Populists are not fighting in the streets. The battle line is democratic rights
It is commonly and correctly understood that the populist right are not traditional fascists.
US President Donald Trump, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and their ilk might be ideologically adjacent to fascist ideology, and their prominence is certainly an encouragement to outright fascists. But there are also some crucial differences between the populist right and traditional fascist organisations, whether the 1930s originals or later inheritors, such as the British National Party.
One vital difference is that traditional fascist groups relied on building up paramilitary forces to dominate the streets and intimidate and repress opponents, whether socialists, trade unionists or minority communities.
The modern populist right lacks this crucial dimension. They are overwhelmingly structured as establishment electoral parties with no paramilitary wing, although they exist in a symbiotic relationship with those who would like to become such a force; for example, the Proud Boys in the US, or Tommy Robinson supporters in the UK.
But these are not stable, organised relationships, nor do they underpin a fascist strategy of controlling the streets. Farage had to distance himself from Robinson last summer as a huge anti-racist mobilisation followed a wave of race riots in August.
New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch
Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters
It’s important to be clear on this, because using the methods that anti-fascists have traditionally used to contest fascist attempts to build a base are likely to misfire if deployed against the populist right. For one thing, Farage doesn’t march, and he doesn’t send goons to break up socialist meetings or trade union picket lines.
The populist right’s attack on the left moves on other hinges. One is cultural: the war on “woke”. This is an ideological struggle in which the left must confront the new right. The crucial element here is that the right cannot be defeated by simply defending every position that the identitarian left has adopted.
Structures of oppression
On this issue, the point of entry into working-class consciousness for the populist right is that much of the Labourist/managerial approach to fighting oppression actually involves only trivial or superficial change, leaving the most important structures of oppression intact - or worse, masking their further entrenchment.
That Cressida Dick was celebrated as the first female Metropolitan Police chief while one of her officers killed Sarah Everard, more of her officers repressed those that protested about it, and the entire force was found by an official inquiry to be institutionally racist and sexist, is perhaps the epitome of this problem.
The answer to this is that opposition to oppression must unite the working people, rather than uncritically endorse identity politics formulations that atomise and disaggregate class consciousness and organisation.
If this condition breaks down, then the state becomes the site of internal ruling-class feuds, reproducing the chaos of market competition within the state structure
But the modern populist right are not only engaged in a cultural battle with the left. They are also instrumentalising the state machine and using its repressive capacities to a far greater degree than has normally been the case in recent years, at least in the West.
The conventions of parliamentary democracy are as follows: firstly, the repressive apparatus of the state is used only when necessary. Persuasion and propaganda are preferred over force as the normal methods of rule, which is not to say that some degree of force is not always present.
Secondly, the illusion of the neutrality of the state machine is preserved by the separation of powers. The deployment and regular functioning of the state machine is reserved for those projects commonly acknowledged to be in the interests of the ruling class, either in whole or in large part, rather than to support the factional aims of a single establishment party.
If this were not the case, the state would not be, as Karl Marx described it, merely “a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie”. If this condition breaks down, then the state becomes the site of internal ruling-class feuds, reproducing the chaos of market competition within the state structure - the very thing the state machine is supposed to overcome.
Systemic crisis
Of course, this is a matter of degree. The state always internalises some intra-ruling class conflicts. The members of “the committee” argue among themselves before, they hope, coming to a resolution. But this is supposed to be a more or less rule-bound process.
The rise of the populist right is producing a crisis in this system. The populist right are openly politicising state functions and seeking to colonise parts of the state machine for their own particular faction, thus disrupting the negotiating framework for the ruling class as a whole.
This risks exposing the workings of the state to the masses, undermining the myth of state neutrality. This, in turn, produces instability that requires, as do the natural inclinations of the populist right, increased use of coercion against opponents.
Trump’s whole arc of development since his first term is an object lesson in understanding this process. From the Capitol Hill coup attempt; to the threat not to recognise the result if he was defeated in his second run; to the appointment of Elon Musk and the dismantling of sections of the state bureaucracy hostile to Trump through the “Department of Government Efficiency”; to the use of executive orders to make laws without congressional oversight; to the breaking up of the “rules-based international order”, Trump is bypassing normal parliamentary democratic processes.
In the UK, the populist right have helped to help drag the political spectrum to the right, thus enabling Boris Johnson’s far-right takeover of the Tory party and marginalising any remaining one-nation Tories. Johnson was himself a proponent of factionalising the state machine, most notably - though ultimately disastrously for Johnson - through the elevation of his adviser, Dominic Cummings.
Suella Braverman tried the same strategy at the Home Office, attempting to instrumentalise police for the far right through an argument, drawn from far-right sources, about two-tier policing.
This process set in train by the Tories has, like so much else, been continued by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, whose authoritarian frame of reference is all too accommodating to impulses from the right, even the far right. The same gravitational pull of the far right can be seen in the collapse of German social democracy in the face of the AfD threat, and of the French centre in the face of Marine Le Pen.
Dozens of political prisoners of the left have been sent to British jails. Leaders of the pro-Palestine movement are being charged with public order offences, and others are being questioned, including an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor and a famous actor. Metropolitan police have broken down the doors of a Quaker meeting house to arrest six women discussing the Palestine issue. The government plans even more restrictive legislation aimed at limiting freedom of assembly. A similar tale can be told of the US and across Europe, particularly in Germany.
The re-militarisation of Europe will likely accelerate this attack on democratic rights. This is the ground on which the decisive battles with the populist right and their social democratic mimics will be fought.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Middle East Eye delivers independent and unrivalled coverage and analysis of the Middle East, North Africa and beyond. To learn more about republishing this content and the associated fees, please fill out this form. More about MEE can be found here.
