OPINION Why it's dangerous to equate the Left and the Right

For reasons that are perfectly understandable, many believe we are living in an age of uniquely toxic and rancorous politics. From Donald Trump’s racist rhetoric to Europe’s atmosphere of rising nationalism and pervasive anti-immigrant sentiment there is a growing sense of crisis and anxiety in liberal democracies about which many are rightly concerned.

But amid this climate, it has become fashionable to contend—particularly in the media—that left and right share equal or near equal responsibility for this state of affairs. The equivalence isn’t simply false—in today’s world, it’s downright dangerous. In this all-too-popular framing of current events, politics are imagined to be a kind of horseshoe—with left and right diverging from a supposedly reasonable, level-headed middle ground and converging at each end. To put it mildly, this is a case of “both sides-ism” at its worst.

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A little historical perspective serves us well here. In the 20th century, left-wing anger gave us minimum wages, weekends, Medicare, and environmental regulation—institutions cherished by millions of Canadians. Even in some of its earlier and less hardline incarnations, the right resisted these reforms and sometimes sought to push things in the opposite direction.

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It’s also become evident that there is a real and visceral ugliness festering on the fringes of conservatism, one made frighteningly visible by social media. And, in the age of Trump, elements of even the mainstream right seem increasingly willing to flirt with exclusionary nationalism and entertain the crudest forms of xenophobia and cultural resentment.

link
https://www.macleans.ca/opinion/why-its-dangerous-to-equate-the-left-and-the-right/