The right in the US, in the UK, in the Netherlands in France and across Europe lead on racism and the need to halt types of immigration as their answer to the effects of globalisation. Wilder's latest insult against what he called 'Moroccan scum' demonstrates the directly racist leading edge of his campaign (against the 4% of the population who are Dutch Muslims and live in Holland.) But the foundations of his agitation are actually primitive but radical propositions about Tax and State authority. In his 'WEBLOG' he writes at the end of his program
'9. A lot of extra money for defence and police
10. Lower income taxes
11. Halving of car taxes'.
There is emerging across all the new right in the West, another 'solution' to the insurgency caused by unemployment, poverty and racism. Besides attacks on minorities it suggests a more directly authoritarian answer to the failure of mainstream politics to deal with the impact of globalisation.
The 23 April is the opening round of the French Presidential Election. 7 May will be the final round between the top two candidates. Again, Marine LePen is a shoe-in for one of the final two. Again it is supposed that the French electorate will vote 'anybody else' against France's fascist. France has been in a state of emergency since 130 people were killed in the November 2015 attacks in Paris. A state of emergency also describes the situation of the two main parties that have ruled France since the 1980s with the independent Macron, a politician deracinated of politics, the only answer to the far right wing threat. Already this latest 'independent' is weakening in the French polls. Already the establishment's political answer to the threat from the right is faltering. And Le Pen junior is now ramping up the 'defence' of French society to deal with the 'thugs' that have risen from Paris's Banlieues once more defending themselves against the police. According to Le Pen, the confidence and the authority of those 'defending' law and order must be rebuilt!
Meanwhile Douglas Williams on the British 'Guardian' website (17 February) has pointed out some of Trump's less well circulated executive actions to deal with the impact on those left behind by globalisation in his first days in office.
'The executive order titled Presidential Executive Order on Preventing Violence Against Federal, State, Tribal, and Local Law Enforcement Officers' promises to:
Pursue appropriate legislation, consistent with the Constitution’s regime of limited and enumerated Federal powers, that will define new Federal crimes, and increase penalties for existing Federal crimes, in order to prevent violence against Federal, State, tribal, and local law enforcement officers.
Review existing Federal laws to determine whether those laws are adequate to address the protection and safety of Federal, State, tribal, and local law enforcement officers.'
"That’s right. In a country where police chiefs consider resisting arrest a hate crime punishable by ten years in prison and where state legislatures are considering immunity for those who run over protesters, the Trump administration has signalled that, actually, we are not tough enough on protesters and activists. As bad as this may be, however, it is this part of the executive order that is the most chilling:"
'Following that review … make recommendations to the President for legislation …. defining new crimes of violence and establishing new mandatory minimum sentences for existing crimes of violence against Federal, State, tribal, and local law enforcement officers, as well as for related crimes.'
Enhancing or even reconstructing state power is invariably a critical objective for the far right. The new right's objectives in the West are a so far a weak echo of a more direct and brutal process in Egypt that was as a response to the Arab Spring and now in Turkey, with its fear of the emergence of a Kurdish state.
Another date of note is therefore the 16 April, when a constitutional referendum will be held in Turkey. Voters will vote on a set of 18 proposed amendments to the Constitution of Turkey. They are singularly authoritarian in character. They include the introduction of an executive presidency with a wide range of judicial and military powers, including the extension of the office which in Erdoğan's case could run on to to 2029. It would replace the existing parliamentary system of government, abolish the Office of the Prime Minister and change the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors. While tens of thousands of critics of the regime are in jail, convulsions are expected around the referendum and will certainly be provoked if they do not arise spontaneously.
The new right's need to destroy the 'enemy from within' emerges from its first steps to reconcile the irreconcilable. Trump, the Tory right, Wilders, Le Pen and Erdoğan lead on the race/culture/national threat as the reason for impoverishment, lack of services, loss of jobs etc., but their notions are utterly absurd and ineffective. Accordingly repression is required to resolve the ensuing quandary. The right's answers do not work. But if resistance is supressed then there is less and less of a problem to sort out. And with the ensuing silence new and more expansive ambitions become possible.
If this all seems a little bloodthirsty in the UK context, with its apparent history of stable politics and society, then readers might turn to comments written by Britain's leading liberal political journalist (Observer 19 February). Andrew Rawnsley's weekly half page was entitled
'Why some Tories fear blood on the streets in a couple of years'. Underneath Rawnsley wrote 'Further spending cuts, higher taxes and a renewed squeeze on living standards all add up to trouble ahead.' Rawnsley was anti-Brexit and tried to paint his picture of gloom as a result of Britain leaving the EU. Unfortunately for his perspective he had not read the pages in his own newspaper about the catastrophic situation in Greece, or previous pieces about the crisis across Italy, Spain, Portugal and France, all inside the EU. Being inside or outside the EU was never any sort of answer to the impact of globalisation (except in part in Germany.) Now it seems that Britain too may have to try and resolve the issue of the effects of globalisation via an increase in state power rather than via Brexit or a change of mind about the EU and a new referendum on EU membership.
And of course on 23 February the British Labour Party and its Corbyn leadership will face the results of 2 bi-elections. (See Blog 13 February.) It looks likely that working class spiv Nuttall has blown away UKIP's chances in Stoke with lies about his role in the Hillsborough disaster. (Middle class spiv, UKIP's Nigel Farage, never faced anything like the media barrage that Nuttall has endured.) And the fight to defend the NHS against the plan to close the general hospital in Copeland seems to have overwhelmed local fears about Corbyn's previous views about nuclear power. If Labour scrapes by, it will still be a Corbyn failure as far as the right majority of Labour MPs are concerned (lots of stuff about the small majority vote etc.,) but will probably put off any immediate direct action against the leadership. Nevertheless while the Labour right's revolt is a minor and fluctuating part of the general trend of the times, it is as inevitable as the arrival of the new Spring and Summer. The old Labour Party as it exists today has no answer whatsoever to the impact of globalisation either. It will thereby inevitably fracture, possibly into a new future with a recomposed left, or perhaps just dissolve into parliamentary leavings composed of some ambitious hotspots. As with the position in most of the West (and even in Turkey) the social forces that could drive an alternative to the new right are still strong and certainly not defeated. The challenge for the left is to create a new left that really does have an attractive, popular and credible alternative to globalisation and austerity.
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