Rightist drift continues
I FIND recent incidents in the United States interesting because of its portrayal of the global drift to the right and the progressive backlash it is starting to conjure. The first one happened in Charlottesville, Virginia where white supremacists, who euphemistically call themselves white nationalist or alt-right, together with the Ku Klux Clan and neoNazis organized a rally that invited a counter-protest by progressives and liberals.
Among the counter-protesters was Heather Heyer, who had posted on her Facebook account on the whiter supremacists’ “Unite the Right” rally: “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.” She was with her friends and was crossing the street while the counter-protest was breaking up when a young man, James Alex Fields Jr., described as “misguided and disillusioned,” drove his vehicle into the crowd killing Heyer and hurting many others.
The backlash was immediate. The denunciation of the ideology of hate and bigotry was so widespread even US President Donald Trump, whose electoral campaign and presidency gave the ultra-rightists their current swagger, had to go with the flow. Yesterday, protesters toppled a statue of a Confederate soldier in Durham, North Carolina as calls to go after the symbols of racism were made.
It may look to us like those events and their relevance are far too distant from us. But this is simply not so. While in the US the drift to the right is symbolized by Trump’s win in the US presidential elections and the rise of the so-called “alt-right,” here in the Philippines this is shown by former Davao City mayor Rodrigo Duterte winning the polls and the constant assault on progressive beliefs like human rights and due process.
A Republican senator, whose brother was killed in World War II, said in the aftermath. He said his brother did not die fighting Nazism only to allow the advancement of such belief in the US to go unchallenged, or words to this effect. His linking the past with the present is also interesting. It showed that after eight decades or so rightist and ultra-rightist beliefs are resurgent, a challenging time for the present generation of progressives and liberals.
We don’t really know how far right the swing of the pendulum will be. During the time of Germany’s Adolf Hitler, it led to fascism, World War 2 and the Holocaust. In the US, the turmoil has so far been contained. But will the current response to Heyer’s killing by progressives and liberals lead to the escalation of violent acts by rightists and ultra-rightists?
In the Philippines, the drift to the right has continued, as shown by the President’s high approval rating, which means a good number of Filipinos are one with him in his slow but sure diminution of the gains of the progressive and liberal movement acquired through the decades and especially after the 1986 Edsa People Power uprising toppled the ultra-right Marcos dictatorship.
I will continue monitoring the events in the US and look for signs that the pendulum’s swing to the right has been halted and that the counter-swing to the left is beginning.