Editorial Round-Up (25.12.16): Anti-Globalization Trend

Walls are Back

Issue: The global order - one that upheld open borders and open societies - is being challenged by forces of reaction.

Statement made by Prince Charles:

Prince Charles has warned about “the rise of many populist groups across the world that are increasingly aggressive to those who adhere to a minority faith”.

“All of this”, the Prince of Wales continued “has deeply disturbing echoes of the dark days of the 1930s”, when Fascist parties began their triumphant rise across Europe.

Symptoms of the above phenomenon:

* Brexit

* Election of Donald Trump

* Rants of hatred against religious and ethnic minority groups in Western Countries

* In France, Marine Le Pen's National Front has gained ground; in Germany, it is the uber-right-wing party, Alternative for Germany

Why are the above changes occurring?

* The right is not rising in a vacuum, like some kind of pathological bloom. Technological change, and the dismantlement of the welfare state, today threaten the immiseration of great swathes of the Western middle and working classes.

* Entire sectors of employment will have given way to automation inside a generation.

* Left-liberal parties have, for the most part, failed to engage with the growing desperation of this mass of people, leaving the field open for demagogues and ethnic-religious nationalists.

* Divisive tendencies fuelled by the experiment of a forced economic union in Europe, as a result of which wealthier nations were occasionally perceived to be shouldering the burden of those that performed badly.

* Rattled by an influx of refugees from a conflict-ridden Middle East and engulfed by the fear of terrorism, voters across Europe have been turning to conservative parties for succour.

* The recession of 2008 demolished beliefs in stability. It left the working masses even more impoverished and vulnerable to conservative propaganda.

* While policies favouring corporate organizations did nothing to assuage their fears, their faith in the political elite also evaporated. In times of crisis, people cling to what reassures them most: fear of minorities and 'outsiders', and a myopic view of nationhood.

Analysis and Way Ahead:

* Fascism, it is true, shares many features with the new right-wing populism, but it is important to note the historical  context is vastly different. In the 1930s, Fascism broke from the moribund traditional right to defeat communism.

* Today’s European populists differ only in aesthetics, not ideological substance, from Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan. They are saviours of the traditional right, not a breakaway.

* For ethnic-religious bigotry to be defeated, long-forgotten progressive ideas of community and welfare must be given centre-stage again, but grounded in the realities of our changed industrial-technological landscape.

* Imagining such an alternative is harder than calling Trump a fascist — but spitting abuse at the right, it has long been clear, is doing nothing to stop its rise.