In recent years, the far right has moved from the margins to the centre of political life in the West. With a leading role in European governments, from the Nordic North to Italy, it is claiming the French presidency after the shock of the recent European elections and its adventurist decision Emmanuel Macron call early legislative elections.
How did we get here and how can this grey wave be stopped? In his new book, Petros Papakonstantinou tries to guide us through the transformations and roles played in post-war Europe, but also in Trump’s America, Bolsonaro’s Brazil, Miley’s Argentina and the tragedies in Ukraine and Gaza.
Starting with the historical roots of neo-fascism in the early post-war years, with the recycling of Nazis and fascists in Europe, McCarthyism and the descendants of the Ku Klux Klan in the US, and authoritarian regimes in Latin America, he positions himself on the main stages that helped the growth of the far-right phenomenon: the advance of globalization, the abandonment of the popular classes by the mutant social democracy, the international economic crisis of 2008-2012, the double shocks of Trump and Brexit, the increase in waves of immigration.
The author’s journey through 32 countries and a depth of eight decades demonstrates the great responsibilities of the neoliberal center, the systemic media and the mechanisms of the deep state for the broadest dissemination and legitimization of the fundamental ideas of the far right.
Drawing on a wealth of historical data, his analysis argues that the rise of post-fascism is not inevitable, but can be stopped. As long as the opposite fear, the world of work and the left that respects History and itself, manage to overturn the dystopian social regime of precariousness and extreme individualization, which subordinates the citizen’s conscience to the animal instinct of survival of the fittest, creating the ideal setting for racism, nativism and nationalism.