By MARGA FERRÉ*
The rise of the far right in the last decade is a reaction, and a global reaction at that. But a reaction to what?
For years I have been reading analyses of the far right without finding an answer that explains why it has so much support. Until in recent months, a study by the newspaper Financial Times, an old feminist book and a history article triggered a response that, decanted, I intend to argue with you.
The rise of the far right is not an expression of political discontent, nor a social pathology, much less an expression of anti-establishment. The growth of the far right in the last decade is a reaction, and a global reaction at that. But a reaction to what?
For a displacement.
The story has changed
A sector of the historiographical academy, which dazzled me, proposes that the most profound change that emerges as a consequence of the acceleration of globalization is the transformation of the very concept of history and this has a lot to do with the rise of the extreme right.
What they argue is that universal history has commonly been studied and learned as a linear story, a series of stages (which even have a name and a start and end date) through which humanity moves forward, towards “progress”. For the benefit of the European empires, History was conceived as Western history, an ascending tree at the top of which are the developed nations (the powers, the empires) led by elite white men who possess the technology and the vision of progress (civilization) and, further down, the nations on the path to this model of development and all the other subordinate groups.
Today, subaltern groups that are underrepresented or invisible in contemporary history are entering the scene, raising new demands.
What do these new historians propose, whose thinking is described in article by Hugo and Daniela Fazio, is that this concept of History is unsustainable today. It is not only the rise of Asia, especially China, as a deconstructor of this idea of Western history, but the emergence of feminism and anti-racism, with their decolonial proposal, that has changed this vision of history to a much more global and diverse one.
They named it global history, from the prism of the following precious truth, which, without gender or class blindness, is evident: today, subaltern groups underrepresented or made invisible in contemporary history have burst onto the scene raising new demands with new leaderships and epistemologies, as there is a shift in the myth of the West towards a much more diverse world.
This shift generates resentment in those who see them lose their position of privilege in a world that no longer sees them as an authority and that, therefore, disputes their position of power. The far right is this, a reaction of those who are losing privileges or fear losing them and, therefore, the feeling of manipulation is resentment.
It is neither anger nor political disenchantment, but rather resentful victimhood, the appeal to the wounded narcissism of someone who feels that he has lost his leadership role in history, at home or at work. The rise of militarism and war are part of this violent reaction to a world that is displacing them.
The fourth wave
Backlash, the undeclared war against modern women is a feminist book that had a huge impact in the 1990s. In it, Susan Faludi denounced the conservative backlash against women’s advancement in those years and lucidly highlighted that this backlash did not occur because women had achieved full equality, but because “it was possible for them to achieve it.” Susan Faludi’s book helps me understand that the rise of the far right is a reaction, first and foremost (although not only), to the fourth wave of feminism, and I assure you that the data is irrefutable.
Young women are much more progressive and men more conservative and more likely to support the far right.
On January 25th of this year, the newspaper Financial Times published a study that blew the minds of many far-right analysts. It shows the votes of young men and women in South Korea, the US, Germany and the UK, concluding that there is a huge gap in their political attitudes: young women are much more progressive and young men are more conservative and more inclined to support the far right.
What shocks more than one is that this is a global phenomenon that occurs all over the planet, including in Spain:
I have read, in amazement, the most bizarre explanations for this phenomenon, ranging from the fact that women are more moderate to the fact that we have less contact with migration and nonsense of that kind. It is obvious, without the gender blindness that permeates academia, that it is the consequence of the fourth wave that has devastated the world. When it emerged, almost a decade ago, it did so on a global basis, as a mass movement, articulated through social networks and with a strong intergenerational component.
It is also a more anti-capitalist feminist wave than previous ones, a feminism that dismantles the historical role of patriarchy and has won the battle for equality as an aspiration. The far right is a violent reaction to this displacement, to this dethronement of paterfamilias, of the dominant man, of the creator of history.
I notice that many analyses reduce sexism and racism to moral and cultural attitudes, refusing to acknowledge that both constructs are used by capitalism to further exploit us. The obvious fact that women and migrants constitute a cheaper labor force all over the planet does not seem to have any impact on their analyses. We must do everything we can to deny the data and continue to insist that women and migrants are minorities and that we are treated as such when the reality is exactly the opposite. I almost admire their stubbornness.
I may be wrong, but I also realize that analytical blindness is not only related to gender. I detect a stubborn resistance to accepting that there is no direct relationship between economic inequality and the rise of the far right; in other words, economic orthodoxy is not useful for analyzing the phenomenon. If it were, there would be no way to explain what is happening in the Scandinavian countries (the least unequal in the world) or that in the country where inequality is most severe, South Africa, the far right is not relevant. Of course, the economic situation can be a trigger for the rise of the far right, but it is not its cause.
I suppose that cold economic metrics do not understand resentment and it is the sentiment that drives the reaction. To better understand this I suggest the magnificent study by Tereza Capela et al. on young Korean far-rightists that concludes decisively that their attitudes are built exclusively on resentment and victimization.
Reactionary whispers
I can smell a certain political tendency (from which not even the European left is free) that tends to compromise with some of the postulates of the extreme right when it feels threatened by its rise; and this is also a global phenomenon. I am beginning to hear, as subtle as a whisper, that perhaps we feminists have gone too far, that we must respond to the demands of young people who are moving to the right, that immigration is a problem, that what happened in Palestine is not a genocide, that we must buy more weapons, that ecology is not a fundamental contradiction…
I defend the opposite thesis: the antithesis of the far right and its enemy is to defend feminism, especially young women and their demands, the concept of class versus that of nation, peace, diversity, equality, social justice, solidarity, ecology and a common world and to do so, moreover, with a vision that goes beyond the narrow and hierarchical worldview of the West.
I argue that the far right is a reaction to the impulse with which we, the subalterns, have begun to change the world. But I warn you, returning to Suzan Faludi's warning, that the reaction is not only to a change that has been produced, but to the possibility of it occurring; in fact, they react violently to change in order to prevent it from happening. This is the far right: pure reaction.
*Marga Ferre, former MP in Spain, is co-president of Transform Europe.
Originally published on the portal Context and action.
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