During the post-election analysis taking place in the US, there are a number of loud voices among supposed liberals asserting that Democrats failed because they were too nice to trans people and immigrants; they just didn’t listen to the concerns of the people. This attitude also manifests in the UK, and in both places it has played a significant role in enabling the right to ratchet policy further and further in its direction. When taken seriously, it endangers everyone’s human rights – and what’s more, though it may seem an easy sell to frightened voters, it’s just not borne out by the evidence.
Who are the people? Whose concerns count? The implication is that it’s people who would have voted for the losing party but didn’t because they felt it wasn’t right-wing enough. Yet every time this happens, there is analysis showing that there are also people who didn’t vote because they didn’t see it as left-wing enough. Like it or not, there are always people who feel unable to vote for the lesser of two evils, or those who struggle to distinguish between them. Those in more privileged positions might see plenty of differences. But if both major parties in an election are threatening to deport one’s spouse, or strip away the welfare payments on which one depends – or deny one’s children the medicine that stops them feeling suicidal – it’s understandable that one might feel there’s no point in voting, or choose to support a minority candidate as a protest.
How extremists can shape the agenda
Interestingly, though we think of it today as something that left wing parties do, the idea of stealing ground from the right originated, in its modern form, with the Republican Party. It was the brainchild of Pat Buchanan, who, when serving as an advisor to Ronald Reagan, advised him that he could gain ground against a Democrat who was causing him problems by adopting his more moderate policies and siphoning off his support. That Democrat was neo-Nazi David Duke, whose choice of political colours did not dissuade him from running an openly racist campaign. Buchanan’s strategy was successful (though the work of Black activists in simultaneously undermining Duke should not be discounted) – but while it may have worked against extremism in the short term, it would help to ensure its long term advantage.
What seems extreme depends on what we are used to encountering in day-to-day life. Buchanan was among those who would later advise targeting trans people, with many on the right feeling that their small numbers made them ideal for the creation of a wedge issue. Gay people could be used this way in the 1980s, but as prejudice broke down in many parts of the US and UK, most people realised that they knew someone who was gay – a friend or a colleague or a family member – so the monstering ceased to work. Trans people, however, were less numerous, less likely to live openly, and therefore easy to turn into a perceived threat. They had little public means of responding to mischaracterisations and inaccuracies. This is why, in 2017, English language media in the US, UK and Australia were suddenly flooded with stories about the supposed threat, many of them relating to rules – like access to sports and public toilets – that had been in place for years without any significant fuss.
Immigrants are, of course, a larger group, at least if you count those who migrated many years ago and have already been naturalised, but they can be used in a similar way politically because their population is not evenly distributed. Support for parties with strong anti-immigrant rhetoric is notably higher in areas where the actual population of immigrants is low. They also have little voice in the media, making it easy to misrepresent them. In the UK, where press regulation is particularly weak, it’s difficult to take effective action even when stories are wildly inaccurate.
Opening the door to extremism
The thing about wedge issues is that they open up other opportunities. Once people who see themselves as politically centrist or left wing start surrendering ground and decide that it’s easier to cut these groups loose, or join in with the rhetoric about being ‘tough’ on them (how tough do you need to be to pick on those who are massively disadvantaged to begin with), the right can move its front line and start attacking the next group. Anti-immigrant sentiment is easily converted into Islamophobia, for instance, or straight-out racism. When trans people become acceptable targets, anybody who appears to break conventional gender rules can be turned into a figure of suspicion too, whether that’s because they’re attracted to people of the same sex, or because they’re not sufficiently manly or ladylike. It’s no coincidence that hostility towards trans people has been followed by major attacks on women’s rights in the US, and increasing pressure on young men, in particular, to buy into models of masculinity that are all about aggression and emotional repression.
Trans people and immigrants have been on the front line of the far right’s attack, but that doesn’t mean that abandoning them will make the attack stop. Destroying your own front line only creates a new one. Furthermore, it’s never going to be possible to win against extremists by trying to be more extreme, because that’s a game they’re willing to play far more ruthlessly.
What people elsewhere in the world may not realise is that people in the US did not just vote for new top-level politicians in the recent election – they also voted on a host of other things, from city-level politicians to state-level referendums. Here we see, again and again, that even where Republicans were elected, so were people who were vocally supportive of trans people and immigrants – and some who actually came from those groups. A lot of referendum results suggested people leaning to the left. Voters are complicated and most don’t make decisions on a single-issue basis. When it comes to local politicians, they are most attracted to those whom they perceive as honest – they will accept things they disagree with if they believe that they come from the heart. No matter what they think about particular groups of people, they generally respect politicians who stand up for human rights.
The need for leadership and solidarity
This is where parties on the left can really show leadership, and the same is true in the UK. It isn’t necessary to overcome all the right-wing propaganda straight away, just to stand by the principle that every human being deserves fairness and respect. This in itself generates more respect than giving way to an agenda set by the more vicious elements of the press, which shows obvious cowardice.
Today, it is often forgotten that Martin Niemöller’s famous poem begins with the line ‘First they came for the communists’. Most of the people he was addressing distrusted communists, and that’s the point. The far right never starts by attacking popular people. It looks for those who are already in a precarious social position, or poorly understood. If it can’t find such groups, it creates them. And when sacrifices are made by people who never cared very much about those groups anyway, it moves its agenda a little further along.
In the face of rising right-wing extremism, solidarity is essential. Abandoning the most vulnerable puts everybody at risk. Strength comes from standing together and rejecting the politics of hate.
More in democracy.
