However, no matter how people-oriented and lefty politics were after the Depression, it didn’t stop the post-sixties ascent of right wing politics with Heath and Thatcher. Nowadays, after thirty or more years of extrinsic thinking, and with the whole of Western economics a spent and bankrupt force, we still have people like Abbott and Cameron, standing blindly amongst the wreckage, and braying their ‘message’ to the very people they have impoverished.
The dreadful thing about the last thirty odd years of conservatism is that, we, the great unwashed have had a whole generation of extrinsic propaganda, and many of us believe now that this is the only way. On top of this we have seen the growth of multi-nationals. These companies, right-wing to a man, wield tremendous power and are the absolute embodiment of far right politics. Couple this with the all-encompassing Murdoch media and you begin to see that very rapidly, the “democratic process’ to these people is meaningless.
These groups used the democratic process to achieve power. We allowed this to happen, became convinced that ‘get big or get out’ was the way to go. Now they are hell-bent on destroying the system that created them.
I agree absolutely with Monbiot.
I think however, when arch conservatism eventually falls on it’s arse, as it has done, it is left to the lefties to pick up the pieces and try to glue them back together. When the country is back on it’s feet, the reactionaries seem always to take over again and set about rifling the till.
This has certainly been true over the last hundred years.
The right has so much power now to influence thinking it’s hard to imagine a thirty year period in the near future where left wing politics predominate.
Perhaps the only thing that will change the status quo now is revolution. Whitlam tried having a political revolution and the contemptible Fraser had him slung out. Perhaps the West needs a Castro or two. Or a Chavez. Or JD.