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David Garcia, "The Challenge of the New Right"kernow writes: "The Challenge of the New Right" This began off list when I engaged Patrice Riemens in discussion. As this meeting is taking place in the Netherlands I think that it is important to learn the lessons of the rise of the new european right. Unlike the mainstream centrist parties the new european right has made significant political capital out of the fact that the globalised free market has losers as well as winners even in the rich countries. In doing so they have outflanked the old political parties, moving with great effectiveness to exploit the dislocations and insecurities created by the global free market to re-ignite the old mix of racism and xenophobia.Indeed the version of this tendency that has emerged in the Netherlands is one of the most successful as its unusually slippery combination of inflammatory rhetoric and libertarianism has helped it appear to slip free of all the usual political stereotypes and in the process attained a very wide electoral appeal. Phillospher and commentator John Gray pointed out that this movement, unlike the Fascism of the 1930's which was born of hyperinflation and mass unemployment has emerged in the more afluent European countries. Although highly aware of the precarity issue the new european right is economically orthodox, it "promotes a high tech economy and global free trade but insulated from the worlds poor by a ban on immigration. If this is facism it is the facism of lap-tops not jackboots”. My provocation is to ask whether the time has come to learn from their success in creating a popular political movement and challenge them on the territory of electoral politics. Hasn't the "movement of movement's" refusal to engage the mainstream forum of electoral politics not simply handed the initiative exclusively to the extreme right who have no qualms about using the platform of party politics to propel their values into society and thus popularise their insidious solutions to the pressures of precarity unchallenged. Mmmmm... that is very interesting question, thank you for asking it (and now, unlike politicians, I will try to actually answer it! |
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