Miguel Amorós: The likely causes of the rise of the extreme right in the capitalist world

Former president Donald J. Trump speaks at his rally at Madison Square Garden in New York on Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024. | Angelina Katsanis/POLITICO

The most striking political phenomenon of our recent era, which some rightly call the era of authoritarian leaders, is the rise of the extreme right in the partycratic/party-dominated capitalist countries. Some prefer to call it the radical, ultra-nationalist or populist new right, and the more belligerent, the neo-fascist right. For some reason, a disappointed and angry crowd, some of them workers, who feel hurt, discriminated against or insufficiently cared for by the institutions they had trusted, turn to this political option. Neither Franco, nor Hitler, nor Mussolini have been resurrected, even if historical revisionism casts their regimes in a nostalgic light and encourages a relative understanding. This is a very modern phenomenon. For a better understanding of it, it is necessary to study the context in which it has occurred in order to reveal one by one the factors that have contributed to its emergence and development. First of all, the disappearance of the labour movement.

In the Spanish state, at least since the eighties of the last century, we can speak neither of a workers’ movement, nor of proletarian autonomy, nor of class consciousness. The wage increases achieved in the previous decade, the fear of unemployment, added to the intervention of the trade unions organised under the government umbrella, which monopolised negotiation and disarticulated the mechanisms of workers’ assemblies, provoked a wave of conformism so generalised that it determined a declassification that was impossible to reverse. The preponderance of the tertiary sector, the automation of production processes, industrial reconversion, the relocation of the working masses to the periphery of the large cities and the economic growth related to the first phases of globalisation, made possible a consumerist atmosphere that gave rise to a new salaried middle class. It was the end of the autonomous workers’ movement. The new lifestyle created an individualistic and competitive mentality far removed from the values that once characterised the working class. Private life then completely displaced social life, allowing trade unionism and politics to become professionalised and corrupted, integrating it into the world of the commodity as a well-paid job and an opportunity for social advancement, always, of course, at the service of the dominant interests.

The immersion in private life, the social isolation typical of suburban metropolitan blocks, indifference towards politics – translated into passive acceptance of the parliamentary system -, indebtedness and concern for security were the traits that best defined the new middle class, or rather, the ‘cautious majority’, as the advisors of the last socioliberal president would later call it. The level of income was secondary, as it hardly altered the mesocratic ideology: even today, when the real middle class is impoverishing by leaps and bounds, 60% of the population considers itself a member of that class and only 10% perceives itself as working class. The middle class factor has been a determining factor in the social paralysis that has been maintained even in a situation of clear inequality and degradation of the so-called ‘welfare state’ or ‘rule of law’, or more specifically, in the deterioration of the public services that justified the paternal rule of the state. Fear paralyses and that is the great passion of a class that ignored solidarity and did not know what to do with freedom. Panic feeds its ghosts, against which the demand for protection against any real or imaginary enemy is at the forefront of its demands.

The hegemony of the middle class had not only practical consequences, such as the abandonment of anti-capitalism in popular media, but also ideological ones, with the catch-all concept of ‘citizenship’, the new imaginary political subject of leftist discourse. Quirky curiosities common in American universities, such as queer creed, deep ecology, intersectionality and critical race theory, spread across Europe with incredible speed in post-modern social movements and politics, until their vocabulary penetrated the common language of activists a la page and hip politicians. The demolition of the notions of class, reason, revolution, emancipation, alienation, mutual support, proletariat, memory, communism, etc., allowed nonsense, contradiction and delirium to take root in speculative thinking and militant language, encouraging all kinds of irrational and sectarian behaviour. The exploitative enemy was no longer the oppressive bourgeoisie and the state; under the new progressive parameters it was the heterosexual, omnivorous white male, potential racist and rapist. The class struggle was replaced by the gender struggle. The sense of identity replaced proletarian consciousness, and the idea of ‘diversity’ that of universality. Workers’ pickets and strikes were relegated to the escrache and the “culture of cancellation”. The defence of territory was seen as a struggle against patriarchy… and so on and so forth. In two decades of petty-bourgeois post-modernity, a complete cultural counter-revolution took place. The revolutions that served as historical pillars for the protests ceased to be references. In short, free, rational and revolutionary thinking was liquidated in favour of woke doctrine. Financial domination is so consolidated that today it does not need reasons; it is enough to have unreason on its side.

The financial crisis of 2008 shook capitalist society to its foundations. The state’s preference for the banks and the inadequacy of social palliatives led to a major disaffection with the mainstream parties, undoubtedly the main factor in the right-wing upsurge. The decline and discrediting of the governments brought about by the party game, typified and labelled as ‘representative democracy’ or simply ‘democracy’, was manifest. The middle class – especially its low-income and poorly educated sectors – reacted harshly against the financial elite, the government and the Cortes by supporting critical parties improvised by the right and the left, and promoted by the media with great fanfare. It did not take long for them to be assimilated by the system they wanted to regenerate. The spectacle of renewal managed to avert the political crisis for the time being; the economic crisis was contained in a bad way with the reduction of public spending and attempts to ‘green’ the reconversion of production and consumption. The farce was short-lived as the migration crisis of 2015 and the pandemic episode hastened its end. The general discontent caused by the difficulty of finding work, precarious jobs, housing prices, lack of health care, minuscule pensions, petrol prices, etc., only accentuated the disaffection with politics and reinforced the conviction among the affected population that parliamentarianism had failed and no longer worked. Thanks to a prolonged crisis, apparently with no way out, the secret of the political elite became public: it was nothing more than a caste with its own interests, alien to those of its voters, but closely linked to the survival of capitalism. The consequences of the malaise and frustration were immediately felt with high levels of abstention and the emergence of populist parties that exploited the sense of insecurity of the frightened population and launched slogans made up with the woke clichés of the post-modern left turned inside out. If political correctness, climate alarmism and inclusive language were already part of the ruling class, insult, denialism and sexism will be the anti-establishment language of the present. This is the understanding of the new populous, which is quite adept at making its own the social demands that the classic parties and trade unions, too embedded in the structures of power, have neglected.

Misogyny, homophobia, transphobia and racism will come to adorn, without much originality, a discourse that vindicates the traditional family, the Catholic religion, biological gender, property, Spanishness and patriotic myths. With the universalist ideals of the working class disappearing, their place is being taken by nationalist identity projects, openly xenophobic, hostile to cultural pluralism and vernacular languages. In them, the foreigner is the supreme enemy, the greatest threat to identity; particularly, if he is a Muslim. The extreme poverty brought about by globalisation and geopolitics in many countries has pushed scores of immigrants into the capitalist metropolises, where they will survive on the junk jobs that nobody wants, filling the gaps left in their retirement by an ageing working population. The racialisation of the proletariat has been another factor explaining the rise of the far right, for it has not only provided the lumpenbourgeois masses with an ideal scapegoat, the undocumented migrant, alleged criminal, but also diverts attention from the real enemy, the capitalist ruling class and its political auxiliaries.

The presence of other, more effective models of capitalism such as Russia’s and China’s, under the tutelage of strongmen supported either by powerful police and military apparatuses or by tentacular political-administrative bureaucracies, has been a source of inspiration and a point of reference for dissidents from conventional conservatism and other anti-progressive ‘alternative democrats’. That is why they are in favour of not aligning themselves with US foreign policy. For post-ideological authoritarian thinking, the uselessness of parliaments extends to the uselessness of parties, trade unions and guaranteeing laws, while the wreckage of Keynesian and Thatcherite economic liberalism means that the political direction of the economy must be placed in the hands of a providential leader in good relations with Russia, Iran and China. However, the extreme right is not radically anti-European, nor does it proclaim itself against the parliamentary system: it is inclined to change the EU and parliaments from within and little by little. In institutional matters it is rather moderate, as it wants to be above all a party of order. To achieve this, it must win elections and make agreements. Once again, technology will provide the necessary tools to make the ultra strategy a reality: social networks. It will be the definitive factor.

The networks have played the same role that radio once played in the rise of the Nazi party. In the last ten years, information and politics have undergone a profound transformation thanks to the platforms’ algorithms. The influence of the official press has plummeted. The understanding of time has become obscured: the future, the place of utopias, no longer counts; the past, as the repository of a Golden Age of choice, serves only to legitimise the chosen identity. The present is the hegemonic time; the world of networks has become furiously presentist. In the society of ignorant immediacy, the citizenship of post-leftism has become a digital multitude, a mass that is informed, nourished and coordinated in cyberspace in real time. The occasion, which also opened the door to exhaustive social control, was seized politically by the emerging leftist movements, but it was the post-fascist pages that ended up taking the cake. Their fusion with networks and applications will give birth to a monster that will be impossible to stop. In the cyberworld, aberrant and irrational content attracts much more attention, as it provokes emotional reactions, controversy and outrage. This is why disinformation, rumours, lies, plots and hoaxes are now becoming a reality on the web: they provide disgruntled virtual communities with new keys for interpreting reality. Fake news spreads six times faster than true information. So there is then a disenchanted and resentful populace that hates politicians (especially the former anti-system co-opted by power, the entrenched leftists) and is increasingly receptive to arguments that come from a parallel reality to the one described by pro-government journalists, making it easily manipulated by experts in chaos. Information and politics have taken a quantum leap in falsification as historical consciousness has marched backwards. Stripped of memory and prey to algorithms, the people are not what they used to be. And nor is popular rage.

Without effective dikes and favoured by the crisis – economic, environmental, political, cultural – the far-right tide will continue to gain support among small farmers, the impoverished middle class and the excluded white workers living in small towns, on the outskirts of big cities and in de-industrialised areas. It is taking over the social base of the old Stalinism, politically liquidated after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Paradoxically, the extreme right is less frightening than the stablishment. The new European path, forced by the future catastrophe, has similar features to those advocated by extremism. The unlikely exit calls for deregulatory measures on environmental issues, austerity policies, import tariffs, changes in defence plans (especially regarding Ukraine), alternatives to impoverishment and restrictive precepts on migration and freedoms, which can only be accommodated within a nationalist retreat. If the radical right triumphs, the controlled dismantling of the European Union – the dream of the enlightened bourgeoisie victorious over Nazism -, will loom on the horizon. The political foundation that sustained it, the Washington-blessed alliance between social democrats and conservatives, will be in tatters. In terms of real power, it would mean that part of the transnational executives are considering the continuation of the Europeanist project in their own guise, for the older project is becoming onerous and politically less and less viable. With its end, a new capitalist cycle and a new chapter of bourgeois domination would come to an end. For those resistant to disaster, the outlook is daunting, but unstable to the point that all possible ways out are possible. Including the best ones.


(Source: Diario16+, 22/06/2024)

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1 Response to Miguel Amorós: The likely causes of the rise of the extreme right in the capitalist world

  1. Pingback: Miguel Amorós: The likely causes of the rise of the extreme right in the capitalist world | Autonomies | word pond

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