Far-right leaders are winning across the globe. Blaming ‘the economy’ or ‘the left-behinds’ won’t cut it
Far-right leaders are winning across the globe. Blaming ‘the economy’ or ‘the left-behinds’ won’t cut it
The economy matters, but the likes of Trump succeed by offering voters revenge for problems both real and imagined, says author and Salvage founder Richard Seymour
Summary
Far-right leaders are gaining globally, with Trump’s victory in the US presidential election echoing trends in Hungary, India, and other countries.
Donald Trump’s 2024 victory marks a historic first where he won the U.S. popular vote, supported by diverse groups including young, Black, and Latino voters, as well as the working class—a reversal from previous elections.
This win aligns with global far-right gains, reflecting voter frustration with economic hardships and liberal policies.
Analysts argue that the far right’s appeal lies in its “politics of existential revenge,” which vilifies minority groups and offers imaginary disasters as scapegoats.
It's really a reaction to 40 years of failed neoliberal policies.
The solution is leftist economic populism.
The lefts populism is best for 99% of the people, but worse for the wealthiest 1%, and that's why it'll never happen.
The plutocracy would prefer the lies and mental illness of right wing populism. A fascist dictatorship and boogeymen to keep the people in line, is better than the risk of being marginally less wealthy.
Enough people show up, it happens.
What about a kakistocracy?
The solution is something super simple!
Yeaaahhh, no. It is not that simple, it is never they simple.
Why do you think another populism is the solution?
Ring wing "populism" isn't really populist, it's masking politics beneficial to the wealthy elite in a way that is palatable to enough people just long enough to gain power and put into effect laws that are highly unfavourable to your average person. The antidote to that is making changes that are actually favourable to your average person. Placing those two different concepts under the singular label "populism" is, frankly, disingenuous.
The far right populism is a pseudo populism. Real populists are (as name suggests) for the people.
Social media is to blame, at least in huge parts.
It offers a platform for unproven claims, and especially the short content formats are an issue:
You can not cover important topics fairly in those formats. Only populism can profit from it. And the far right does this.
We reached a point where people don't believe the published agendas of candidates and parties anymore. They only trust what the hear and see on social media.
Of course there are other factors, but this is an important one.
Social media is just the medium, the problem is the right have a united and highly organised propaganda machine across the globe. From tv news to in print newspapers to social media influencers to the algorithms and owners of the platforms themselves.
Mea while the left has none of that and doesn't have the unity or organisation to do it.
I am talking about the global phenomenon. Something like rox news does not exist here in Germany for example.
We always had right wing propaganda. But now we have social media too. And that produced a confirmation cycle. The propaganda channels spew lies, people spread does lies on social media, and the media cam say "look, there, normal people on X say the same thing, it must be true".
And of course, also the other way around
They only trust what the hear and see on social media.
Is there any data yet that backs this thinking?
There are some studies. Mostly behind pay Walls. A good source I found a while back was this meta study.
We have the data. Trust me. I'm from social media.
Social media indeed.
And that lying has no consequences. (Which also tied in No.1)Or just maybe social media has enabled the masses to realize globalism hasn't really helped them. A cheaper TV wasn't worth the massive exportation of factory jobs. Free trade allows a race to the bottom for labor that can be done elsewhere, that's great for owners, not so great for the workers that can't find a comparable job anymore.
The right has been capturing the media and manipulating the masses for years. They gained control of the racist south and the churches.
They will blame everyone and everything. When that tactic runs out, they will begin to eat each other.I saw something interesting.,,
I know the details are hard to read, but the only world commonality I can think of is COVID.
Looks like opposition parties were successfully able to blame everything on the parties in charge, regardless of whether they deserved it or not.
Actually here in hungary, trump's comrade orban is shitting in his pants, as Peter Magyar became more popular than orban in 6 months. (Before that he was unknown) This happenes because orban and his comrades created skyhigh inflation in hungary along with the devaluatiom of the hungarian currency. Actally orban and his comrades fked up everything, and even though they have the most powerful propaganda machine, they seem to be losing ground.
It's a lot more difficult to blame things on others once you've been in charge for that long and shit still fails and breaks down. That's my hope for other countries as well, that the continued downward spiral under a right wing government eventually makes the pendulum swing back towards the left. I just hope that there'll be politicians to jump in once the opportunity arises.
People continue to blame "the economy" on Trump's victory. Trump was campaigning on actively making the economy worse. So to say that people didn't vote for Harris because of the economy is either demonstrably false or proves that the American people are infinitely dumber than we thought. If you have a problem, you don't vote for the person who's campaigning on making your problems worse.
And you've got the Democrats saying that we should have put up Bernie Sanders. Right after complaining about Biden being too old. So apparently solving the problem of Biden being too old is either (a) voting for Trump who is virtually the same age, or (b) voting for an even older white guy with the same policies. Notice something here?
And before the "they're trolling" excuses come out, people who actually have respect for women wouldn't be "trolling" like this. You don't put your face to the trolling if you don't sincerely believe it.
But sure. You just keep thinking that it was the economy. Then keep putting up minority candidates and wonder why you keep losing to people like Trump. The hard fact remains that American voters in general are far more racist and misogynist than Democrats want to admit, and they showed (for the second time) that they are willing to hand over the country to a pile of garbage like Trump before they even consider voting for a woman.
Think of it. Democrats spent months complaining that we shouldn't put up the old white guy again. And now that Trump won, they're saying that we'd have won if we just put up an even older white guy. And 10+ million of them were so pissed off that we didn't put up an even older white guy that they'd rather sit home and allow an old white guy with dementia to take office anyway rather than vote for a black woman.
People didn't want to vote for a woman. Especially not a black one. That's all there is to it. The rest are just excuses.
The underlying assumption here is that these voters aren't low information voters. The economy was what they themselves say they voted while thinking about. I believe it's pretty clear that perception is more important than reality for these voters, and their perception could not be more wrong about that and many other issues. There is certainly misogyny and racism in there too, but also keep in mind that was largely felt in people staying home, not voting for Trump. Harris got far fewer votes and Trump received nearly the same as last time.
There's no easy one size fits all blame to be had here I don't think, as nice as simple explanations are. I believe lack of populist messaging, following safe trends rather than creating them in the minds of constituents (with exception of the weird insult), lack of emergency covid situation, sexism, and appeals to status quo systems that have flaws all played a role.
A lot of big words to fog a simple problem. Here's a breakdown.
Most are low information voters. Because humans are selfish and lazy.
Governing is complicated. People are busy with their own sh*t. That turns people off (lazy).
America makes it simple, binary two-party choice. No need to be informed when you just pick one of two teams, and you grew up in one already as a kid. (Lazy)
Busy on voting day? Nah, not voting (80 million Americans, lazy, selfish)
If they vote, they pick the choice that offers the things they like the most (selfish). Don't matter if it's lies or will make other things worse. No time to consider, we're busy. (Lazy)
Why are we low information voters? Can look up anything from reputable sources on the internet in seconds? Nah, how about cat videos. Porn. Dancing with the Stars is on (Selfish, lazy)
Trump bullies and Harris nags. Rather watch someone else get bullied than be nagged (Lazy, selfish)
Harris is black and woman, and has a career in public service. Trump is rich white man that barely works who acts like he's successful with beautiful women. Which do people wish to be like? (Selfish, lazy) [See: Freakanomics - selling crack vs working at McDonalds.]
Americans are lazy and selfish, resulting in low information voters. Low information voters vote against their interests and cause their own country's eventual downfall.
It isn't the Democrats fault due to messaging. It isn't Republicans fault due to propoganda.
It is always singularly only one group responsible for all problems in America, and always has been. "We the People".
Americans continue to get the country they pick.
Till Americans overcome their base human instincts en masse to overcome their own laziness and selfishness, which will be never, things will keep being taken advantage by the American oligarchy and others.
After the USSR fell the Russian people mistakenly sold their country's assets for free chicken dinners and Levi's jeans [see Red Notice by Bill Browder] due to being horribly low information citizens ("What are stocks?" Oligarchy formed and answered.)
Americans could very likely soon do the same. Seems the goal. Half of Americans seem likely to do it gleefully, if it lowers egg prices.
The underlying assumption here is that these voters aren’t low information voters. The economy was what they themselves say they voted while thinking about.
I simply refuse to believe this because it just doesn't make sense. If these voters aren't low-information voters, they'd know that Trump plans to increase their expenses by about $400 per month. They'd know that Musk has already said he plans on making things exponentially worse. They'd know that Trump literally has no economic plan besides "get rid of the brown people." And they either voted for him or decided to stay home anyway? That doesn't make the first bit of sense.
Harris got far fewer votes and Trump received nearly the same as last time.
This is my point. The policies weren't the problem. Dem policies such as abortion did just fine. The "old white guy" thing mysteriously disappeared once Biden dropped out of the race, and now people are saying we could have avoided this by putting up an even older white guy. They certainly didn't like Trump's policies because Trump doesn't have any and Project 2025 is wildly unpopular. All 50 states went significantly redder.
It certainly wasn't because of policy. Dems did just fine there.
It wasn't because of downticket. Senate and House races went largely as predicted.
It wasn't because Biden was old. Trump is virtually the same age and Bernie is even older.
It's not the economy. Trump plans to make things worse.
The excuses that people are giving just do not make the least bit of sense when up against even a minimum amount of scrutiny. We have people saying "women are property", "your body, my choice", sending texts to Latinos telling them to pack their bags, and telling black people to report for slave duty. We don't have people out there celebrating "the economy is gonna be great again!".
"the economy" is a convenient excuse for people who just don't want to admit they refuse to vote for a black woman. If the "economy" is a concern, you don't vote for the guy who's planning on increasing your expenses by thousands of dollars per year.
People like to focus on economic factors because they're easily quantifiable. More vague factors disassociated from economic lifestyle are difficult to quantify, so harder to study and talk about. By way of example, though, when someone really hates black people, that's not economic, it's personal. It's something else entirely. Men wanting power over women isn't economic. Even immigration complaints aren't really economic, that's just an excuse to cover up much less defensible reasoning.
If you claim to be a society, the "left-behinds" are a monument to your society's complete abject failure.
The problem is that a economy is, by its nature, a lowly tool to maximize the equitable distribution of goods and services for the benefit of a society, and a society is it's people.
Most modern developed nations reach a point, and the US is the flag bearer for this, where the society subsists in service to the economy, and the economy becomes a tiny sliver of the population swallowing everything out of proud greed and gluttony. Which is fucking perverse, inhuman, and sociopathic.
We've just been propagandized by for profit media and oligarch captured education to literally hate and blame our own victims, calling them welfare queens and filthy beggars lowering our property values instead of the struggling neighbors we have all failed spectacularly.
Those that defend this vampire economy, while not being subject to those conditions, have become the disease. It's not OK that we have enough resources to house and feed everyone, but willfully don't while still allowing some to live lives of excess that are the equivalent of hundreds of modest lives with full bellies.
Carry on though, we've been too far gone to recover before complete societal collapse since the Reagan Revolution, and climate change will finally force equality, the final, actual zero sum game because all the temporarily embarrassed millionaires chose die alone over live together.
They're blaming minority groups for problems with the economy and people getting left behind. If that shit was resolved and things were good they'd have nothing to blame on the minority groups.
I’m just starting to think humans crave conflict. The larger the population and the more interconnected it gets the more we need larger scale chaos. I’m worried the only solution is to satiate that desire through global war. It’s so depressing to think about.
I think it has to do with our ability to manage large societies. People evolved in small groups and now we are trying to manage hundreds of millions of people under the same systems. Humans are not inherently good at abstract thinking and critical thinking skills are taught not hard wired.
So we have hundreds of millions of people all living in the same capitalist neo-liberal economic system, but that might not work for all of them. Well we just let those people wander around forming tent cities. All because our culture says if you are poor or homeless then you failed, not that the system failed the individual.
I'm not an expert on small human societies, but from my understanding homeless starving people wouldn't be tolerated in a community of like 150 or so.
Far-right leaders are winning across the globe.
How does it map to income inequality? Only authoritarianism can support higher levels of income inequality. Arab Spring. Western Fall.
Exactly this. A small organized group of ultra rich, making everyone's life miserable. Buying up social media, newspapers, TV and spreading their dumb propaganda. Fox 'news' started it, Musk kept going with Twitter.
Its the authoritarian clap back againts the hyper woke. The world went hard left now we going hard right.
When the fuck did the world ever go hard left? Delusional.
Trans people existing is hard left, as is keeping women healthy and alive.
Define woke.
As far as I can tell it now means "anything mush-brained right wingers don't like" but maybe you can do better.
Woke ideology is a social and philosophical movement that prioritizes identity politics, cultural Marxism, and social constructivism.
It emphasises:
- The importance of group identity over individual identity
- The existence of systemic oppression and power imbalances
- The need to challenge and dismantle these systems
Basicly
- Language policing
- Cancel culture
- Moral absolutism
- Compliance and conformity
This then meads to:
- Intellectual suppression
- Censorship
- Social conformity
- Divisiveness
Huh? Hard left?
Finally I get to use this
Yeah righto champ 👍
I wish we lived in the hard left world you munted fuckwits have nightmares about.