Right-Wing Nationalism Threatens Our Future
Right-Wing Nationalism Threatens Our Future
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. (Palácio de Panalto / Flickr)
What follows is a conversation between journalist John Feffer and Marc
Steiner of The Real News Network. Read a transcript of their conversation
below.
MARC STEINER Welcome to the Real News. Im Marc Steiner, great to have you
all with us. And weve watched the rise of the right wing all over the
globe, racists, xenophobes, nationalists, democratically seasoned control of
governments and are becoming rising powers all over the place in places like
Brazil, India, Italy, Poland, to name just a few. Theyve found a way into
the hearts and minds of working and middle class people across the world
terrified of the future. Now, the largest economy in the world, our own, the
United States has fallen as well to the rise of the right with right wing
nationalist movement seizing, as I like to say, the executive branch. So we
have Donald Trump who can now play godfather to the rest.
How did it happen? Once the left had led the way around internationalism and
the fight against exploitation, but now, the rhetorical rise comes from the
ideologues who worry about Europeans, white folks, non-Muslims being
replaced by the other, capitalist economics and neoliberal politics gave
rise to the contradictions that allow the rise of the right. What does that
really mean? So what is happening and what should be the response?
We talk now with John Feffer, whos director of Foreign Policy in Focus at
the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. And hes written about
the rise of the right in TomDispatch, The Law and The Nation and many other
places, and also, hes the author of a dystopian novel, Splinterlands that
warns us of what we might face in a much more creative way. And welcome,
John. Good to have you with us.
JOHN FEFFER Thank you for having me on the show.
MARC STEINER So where do we even begin? I mean we watched this phenomena
happen across the globe, the pinnacle being Donald Trumps election here.
Take a step backwards a bit and talk a bit about what you wrote about in one
of your pieces
Theyre coming together in my head, I cant remember which
piece, but it was a lot of the other pieces you wrote, where you talk about
the end of the Cold War and talk about what the end of communism and the
failure of labor unions falling and the rest kind of leading to this world
were in now. So talk a bit about your perspective historically on why we
are where we are.
JOHN FEFFER Sure. Well, first of all, Id say that during the Cold War
period, there was kind of a liberal conservative consensus about a lot of
things, about roughly speaking the nature of the economy, roughly speaking
the nature of democratic politics. Im talking about liberals and
conservatives in the United States, in Europe, Western Europe, and in some
other places around the world. But with the end of the Cold War, that
consensus breaks down and it breaks down across the board.
From the point of view of this question of the rise of the right, I would
begin by pointing out that there was an anti-fascist consensus basically by
liberals and conservatives, a belief frankly that was quite good that
fascism should not be part of political discourse, should not be part of the
electoral political scene, should not be part of normal discourse in the
academy, etcetera. But that breaks down after the collapse of the Soviet
Union and you begin to see the rise of fascist politicians, primarily in
Western Europe getting a toehold for the first time really in France with
Jean-Marie Le Pen, whos the father of current leader of the far right,
Marine Le Pen, the rise of Jorg Haider in Austria, also in Russia, the rise
of Zhirinovsky, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, again in Russia where the anti-fascist
consensus it seemed included everybody and yet even in Russia, you saw
someone like Zhirinovsky emerge basically with fascist tendencies. Now that
still remained, more or less, I would say on the margins of political
debate.
What thrust that into the mainstream and front and center are basically two
phenomenon. The first is the failures of economic globalization. I mean
essentially, you have the economic globalization succeeding in increasing
trade around the world, bringing China into the world economy, eventually,
bringing the former Soviet bloc nations into a world economy. Thats all for
the good, but you begin to see the breakdown of economic globalization in
two ways. One, greater polarization in wealth, the haves and the have-nots
around the world. But you also see basically, the failure of the global
economy to prosper. You have, of course, the cycles of capitalism reaching
in the late 2000s a massive financial crisis comparable to the Great
Depression, if not larger, that throws everything onto the table suddenly.
Everything is now open for discussion. And all of the people who have been
kind of grumbling about economic globalization because they havent done
very well as a result of economic globalization are joined by huge numbers
of middle-class people as well who are dispossessed as a result of the
financial crisis.
MARC STEINER So one thing I think as you were talking about this is that the
other factors that youve written about as well that kind of fall into this
scenario about what happened in the past, I mean maybe well talk about how
there was this kind of consensus between liberal conservatives and the Cold
War. I always like to think of it also as there was a period of time in
history between the 40s and the 70s, 80s when it was mostly white men
talking to each other in the halls of power. So they might disagree over
liberal conservative economics and politics, but then lets go and have a
glass of whiskey and a cigar, and we all be good friends, right?
JOHN FEFFER Yeah.
MARC STEINER And you had this common enemy. Then the Soviet Union falls.
People who didnt like that rule go to the right. And then, you also have
this surge of the post-colonial world and our repressive tactics from this
country on to other places. You have forced migrations and more. And so this
all gets
And so theres this racism thats there to begin with that came
out of colonialism and its still in Europe and still in the United States
very deeply. So these factors all kind of dovetailed to create what were
seeing now, and I think as you were saying, it seems to me also, the
contradictions of capitalism itself that can make a global economy, but
cant take care of the people in the process.
JOHN FEFFER Well, what youre describing is a backlash against liberalism.
MARC STEINER Yeah.
JOHN FEFFER I mean a backlash against, of course, the economic aspects of
liberalism, but also, the kind of cultural aspects of liberalism, a backlash
against some of the gains that are made within liberal democracies by
minorities, by women. Theres a feeling somehow, primarily by white men,
that they are being dispossessed. And when we talk about the dispossession
of people by economic globalization and by the financial crisis, but theres
also a perception by white men that theyre being dispossessed by the forces
of history if you will. And if you add onto that an enormous uptick in
immigration as a result, not only, not exclusively, but largely by wars in
Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Syria, in Libya, a huge outpouring of people from
these parts of the world into Europe, and this becomes a major issue that
the far right seizes on. In other words, its not just the dispossession of
white men, its the dispossession of everyone whos considered to be
indigenous, indigenous to France, indigenous to UK. They are under threat
from these outsiders.
And comparable phenomenon in the United States, of course, the far right
seizes on immigration coming from Central America and Mexico, also a
perception that white Americans are going to be dispossessed by these
people. So as you say, these trends are coming together in the 1990s and in
the 2000s to create the conditions, if you will, for the rise of the far
right.
MARC STEINER So youve got this quote in your piece that I really like to
share with our listeners because I think that its an important one. Its by
Matthew Feldman from the Center for Analysis of the Radical Right. And you
quote him as saying, The demographic replacement is a similar master frame
that can unite both clear extremists and conservatives who might be worried
about demographic change. Once you add these two together, you have
potential majorities in many countries. They found a winning formula.
Theres nothing Ive seen that comes remotely close to countering that
formula. Now that to me, and this one particular article that you wrote was
the most frightening line in the entire article. I mean because thats real.
This movement has gained power and I dont see people having an effective
response to it.
JOHN FEFFER Yeah. No, youre absolutely right. And Feldman points out that
this is not something new, this kind of consensus, if you will, between the
far right and mainstream conservatives. We saw the same thing in the 1920s
and the 1930s both in Europe and the United States. In the United States,
you saw this kind of far right racism from people like Calvin Coolidge as
well as Father Coughlin coming together to create what wouldve been if it
hadnt been for FDR and a variety of other factors probably a very
successful far right in this country. The far right, of course, does emerge
in Germany, in Italy, in Spain, in Japan, and based on the similar kind of
consensus.
What Feldman is talking about is whats known as the Great Replacement
Theory and the Great Replacement Theory comes out of France in 2010, the
notion that these immigrants coming from North Africa, coming from Syria,
Afghanistan, they arent just coming into France. They have the intention of
replacing the French and replacing French culture with their foreign
customs, their foreign languages, their foreign religions, and that its
necessary for the authentic French, if you will, to band together and push
them out. Not only stop immigration, but actually remigration, in other
words, push current migrant populations out of the country.
MARC STEINER And in some places, theyre doing that. You look, Israel at
this moment is doing that with African refugees from, especially Sudan who
come into Somalia, who have come into Israel and sending them back out
again.
JOHN FEFFER Thats right.
MARC STEINER I mean this is nothing new. And youre pointing also in your
article that this was Hitlers first idea before he decided to kill all the
Jews was to send them off to Madagascar.
JOHN FEFFER Thats right. Thats right. Yeah.
MARC STEINER So lets talk a bit about where this might be going and what
the response is. I mean I think that its very real. You see this rise. I
remember I guess it was 20 years ago, whatever, there was election in France
and my wife and I just landed in Paris with this cab driver, and he was
talking to us about how everywhere the communists won, the right wing is now
winning-
JOHN FEFFER Thats right.
MARC STEINER
in France. And thats similar to other countries as well.
Its not just in France. So the question is with this rise of the right
thats extremely powerful, you have Donald Trump in power in this country,
so lets talk about where you think this could take the world and what do
you think the response should be?
JOHN FEFFER Sure.
MARC STEINER Thats the most important thing to me.
JOHN FEFFER Well, before I tell you what I think, let me tell you what I
think is the mistaken analysis of this.
MARC STEINER Okay. Go ahead. Yeah.
JOHN FEFFER And the mistaken analysis is that this is just the ordinary ebb
and flow of politics. So the far right wins this election cycle and the left
will win the next one, and maybe the center will come back. I think thats a
fundamental misreading of the current situation because the far right thats
winning, the people that you mentioned at the top of the show, people like
Trump, Modi, Orban, Erdogan in Turkey, theyre interested not in serving for
a term or maybe two terms. They want to serve forever. They want to be
leader for life. You might remember when Donald Trump said that he kind of
liked Xi Jinpings new title, leader for life. Maybe we should look into
that in the United States. He wasnt really joking. I mean-
MARC STEINER I know he wasnt joking, right?
JOHN FEFFER Like many other leaders, they want to be there forever. In order
to do that, they have to dismantle what are known as kind of the guard rails
of democracy. They have to suppress free press. They have to go after civil
society, freedom of speech, all in order to rig the system so that either
they or their daughter, Ivanka, can be leader for life. So thats my fear.
Thats the kind of worst case scenario.
What to do about it? Well, the first thing, of course, is to challenge them
across the board and across the board not only within countries, but across
countries.
MARC STEINER Let me just stop for a second cause hats one thing you posit
in this as you describe this thing is really important because most of
people look in the press and people look at the activists, look at whats
happening with the rise of the right as nothing, but pure nationalists,
right? Youre making a very simple argument. Your argument is they may be
natioinalists in the extent of talking about whats happening internally in
their countries, but this is an internationalist movement. The left used to
be the internationalist movement. Now the right is an internationalist
movement, and thats at the heart of this, which just makes it even more
dangerous at the moment.
JOHN FEFFER And on the face of it, it doesnt make sense. I mean if you want
to make America great, how can you make America great and Hungary great and
Russia great and Turkey great all at the same time? You would think that
they will kind of bump up against each other. But in fact, they have common
interests and the common interests are in basically dismantling liberal
institutions as well as suppressing the left. But for the most part, the
left is relatively weak whereas liberal institutions remain even in the
United States or throughout Western Europe or even in Brazil, liberal
institutions remain kind of the status quo. I mean people believe in
democracy. They believe in free elections. They believe in free media and
freedom of speech.
So the first thing they want to do in kind of by joining hands across
borders is to create a kind of illiberal international in which they push
the needle significantly away from the status quo and essentially establish
a kind of new status quo in which there is no freedom of speech, in which
there are no free free organs of the media. They have other common interests
related to immigration, their opposition to social movements like LGBT,
womens movement.
So for us who are opposed to this kind of nationalist international, this
illiberal international, I think its necessary not only to organize at a
national level against Trump, try to get him out of office next term,
Bolsonaro, get him out of office next term, but as much as possible, to
sever these connections that they are making across borders and to create a
new kind of transnational internationalism in support of the things that we
hold in common interest, whether its primarily climate change, dealing with
climate change, dealing with economic inequality, dealing with militarism.
These are the issues that a transnational internationalist movement has to
put out there in a positive way. And not just say, We dont like Trump. We
dont like Bolsonaro. We dont like Orban. That isnt sufficient. I mean
the average voter may or may not agree with that, but what theyre really
looking for is something new, something positive, and thats what we have to
provide.
MARC STEINER I mean its kind of a mixed bag. We dont have time to get into
it now, but a lot of the European right leaders are not homophobic. Some of
the leaders are gay and lesbian women.
JOHN FEFFER Thats right.
MARC STEINER So its a really different mix than we have here in that
regard, but I think that when you
There was a time when, and this is not
law in the Soviet Union because they were part of the problem, which is why
they collapsed and the left fell apart as well, but they were at one point
the only bulwark against the spread of capitalism across the globe. Now its
everywhere and people are genuinely terrified too about the future. And I
think you mentioned that in one of your pieces that people are really
terrified about where its going. Not so much on I have no money now, but my
future is at stake and I think that the problem with the left is theyre not
organizing. Theyre not part of labor. Theyre not part of doing things that
actually can galvanize a movement. Say theres a different way into kind of
bask in our heterogeneity, lets say, in this country as opposed to playing
into the other side.
JOHN FEFFER Well, I would agree with you. Though I would say the left has
plenty of ideas and has done some organizing. For the most part, the left
lacks kind of institutional power. And the reason I think its important
that you point to the labor unions is because that used to be institutional
power that the left has. And if you look at the decline of labor unions not
just here in the United States, but if you look at the OECD, the most
economically advanced countries in the world, basically over the last 25, 30
years, the percentage of organized labor as part of the workforce has
dropped in half from about roughly 32% or roughly 16%.
So in other words, the very core of institutional power for the left has
declined substantially, which means the left either has to do one of two
things, either has to participate with labor to build that back up, if that
is possible, might be difficult in an age of automation, but lets just say
that is one alternative. The other alternative is to find some other
institutional power base. What could that be? Well, it could be young
people. I mean if we look at the Fridays For Future strikes for climate
change, it could be environmentalists more generally, civil society
activists. There are a variety of different places one could look for
institutional power.
But I would say for the short term at least, I mean I think your question
was looking to the longterm, in the short term, the left really has to kind
of promote a united front strategy, has to join hands with liberals and
moderates and even renegade Republicans in this country, renegade
conservatives in Europe who recognize that there is a threat, a clear and
present danger. And with that united front, once again re-establish what
that consensus was that we had during the Cold War period, a consensus that
fascism and the far right has no place in our society.
MARC STEINER And we have to conclude this now, but I mean I think thats
right and I think that the danger here is A, that what happened in the past
was people who had a different vision of what the world could be got sucked
into the neoliberal world and dissipated any power that they had and became
identified with that as opposed to being identified with people who are
actually struggling to make a better world. And that in itself I think is a
real issue and problem well have to deal with. And that united front idea,
I mean some people would disagree with this. Im sure well get a lot of
letters saying that youre wrong, but Donald Trump being in power is a real
danger not just to our country, but to the globe-
JOHN FEFFER Absolutely.
MARC STEINER
because he is in a literal sense Mario Puzos godfather to
the rest of the right wing, which youre right about as well.
JOHN FEFFER Right. I think most people understand that Donald Trump, Modi or
Bolsonaro, they represent such a threat that theyre willing to do almost
anything electorally speaking or getting out into the street and joining
hands with some uncommon bedfellows, they will do whatever is necessary to
get him out of office. So, okay, I know if we talked about it specifically,
like would I support Biden for instance? I would be uncomfortable, but
still, generally speaking, this is the necessary short term strategy.
Were talking longterm, thats a different matter.
MARC STEINER Right.
JOHN FEFFER Longterm is a matter of building institutional power. Its about
finding partners where our common interests overlap to a much larger degree
and finding those common interests across borders, which is something, as
you pointed out, the left has stepped back from. I mean, again, we used to
be kind of the beacon of internationalism and weve become more parochial
over the last decade or so. We have to kind of burnish that legacy of
internationalism, revive it and operationalize it in a real sense.
And Im not speaking just cause I like the sound of internationalism. This
is very pragmatic. We face international problems that need international
solutions. The only way were going to solve them are internationally. So
its incumbent upon the left to step up and say, We actually are the only
ones who have an internationalist program that can address these problems.
Everybody else, yeah, you can vote for them, but were not going to go
anywhere. Were not going to advance. Were going to step backwards and
frankly, step off the precipice if we continue those policies.
MARC STEINER Thats frighteningly true. John Feffer, good to have you in the
studio. Thanks for coming in today. It was great talking to you.
