By Reyshimar Arguelles
A great man in a wheelchair once said that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” To make this digestible for the common joe, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first inaugural address tells us that that fear is bad and being smart enough to avoid it is good. Being afraid makes you just as desperate as a coyote whose only mode of escaping a foot trap is to chew its own leg off. Whereas we expect our honorable world leaders to find a smarter way out of a difficult situation, they would rather choose to hurt their citizens by shoving counterproductive policies into our throats and forcing us to like it.
This year will go down in history as one of the craziest. We have had a pandemic, the subtle hints of a Third World War, locust swarms, and Tik-Tok videos. But what takes the cake is a renewed acceptance of fascism. In previous years, we experienced “fascism lite” from centrist and liberal leaders preaching respectability while paving the way for ambitious despots to take over.
And now we have “fascism original extra strong” and our mugs are overflowing with it. From the United States to Hong Kong to the Philippines, we are seeing a resurgence of strongman rule as democratic systems begin to implode and leaders have chosen the path to perdition.
Reacting to protests sparked by the murder of George Floyd by a wannabe MMA fighter/cop in Minneapolis, the leader of the greatest democracy on Earth wants drastic measures to maintain law and order. Being a seasoned expert in deal-making, Donald Trump offers the genius strategy of allowing security forces to kill people in a much maligned Tweet that has since been censored.
Trump’s logic of using excessive force to resolve excessive force is dangerous. But it also highlights the actual priorities of democratic systems that purportedly champion “citizens’ rights”.
The monopolization of violence and the rejection of radical dissent have long been promoted across both sides of the political spectrum. Indeed, even before the September 11 attacks, dissent has always been the target of “law and order” policies whose only purpose is to absolve the state for its own crimes and perpetuate hegemony across all sectors of society.
The leaders that came before the likes of Trump, Duterte, and Modi had exercised the full extent of state power by hiding incursions on people’s rights under the guise of public safety. Such has created a dangerous climate of fear that only grew worse when populist strongmen started holding the reins of power.
Indeed, the continuing curtailment of democratic rights is being experienced across the world at dangerously grotesque levels, from Trump designating the anti-fascist movement a “terrorist organization”, to China’s crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, and finally, to the Philippines’ push for an anti-terror law which organizations like the Ateneo Human Rights Center said could be a “glaring attempt to weaponize the law to silence critics and suppress lawful dissent.”
There is no point in trying to analyze the verbiage in draconian measures. And there is certainly no point in trying to prove that governments would play fair when it comes to “keeping the peace”. One senator would say that only actual terrorists and their supporters should be afraid of anti-terror laws and that democratic rights will be assured.
Gee, we can only hope anyone would feel safe regardless of the government’s own view on mass dissent. If only it could pay closer attention to the need for mass testing, considering we are lagging behind in terms of flattening the curve.
We might as well revise Roosevelt’s quote to reflect the sorry state of our times: “The only thing we have to fear is the truth.” And you can bet how potent the truth is when you set it free.
