Concern about the growing presence of the extreme right is evident. But there are some factors that facilitate this growth, which are overlapped or go unnoticed. It cannot be understood without taking into account structural and social aspects that subtly affect people and their most intimate experiences, such as economic interests, the effects of new technologies (ICTs), the transformations of living conditions and the expectations that are generated among citizens.
There are two interrelated global axes of tension that favor this growth: 1) The process of economic globalization (and therefore the control of society) that leads to a confrontation between types of capital. 2) The debate between empowerment and the growing “induced helplessness”.
Currently, there is a real confrontation between two types of capital. On the one hand, speculative and neoliberal “global capital”, with real leaders and inconspicuous think tanks, who make decisions that governments cannot contradict, so as not to be economically disadvantaged.
On the other hand, there is a more “personalized” capital, which does not want to lose control of its niches of power, even though it takes advantage of economic globalization to increase its benefits. In some cases, he dreams of regaining the protection of his “national” market. Examples are the cases of Trump, Le Pen, Fratelli from Italy, among many others.
In the Spanish State, historically, the PP has brought together both typologies. To break this mix, global capital tried to take advantage of cases such as Ciudadanos, but it did not work out for them (unlike the Macron case in France, which has served to thin out the welfare state).
More recently, Vox appears, which claims to represent the most “personalist” capital. This fact relieves the PP of this burden and paves the way for it to return to good relations with global neoliberalism. This opens the door to possible pacts or subtle support between the PP and PSOE (the case of the Barcelona City Council looks like a test in this sense).
The importance of this confrontation of capitals is related to the subtlety of the mechanisms for transforming society. The flag of freedom and individual initiative continues to be made, but structural changes create conditions that favor NO initiative. The implementation of social networks, theoretically, helps to create new habits, and can provide people with a greater capacity for self-management, and therefore more freedom, but factually it is the other way around.
For example, for a relevant part of the population, ICTs generate exclusion and/or a feeling of exclusion (the digital divide in an increasingly aging population). Among the youngest – and increasingly small – networks have become one of the most influential elements of socialization. They bring values ??and models with which they identify, and that go beyond what can be taught at school or in the family, turning a good part of the values ??and habits upside down. On the other hand, ICTs favor relational isolation.
People have the perception of receiving all the emotional support through the networks they share with friends (and with strangers), but personal contact is reduced. When there is a need for effective help, it is more difficult to obtain it directly or in person. The case worsens when the members of the virtual networks are many kilometers away.
In addition, the dominant message received has changed after the 2008 crisis. According to data from our studies, we have gone from trying to “mobilize citizens” (especially on environmental issues) to “do not take initiatives on your own, you will be wrong, do what we tell you”. This aspect has been especially reinforced with the communication style and the official scenery at the time of the pandemic.
The result is that the person does not feel capable of doing, of developing, of feeling emotionally supported. In addition, the subtle messages that “personal fulfillment” can be obtained if you do a certain type of leisure, generally with alienating effects, end up leading to what Seligman defined as “learned helplessness” -I prefer to say “induced helplessness”: the perception that whatever you do is useless, therefore “I don’t do anything”-.
This leads to frustration, lack of expectations (“no future”), which can end in discomfort and depression or other pathologies. This fact activates a new alert: a growing tendency to individualize and “pathologize” social problems can be detected, instead of solving the causes.
On the other hand, there has never been so much talk about empowerment. This term refers to restoring the ability to decide on one’s life, which necessarily requires cooperation between people, groups or communities. It requires self-organization on its own initiative or with the help of external stimuli. This is the inheritance that we have received from the old, most impoverished industrial neighborhoods, but which have left us the richest structure in cooperatives, athenaeums, choirs, sports clubs, mutual funds or savings banks, and which are still key to understanding some current country initiatives…
Subtly, the global economic interest tries to prevent this spontaneous cooperation (which gives civil society the strength to face anything, and that scares the political and economic powers), trying to replace it with the offer of companies that theoretically provide the same service. But it is not the same to be a “client” of a company than a “member” with rights of an association or a club.
Empowerment has become a flag of the left, but too many times it has not been able to execute it. The situation of defenselessness, the perception that “this did not happen before”, a certain feeling of loss, is taken advantage of by the ultra-rights to make simplifying promises to return presumed possibilities of control of personal and social situations, of identity, of control (or renationalisation) of the economy… (Trump’s “Make America great again!”, “Spain, the only thing that matters” and others in the emerging Catalan extreme right).
Faced with personal frustration, hopeful messages, even if they are simple and not very credible, attract a good part of this frustrated population, who psychologically need a way out or a recovery from what they feel is lost.
The person needs a certain calm and bears little mental contradictions (the “cognitive dissonance”, said Festinger). This leads to accepting relationships of causation that are too simple and false… but that give peace of mind. Popular knowledge synthesized it very well in a phrase made to justify the resolution of problems without the causes being real, obvious or credible: “We need a scapegoat…”
It is key, therefore, to delve into these processes, not to sink, but, based on their knowledge, to reverse them. Active policies are necessary that really favor cooperation, intercultural integration, personal and social growth, as well as proactively stopping the conditions that lead to undesirable, exclusive political situations.
E. Pol Urrutia. Professor of Social and Environmental Psychology. University of Barcelona
