Year: 2019
Type: article
Abstract: Throughout the contemporary world, a new "conservative wave" has been producing diverse social and political impacts and generating new forms of subjectivity and intolerance.What we have seen, in the largest sense, is growing revival of conservativism and intolerance that not only threatens the democratic order and moral values, but -above all else -human rights.The post-WWII period has been a fertile field for international alliances for peace and human rights (Alves, 1994), for the growth of social movements that seek to expand rights, for independence of colonies, and for the growth of narratives that favor democracy.The initial decades of the 21 st Century, however, has seen a conservative reaction to all of these things.Democracies have not been left unscarred in the battle between pro-democracy/pro-human rights narratives and their conservative opponents.If their have been positive transformations on the one hand (with some democracies becoming more inclusive through the conquests made by civil rights and identitary politics movements), on the other hand, we can clearly ascertain a retrograde movement that is now taking place (Levitsky e Ziblatt, 2018).In the global geopolitical context, we can say that these changes coincide with the crisis and decline of social-liberal democracies and are associated with the emergence of neoliberalism as a hegemonic political and economic model.This has also been linked to the ascension of authoritarian regimes and extreme right wing parties throughout the world.Conservatism, authoritarianism and intolerance are becoming increasingly visible on the world stage.The new conservative wave is associated with the approval of Brexit in England and Donald Trump's rise to power in the United States in 2016 (Bianchi, 2018).These events were largely made possible through the use social networks that sought to increase nationalist feelings, seeking to produce the feeling that the Other -cx those who are different -is threatening.These mobilizations provoked and strengthened xenophobic, homophobic, sexist, racist, and fundamentalist discourses.Fear and hatred were the emotions cultivated in conservative political campaigns in order to consolidate their constituents and gain undecided voters.These discourses not only violate the principles of the rights and fundamental guarantees of democratic states, but also stimulate and feed back into the narrative construction of supposed and potential "enemies" of world governance.This kind of conservative insurgency has echoed across several countries while manifesting similar tendencies, some of them driven by authoritarian thinking with explicit neofascist references.The new conservative wave already has many fans around the world, such as in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Turkey, Hungary, Italy, Brazil, and other Latin American countries.
Authors: Lia Zanotta Machado, Antonio Motta
Institutions: Universidade de Brasília, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4244350556