Current conventional wisdom is that the recent rise of fascism throughout the world, even in historically democratic countries, is related to vague “economic anxiety” or the threat non-whites pose to white supremacy (or, more likely, economic anxiety over the ebbing of white supremacy.)
Might all of those be exacerbated by a growing, primal uneasiness about catastrophic climate disruption? Is the looming threat of ruinously expensive disaster relief and the influx of climate refugees catalyzing white supremacists? Is the the impulse to (willingly!) hand over power to a strongman related to things like the “Stone Lore” survival advice of N.K. Jemisin‘s Broken Earth trilogy or “the Old Testament heart, the hard heart” mentioned by Vice Admiral James Stockdale in his memoir A Vietnam Experience: Ten Years of Reflection (as quoted in Laurence Gonzales’ Deep Survival)?
Are white people reflexively circling the wagons?
Well then, with the fundamental classing of people by their skin color in that question, I can tell you’re not reading Sozhenitsyn as mentioned in your previous post because you watched the latest Jordan Peterson video.
Who/what made you pick up dear old Aleksandr?
I reject entirely the notion of your first paragraph re the conventional wisdom. There is a fundamental rise anxiety out there, but it ain’t economic, and it doesn’t discriminate by race.
And there is a primal uneasiness about climate disruption out there for sure. And the greatest refugee movements of today (and the future) are economic by several orders of magnitude more than they will be by sluggish climate changes. Also war.
So: I say the lurches towards fascism out there are due to recent cultural contests boiling up, and today’s refugees are due to economics and war, as they’ve always been.
Aleksandr would have opinions about the governments today’s refugees are fleeing to, but I bet stronger ones about the governments they’re fleeing from.
I’m unread on the remaining interesting titles you refer to.
Personally, I see much more circling of the wagons as grouped by cultural values than I do by race. The two can be heavily overlapped of course, but they are very much not the same thing.
– Питер
Fair points. Originally, I had written “Are Western countries circling their wagons?” but changed it at the last minute.
Part of my ambivalence was around the “cultural values” you refer to. Other people see to have their idea of cultural values yoked to their racial identity whereas the rest of us don’t.
Cool. I personally separate race – or better yet remove it entirely – from cultural discussions as much as possible for topics about the current day and future.
Otherwise, I feel modern race labeling just contributes to the cycle of racial intolerance.
But… I’m admittedly a bit naively addicted to the idea of the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, where race is mostly ignored and cultures are not. :-)
Yeah, I’ve shared that Federation perspective, but the last few years have got me questioning it in the near term. I’m wondering if behaving aspirationally post-racial is causing more harm than good.