The Guardian view on demography and politics: nationalist narratives must be challenged
Editorial
Women’s autonomy and reproductive rights must be upheld as far-right ideas gain ground
Fri 6 Sep 2019 18.30 BSTLast modified on Fri 6 Sep 2019 22.04 BST
Viktor Orbán
Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán. ‘What is new about the Orbán government’s recent approach is that it proposes that as well as excluding refugees, Hungarian women should do their patriotic part by raising more babies.’ Photograph: Reuters
The speech on Thursday by Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister, praising the fertility of Hungarian women as a bulwark of Europe’s survival appealed to dangerous and atavistic myths. That isn’t a reason to ignore it. In fact it needs meeting head-on, for it marks a further irruption into mainstream politics across the rich world of “replacement theory”: the belief that the nature of Europe is threatened by demographic change. This fear has become central to politics in the United States and Australia, as well as many European countries, whether or not they have large immigrant populations themselves. It was one of the drivers of the result of the Brexit referendum, in which hostility towards European immigrants served as a cover for wider xenophobias.
The presence at the Budapest summit of the former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott, and his praise of Mr Orbán, underlies the global nature of this belief. At a speech in honour of Margaret Thatcher in 2015, Mr Abbott, one of the architects of Australia’s brutal refugee policy, argued that European countries should embark on a massive programme of imprisoning would-be migrants overseas, and repelling them at land borders and at sea: “It will require some force; it will require massive logistics and expense; it will gnaw at our consciences – yet it is the only way to prevent a tide of humanity surging through Europe and quite possibly changing it for ever.”
The prediction relies in part on undeniable demographic reality: the population of parts of the developed world is shrinking, while that of the poor world is growing. This is happening just as the climate emergency makes the most populous parts of the world less habitable. With the best will in the world, these changes will lead to strains and tensions. And the best will – even goodwill – is in short supply in the world at the moment.
In the past, the left has responded to the anti-migration rhetoric of the right with economic answers. These are important but not sufficient, as the rise of anti-immigrant populists has shown. Even if it’s true that people can be swapped out as economic units without regard to their origins, that is not something the people who feel themselves swapped out will happily accept. The left traditionally, and rightly, believes that people are far more than the sum of their economic usefulness to others – that they have rights, and an intrinsic value just because they are human. This is the belief, and the moral compulsion, that leads us to treat refugees as fellow humans.
What is new about the Orbán government’s recent approach to this problem is that it proposes that as well as excluding refugees, Hungarian women should do their patriotic part by raising more babies. This has already led to a diplomatic row with Sweden, whose minister for social security, Annika Strandhäll, said in February that it stank of Europe’s 1930s – a time when politicians in many countries (including Sweden) urged women to have larger families as part of the nationalist competition which ended so catastrophically in 1939.
Any attempt to discuss demographics now must start with the importance of reproductive rights and women’s choices. It can’t stop there, though. So long as child-rearing is understood as primarily work for women, attempts to encourage large families will inevitably be seen as attempts to chase women out of the workforce. For men to take a greater share of their responsibilities around the home is an essential step towards a fairer and more sustainable world.
The issues will not go away, though, and they cannot be ignored for the global right to exploit. In their hands they will become a further encouragement to far-right terrorism. But in an age of environmental breakdown, we cannot close our eyes and ears to the realities of population growth and shifts. Very hard questions will arise about the division of resources on a planet that cannot even afford the consumption patterns of the rich world today, to which the poor world justifiably aspires. The reduction of consumption has to be part of the answer. So must work towards a world in which every child is wanted, and in which each has a place.
POR CÁ SE LISTASSEM E OBRIGASSEM A SAIR DO ARMÁRIO A PANELEIRAGEM E FUFICE QUE NOS DESGOVERNA O ZÉ POVINHO ABRIA O OLHO...E É MELHOR QUE O FAÇA ANTES QUE SEJA TARDE DEMAIS...
