One of the difficulties of putting the American right in global context, is that the U.S. right has so few analogues around the world. Conservatives in Britain, for example, look closer to communists than conservatives, compared to America’s right. One exception might be Poland, which as I have said before, is one of the few countries where leaders and politicians publicly endorsed Mitt Romney in the last U.S. election. For Newsweek Polska, columnist Tomasz Lis explores why the two countries share such inflexible, bomb-throwing, apparently self-destructive, right-wings.
For Newsweek Polska, Tomasz Lis writes in part:
At roughly the same time, the Republican Party in the United States and the biggest right-wing party in Poland became hostages to ideological extremists and radicals. In America, they are the creepy Tea Party members; in our country, the trusted minions of the Father-director [Father Tadeusz Rydzyk, director of Poland’s extreme right Catholic Radio Maryja]. Republican leaders haven’t even tried to control this radical force of nature; while in Poland, PIS leader Jaros?aw Kaczy?ski has undertaken tremendous effort in this direction. The result? The Republican leadership has been almost annihilated; while PiS elities have themselves become extreme.
It’s uncanny that the radical right, even separated by an ocean, speaks the same language. Both here and there, they assert simply that they are right, and that the state not only lacks a democratic mandate, but is dictatorial. Both here and there, this requires a certain political-emotional sleight of hand – a fundamental negation of all election results at variance with the wishes of the radicals. So Tea Partiers don’t admit to themselves that Obama won election twice, that Democrats won the Senate, and that Obamacare has been confirmed by Congress and the Supreme Court. We don’t like these results, so we will paralyze the country to prevent them from entering into force. Likewise, PiS refuses to acknowledge that it has lost the presidential, parliamentary, and local elections, as well as those for the European Parliament. Since we have no power, it must mean that those who do have no democratic mandate. Simple, isn’t it?
Where does right-wing radicalization and ideology come from? Why it is present to such an extent both in the United States and Poland? It so happens that in both countries, religion plays an enormous role in public life. It doesn’t matter that, in contrast to Poles, most Americans are Protestant. A Bible-citing Tea Party patriot is very similar to Father Rydzyk’s Catholic Pole.
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