Tribalism Is Killing Liberalism Why We Are Succumbing to the Politics of Division

[applegrove]

Last edited Fri Mar 6, 2020, 08:17 PM - Edit history (1)

Tribalism Is Killing LiberalismWhy We Are Succumbing to the Politics of Division

By Michael Carpenter March 5, 2020

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2020-03-05/tribalism-killing-liberalism

"SNIP....


In an interview with the Financial Times last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin glibly proclaimed Western liberalism to be “obsolete.” Self-serving as his remark may have been, Putin was tapping into a global sentiment. Illiberal populism is on the rise on virtually every continent, even in places that not long ago seemed headed the opposite way. The Hindu nationalist agenda of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has fanned anti-Muslim sentiment in the world’s most populous democracy. In Brazil, murders of LGBTQ people have risen sharply under far-right President Jair Bolsonaro. In Europe, far-right parties long confined to the fringes of the political spectrum have recently entered ruling coalitions in Austria, Estonia, and Italy. Anti-Semitism is growing in many societies, and anti-immigrant attacks have shaken democratic communities from Christchurch, New Zealand, to Halle, Germany. 

Three trends are fueling the rise of illiberalism in modern democracies. Social media networks are gradually displacing civil society networks, democratic societies have grown more politically polarized, and the middle classes have been hollowed out by growing socioeconomic insecurity. Taken together, these developments have generated a form of identity politics that undermines liberal institutions even in supposedly “consolidated” democracies. 

WHAT MONEY CAN'T BUY

For decades, scholars of democracy believed that liberal political institutions were the end product of a process of “modernization,” loosely defined as industrialization, economic development, technological innovation, and the accompanying breakdown of traditional social structures. When these forces gave rise to a middle class powerful enough to demand democratic inclusion and civil rights, modernization theorists suggested, the institutions of liberal democracy would follow. 

That theory turned out to be flawed. For starters, it could not explain why some middle-class societies fail to open up politically. Russia is a case in point. Successive U.S. administrations supported Russian economic development, always in the hope of gradually turning the country into a liberal democracy. The administration of President Barack Obama worked to spur investment in Russia’s energy sector and even helped build a small version of Silicon Valley in a Moscow suburb. The Putin regime returned the favor by pilfering sensitive U.S. technologies, using its energy resources as a political weapon against its neighbors, and doubling down on political repression at home.

.....SNIP"

[appalachiablue]

1. 40 years of Reaganomics, Thatchernomics and Neoliberalism have

made inroads into western liberal values and juiced 'tribalism,' especially of the extremist conservative kind. Other way around.

[applegrove]

2. In the US that is how it happened. They knew if they made people desperate

they would start hating others. It is still going on. GOP is gunning for the well educated upper middle class liberals. If you destroy the middle class, as they are, then richer liberals become afraid of losing their spot and becoming poor and start voting right wing. When one third of the population never votes this will give the right wing entrenched majorities in elections. But they have to make not being upper middle class or above really disgusting and dangerous. So the middle class has to go. When Trudeau got re-elected he started a Ministry of Middle Class Prosperity. The right in canada howled. Who the **** does that?