Right-Wing Groups Use Decline Of White Birthrates To Stoke Fear Of Homosexuality, Feminism, Abortion

http://www.alternet.org/story/147352/right-wing_groups_use_decline_of_white_birthrates_to_stoke_fear_of_homosexuality%2C_feminism_and_abortion__?page=entire

AlterNet / By Bill Berkowitz 1 COMMENT
Right-Wing Groups Use Decline of White Birthrates to Stoke Fear of Homosexuality, Feminism and Abortion

Right-wing groups warn that Western civilization is facing a ‘demographic winter,’ risking the destruction of what they call the natural family.

June 30, 2010

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Declining birth rates -- and aging populations -- is a phenomenon that is of concern to countries around the globe. Conservatives have taken to using “demographic winter” as a catchphrase for turning the discussion into another battle in the culture war. For many on the Right, demographic winter describes a future of economic catastrophes, the decline of Western Civilization, and the destruction of the “natural” family. Embedded within the concept is an argument for a return to adherence to “natural law,” which one conservative writer pointed out “reflects the will of Him whom the Founders referred to obliquely in the Declaration of Independence as ‘Nature’s God.’”

For many conservatives, demographic winter -- or “birth dearth” as it is sometimes called -- is the ultimate culture war battle, rooted in the rise of feminism, legalized abortion, the acceptance of homosexuality, illegal immigration, and the growth of minority populations. All of this is supposedly the result of a multi-decade campaign by liberals to undermine “natural law” and the “natural” family. According to Devin Burghart, vice president of the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, an organization that has long tracked and exposed right-wing movements, "Demographic winter is a relatively new phrase that describes the old alarmist ‘birth dearth’ concept -- the idea that we're facing declining birthrates which is supposed to portend all sorts of cataclysmic events.”

“One particular strand of dearthers,” Burghart told AlterNet, “led by folks like Pat Buchanan, focus particularly on the supposed danger of declining birthrates among white people in the United States and Europe, which they argue is leading us toward the impending demise of Western Civilization. Buchanan details the argument in his 2002 book, Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil our Country and Civilization. The concept melds nativism and Islamophobia together with the Christian Right's infatuation with procreation and heterosexuality.”

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Rachel Tabachnick has found that “Conspiracy theorists, including those in the Religious Right, are claiming that liberals are using abortion, birth control, etc. to intentionally reduce the population of the earth by several billion people.”

Like Rob Boston, Tabachnick was careful to point out that the debate about so-called birth dearth and overpopulation are serious ones, and that not all of those engaged in the debate, or who use such terms as demographic winter should be viewed as racists, homophobes or anti-immigrant.

Nevertheless, Tabachnick pointed out, “The claims of the ‘dearthers’ are strikingly reminiscent of the last century when there was also a wave of hysteria about the decline of Western civilization. For instance, Oswald Spengler's book Decline of the West, originally published in German in 1918 about the twilight of Western civilization, was popular in the 1920s and greatly admired by Nazi theorists. (Late in his life, and before he died in 1936, Spengler rejected Nazism.)”

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Fear of Spanish speaking people! Aztlan you know, homie.

Cool! That will surely lead to more progressive politics. I can't wait.

Back when a single income could easily support a family, MANY women stayed home and had more children, but once Mom HAD to get a job because unions went away, and costs rose more than hubby's wages, of course the women put the brakes on "family of 7" , and chose "family of 3 or 4".

I KNOW that most modern women want and like their career-choices, but there are MILLIONS of women who would love nothing more than to stay home with their children while they are young, and who might have 3 or 4 kids if they could afford them..

Right wingers who love the slave-labor/no-benefits wages, have only themselves to thank as they see the birth-dearth.

Most rational people I know agree that the world could use a few billion less people (and if they're honest, most conservative agree- they just want more control over what kinds of people remain, hence the charge of racism.)