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Why Aren't We Asking "Why" ? [1]

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Date: 2024-07-01  

Marine Le Pen’s National Rally just won the first round of the legislative elections and is on the verge of power - the first right-wing government in France since WWII. In the U.S., Donald Trump has openly stated his authoritarian agenda and plans for political revenge with nary a peep coming from the entire Republican Party. Around the world - whether Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, Javier Milei in Argentina, Erdoğan in Turkey, and more - right-wing populism has surged over the past 25 years. Too often, people on the left have dismissed the increasing millions of voters for right-wing parties as ignorant racists.



The surge in right-wing populism is the single most important political development in the world in the past 25 years. Far more important than climate activism, international trade agreements, or immigration reform - although it has links to all these issues. Right-wing populism is, without a doubt, the most salient response to global neoliberalism, the dominant politico-economic structure since the collapse of communism in the 1990s. And the failure of the left to create a coherent counter-response is an indictment of the misdirection of so-called progressive forces.



To illustrate the extent and sweep of the right-wing earthquake - in the late 1990s, center-left governments were in power throughout Europe and the Americas. Labour in the United Kingdom, the Social Democrats in Germany and Scandinavia, the Socialists in cohabitation in France, the Democrats in the U.S., the Liberals in Canada. The right-wing parties now coming to power were marginalized fringe groups or factions with the Republican Party in the U.S. or the Conservative Party in Britain or Canada.



If you look at some of the strongholds of these right-wing parties, there is a striking similarity from country to country - deindustrialized wastelands that were center-left bastions through the 1970s or rural, agricultural regions, or more recently, suburban districts. The derelict factory cities of northern France, the former East Germany, the Midlands, or the Rust Belt are testimony to the brutality of the neoliberal economic model; yet, parties of the left and center-left have failed to address this devastation - real people whose work, whose savings, whose lives have been crushed. Instead, these parties have moved on to other, more important, issues. Farmers in Europe and North America, usually conservative to begin with, are enraged at centrist, bureaucratic administrations that regulate them out of business. So much so that Iowa is becoming a corporate-farm desert and Belgian farmers use manure spreaders to fight back against police water cannons. And to look at election maps of many countries is to see that parties of the left have been confined mostly to core urban areas. Which makes a left majority increasingly difficult in any political system that has some degree of federalism or regional representation.



So then, are all these people voting for Marine Le Pen or Donald Trump just ignorant racists? Because, if they are, then we are in for a long, bumpy ride. Does the “We don’t need them” approach yield any dividends? Other than permanent political minority status. In France, in the U.S., and elsewhere political parties of the left have relegated basic material issues to a secondary status. Jobs, housing, retirement, access to affordable care. That does not mean that climate, racism, and immigration are unimportant, it simply means that someone is not going to give a shit about EVs when they can’t afford to repair their 2008 Saturn. Or racism when the only jobs available in Youngstown are McJobs. Or immigration when they can’t afford an apartment, not in Amsterdam, but in Utrecht.



There are also dire, long-term consequences of inaction. One look at the crowds cheering Jordan Bardella tells you that young people are flocking to the right-wing banner. Le Pen is nothing if she isn’t savvy. She realizes that establishing a political affiliation while young often lasts a lifetime. Franklin D. Roosevelt created such a realignment with his New Deal - and young New Deal voters continued to vote Democratic into the 1970s. The drop-off in youth support for Biden since 2020 is not an outlier. Because parties of the left and center-left represent establishment thinking to young people today - and far-right populism represents the only significant challenge.

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