It's Right to say a decency deficit is poisoning democracy

Political dysfunction is not a “both sides” problem; it is the result of a right-wing culture that has currently abandoned decency and democratic norms, writes Dr Victoria Fielding.

I GET REALLY SICK of hearing people say that politics is poisoned by polarisation. This idea goes that the opposing sides of politics – the Left versus the Right – cannot get along and, because of this bad behaviour, democracy has become dysfunctional.

From this mistaken idea flow many others that serve to give false equivalency to “both sides” of politics. By characterising both sides, often through the catchphrase “both the major parties”, the implication is that all politicians are to blame for this democratic crisis.

But the fact is, it is predominantly one side of politics – the right-wing side – which is clearly behaving badly in many ways. And for the most part, the Left are the victims of this bad behaviour.

This bad behaviour comes in many forms. The Right refuses to be bipartisan with the Left in working to solve structural problems like climate change, racism, gendered inequality, wealth inequality, and instead works to weaponise and exacerbate these structural problems.

How the Right radicalised its own voters

Mainstream conservative parties helped create the conditions for the Far-Right's rise by normalising divisive politics on gender, race and climate change.

The Right constantly perpetuates disinformation and the Left does not. The Right discriminates against minorities, including racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia amongst other forms of abuse and hatred, and the Left fights against these attacks. The Right is thoroughly indecent and the Left is disadvantaged by this.

You might be reading this and thinking to yourself that I am arguing that the Left of politics is perfect and the Right are the only ones who are flawed. No doubt such an idea would produce a steady stream of whataboutism pointing to problems on the Left of politics.

Of course, I am not arguing that the Left is perfect, because no political movement is. Every political movement, every party, has bad faith actors, people behaving badly and bad apples. What I am arguing is that currently, the Right across the globe – not just the Far-Right like Trump, One Nation and Reform UK, but also mainstream right-wing parties including the Liberal and National parties – appear to have propagated a systemic political culture which is totally devoid of decency.

I was reminded of this lack of decency when I watched a painful example of the Right’s behaviour which spoke to the culture I describe here. The incident occurred back in March 2025. During a House meeting, Republican Keith Self deliberately misgendered Democrat Sarah McBride, who is the first out transgender member of U.S. Congress, by introducing McBride, who is a trans woman, as “Mr McBride”.

In a pertinent example of the value of allyship in the public sphere, Democrat Bill Keating defended his colleague, calling out Self’s bigotry, saying:

“Mr Chairman, you are out of order… do you have no decency?”

Keating then said the hearing should not continue until Self introduced McBride correctly. Rather than comply with this request, Self closed the hearing. In other words, the Republican would prefer democracy to shut up shop rather than show any decency.

Australians are waking up to the One Nation con

One Nation's support is slipping as voters increasingly see through the party's rhetoric on multiculturalism, economic competence and whose interests it really serves.

Decency means many things and this exchange is just one example. The lack of decency in right-wing politics is related to their lack of honesty. Their lack of empathy. Their complete and utter disregard for the public good.

This lack of decency is no accident. Proponents of the Right do not care about decency because they exist to gain and wield power on behalf of the capital class and they will do anything, no matter how morally wrong or how unethical or how hateful or how indecent, to do that. This includes lying, cheating, abusing, directing hate and undermining democracy.

Indeed, I argue the Right undermines democracy deliberately in these ways to make it impossible to have a fair and legitimate debate on any topic, because its supporters know that they cannot win democratic contests based on the merit of their ideas. They can only win through deceit, through directing hate at minorities, and through cheating democracy by making fair and reasonable debate impossible.

The Right has lost all decency and even those in the Right who try for decency eventually get cut down by the dominant culture, which sees doing the “right” thing as doing whatever it will take to maintain their power. Then they wield that power, undermining the common good.

The result of this right-wing political culture is that the Right is polarised away from the Left and there is no functioning political debate in this climate. So, yes, politics is polarised. But the fault for this polarisisation, for this dysfunctional hate and deceit-filled democracy, falls at the feet of the Right.

Until we name this problem for what it is, this dominant Right culture will continue to benefit from the idea that everyone is behaving badly, when really, it is only them who have created this problem.