Climate Change Isn't The Only Ominous Change Today

Usually this part of this blog reviews a Christian writing. That is changing just for today. For activist George Monbiot (click here for a bio) wrote a short but important article on the emerging fascism and authoritarianism that is occurring in the world today, even for what were democratic nations, for the Guardian which was republished by ZNet (click here for the article).

What Monbiot wrote there was both a telltale sign of this emerging fascism as well as a list of the number of formerly democratic nations where we see fascism growing. Monbiot states that we see this fascism when political leaders not just break the law, they flaunt the law and those who are still bound to keep it.

The immediate examples of such leaders he gives include: Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro from Brazil, Narenda Modi from India, Rodrico Duterte from the Philippines, and Boris Johnson from the UK. The actions of some of these leaders include some kind of involvement with or support for physical violence against those who dissent as well as other violations of the law in order to gain power.

None of that includes the growing authoritarianism in other countries around the world many of whom are allies. Some of those nations include: Russia, China, Israel, Hungary, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela.

Though the following is not an observation made by Monbiot who is also an environmentalist, the signs of the growing authoritarianism and use of power with impunity around the world are as ominous as the signs pointing to the onset of coming problems caused by global climate change. And what makes things worse is that, as Naomi Klein observed, crisis events has often been used to usher in authoritarianism with public approval. Here we should note is that it was Yeltsin's poor handling of post-Cold War Russia that made the emerge of the autocratic rule of Vladimir Putin initially acceptable to so many Russians.

What Monbiot's short article here does is simply tell us that there are too many signs of fascism and authoritarianism to ignore the problem. Unfortunately, we can't afford to act naturally to this impending crisis because that would further the authoritarianism in the world. Rather, we have do something counterintuitive: we have to relinquish either the power we have or our dreams of gaining it in favor of looking to be inclusive and collaborative with those from other ideologies. If we can learn to be inclusive and work with those from opposing ideologies, we can sound a death knell to the growing authoritarianism and lawlessness as exhibited by the world's leaders today.