Has Obama's ineffectual centrism propelled the ultraright?

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Master_Pedant
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21 Nov 2009, 12:30 am

There's a marked resurgence of ultra-right ultra-nationalists in this depression. Many ultra-right leaders - demagogues like Michael Weiner Savage, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck, that "mainstreamer" of reactionary ideas - are the most opportunistic, cynical, and amoral people one has ever seen.

But there message seems to have progressively greater resonance with an increasingly larger sector of the white working class. Quite understandably, people are looking for answers as to why this economy and system is failing and solutions which will improve their lot in life. Abhorently, the political centre (or centre-right to far-right continnum) has failed to provide such answers and solutions.

Thus, people are looking outside the box - to the ultraright. The ultraright has a well intact organizational sturcutre, whereas the organization of the leftwing was shattered with COINTELPRO (which also target members of the racist extreme right - albeit to a less completely anihilating extent).

Obama campaigned as a Democratic populist - perhaps even a centre-leftist. He's failed to deliver or even set a coherent tone on what the genesis of these problems are and what remedies will help the average, working class American. John Edwards (marital infidelity aside) presented such a possiblity, whereas (right-leaning) centrecrat Obama does not.

Unless the left reconnects with countless working class voters and Obama develops some ideological willpower, I fear the rise of cynical ultranationalist demagogues serving the wishes of robber barons.



John_Browning
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21 Nov 2009, 12:58 am

Obama's own ineptness and inability to navigate Washington politics (even when he has a supermajority) has made the far right's power clearly visible to people that woudn't normally take notice of it.


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21 Nov 2009, 10:10 pm

Wingnuts, especially right-wing nationalists, see an upswing in their influence whenever their country is doing poorly. They give people what they want- a scapegoat.


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