Should we be surprised?
For a time, many of us were convinced humanity was headed toward some kind of great awakening. In 1980, the book The Aquarian Conspiracy described how humans were evolving into a much more peaceful species that was in greater contact with the natural world.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, it was believed world peace and the prevalence of democracy across the globe was a foregone conclusion, and that it wouldn’t be long before nearly all forms of conflict would be a thing of the past as people of all races and ethnicities would embrace to the tune of the Beatles’ classic song Imagine.
Then reality hit.
In June 2016, citizens of the UK decided to break away from the European Union, driven in large part by a fear of foreigners. That same year, a man by the name of Donald J. Trump, a billionaire notorious for being openly anti-science, misogynistic, xenophobic and racist, was elected to be the 45th head of state of the United States of America, and as of the time of writing it’s looking like he may serve another four years (possibly even more) as the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth.
What does it mean to be “right-wing”?
Before moving forward, let’s define what it means to be “right wing”. While we’re at it, we might as well get into what it means to be “left-wing” as well, so no sides feel left out.
Today, in many parts of the world it seems those who identify with either “the left” or “the right” are filled with vitriol for those on “the other side”, without realizing that the whole directional concept started with a group of individuals in France who were literally “on the other side” of one another.
The “left-right” labels were originally coined to refer to the physical seating arrangements of politicians during the good old days of the French Revolution. In the summer of 1789, members of the French National Assembly met in the assembly hall to draft a constitution which would decide how much authority King Louis XVI should have.
To avoid sitting beside their archenemies, the anti-royalists sat themselves to the presiding officer’s left, while the King’s aristocratic supporters, who were more conservative, sat on the right, and that’s how the whole left-right thing began, with these political labels eventually spilling out to the rest of the world.
Today, “right-wing” people are more akin to view religion, tradition, authority, and their own race, ethnic group, and/or nationality as sacred, while those on “the left” are more fluid, willing to embrace change, or even provoke it, while generally being less afraid of those outside of their perceived in group.
By reading this you may assume that I, the writer of this article, am trying to demonize those on “the right” while glorifying those on “the left”. Not necessarily. I’m well aware that reality is much more complex and dividing those with certain political views as “good guys” vs “bad guys” is a massive oversimplification of the world we live in.
Those who identify as “left-wingers” or “liberals” are also far from perfect, and I have also criticized many “left-wing” positions for being unrealistic and even absurd.
However, when looking at the big picture, I am still convinced that a world where those on “the right” (particularly the “far-right”) are in charge is generally more conducive to a world that is more greedy, short-minded, violent, and overall less livable for all forms of life, not just our own species.
The right and the left through time
Throughout history the right-left dichotomy has evolved, but in a way, well, it kind of hasn’t. During much of the 19th century in the Americas a heated topic was slavery, with those on the right of the political aisle fighting vehemently to hold onto the tradition (and business) of human slavery as much as possible, where those on the left tended to be more opposed.
Human (though not animal) slavery would eventually be abolished, and the next left-right dispute would shift (mainly in the Americas and South Africa) to whether or not black children should be allowed to attend the same schools, ride in the same busses and drink from the same water fountains as white students.
Not surprisingly, those who identified more as “right wing” were adamantly opposed to darker skinned human beings sharing the same spaces as whites, the latter of whom, they believed, were inherently superior.
But the right-left rift, contrary to popular belief, goes well beyond white supremacy. Throughout much of Indian history, for example, those with more right leaning views (whether or not they are labelled as such in local languages) believe certain individuals are inherently lower or higher than others, this time not because of skin color or nationality but because of some spiritual order that is believed to be unshakable.
The 20th century saw a temporary shift to the extreme right with the rise of fascism in Europe, followed by the Holocaust. But the outcome of World War II brought about major changes throughout much of the western world, with the prevalence of what we now know as liberalism, which includes the notion of human rights, at least in theory.
After the Vietnam War the left-leaning hippy movement brought about the belief that our species was well on its way to that great awakening I already mentioned, yet much to the hippies’ chagrin, the opposite appears to have happened.
But why does the far-right appear to have regained a foothold in today’s supposedly “woke” society?
Many people like to believe that humanity is evolving, but the truth is our minds have actually not changed in the last several thousand years, even though we’ve managed to produce some amazing innovations in the last few decades, such as propelling objects and people into space.
But regardless of the impressive feats we have achieved, our most primitive instincts still remain intact, such as our often violent and tribal tendencies towards perceived out-groups, a legacy of stone age peoples who frequently murdered members of other tribes over territorial disputes, which has been ubiquitous throughout human history.
The belief that tradition must be preserved at all costs, regardless of how barbaric, that outsiders are inherently bad, and that certain scientifically proven realities should be denied because they are confusing and inconvenient, are all primitive and simplistic ways of viewing the world. Regrettably, they are also the most natural for most people, even today.
Remember, our minds really have not evolved much for the last few thousand years. This means that if we stole a newborn from the labor and delivery unit of a hospital in 2024, put them in a time machine and took them back to a primitive tribe somewhere in Siberia over 2,000 years ago, that baby would grow up to behave just like the primitive tribe that raised him or her, without any idea of modern-day hygiene, let alone the notion of human rights.
If we stole another baby (and managed to evade the authorities now looking to arrest us for human time trafficking) and sent him or her to 16th or 17th century Europe (or Massachusetts, USA), when “witch” burnings were commonplace, it would be highly unlikely that our 2024 baby would grow up to say “Stop the witch burnings! I was born in the future and my brain is wired to be woke and you must stop this savagery!”
It’s more likely Mr. or Ms. 2024 growing up in the 1500’s or 1600’s would gleefully partake in the same barbaric rituals as his or her peers without ever questioning them.
According to most evolutionary biologists, anatomically modern human beings have been around for about 300,000 years. It has only really been less than a hundred years or so since we began living in multicultural cities, in relative harmony with people of completely different racial and ethnic backgrounds (different tribes), where the general public has had access to public schools with the chance to learn about science and things like evolution, physics, and human induced climate change, barely a fraction of our existence on this Earth.
Therefore, it should (sadly) be no surprise that the political decisions of “the right”, which tends to be more xenophobic and racist while also refusing to accept certain scientific facts, appears to be regaining influence over the human psyche across much of the globe.
When a far-right leader like Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, Jair Bolsonaro or Benjamin Netanyahu tells the masses that the world is divided between “us” and “them”, “good” and “evil”, that those from the other side of the border are inherently malicious and the cause of all their problems, or that there is no way human activities could possibly alter the Earth’s climate, or that all-out war is the only way to solve the nation’s problems, they are really just appealing to that inner caveman that still lives in all of us and never truly evolved.
This is evident in what appears to be a recent uptick in global conflicts, which may just be us humans going back to our default setting of tribalism after a brief period of relative (and perhaps unnatural?) peace in many parts of the world.
In a similar vein, it’s also much easier to believe that the hurricane or floods or the earthquake that destroyed a given city or area was really the result of a spirit that lives in the sky (God) to punish the masses because they voted to legalize gay marriage and/or medical marihuana, or that the planet is heating up not because of human industrial activities (too confusing) but because the evil spirit living under the Earth’s crust is getting closer to the surface, invoked by the recent influx of transgender sinners.
Many of us are surprised, even appalled, by Mr. Trump’s (and other far-right leaders’) cult-like following. But when we learn enough about human evolution and, subsequently, human behavior, we realize that what appears to be the recent “rise of the far-right” is really just the majority of us being who we’ve been for the last 300,000 years: simple-minded tribal beings who never really let go of their spears, a handful of whom decided to sit on a certain side of the aisle at the French National Assembly in 1789.
