We can see it on both sides of the Western world, in the United States for four decades and more recently in Europe: the far right is reaping the fruits of the discontent of the working and middle classes put under pressure by inflation and unfortunately frightened by immigration.
The radicalization of the Republican Party across the border, the rise of the National Rally in France (formerly the National Front), the election of far-right deputies in Scandinavian countries (a breeding ground for social democracy) , the victory of Javier Milei in Argentina (paradoxically brought to power by the disadvantaged social classes) with his ultraliberal ideology, among others, are symptoms of a political vacuum left by a left which seems to have lost its bearings since the 1970s.
However, the program of this new extreme right does not really present anything innovative, apart from the continuation of a general movement which began in the 1980s with the elections of Thatcher in the United Kingdom and Reagan in the United States: privatization of public services, withdrawal of the welfare state, erosion of workers’ rights, deregulation of environmental standards, reduced voter turnout, valorization of individualism, return of religious beliefs, growing wealth gaps alongside blind faith in the laws of the market are the main characteristics, which could ultimately lead, at their peak, to a democratic regression as we risk seeing in the event of the re-election of Donald Trump as president of the United States.
The population’s aspirations for change are legitimate. But such a change that would further aggravate and deepen the problems we already face is not sustainable change. It would even prove to be more dangerous than the status quo, with the drift it entails towards a new form of populist authoritarianism with a xenophobic tendency coated in market dogmatism while being dangerously blind to the major economic, social and environmental issues of our time.
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