Public ideas
Taming the far right
Many are alarmed by the political success of the far right in western Europe, illustrated in 2022 by the success of parties with roots in the extreme right in Sweden and Italy.
Writing in Foreign Affairs – How democracy can win: Europe, America, and the taming of the far-right – Sheri Berman suggests that in Europe the far right has to moderate in order to remain legitimate:
When democratic norms and institutions are weak, extremists may have little incentive to moderate, since they will be able to gain supporters and even actual power without playing by the rules. But where democratic norms and institutions are strong, extremists will be forced to moderate because there will be little constituency for explicitly antidemocratic or radical appeals and because if they don’t, other political actors and institutions will be able to keep them from power in any case.
She bases her confidence on the history of communist parties in western Europe in the post-1945 period. To retain any legitimacy they had to adapt – even to the extent of forming alliances with social democrats. She observes that in Europe far-right parties, particularly Italy’s Fratelli d'Italia (Brothers of Italy) have had to moderate now that they have taken office.
By contrast, she notes, US Republicans show no sign of moderating, and there is no sign of their extremism costing them support in the electorate.
It’s an upbeat analysis. She makes no mention of Hungary where strongman Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz Party has solidified its position through rigged electoral boundaries and suppression of a free press. Nor does she mention Poland, where it’s been the threat of economic sanctions from the EU, rather than any domestic norm of democracy, that has kept the government from implementing the most anti-democratic aspects of its platform. Nevertheless her essay is a reminder of the need to nurture, defend and strengthen democratic institutions.
Berman is author of Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe: From the Ancien Régime to the Present Day.
Another optimist is Martyn Goddard, who has an article on his Policy Post Progressive politics always (in the end) wins. Here’s why. “History moves to the left” he states. “The process has never been easy, quick or certain and never will be. Conservatives have won many of the battles and not every progressive idea has been a good one; but, in the end, societies change because they have no choice”.
He takes the reader through the history of slavery, women’s suffrage, and laws relating to homosexuality. All have involved struggles, but views and policies once considered radical eventually come to be accepted as beyond question.
Less encouraging is a report from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, in which it is noted that there has been a 42 percent rise in reported anti-Semitic incidents in the last two years in Australia, and that general awareness of the Holocaust is fading. Its authors have been extremely vigilant in calling out instances of anti-Semitism. It’s a useful who’s who of the far right, for the sources of anti-Semitism it brings to our attention tend to be the same outfits that promulgate other right-wing extremist views.
American individualism – its roots and meaning
The word “individualism” is what philosopher Claude Lévi-Strauss called a “floating signifier”. That is, it can have many meanings, laden with different values. To some on the left it means selfishness, greed and contempt for government. To others it denotes freedom and responsibility without the intervention of government. By contrast to some others it is about the freedoms that can be exercised only in a well-governed society.
On Late Night Live Phillip Adams interviews Alex Zakaras on the origin of the idea of American individualism, which tends to be associated with the first two meanings. Its roots are in the pre-Civil War era, sometimes known as the age of Jacksonian democracy (which was anything but democratic by present standards).
Zakaras describes three myths – the myth of the individual proprietor, usually a farmer forging his own life; the myth of the bearer of individual rights enjoyed without interference from government; and the myth of the self-made man, free to be all he can be in a democratic meritocracy. This mythical framework was in contrast to what the Americans saw as a class-stratified and oppressively-governed Europe. It was also seen as a natural or even divinely-ordained order. Any violation of that order, such as government intervention in markets, or imposition of a distributive welfare system, was therefore morally unjustifiable. That Weltanschauung formed the moral framework of Protestant evangelical religions.
These myths had glaring inconsistencies which were easily overlooked. For example those freedoms applied only to “white” men, and included the freedom to subordinate others.
He notes that the concept of individualism is malleable, and that over time the same rhetoric about freedom has been used to argue for civil rights. The idea is still contested: Trump and his followers are adherents to the Jacksonian idea of individualism.
Zakaras is author of The Roots of American Individualism: Political Myth in the Age of Jackson.
Published in Dissent in 2005 is an essay Orwell and the Australian Language that goes into the shifting meanings of “individualism”, including Oscar Wilde’s interpretation which sees individualism being realized only in socialism, and Alex de Tocqueville’s discovery of the particularly American interpretation of the term. He wrote that “individualism at first only dams the spring of public virtues, but in the long run it attacks and destroys all the others too and finally merges in egoism”.