Global xenophobia: November 08, 1999 issue of New Thinking

November 08, 1999 New Thinking:
Global xenophobia

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November 08, 1999

Global xenophobia

By Gerry McGovern

“The Far Right is on the move again in Europe,” Britain’s The Independent newspaper wrote in an editorial entitled “The ghost of Fascism stalks the European landscape,” on Tuesday October 26th. “In Austria and now in Switzerland, voters have swarmed in alarming numbers behind the banners of extreme anti-emigration and fierce xenophobia.”

The Independent was rightly lamenting a move to the extreme right in European politics. Ironically, its lead editorial of that day was encouraging its own more moderate form of xenophobia. “Only the EU can ban French meat. But we can all make our own choices,” the header stated.

This none too subtle call for a boycott of French produce reflects an increasing xenophobia in Britain. Only a couple of weeks earlier, former British PM, Maggie Thatcher, was idolized by desperate Conservatives as she ranted against mainland Europe.

My own country, Ireland, is no exception to the trend. The richer we get, the nastier we get, it would seem. Ireland of the Welcomes is being replaced by an Ireland that likes foreigners who come on holidays but not those who come to live and work here, particularly if their skin is darker than our rain-pale white.

So what about globalization, the breaking down of walls and barriers, the creation of a ‘One World’, global, happy family of humankind? While money and trade are moving more freely than ever, there are rumblings on the streets, in the villages and in the heartlands. Austria, Switzerland, Serbia, Kosova, East Timor, Russia, Chechnya, Africa, the list is lengthening along the road to globalized paradise.

For a number of years now it has been readily accepted by politicians and business people around the world that globalization is an inevitable force. But as British MP, Denis MacShane wrote in the November 1st issue of Newsweek, “The politics of antiglobalization are growing into a powerful force aimed at liberal democracy and market economies in a way not seen since communism’s heyday earlier this century.

Just what is globalization? A positive description would see it as a force that evens out the world, where nations give and take to create a global economy that benefits all. Others would describe it as merely another name for Westernization. Others still would say that at heart it translates as Americanization.

So then, America should be the No. 1 champion of globalization? Yes and No. President Clinton is truly committed to the global economy. However, the Republican Party, in recently rejecting the worldwide nuclear weapon test ban treaty, signed by 154 countries, reflected a more isolationist America.

While on the fringes politicians like Pat Buchanan, who recently joined the Reform Party, talk about a “peasant army,” in America ready to fight a “godless New World Order,” and how Europe is a “superstate that pays homage to the great god mammon.”

It strikes me that the forces that drive globalization – the multinational corporations – have ignored the growing fears of the ordinary man and woman in the street, whose lives are still intensely local.

I heard of one such executive recently talk about how the Internet and other tools of globalization were helping his corporation “control the Europeans” better. If that’s the real thinking behind globalization then it is just a new form of colonization or imperialism.

People will resist.

Gerry McGovern

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The forces that drive globalization – the multinational corporations – have ignored the growing fears of the ordinary man and woman in the street, whose lives are still intensely local.