21/04/2024
Radical left website RS21 features an essay by Pete Cannell about the rise of populist right wing parties and their links to climate change denialism. He writes "Five decades of neo-liberalism has syphoned money and resources from public to private and increased inequality everywhere so that working class people are anxious or scared about climate, cost of living, war, housing, growing old. The belief that their parents or grandparents had that things would be better for the next generation is dead. Most people don’t trust politicians and find themselves being asked to choose between mainstream parties that offer minor variations on the same neo-liberal agenda. Into this vacuum has stepped forms of right-wing populism that purport to offer alternatives to the ‘establishment’. Right wing populism takes different forms – sometimes taking over long-established parties – Trump and the Republican Party in the US. Or in the UK the continuing rise of right-wing populists as a major, perhaps majority faction within the Tory party. Sometimes emerging from explicitly fascist formations, for example, Le Pen in France or Meloni in Italy. And sometimes completely new organisations, for example the AfD in Germany. None of them are into Greenwashing. They are all about Climate Denial.... It’s obviously not just climate that is building the new far right. Climate issues intersect with the legacy of neo-liberalism, migration and racism and the failure of the left to provide an alternative that speaks to working people’s insecurity and against individualistic solutions. The right-wing populists feed off social media fuelled confusion and conspiracies. Angry or frightened people looking for answers find them in apparently anti-establishment and authoritative voices online." Pete also offers some ideas on how progressive forces can build on strikes and community activism to push back the right wing populists. You can find his essay online at https://www.rs21.org.uk/
