THE POLITICAL MAUSOLEUM
PRIVATE ARMIES
The dangers implicit in this power vacuum can be gauged by glancing briefly backward at the mid-1970’s. Then, as energy and raw material flows faltered in the wake of the OPEC embargo, as inflation and unemployment spurted, as i he dollar plunged and Africa, Asia, and South America began to demand a new economic deal, signs of political pathology flared in one after another of the Second Wave nations.
In Britain, celebrated as the home of tolerance and civility, retired generals began to recruit private armies to impose order, and a resurgent fascist movement, the National Front, fielded candidates in some 90 parliamentary constituencies. Fascists and left-wingers came close to fighting a massed battle in the London streets. In Italy the fascists of the left, the Red Brigades, escalated their reign of kneecapping, kidnapping, and assassination. In Poland, the government’s attempt to hike food prices to keep up with inflation brought the country to the edge of revolt. In West Germany, wracked by terrorist murders, a jittery establishment rushed through a series of McCarthyite laws to suppress dissent.
It is true that these signs of political instability receded as the industrial economies partially (and temporarily) recovered in the late 1970’s.Britain’s private armies never came into play. The Red Brigades, afterkilling Aldo Moro, appeared for a time to pull back for regrouping. A new regime took over smoothly in Japan. The Polish government made an uneasy peace with its rebels. In the United States, Jimmy Carter, who won office by running against “the system” (and then embraced it), managed to hang on by his fingernails despite a disastrous decline in popularity.
Nevertheless, these evidences of instability must make us wonder whether existing Second Wave political systems in each of the industrial nations can survive the next round of crises. For the crises of the 1980’s and 1990’s are likely to be even more severe, disruptive, and dangerous than those just past. Few informed observers believe the worst is over, and ominous scenarios abound.
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