The rise of extreme right-wing parties will have a revalidation this year, in which more than half of the world’s population is called to state or supra-state elections, without taking into account the myriad of local electoral processes. The European elections (June) or the American elections (November), among many others, will confirm or not whether this political option continues to gain ground. In a context in which it actually seems possible that they continue to accumulate plots of power, La Vanguardia has proposed to eight researchers and analysts from various fields an illustrative exercise based on a question: What would happen if the extreme right ruled the world? The answers do not invite optimism. Curves are coming.
Far-right parties have reached heights in European countries where it was previously unthinkable. They hold the government (Italy and Hungary; they achieved it only to lose it recently in Poland); They have won elections although it is not yet known if they will form an executive (Netherlands); They are integrated into coalition governments (Finland) or provide support without being part of the executive (Sweden). In America, Trump’s shadow is cast again and Milei takes the first steps to put her radical political and economic agenda into practice. In many other countries, ultraconservative forces remain in the opposition but have an important presence. In the last French presidential elections, for example, Marine Le Pen surpassed 41% of the votes.
This is the context in which Manuel Castells, sociologist and former minister of universities answers the question posed, and he does so by turning to the United States, because he considers Trump the paradigm of what can happen. He tops his list of forecasts with the decline of women’s rights – particularly abortion – and the LGTBI community; the limitation of immigration combined with mass deportations and institutional racism with strong popular support; and the rise of identity nationalism.
Castells’ list continues with a new impulse of accentuated economic neoliberalism, as is already being observed in the case of Argentina. The recently elected president, Javier Milei, has put on the table measures to deregulate rents and the labor market, limit the right to strike and modify the health system to give more scope to private insurance, among many other aspects. The immediate consequence of this type of measures, experts warn, is the dismantling of the Welfare State and, consequently, the increase in social inequalities.
But these would not be the only consequences of the economic policy of hypothetical or existing far-right governments. Manuel Funke, researcher at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, lists a few. “The indications are that the country (with this type of regime) would have less GDP growth, more public debt and inflation,” but “above all,” he adds, “less international trade and fewer financial flows.” This last aspect is especially disturbing if we take into account that precisely the protectionist tendencies of European countries, according to the consensus among specialists, are among the factors that led to the Great War and that precisely European construction and economic cooperation have been often used as an antidote to the confrontation between the countries of the Old Continent.
In the opinion of work or purchasing power.” That is, more unemployment and more poverty.
It is not easy to speculate on what may happen in the future in issues of such complexity, further increased by the heterogeneity among far-right parties and movements. Because what extreme right are we talking about? The historian and expert in the history of fascism, Federico Finchelstein, believes that the extreme right represents “a national and global threat as these characters and movements influence each other and demonstrate that a return to autocracy is possible in democratic countries”, a trend which “can only increase with a Trump victory in November.”
“I have an unpopular opinion,” says Benjamin R. Teitelbaum, professor of Ethnomusicology and International Relations at the University of Colorado. “It is increasingly clear that the global far right is not a single movement: it has a more dangerous side and a less dangerous side.” That’s why, he says, “I’m less concerned about whether the far-right in general advances and I’m more concerned about what kind of far-right (or far-left!) is doing so.”
Certainly, the dynamics of the parties in the various European countries or in the rest of the world are not the same. “In Europe there are groups such as the National Rally in France, the Swedish Democrats or the Brothers of Italy, which, despite coming from the ranks of the extreme right, do not currently constitute direct threats to democracy,” says Sheri Berman, professor of Political Science. at Columbia University. On the other hand, “other parties (AfD in Germany, Fidesz/Orban in Hungary, Peace and Justice in Poland) clearly do not respect democratic institutions”, as is the case with Trumpism, so they do constitute a danger. Precisely the AfD, which achieved more than 10% of the votes for the German federal parliament, could soar according to the latest data above 30% in three länder that hold elections in September.
In short, for the researchers consulted, “there are so many types of extreme right, each with its own agenda, that it would be impossible to generalize: neo-Nazis, Putin, nationalist variants of state communism, military dictatorships, religious fundamentalists like Iran or Isis, all with their different utopia,” says historian and professor at Oxford Brookes University Roger Griffin.
This is a mixed bag, but within it there are some common denominators, such as opposition to immigration and opposition to environmental policies. In this last aspect,
In this context, Castells foresees an “accentuation of a cold war of variable geometry between the United States and China, but not with Russia,” in the event that Trump wins again. If this were to happen, “U.S. “It would return to an isolationist policy, separating itself from Europe, and a negotiation would end up being imposed in Ukraine with important concessions to Russia.” “Generalized Islamophobia and support for Israel, increasing violence and war in the Middle East” are also among the consequences. That’s the detail. From a more general point of view, historian Ken Weisbrode states that if there is a widespread advance of the radical right, “we will live more than we do now in a Hobbesian world, or at least in a world of every man for himself.”
Roger Griffin takes this statement to a dystopian extreme because he believes that in this case it would end up creating “a puzzle of psychopathic and paranoid states (…) that would destroy each other in endless wars.” The victors “would ultimately be destroyed by an uncontrolled ecological catastrophe.”
Faced with a panorama like this, Federico Finchelstein provides some hope: “I believe that constitutional democracy is more than defensible and must be defended. “There will always be a focus of resistance of democracy and freedom so that the extreme right does not manage to govern the world.”
