Prathik H Kumar

BA/LLB 2018
18010792

Populism and revival of global right

Abstract: Populist conservative movements have seen a global resurgence over the last
decade, this stands in stark contrast to the claims of an ‘end of history’ and the perfection of
democracy in the form of the neoliberal consensus celebrated a mere two decades ago. The
following paper seeks to examine the causes for this revival and contend that it is rooted in a
feeling of alienation among certain sections of society rooted in the failures of the neoliberal
consensus and the rapidly changing technological and economic landscape of the 21st century.
Constitutional republics around the world have seen the emergence, rise, electoral success
and consolidation of power by highly nationalistic populist conservative movements. These
movements, the ideology born of them and the implications and potential long term social,
political, cultural and economic impact of values and policy endorsed by them is almost
certainly the political trend that has garnered the most attention by political observers and
commentators in the second decade of the 21st century. the sociological implications of the
changes wrought by these movements are yet to firm up and their true long term
consequences remain unknown, no matter how worrying their actions in light of historical
precedent or how negative their indicators; to say anything more at this point in time would
be more an exercise in augury than actual study. What can be sought now however is an
explanation for the rise of these movements and the social and political forces that continue
to drive them, that explanation lies at the intersection of trends from a diverse range of fields
such as technology, communication and media theory, history, economics and demography;
the interplay of these trends with both myriad local political factors and broader sociological
trends that have generated anxieties in a number of previously secure and/or hegemonic
constituencies and generated new conflicts between them and ascendant social groups and
their attendant values and ideology; these conflicts can be seen in friction centred around
identity particularly around emergent forms of gender and more historical ones such as those
centred around race, backlash against new codes of behaviour, cultural conflicts magnified by
globalization, immigration and growing religiosity, social inequality and the perceived
marginalization of formerly dominant constituencies. The following paper will attempt to
identify, deconstruct, and analyse some of these trends in order to highlight the social and
political forces driving these political movements which have been collectively termed
“right-wing populism.”
In order to understand the genesis of the above mentioned trends we must travel almost three
decades back in history and understand the political consensus that emerged among western
democracies following; a consensus which retrospectively appears breathtakingly
egomaniacal in the scale and speed with which it sought to alter political and economic
structures globally. (Brown) Fuelled by the magnitude of the social and political victory that
was the end of the cold war, a victory so immense it would infamously lead the political
scientist Francis Fukuyama to declare that we have arrived at “the end of history” and
perfected government in the form of the western liberal democracy (Fukuyama). Under this
heady zeitgeist western politicians would arrive at and propagate the economic and political
consensus we now know as neoliberalism and its militant international relations centred
cousin neoconservatism. The policy framework enacted by this western consensus would
create the globalized world we know today with its sprawling international supply chains and
ever more permeable global borders. The neoliberal consensus viewed trade and economic
development as the ultimate panacea for all political and social ills, the idea being that
economic upliftment born of free trade and the cultural exchanges born of globalization
would drive the people of nations around the world to demand political freedoms from their
rulers and the constitution of liberal democratic frameworks within their own countries while
simultaneously providing economic leverage in the form of sanctions over autocrats who
refused to grant said rights and freedoms. The results however have not been anywhere near
as rosy (Brown); while the neoliberal consensus has succeeded in creating untold amounts of
wealth and capital, it has done so at a grave cost and has destabilized social and political
structures in nations across the globe, it has concentrated this wealth in the hands of ever
fewer people and corporations, spiking inequality (Juliana Menasce Horowitz) and deeply
alienating the have nots; it has corporatized virtually every industry, an outcome which when
combined with the laws of scale has decimated small and medium enterprises in a range of
industries; it has left large swathes of humanity at the mercy of fragile international supply
chains as demonstrated by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic; it has decimated the western
working class particularly those employed in low skill manufacturing; it has embroiled
western military alliances in two wars that turned into quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan and
left them with little appetite for and exposed their inability or unwillingness to affect lasting
change in countries following the deposition of an autocrat seen in both Iraq and Libya; these
wars would also become extremist propaganda points in the Islamic world (Munoz); further
the political idealism of a spread in democratic values has been shattered by events such as
the suppression of the Arab Spring and the strengthening of oligarchies such as Russia and
China while providing the autocratic leaders of these countries and their families safe havens
for both their persons and ill-gotten gains in the west; rather than provide democracies
leverage over autocracies through trade, the reverse has happened providing autocrats who
control key bits of the fragile international supply chains leverage disproportionate to their
positions and lastly it has strengthened transnational organised criminal networks, (Shelley)
who unencumbered by regulations and able to hide within the sheer volume of global trade
have risen to a level of power where they can now threaten the very structures of the state in
smaller and less developed nations demonstrated by criminal street gang MS-13 in El
Salvador or even the attempt by the terrorist group ISIS to create its own nation state funded
by illicit oil exports, a situation that drove President Obama in the waning years of his
administration to categorise transnational organised crime as the greatest emergent threat to
global and national security. (council) The neoliberal consensus has contrary to the expected
spread of democratic and liberal values has instead subordinated and eroded these values to
market efficiency, not just in non-western or historically undemocratic nations but in
democratic countries and the west itself opening gates to and producing the disaffected
vacuums of political space into which populist demagogues of the stripe we are seeing today
have historically filled themselves and have indeed once again done so.
The disaffection and alienation generated by the destabilising effects of the neoliberal
consensus listed above have played out in favour of much of the rhetoric propagated by
populist leaders across the globe; for example Donald Trump’s surprising victory in the 2016
US presidential election occurred in large part due to his ability to turn three traditionally
democratic states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin republican; three states that are
coincidentally located in the former heartland of American manufacturing known as the rust
belt and which have borne the brunt of the economic devastation of the industrial decay
taking place in America; Trump’s populist rhetoric coupled with the Left’s neglect of labour
as a constituency over the last two decades put him in office, albeit by slender margins. The
growth of transnational organised crime swept Rodrigo Duterte into office in the Philippines
and his popularity soared in the wake of his extra-judicial campaign against drug traffickers
and lastly Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey is demonstration of the kind of political idealism
behind the neoliberal consensus wherein western leaders project their own values on foreign
leaders and people’s, characterising and embrace of western economic policy as an
acceptance of their political philosophy despite strong evidence to the contrary such as
Erdogan’s Islamist history or if we go further back in time conflating the CCP’s embrace of
free trade in china during the 1990’s as an indicator of their acceptance of democracy as a
value. (mcgregor)
The destabilising effects of the neoliberal consensus would be accelerated and exacerbated by
the immense technological advancements that took place during the same time period,
particularly those driven by the rise of the internet, the spread of personal computing and the
growing utilization of automation (particularly in industrialized nations). These technological
advancements sharpened the divisions produced by neoliberalism to the point where those
with access to and training in these technologies inhabit a completely foreign social reality to
those without. As the value of physical labour has declined; the value of intellectual labour,
particularly in the services and STEM fields has exploded. Evidence of this is seen in the
explosion in college enrolment and the willingness of students and parents to shoulder
massive debt for access to this knowledge. This however has generated sharp backlash from
those without access to or who are too old to reskill for this new digital age manifest in the
ubiquity of the disdain for the ‘liberal elite’ among the supporters of populists from Trump to
Modi. This backlash is equally evident in varying degrees of resentment and opposition to
immigration among the supporters of right-wing populists,
Another effect of the internet is the emergence of the era of information post scarcity and the
emergence of the post-truth era driven largely by social media and the erosion of traditional
media. Social media has had remarkable democratizing effects and empowered or given
voice to untold numbers of previously marginalized sections of society, it is not without a
trade-off, however. In the absence of the gatekeeping and fact checking performed by
traditional media, extremist voices of every stripe have attained a platform and reach hitherto
unseen. Navigating this glut of information requires critical thinking and media literacy skills
that are scarcely taught in primary and secondary education; they are often only acquired at a
college level, a fact that further splits the haves from the have nots. In the absence of these
media literacy skills large numbers of people are at best susceptible to influence of politically
motivated and biased media and at worst totally believing of carefully manufactured “fake
news” or “deep fakes.” Evidence of this is seen in the prominence of white nationalist
movements such as the Alt-right on social media platforms; the prominence of the alt news
website Breitbart, an organisation headed by none other than Donald Trump’s own former
chief political strategist; the emergence and operation of call centre troll farms such as those
utilized by Narendra Modi’s BJP and colloquially termed the ‘IT cell’ (Jha); misogynistic
online movements such as the incel movement, red pill or MGTOW (men go their own way)
and lastly in the explosion of conspiracy theories of every stripe from flat earthers, moon
landing hoaxers and climate change deniers to pizzagate, qanon and birtherism. (Schroeder)
The political leadership of Right wing populist movements rather than condemn or distance
themselves from such narratives have proven adept and willing to piggyback on them to rise
in political prominence and co-opt the platforms of their larger parties; in addition the more
moderate members and leadership of right wing parties have proven more willing to do
business with the extremist wings of their party than their counterparts on the left. this is seen
in the rise of Donald trump in the USA, the willingness of republican leadership to court the
tea party movement in the late 2000’s and David cameron’s consent to a Brexit referendum
following pressure from the UK independence party headed by Nigel Farage, Theresa may’s
willingness to ally with the far right Democratic Unionist party (Erlanger) and the BJP’s
patronage of cow vigilante groups in India.
A contingent effect of both neoliberal economic policy and the growing prominence of so-
called ‘new media’ is the economic pressure placed on traditional forms of media; under
these pressures traditional media has seen a growing consolidation under a handful of media
giants across the world and news has devolved into infotainment with a dangerous veneer of
legitimacy, the economic pressure on news organisations to compete for viewership has
produced the hyper partisan news landscape we know of today. This erosion of media
independence is a dangerous trend for democracy that requires the fourth estate to hold
political leadership accountable. A task that seems increasingly impossible while news
organisations remain subject to the political interests of their corporate ownership.
(Schroeder)

Finally, we shall examine the tensions produced by sociological changes outlined in the
introduction section of this paper. The post-modern impulse that characterized much of late
20th century academia sought to tear down all socially constructed forms of identity. The
political left in much of the world has seen a readjustment around in its political platform
centred around the fight for acceptance of marginalized and emergent forms of identity
following the erosion of its traditional base in labour; this shift has further alienated these
constituencies and driven them towards populists. The new politics of the left that seeks to
alter, politicise and further bureaucratize behaviour has garnered a political backlash in
various socially conservative communities that formerly supported left politics out of
economic interest; other factors that have driven acceptance of right wing populists is their
willingness court hyper religious sections of society, the populist who has taken this the
farthest has undoubtedly been Narendra Modi with his increasingly extremist brand of Hindu
nationalism, this stands in stark contrast to his 2014 election platform of economic reform
and the comparatively dovish initial years of his government, indeed his pivot to the hard
right on social issues almost perfectly coincides with the floundering of and political
opposition generated by his economic agenda best exemplified by the collapse of his land
acquisition reforms and the erosion of support that followed it (Mukhopadhyay). Other
factors that have driven right wing populism are the globalization of the labour market
following the neoliberal consensus that rendered those not adequately skilled unable to
compete. Lastly there is the global shift in the overton window produced by the collapse of
the soviet union and the absence of a truly far left pole on the international stage, this shift
has resulted in what were historically centre-right positions in the west being recharacterized
as the new far left and stuck with the enduring stigma of that label, this shift in the overton
window coupled with demographic changes wherein those with living memory of the second
world war and fascism have slowly died off has produced a situation where previously taboo
right wing authoritarian and populist positions have once more become politically acceptable.
(beck)
As has been demonstrated, the rise of right-wing populism is a complex and multi-faceted
issue. The social forces driving these movements are powerful and at this point deeply
entrenched, at the heart of all of them however is a sense of alienation and instability;
addressing them will require an embrace of the principle of equity among liberal political
leadership around the world, continued disregard for those that have lost out following the
tectonic social and economic changes of the last two decades will only continue to produce
ever more radical and amoral populist leaders. The value generated by the deified free market
and the technology produced by it is only as good as the people it serves and uplifts, a failure
to equitably share these fruits will only produce greater political turbulence in the years to
come.

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