Reaction
Article originally published in CTXT Magazine
https://ctxt.es/es/20240401/Firmas/46260/marga-ferre-extrema-derecha-reaccion-brecha-genero-cuarta-ola-claves.htm?utm_campaign=twitter
April 29th 2024
Marga Ferre [1]
The far right is a response to the drive with which we, the subalterns, are beginning to change the world, a reflection not only of the change that has occurred but of the change that could occur.
I've spent years reading analyses about the far right without finding a truly fundamental answer as to why they have so much support. Until, in recent months, a study in the Financial TimesAn old feminist book and a history article have triggered a response in me that, after careful consideration, I intend to explain:
The rise of the far right is not an expression of political discontent, nor a social pathology, much less an anti-establishment sentiment. The growth of the far right in the last decade is a reaction, and a global one at that. But a reaction to what?
To a displacement.
History has changed
A sector of the historiographical academy, which has me amazed, argues that the most profound change emerging as a consequence of the acceleration of globalization is the transformation of the very concept of History, and this has a lot to do with the rise of the extreme right.
Their argument is that universal history has commonly been studied and learned as a linear narrative, a series of stages (even with names and start and end dates) through which humanity moves forward, toward “progress.” Due to the influence of European empires, history has been conceived as Western history, an ascending tree at the top of which are the developed nations (the powers, the empires) led by elite white men who possess technology and the vision of progress (civilization, as it was formerly called), and below them, the nations on the path to that model of development and all other subordinate groups.
Today, subaltern groups, underrepresented or made invisible in contemporary history, are bursting onto the scene raising new demands.
What these new historians propose, whose thinking describes the Article I propose to you by Hugo and Daniela FazioThe problem is that this concept of history is untenable today. It's not just the rise of Asia, especially China, as a deconstructor of this Western idea of history, but also the emergence of feminism and anti-racism, with their decolonial proposals, that have shifted this vision of history toward a much more global and diverse one. They have dubbed it global history, from the perspective of the following precious truth, which, without the blindness of gender or class, is evident: today, subaltern groups, underrepresented or rendered invisible in contemporary history, are bursting onto the scene, raising new demands with new leadership and epistemologies, as the myth of the West dislocates toward a much more diverse world.
This displacement generates resentment in those who see their privileged position slipping away in a world that no longer views them as authorities and, therefore, challenges their power. The far right is precisely that: a reaction from those who are losing privileges or fear losing them, and thus, the emotion to be manipulated is resentment. It is not anger, rage, or political disillusionment, but rather a bitter victimhood, an appeal to the wounded narcissism of those who feel they have lost their leading role in history, at home, or at work. The rise of militarism and war is part of this violent reaction to a world that is displacing them and also a reaction to the wave that is sweeping them away.
The Fourth Wave
Backlash, the undeclared war against modern women It was a feminist book that had an enormous impact in the 1990s. In it, Susan Faludi denounced the conservative backlash against women's progress during those years and lucidly pointed out that this backlash didn't occur because women had achieved full equality, but because "it was possible for them to achieve it." Faludi's book helps me understand that the rise of the far right is a reaction, first and foremost (though not exclusively), to the fourth wave of feminism, and I assure you the data is irrefutable.
Young women are much more progressive, while young men are more conservative and more likely to support the far right.
On January 25th of this year, Financial Times published a study that has It blew the minds of many analysts of the far right. It shows the voting patterns of young women and men in South Korea, the US, Germany, and the UK, concluding that there is a vast gap in their political attitudes: young women are much more progressive, while young men are more conservative and more inclined to support the far right. What shocks many is that this is a global phenomenon occurring all over the world, including in Spain.
I've read, astonished, the most bizarre explanations for this phenomenon, ranging from women being more moderate to having less contact with migration, and other such nonsense. It's obvious, without the gender bias that pervades academia, that it's a consequence of the fourth wave that has swept the world. When it emerged, almost a decade ago, it did so globally, as a mass movement, articulated through social media and with a strong intergenerational component.
It is also a more anti-capitalist feminist wave than previous ones, a feminism that dismantles the historical role of patriarchy and has won the battle for equality as an aspiration. The far right is a violent reaction to this shift, to this dethroning of the pater families, of the dominant male, the maker of history.
I've noticed that many analyses reduce sexism and racism to moral and cultural attitudes, refusing to acknowledge that both constructs are used in capitalism to further exploit us. The obvious fact that women and migrants are cheaper all over the world seems to have no effect on their analyses. They have to go to great lengths to deny the data and continue insisting that women and migrants are minorities and treat us as such when the reality is exactly the opposite. I almost admire their stubbornness.
I may be wrong, but I also perceive that this analytical blindness isn't just gender-based. I detect a persistent resistance to accepting that there isn't a direct relationship between economic inequality and the rise of the far right; in other words, economic orthodoxy is inadequate for analyzing the phenomenon. If that were the case, there would be no way to explain its success in the Scandinavian countries (the least unequal in the world) or why, in South Africa, the country where inequality is most glaring, the far right doesn't even exist. Of course, the economic situation can be a trigger for the rise of the far right, but it isn't its cause.
Cold, economic metrics fail to understand resentment, and it is this feeling that drives the reaction.
I suppose that cold, economic metrics don't understand resentment, and it's this feeling that drives the reaction. To understand it better, I suggest the excellent study by Tereza Capela et al. on far-right Korean youth, which concludes, definitively, that their attitudes are built exclusively on resentment and victimization.
Reactionary whispers
With my trained senses, I sense a certain political tendency (from which even the European left is not immune) to compromise with some far-right tenets, feeling threatened by their rise; and this, too, is a global phenomenon. I'm beginning to hear, subtle as a whisper, that perhaps we feminists have gone too far, that we must heed the demands of those young men who are shifting to the right, that immigration is a problem, that what's happening in Palestine isn't genocide, that we need to buy more weapons, that ecology isn't a fundamental contradiction…
I defend the opposite thesis: the antithesis to the extreme right and its nemesis is to defend feminism, especially young women and their demands, the concept of class versus that of nation, peace, diversity, equality, social justice, solidarity, ecology and a common world, and to do so, moreover, with a perspective that transcends the narrow and hierarchical worldview of the West.
I maintain that the far right is a reaction to the momentum with which we, the marginalized, are beginning to change the world. But I warn, echoing Suzan Faludi's warning, that this reaction is not only to change that has already occurred, but to the very possibility of change; in fact, they react violently to change in order to prevent it from happening. That is what the far right is: pure reaction.
[1] Marga Ferré is co-chair of Transform Europe and a member of the CLACSO Working Group "What work for what future?"
