cesspool. In neighbouring Alberta, Team Kenney took a different approach. Like their counterparts in the US they approached it as more of an economic threat and more Albertans became infected and died in the result.
We are embarking on a very dangerous time, perhaps the most dangerous in human history. We need to find a way to crush these culture warriors who, quite deliberately, leave us divided, weak and vulnerable. If we can't pull together in the face of a pandemic what fate will befall us when we are confronted by far more serious threats?
I still think that electoral reform could partly answer the culture war crisis. Devolve power where it rightly belongs - to the electorate. Weaken the political caste that has been increasingly failing the country and our people.
I agree, Mound. My impression is that the culture warriors are a distinct minority. But, because of the way our electoral system is structured, they retain power. A re-configured electoral system would recognize the true influence these people possess.
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