Liberal democrats in Latin America now have to deal not just with an authoritarian left but with a right that is far more intolerant than in the recent past, the Economist reports. What explains the rise of the new right?:
- One factor is the formation in recent years of grassroots groups with Catholic and evangelical ties which have campaigned against abortion, gay rights and feminism. Another is a popular demand for protection against crime. As with the radical left, the radical right is benefiting from public disillusionment with economic stagnation and mainstream democratic politicians, who are seen as self-serving if not corrupt.
- But what unites all these new right-wing forces, says Ariel Goldstein, a political scientist at the University of Buenos Aires, is “the specter of Venezuela” which has sought to export its poverty-spreading leftist dictatorship. In that sense, the radicalization of the right is a mirror of the same process on the left. RTWT
