Silence&Motion
Senior Member
In terms of historical precedents, I've been thinking a lot about 19th century France, basically from the end of the First Empire (1814) to the putting down of the Paris Commune (1871). I'm no historian, but my impression of that period was that there was a vacuum of political legitimacy. No government had robust political support. People held completely contradictory views of what political system they should have (ranging from monarchy to communism). A lot of people saw mass protest and even violent upheaval as the only effective way to enact political change. Eventually the vacuum gave rise to the ultra-nationalist dictatorship of Napoleon III, supported by a coalition of the military, the church, rural peasants, and urban capitalists. Napoleon III squashed political dissent and used military adventurism to distract people from domestic problems. Eventually that was his undoing when France lost the Franco-Prussian war. Then, political unrest came rushing back to the surface in the form of the Paris Commune, which was eventually put down by the Third Republican government, leading to a period of stability.
I see a lot of this in the US today (and, to a lesser extent, across the West). You have people on the right openly calling for a dictatorship. You have people on the left who are filled with revolutionary zeal and who seem more interested in rooting out heretics in their own movement than they are in winning popular support. Progressive organizations like universities, arts granting agencies, Pride festivals, etc. have been wracked with internal conflict over the last few years (over BLM, Palestine, etc.). It reminds me of 19th century leftists arguing over whether a particular painting style is revolutionary or bourgeois. Today, the status of LGBTQ rights are a microcosm of a larger dynamic. LGBTQ rights are under significant threat by the right, who is using the power of the state to curtail free speech (e.g. book bans, "don't say gay" laws, banning rainbow flags, etc.), and pressuring corporations to stop donating to LGBTQ causes. And, in the face of this assault, you also have leftist groups shutting down Pride parades (e.g. BLM in Toronto, Queers for Palestine in Ottawa). Not a huge thing in the broad sense, but an illustration of how a lot of progressive organizations have become paralyzed by infighting over things like how to word a statement condemning police brutality or genocide in Gaza, while they cede more and more ground to the right.
Clearly, the right's march toward dictatorship is more troubling than the left's fracturing over symbolic identity issues, but I see them as stemming from the same underlying causes. That is, a general loss of faith in existing institutions leading to an overall sense of powerlessness. Whereas, on the left, this powerlessness leads people to focus on winning micro battles of little significance (e.g. should we mention October 7th in our letter condemning Israel?), on the right it leads people to put their faith into authoritarian strong men.
(Sorry for the tangent!)
I see a lot of this in the US today (and, to a lesser extent, across the West). You have people on the right openly calling for a dictatorship. You have people on the left who are filled with revolutionary zeal and who seem more interested in rooting out heretics in their own movement than they are in winning popular support. Progressive organizations like universities, arts granting agencies, Pride festivals, etc. have been wracked with internal conflict over the last few years (over BLM, Palestine, etc.). It reminds me of 19th century leftists arguing over whether a particular painting style is revolutionary or bourgeois. Today, the status of LGBTQ rights are a microcosm of a larger dynamic. LGBTQ rights are under significant threat by the right, who is using the power of the state to curtail free speech (e.g. book bans, "don't say gay" laws, banning rainbow flags, etc.), and pressuring corporations to stop donating to LGBTQ causes. And, in the face of this assault, you also have leftist groups shutting down Pride parades (e.g. BLM in Toronto, Queers for Palestine in Ottawa). Not a huge thing in the broad sense, but an illustration of how a lot of progressive organizations have become paralyzed by infighting over things like how to word a statement condemning police brutality or genocide in Gaza, while they cede more and more ground to the right.
Clearly, the right's march toward dictatorship is more troubling than the left's fracturing over symbolic identity issues, but I see them as stemming from the same underlying causes. That is, a general loss of faith in existing institutions leading to an overall sense of powerlessness. Whereas, on the left, this powerlessness leads people to focus on winning micro battles of little significance (e.g. should we mention October 7th in our letter condemning Israel?), on the right it leads people to put their faith into authoritarian strong men.
(Sorry for the tangent!)
