Would have been the first far-right president in the country, instead they got their first green president.
It's crazy that Europe is going in this direction. Haven't they learned from history this doesn't work out?
A lot of parties in democratic countries bought into the neoliberal consensus. Privatisation good, public utilities bad and let the bankers do what they want. Since the bankers royally borked it they've been insisting the only solution is cuts, cuts, cuts-except where bailing out flagging banks is concerned and most mainsteam politicians have been lapping it up. This is why people are getting pissed off with the mainstream and turning to new, often extreme political parties. My two cents.
I agree. I have a book on far-right populism and all these parties started up in Europe, United States, Canada, and Australia started up and gained traction during the neoliberal age.
There is also a Dutch professor who studies these movements, Cas Mudde, who says the same.
The only thing I disagree with the book, and Cas Mudde on, is that far-right populism here in Canada has died. It is weak, yes, but what happened is the far-right populist party merged with the Conservative Party, and they adopted neoliberal views. Stephen Harper started out in the far-right populist Reform Party and his government very much had those traits to it. But, he sold out to the corporations and dropped many aspects of his populism. So Canada is a unique situation, though it wasn't a leftist alternative that killed it, it was more neoliberal capitalism that killed it (even though it was neoliberal capitalism that caused their misery). Dunno, maybe Trudeau's embrace of Keynesian deficit spending is a good idea considering the far-right is getting worse in other countries where trickle-down economics and austerity are still the norms.
