As is known, the current far right and fascism are not the same nor are they written the same.
From the combat fasci and the black shirts of Mussolini, the brown shirts and the National Socialist Party of Hitler, to the dictatorships of the Latin American-Caribbean military regimes, born from the counterinsurgency egg laid by the Alliance for Progress in the 1960s, they all subjected the institutions of the republican and liberal State to the political-military structures.
The current far right, on the other hand, does not propose to suppress institutional political systems, nor does it base its power on the armed forces as its backbone.
The conservative currents ideologically intertwined with the fascist dictatorships reflected the interests of the oligarchies and especially of their most ill-tempered sectors. Although they brandished populist and chauvinist rhetoric that claimed to embody the “people” or “the nation,” their real role, at the service of that oligarchy, was directed at repressing worker organizations and social movements, the entire left and, above all, the communists. The Latin American-Caribbean military dictatorships of the 1970s did not even bother to pretend to be populist.
On the other hand, the current boom of the far right, the growing electoral success of recent years, is not primarily explained by its ideological association with those oligarchic powers or by being articulated in dictatorial structures. This is a more sinister and challenging wave, due to its roots, social bases and scope; and also due to its legitimacy.
These extreme right-wing parties have learned very well ― often more than the left and center-left, in particular ― certain lessons that leftists have ignored or forgotten.
For some very conspicuous voices that arbitrate democratization in our region, this is measured above all by technically correct elections, formal respect for the balance of powers, and everything else takes a backseat. It is enough that the extreme right does not come to power through a coup d’état or suppress the left-wing opposition, even if it is harmless, to grant it the seal of legitimacy.
That seal is preserved even if the ultra-conservative regime unleashes or perpetuates a state of civil war, pushes more than half of the workers into poverty, judicializes politics, suppresses health regulations amid a devastating pandemic, criminalizes abortion, carries out mass deportations with risk to the lives of tens of thousands, tries to control crime based on brutal repression, is unable to eradicate the influence of the mafias in the justice system, etc.
If they had been in Germany in 1933, those referees would have validated Hitler and the Nazi Party, for having won the majority in the elections; and they would not have started to worry, perhaps, until the Night of Broken Glass (Kristallnacht). And that is called “respecting the rule of law.” What can you do, right?
Of course, if the “authoritarianism” in power is left-wing, then it is an “infamous dictatorship.”
Although it may seem surprising, this minimalist discourse on democracy as an electoral event and inter-party competition is reproduced today in Latin America and the Caribbean, where almost no country has been exempt from military dictatorships, and where the occurrence of right-wing and very right-wing parties in government has never ceased.
What is new in today’s world, however, is that the multiplication of far-right regimes has taken on an unusual momentum in Europe, amid that supranational order that guarantees harmonious coexistence between States and parties, adopted precisely to prevent conflicts and political extremisms such as, let’s say, those that led to the last world war.
For those who like numbers, a look at the latest elections in the European Parliament is revealing. While the Social Democrats lost seats, as did the Greens and the Liberals (assuming that all of that was “left”), the far-right tendency known as Patriota gained 35, reaching a total of 84. These seats went to Vox (Spain), the National Front (France), and Fidesz (Hungary). The ultra-conservatives gained 9, reaching 78: PiS (Poland) and Fratelli d’Italia (the ruling party in the country). And the nationalist far-right of Germany (AfD) and France (Reconquête), gained 25 seats. This is the European Parliament with the lowest relative presence of the left in the last 40 years.
Looking at countries, in the historical realm of social democracy, Sweden, a far-right party, the second winner, opposed to the European Union and allergic to Islam, became the option of forming a government for the first time. The Austrian far right has just won almost a third of parliament, with the conservatives in second place and the social democrats at the bottom with barely a fifth. In former socialist countries such as Hungary, there has been almost nothing to the left of the center-right in the political spectrum for more than a decade. In Poland, an alliance of conservative nationalist parties has reformed the legislation to consider abortion unconstitutional even if the fetus has malformations. Etc.
If we look at these elections across the board, abstentionism was the common denominator. In most EU countries (including Italy, Greece, Spain and Poland) less than 50% of the electorate voted. But even in countries with high voting rates, such as Austria, the rise of the far right is rampant.
Two years ago, when the Fratelli d’Italia and its leader, Giorgia Meloni, came to power, they did not hide their admiration for the glories of fascism or for the lessons of how to build hegemony for the far right, learned from none other than Antonio Gramsci. At the time, it did not seem that this ultra wave could lead the National Front led by another woman, Marine Le Pen, to shake up the political system in France during the Fifth Republic. And much less that the Alternative for Germany (AFD) party, the open heir to the Nazi legacy, would capture 83 seats in parliament.
But this terrifying rise of the far right in cultured Europe is not measured only by electoral results, naturally, nor is it explained by the ideological resurrection of the old fascisms and their icons.
Commenting on the rise of populism in this same column, I recently noted the obsolescence of party systems and their loss of credibility. In this rarefied space, populist leaders have managed to unearth old phobias and alienations buried in the dark side of popular culture; among them, racism, misogyny, homophobia, religious intolerance, anti-intellectualism, puritanism, xenophobia, taboos and inherited prejudices, latent in families and regions.
This revitalization of the darkest genes of Western political culture springs from a very palpable deficit, consisting of the inability of the really existing democratic order to respond to the promise of a standard of living, security, well-being, justice, and citizen rights.
These symptoms, associated with the change in the way of life and the uncertainty that accompanies it, are manifestations of a crisis, which the far right uses as a weapon and a threat. It is on this real experience that the far-right discourse builds its prophetic and hyper-nationalist reason, which preaches distrust in international alliances and pacts, promotes isolationist policies, and exalts a strong leadership that concentrates authority to guarantee solutions to the great national problems.
Those among us who learned to think about politics with the mental habits of vulgar materialism, tend to explain all this based on ideology and to reduce ideology to the stereotypes of the leaders’ speeches. So the critical analysis of the social and economic circumstances, and of the inverted image of that reality in the social conscience, is confused with the “denunciation” of the rhetoric that manipulates it. This ideological approach, which reduces the rise of the far right to how the arguments are intertwined in its discourse, ignoring the real economic and social problems, does not even manage to dismantle the contradictions between arguments and political practices.
For example, the use of isolationism, as if it were an effective principle. Meanwhile, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the main forum of the right in the United States, in its last meeting, held in Mexico, calls for the creation of transnational alliances:
In a world where traditional values and fundamental freedoms face constant threats, it is imperative to form international conservative alliances that defend life, family, and our freedoms. In the face of the attacks of political and cultural socialism, with its attempts to erode our cultural and social foundations, it is crucial that we join forces to safeguard what is most precious to us: God, country, and family.
Under these banners, fans of Nayib Bukele, Javier Milei, Nigel Farage, Santiago Abascal, Steve Bannon gather, raising the idea of an alt-right, opposed to the UN and its 2030 agenda, which repudiates the climate emergency, the human rights of immigrants, the right to abortion, and denounces socialism, globalization, progressivism and identity politics as perverse ideologies.
But these conspiratorial hotbeds and networks of the far right, with all their noise, are not what explains its new political strength. In addition to the gaps and weaknesses of the political systems mentioned, some reasons can be touched with the hands.
The North, with its rituals for reason, liberté and fraternité, preserves “identity cultures” never resolved in terms of egalité. In these cultures, where centuries-old racist and xenophobic strains persist, employment, healthcare and education services, security, community life, and the entire way of life react to waves of immigrants who bring with them their “foreign” ― that is, subaltern ― cultures. Even if immigrants do not compete for the same jobs, live in the same neighborhoods, or are guilty of crimes, they are the perfect scapegoats for everything that does not work or has “gone wrong.” Intra-religious intolerance in France, especially against Islam, is a measure of this malaise.
Although some also perceive it as “intertwined with ideology,” the very specific geopolitical reason has pushed the West into a new crusade against Russia and China. The prolongation of the war in Ukraine, triggered by a far-right regime, and prolonged beyond what NATO had calculated, has generated economic wear and tear on the bloc, which has brought grist to the mill of an anti-Atlantic and supposedly isolationist far-right.
The second hotbed of conflict around Israel’s new invasion of Palestine, with a multiplier effect that already reaches Lebanon and Iran, and whose exit is not in sight right now, seems to have repercussions in the same direction: Which parties and governments would be more capable of providing a path towards peace and stability? Wouldn’t it be better to come to an understanding with China instead of waging trade wars against it? No? Just because the United States insists on taking the lead in digital technologies? Etc.
Of course, all this is much more complicated and cannot be resolved with a couple of blunt sentences. I only mention it to illustrate that the rise of the far right is not simple manipulation, nor are its political resources reduced to the verbal pyrotechnics of a certain Trump or a Milei.
If we were to return to our more immediate reality, we could ask ourselves, as a friend did in a conference a few days ago, how it is possible that some Cubans born and raised in a socialist culture can suddenly become fans of Trump and the Republican Party. Some will immediately attribute it to the fact that in this globalized world, where ideology travels at the speed of light, the far right has penetrated their brains with its tricks and foil paper. Or that they are only reflecting their “ideological tantrum” with the Cuban government.
But to evacuate this tantrum it would be enough for them to adopt faith in capitalism, and the Democratic Party would serve them just as well, so that they could choose anyone, to the right and to the left of Kamala Harris and company, as other immigrants similar to them do. Why precisely the far right?
If we want to consider this problem seriously, instead of moving pieces in a hurry, we have no choice but to seal our game.
Author
Rafael Hernández
