When the fact that the right-wing, fascist candidate for the Austrian presidency “only” wins 46% of the vote is celebrated as a victory by the liberal left, it reveals how far the political equilibrium has shifted and the overall direction of travel for politics in Europe and elsewhere.
As this column argued in July, wherever you look, and from whichever angle, the political scene has never looked more peculiar — and precarious. And, six months later, one should add that it has never looked more menacing: the rise of the fascist right is happening now, and very fast, before our very eyes.
This year will go down as one of those tipping-point years — one that propelled the march of history on to a very different and dangerous path.
The liberal left’s annus horribilis has just carried on getting worse. Donald Trump’s victory in the United States election follows on the ascent to power of other authoritarian populists such as Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines earlier in the year.
On Sunday, although the Austrians preferred a left-leaning Green candidate to be president over Norbert Hofer, Hofer’s Freedom Party of Austria (FPO) will be encouraged to think that, in the more important parliamentary elections, it can seize power.
It would appear that two powerful but paradoxical political impulses are hard at work. The first is straightforward: the rise of a neo-fascist, invariably racist right wing that is redolent of the 1930s in the way that it exploits economic vulnerability driven by high unemployment and rising inequality to advance a nasty anti-immigrant agenda, as well as vicious attacks on “otherness” — for Jews then and Muslims now.
The second is more complex. It derives from the injustices of the socioeconomic landscape: globalisation’s chickens are finally coming home to roost. Working-class communities — left behind by the grossly uneven economic growth patterns of the past 20 years, which have tended to serve the interests of urban elites — have revolted. They are taking the opportunity presented by plebiscites such as the Brexit referendum in Britain in June to fight back and land one on the jaw of cosmopolitan liberal establishments pretty much everywhere.
Of course, the two impulses overlap, and they challenge views and values that the liberal left has held dear, but all too complacently assumed were victories that, once won, were won forever.
Now, extraordinarily, the fight for women’s abortion rights in Poland is, for example, having to be refought decades after it was assumed that the matter was settled.
Yet, because the two political impulses or trends overlap, they can be confused. How, for example, is one to understand the result of the Italian referendum that also took place last Sunday? The resounding 60-40 defeat of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s governance reform package was not so much a victory of the right — with its interlocking sustainability agenda, Italy’s populist Five Star Movement is a very different animal to, say, Hofer’s FPO, Germany’s Alternative for Germany, France’s Front National or even Britain’s UK Independence Party, led by the ghastly Nigel Farage — as yet another defeat for the elite political establishment of which Renzi was undoubtedly a part.
This is where and how the dots can be joined and the contradictions between the two political trends reconciled: populist anti-establishment political leaders and movements have exploited discontent and political, economic and cultural identity heterodoxies in the capital cities of Europe, the US and in some parts of Asia and Latin America to advance a socially conservative agenda.
Hilary Clinton in the US, the “remain” vote in the Brexit referendum, Renzi in Italy — all of these were symbols of an arrogant political establishment that was ripe for the picking. In this angry, populist paradigm, the European Union is inevitably the biggest target and scapegoat and, therefore, the likeliest long-term loser.
But this is why one must take care with the use of the word “populist”. Although it’s clear that authoritarian populists are exploiting the opportunity, the anger of working-class people across the world is justifiable and legitimate.
This, however, is as much a failure of the left and of progressive politics as it is a victory of the right. The left has negligently vacated the space.
Where is the political leadership to challenge the right and to present a coherent, progressive alternative to the nationalist dogma of Trump, Hofer, Farage et al? Seriously, where is it? Name one articulate and authentic, politically and electorally credible left politician? Certainly not in Europe.
One can ask the same questions of South Africa’s political scene. Just as the weakness of the left has created a vacuum for the right in Europe, so it has enabled this country’s own authoritarian populists — both President Jacob Zuma and his archenemy, the Economic Freedom Front’s Julius Malema — to gain power advance their own socially conservative, nationalist agendas.
And yet, as a rollercoaster year of South African politics comes to a close, there is perhaps greater justification for optimism here than elsewhere. Progressive civil society forces have organised and mobilised to great effect. Cross-sector formations such as the Save South Africa campaign have put considerable pressure on Zuma and his venal faction in the ANC.
Most importantly, democratic institutions have held the line and withstood partisan political pressure. From the Pretoria high court and the Constitutional Court to the auditor general’s office, the treasury and the Financial Intelligence Centre, these, and plenty more, are institutions that South Africa can be proud of as it celebrates, this weekend, 20 years since Nelson Mandela signed the Constitution into law.
The Constitution creates the framework for these governance arrangements, as well as enshrining the socioeconomic and civil and political rights that have proved their transformatory potential regardless of those authoritarian populists on the ANC’s right wing, who seek to undermine the legitimacy of the 1996 constitutional compact.
It is a Constitution that is proving durable. But it is a deeply contested space. The authoritarian populism of Zuma, as much as that of the likes of Trump, Farage and Hofer, despises the liberal-left consensus on which modern constitutional democracy is founded.
That is why the British Daily Mail’s front-page headline after the high court found that the Brexit vote was subject to ratification by Parliament described the judges as “enemies of the people”.
One can well imagine a similar line tripping off the tongues of Zuma and his gang here. The case for constitutional rights will have to continue to be made against the strong headwinds of an angry populism. Otherwise, the gains that have been made for the rights of women and LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex) people, among many other progressive victories of recent decades, will be set back.
Nothing can be taken for granted and 2017 will be no less rough a ride than 2016, here and elsewhere.
Zuma will continue to fight to hold on to power. Those who wish to continue his venal agenda of state plunder will push hard for a successor equally as pliable and ideologically vacuous and incoherent. Institutions such as the public protector will be tested to see whether they can be bent to the will of those with malevolent, self-serving interests.
Back in Europe, France’s presidential election next year could be an even more potent challenge to the political establishment. A disastrous socialist president, François Hollande, who came into power with a promise to tackle the financial system that creates such social inequity, will be leaving power with his tail between his legs.
The same commentators who said that Britain would not vote for Brexit and that Trump could not win are saying that France would never allow a victory for the Front National. But its leader, Marie le Pen, is as shrewd and charismatic a political operator as Malema is here. She could win. And that really would be the end of the EU, which, for all its faults, is a force for geopolitical good.
We are left hoping that a Christian Democrat leader, Angela Merkel, will survive to rule for another four years in Germany. Her bold and progressively principled approach to the refugee crisis in Europe last year has made her position more precarious than it has ever been, leading her to ask her own party on Tuesday, with a rare show of emotion as well as weakness, for help in winning next year’s parliamentary election.
Merkel, more than anyone, is the voice of reason, of egalitarian values and of social accord.
It has come to that.
Richard Calland’s latest book, Make or Break: How the Next Three Years Will Shape South Africa’s Next Thirty, is published by Penguin Random House.