Janan Ganesh is probably my favorite news commentator. In a recent column, he pushes back at the widespread belief that the global rise of the hard right is a reaction to neoliberalism:
Rightwing populism is ascendant in France, which might be the least economically liberal country in the rich world. Government spending there accounts for well over half of national output. The component that goes on social protection — cash benefits and so on — is likewise OECD-topping. On the other side of the Alps, the Italian state is not far behind on either overall or social spending. The hard right is not just successful there. It is the power in the land. Meanwhile, in Australia, where the government is smaller, the mainstream political parties are holding up. The centre-left governs.
Ganesh also discusses the view that the loss of manufacturing jobs is the problem. He points out that the extreme right has recently gained a lot of ground in Germany, where manufacturing is a far higher share of GDP than in other western countries. He then adds:
And if that is odd, consider next door Austria, which might be the most confounding case study in the west. It has one of the highest levels of public spending and a manufacturing sector almost as large as Germany’s and a rampant hard right.
Ganesh then raises some interesting questions regarding the politics of neoliberalism in the US:
What possessed the Democrats to think America wanted or needed a statist economic transformation? The slogan “Build Back Better” implies a widespread unhappiness with the pre-Covid world that didn’t exist. On the eve of the pandemic, economic confidence was at an high not seen since the millennium.
There is much more of interest. Read the whole thing.
PS. He doesn’t discuss the developing world, but the shift of politics to the right in India and China also fits his hypothesis. It seems rather far-fetched to view the rise of Modi and Xi as a reaction to “neoliberalism” in India and China.
READER COMMENTS
TMC
Jun 19 2024 at 3:00pm
It’s funny that the left is the ‘centre-left’ and the right is the ‘hard right’.
Trump’s policies ( and proclivities) are much closer to Bill Clinton’s than Reagan’s, but he’s ‘hard right’.
Scott Sumner
Jun 19 2024 at 6:41pm
Well, he did advocate that China put its Uyghurs into concentration camps, and advocated a Muslim travel ban. I don’t recall President Clinton taking those positions.
But yes, these terms are subjective. In Europe, the Christian Democratic Parties (Merkel, etc.) are viewed as center-right and the Russia supporting anti-immigrant parties are viewed as far right. It seems like European rightists are less reluctant than American conservatives to make blatantly racist statements about groups like the Roma, perhaps because they never went through our civil rights movement.
TMC
Jun 20 2024 at 1:20pm
” advocated a Muslim travel ban.”
Trump enacted an Obama administration travel ban that would ban people from countries that could not vet their citizens, or were actively aiding criminals to access the US. This included 10% of the world’s Muslim population. Pretty weak ‘ban’.
Stephen Kirchner
Jun 19 2024 at 6:55pm
I make a related case in this newsletter:
https://stephenkirchner.substack.com/p/is-neoliberalism-to-blame-for-donad
Mactoul
Jun 19 2024 at 9:36pm
How extreme and how hard is this extreme hard right of Europe?
Exactly what bundle of policies get a party or an individual get labelled hard right?
India, if anything, has shifted left in the national elections.
Scott Sumner
Jun 20 2024 at 12:17pm
There’s certainly some pretty extreme anti-Muslim sentiment, as well as anti-Roma. There’s a lot of support for Russia. Not all conservative parties in Europe are far right, but that group is rapidly gaining ground.
Mactoul
Jun 21 2024 at 12:22am
So Islamophobia is a reaction to loss of manufacturing jobs and economic stagnation and has no relation with political and cultural problems associated with a population that generally refuses to assimilate to Western norms?
This is pretty conventional wisdom.
Scott Sumner
Jun 21 2024 at 2:05pm
I never made that claim. My point is that it’s clearly wrong, whatever the motive.
Roger McKinney
Jun 20 2024 at 10:02am
The whole point of calling these groups far right is to associate them with Nazis. Buy Nazis were the far left. Nazi is short for National Socialism. Stalin and all socialists in the US considered Nazism to be socialist until Hitler attacked Russia. So how did it suddenly become the far right? The worst insult Stalin could think of for Hitler was capitalist. Socialists worldwide wanted distance from their red headed stepchild, so they went along with Stalin’s nonsense. Today, all mainstream media, historians and academics promote Stalin’s lie.
These groups called far right oppose free markets and promote big intrusive governments just like socialists. They are the far left, but with a different view of immigration only.
Anonymous
Jun 20 2024 at 9:19pm
This comment is historically ignorant. The nazis were considered right-wing and were allied with other right-wing parties. Right-wing voters supported them and switched from other right-wing parties.
TMC
Jun 21 2024 at 4:15pm
National Socialist German Workers’ Party:
nationalized the banking system, 3/4ths of the steel industry, placed price controls over many goods, the film industry as was radio and the press. Hard leftists by any definition.
Michael Sandifer
Jun 20 2024 at 10:21pm
You obviously aren’t familiar with the history of Nazism. Nazis were fighting socialists and communists in the streets of Germany long before Nazis seized power, and Hitler sent many socialists and communists to the death camps simply for being left-wing.
It’s superficial to just consider the nominal. It’s wishful thinking to believe fascism wasn’t right-wing.
Henri Hein
Jun 21 2024 at 3:25pm
I consider the whole debate about whether the Nazis were right-wing or left-wing meaningless, but the fact that they were fighting socialists tell me nothing about the issue. Socialist-on-socialist strife is common. One of the most dangerous ideologies you could have in Lenin’s Russia was being a Menshevik or a social-democrat. Mao was famous for purging “rightists,” which was his term for someone we would consider a social-democrat or communist-lite.
TMC
Jun 21 2024 at 4:22pm
The Nazis were allied with socialists and communists. They later turned on Russia in June of 41, well after the beginning of the war. Communism, Socialism and Fascism are all kissing cousins.
Michael Sandifer
Jun 20 2024 at 4:06pm
This seems plausible, especially considering how little left-wing big government ideas seem to be selling around the world. Also, 4 of the major cost diseases in the US, those infecting public infrastructure, healthcare, education, and cars, are largely the result of what would traditionally be considered left-wing policies. One might consider NIMBY policies, which help explain high housing costs, to be less purely left-wing, especially lately.
Yet, there’re still some progressives who think that the Democrats simply haven’t pushed left-wing policies enough, and/or when pushing such policies fail, it is the manner with which they’re pushed or will complain that voters just don’t care about policy.
Michael Sandifer
Jun 21 2024 at 9:24pm
One problem with this perspective though, is that the far right seems to be rejecting neoliberalism.
Thomas L Hutcheson
Jun 22 2024 at 11:59am
“pushes back at the widespread belief that the global rise of the hard right is a reaction to neoliberalism”
Makes sense as there was never much beyond rhetoric to react against.
No progressive consumption tax
[One very brief period of budget surpluses]
No merit based immigration reform
No tax on net emissions f CO2
No move to tax rather than regulate negative externalities by EPA or even regulate so as to mimic a tax.
Very modest reduction in protection
Zero land use and building code reform.
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