America’s generations-old platform for culture export sends out seeds of political dissent and social strife across its worldwide network

America has been hailed as a model for the rest of the world to emulate. Its democratic government, hyper-capitalist economic system, and blind devotion to the freedom of its citizenry have, for generations, made it the standard bearer for modern society. America has exported its ideals in two ways – by force, through invasions and clandestine political sabotage of “hostile” governments, and by culture, using its rich and ubiquitous media that put US ideology on a moral pedestal.

The second avenue for the propagation of the American social model is especially effective because it is always in use, wartime or not. One could be in a suburb of Manila and still be aware of the happenings in downtown Minnesota, thanks to the global news media. If you appreciate what the country stands for, you’ll support the direct connection that it has with billions of people across through globe and recognize how its export of culture and way of life has created a unified global America beyond its borders.

But what happens when this socio-political compass, which has, until recently, always been perceived to point north, starts going haywire? When America has worked so hard to become the global heart that pumps out its ideology to the rest of the world through global media, and then it becomes diseased with politics-driven social strife, what chance do we have of insulating ourselves from decay?

Populism in modern-day politics

The mid-2010s saw a revival of populism as a political tool to sow division and unrest in the populace. This phenomenon has been going in and out of fashion throughout history, since perhaps the Great Recession, but the growing support for today’s right-wing populism can be traced back to the European refugee crisis of 2015 (Halikiopoulou and Vlandas, 2022). Since this time period, democracies across the globe have started leaning farther right, a stark departure from the two-decade-long political climate that advocated for international cooperation and globalization (Merelli, 2019). 

Authoritarian governments are consequently on the rise, with Hungary, Austria, and Italy exhibiting varying symptoms of autocratic domineering. Syria’s al-Assad and Egypt’s al-Sisi rule their respective countries with the same iron fist. The Philippines is no stranger to Duterte’s bloody war on drugs and even more concerning war on reason.

What should have been an isolated regional problem became the official platform of Donald Trump’s bid for the US presidency. His socially divisive rhetoric used hyperboles based on othering, mostly focusing on demographic and political differences instead of capitalizing on the universality of the modern human experience (Powell, 2017). With America’s place on the global stage and its well-placed and wide-reaching media apparatus, it’s not hard to see this as the beginning of a movement that would infect the rest of the world that underlines fear of others and the profoundly inaccurate view of economics as a zero-sum game.

Right-wing extremism as a result of populism

Domestically, Trump’s and his cohorts’ rhetoric against those they considered others empowered citizens with extreme views to come out of the woodwork and make their voices heard. This narrative gave rise to the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, where white supremacists held tiki torches and chanted “You will not replace us,” recalling images of the Ku Klux Klan’s rallies and lynchings of the past (Murphy, 2017). 

And yet, this is not limited to differences of opinion in matters who gets to be part of American society. The movement has taken lives, and for that, is now considered a significant domestic terror threat by the US government. In 2022 alone, ideologically-motivated killings counted 25 victims in 12 separate incidents, all of them committed by right-wing extremists of all stripes (Center on Extremism, 2023). Over four years, Trump’s presidency was wrought with incidents following the same theme, with participants singing the same tune. The sudden change in what was considered acceptable civil behaviour continues to embolden individuals and groups who hold right-wing extremist views across the country.

All of these unfortunate incidents and major setbacks to American social progress cannot be solely attributed to Trump or populist movements in Europe in response to the refugee crisis of 2015. The media played a massive role in giving politicians a platform to voice their dangerous rhetoric, gather support from similarly-leaning segments of the population, and create social discord for political gain. What was considered extreme quickly became mainstream when people started to hear their very same thoughts echoed by someone who occupied the highest office in the land.

America-first policy and populism

On the eastern front, Russia’s propaganda machine was hard at work fabricating a portrait of a strongman president. Where diplomacy and stateliness were once the favoured qualities of a national leader, and for obvious reasons in the interest of regional and global security, that soon shifted to this idea of warrior-king who would gladly die and inflict damage on others in service of his country, even if that meant attacking his own people to preserve the “greater good” of the nation. In theory, this rallies the support of people who see the return to Russia-first or America-first policy, especially if they do not know the inner workings of operationalizing such as stance – the discrimination against others, the anti-cooperative and isolationist ideology, and the at-all-costs methodology to staying in power.

Authoritarian governments are consequently on the rise, with Hungary, Austria, and Italy exhibiting varying symptoms of autocratic domineering. Syria’s al-Assad and Egypt’s al-Sisi rule their respective countries with the same iron fist. The Philippines is no stranger to Duterte’s bloody war on drugs and even more concerning war on reason (Walker, 2018).

The media, both traditional and digital, have given these leaders a platform to amplify their voices and gain popular support through dog-whistle politics. They have been weaponized against the citizens that they purport to serve, sometimes willingly, in the case of Fox News and their undying support of Trump. The lack of regulatory guard rails against social media giants like Facebook further compounded the problem with their global reach and high penetration. Modern society has been at a crossroads for quite some time, and there is an absolute necessity for accountability in these media outlets and for the recognition of the inalienable role they play in the power dynamics of global politics.

References

Center on Extremism. (2023, February 22). Murder and extremism in the United States in 2022. ADL. Retrieved March 5, 2023, from https://www.adl.org/resources/report/murder-and-extremism-united-states-2022  

Halikiopoulou, D., & Vlandas, T. (2022, June 1). Understanding right-wing populism and what to do about it. London School of Economics. Retrieved March 5, 2023, from https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2022/06/01/understanding-right-wing-populism-and-what-to-do-about-it/  

Merelli, A. (2019, December 30). The state of global right-wing populism in 2019. Quartz. Retrieved March 5, 2023, from https://qz.com/1774201/the-global-state-of-right-wing-populism-in-2019  

Murphy, P. P. (2017, August 14). White nationalists use tiki torches to light up Charlottesville March. CNN. Retrieved March 5, 2023, from https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/12/us/white-nationalists-tiki-torch-march-trnd/index.html  

Powell, J. A. (2017, November 8). US vs them: The sinister techniques of ‘othering’ – and how to avoid them. The Guardian. Retrieved March 5, 2023, from https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/nov/08/us-vs-them-the-sinister-techniques-of-othering-and-how-to-avoid-them  Walker, T. (2018, July 24). The rise of strongman politics. La Trobe University. Retrieved March 5, 2023, from https://www.latrobe.edu.au/news/articles/2018/opinion/the-rise-of-strongman-politics