Dr. Anthony Fauci on Friday declined a request to appear voluntarily before a second Senate panel after majority Republicans on the Homeland Security Committee voted along partisan lines last week to hold the longtime infectious disease expert in contempt.
In a pointed letter to Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, a lawyer for the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said any effort to compel him to appear before a Senate subcommittee, after a contentious July 29 hearing, would be to "impermissibly harass or degrade Dr. Fauci for political purposes.”
The recent rise in the far right in western countries is probably a combination of American influence and the massive growth in immigration. There have always been fascists and neo-nazis in these countries, but they have grown in popularity due to American influence and rising immigration.
The growth of English as a lingua franca on the internet has created a lot of cultural and political exchange between the US and western countries. The consistent parade of jingoism, fascism, and white supremecy in the US has inspired similar far-right movements in these countries. The US was an apartheid state only 60 years ago, and the civil rights movement ended in political violence, with MLK and Malcolm X being assassinated. That’s not to say American culture is evil or that the world shouldn’t have cultural exchange with the US, but problems that the US has failed to address have spilled over to the rest of the world.
The spike in immigration, caused by cheap transportation, the Internet, Schengen, and the Arab Spring, has also helped trigger far right thinking in Europe and other western countries.