IN EUROPEAN politics a useful distinction is sometimes drawn between the “clean right”, a group which can include pretty flinty conservatives, and the “dirty right”, meaning those who cross the bounds of democratic decency, whether with race-baiting, threats of political violence or snarling challenges to the rule of law. That distinction has proved powerful in its day. In the French presidential elections of 2002, the main parties of left and right united behind an unprincipled machine politician, Jacques Chirac, to defeat his opponent, Jean-Marie Le Pen, a brutish demagogue. Parisians fondly remember the posters that popped up, urging: “Vote for the crook, not the fascist”.
Donald Trump, front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, is of the dirty right. He showed that when he called for a blanket ban on Muslims entering America, and advocated both the use of torture and the punitive killing of terrorists’ families, a war crime. He whips up crowds by lamenting that he cannot punch protesters in the face. He accuses the Mexican government of sending rapists to America, and promises to round up and deport 11m migrants who are in...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/1OTfTOr
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