🌱 2024's Global Context: An Interconnected Right-Wing

🤓 Bite-Sized Knurd: 2024 will be one of the biggest election years for global democracy. At home, the U.S. faces growing political violence, a rise in authoritarianism, and a deeply divided left. This year’s election will have lasting impacts so let’s ease into this year, understand the landscape, and what we can do.

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Welcome to 2024! 👋🏼

Just seeing the number is enough to bring night terrors, but we have done it. We have officially entered the biggest election year of our lifetimes.

We are zooming towards a consequential election in November in the U.S. with far too much at stake. In fact, 2024 is the biggest global election year in history! Around 4 billion people will be casting ballots this year in 60 countries. At home, the U.S. faces growing political violence, a rise in authoritarianism, and a questionably corrupt court system. And that’s just what’s happening on the right!

Democracy in Disarray

When we talk about the stakes for global democracy, the media makes it sound a lot more heroic than it is. It’s about good vs. evil and slaying the bad guys. I understand the urge for black-and-white thinking, but if 2023 has taught us anything, it’s that we live in the grey.

The fact is that democracy is in disarray. While it is true that the U.S. and many countries across the world are facing a tilt toward authoritarianism, it’s also true that the democracy that Democrats often celebrate is deeply flawed and wounded. We’re facing an election where our institutions are so frayed and many are feeling disheartened by the lack of progress.

Since the 80s, Republicans and capitalist interests have been on a crusade, if you will, to rid the world of “socialist” lifestyles through deregulation in business and lots of regulation in people’s social lives. Starting with Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, this meant dehumanizing folks who were already marginalized to score political points with aggrieved white working-class voters, while slashing the regulations that had been established to support the social fabric for all under The New Deal.

Fifty years since that project began, the right-wing has achieved “victory” for their evangelical voters by restricting half of the country’s medical freedoms, while the wealth gap is larger than ever. The candidacy and first term of Donald Trump was enough for The Federalist Society to stack the courts with three new judges, two of which were questionably rushed or delayed. It was also enough to bring a new era of political aggression that influenced people to turn toward greedy interests in the face of a decaying social fabric.

The Global Context: What’s really at stake?

We are also seeing how this phenomenon is not as close to home as we would like to think. New reporting has been trickling out over the last few years about how connected the wealthy and right-wing political interests are across the globe.

Each new report adds more layers to the deeply interconnected web of increasingly extreme right-wing governments (the UK's Rishi Sunak), global PR and consulting firms (Edelman's promotes oppressive regimes), and billionaires (manufacturing outrage to crush DEI). The latest news is about an organization called the Atlas Network. They are a shadowy think-tank (or as George Monbiot from The Guardian calls them, junktank) that works as intermediaries between right-wing money and right-wing governments to enact their repressive capitalist vision.

“The dark-money junktanks, and the Atlas Network, are a highly effective means of disguising and aggregating power. They are the channel through which billionaires and corporations influence politics without showing their hands, learn the most effective policies and tactics for overcoming resistance to their agenda, and then spread these policies and tactics around the world. This is how nominal democracies become new aristocracies.” - George Monbiot, The Guardian

What is clear from this report and others is that the right wing is ready and willing to wage war on all aspects of life to enact their vision for the future. As wealth has risen to the top, especially after the pandemic, the wealthy have been able to influence more layers of society through deregulation and stripping of democratic norms. It all feels very masters of the universe with their cigars in a back room. And I think that's how they like it!

The Hope Behind the Curtain

While it is somewhat jarring to think about the global connections that are all working towards a blindly capitalist future a la Parable of the Sower, it does give me hope to understand the connections. Each of these actors is playing by the same playbook. When Rishi Sunak condemns trans women and shocks the UK tabloids with a vulgar statement about people's bodies, he’s using the same playbook that Donald Trump will use as he campaigns for a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card, aka the presidency. We can defeat the disinformation and shock politics when we move in the same direction towards a vision of something better.

This month, as we ease back into the year and begin to wrap our heads around the 2024 election in the U.S. and its consequences globally, I hope to bring some thoughtful analysis on the suppression of progressive politics, where we are political, the steps towards achieving, and strategies we can consider throughout the year.

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• 🎬 A Lesson on The Black Panther Party - I love @jordxn.simone review of building a revolution with community and care at the front.
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