Ashraf Engineer
January 4, 2025
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Happy new year and welcome to this All Indians Matter special. I am Ashraf Engineer.
A few months ago, the Freedom Party secured the first far-right parliamentary election win after World War 2 in Austria. Tapping into fears around immigration, soaring inflation and the Ukraine invasion, the Freedom Party was only the latest among right-wing populist parties that have risen strongly across the world.
The Freedom Party’s campaign, christened ‘Fortress Austria’, was shrill on its promise to deport immigrants, tighten border control and suspend the right to asylum. It also took a pro-Russia stand, calling for an end to sanctions against it and criticising Western aid to Ukraine.
Its stand on the issues, the right-wing party said, would guarantee stability in an increasingly chaotic world.
We are seeing such political shifts to the right across the world. Turkey has had such a regime in place for a while; Italy is now headed by Giorgia Meloni, who has mirrored the Freedom Party’s stand on issues such as immigration; France is witnessing a surge of support for Marine le Pen’s National Rally party; and India, of course, has Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party or the BJP.
There is something about this time that is ripe for the populist right wing to flourish. It’s happening in countries that are wealthy as well as those that are poor; in those that have immigration and in those that have virtually none; and in those that have high economic inequality and those that have low levels of it. This is not just an American or European phenomenon, but a global one.
If you go back in time to the 1990s, you see the emergence of the far right in a few European elections. For instance, Austria’s Freedom Party was part of a governing coalition in 2000 after doing well in the previous year’s election. In the two decades that followed, there were various anti-democratic rumblings. For instance, Recep Erdogan tightened his grip on power in Turkey and Hugo Chavez launched an assault on democracy in Venezuela.
As the 2010s unfolded, it was apparent that the political ground was shifting across even advanced democracies. The sharp right turn was witnessed in the US, Hungary, Israel, India, Brazil and Poland. The extreme right, whose relationship with democracy was, shall we say, distant, scored great electoral successes.
Oddly, they all presented themselves as deeply democratic despite being authoritarian and divisive at their core. These parties are contemptuous of democratic values like liberalism, multiculturalism and secularism. In India, for instance, Modi and his BJP have been scornful of secularism and openly says it is for a Hindu Rashtra. There have been other statements like “too much democracy” or the implication that human rights are a western concept not necessarily suited to India. While supporting on paper the idea of freedom and inclusion of all groups, their actions are the exact opposite. For example, in India there has been a steady erosion of the right to expression, the freedom of the press, the right to profess your religion without being suppressed, states’ autonomy, etc. There has been a concerted effort to take over institutions, thus hollowing out any semblance of their neutrality or adherence to the Constitution.
So, what explains the rise of the right wing across the world and in India? All Indians Matter attempts to analyse this over a three-episode series. Welcome to Episode 1.
SIGNATURE TUNE
The strategy of talking endlessly about a commitment to democracy, while acting in a manner completely opposite to that, seemed to work.
This has been borne out by research too. Political scientists Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman , in their 2022 book ‘Spin Dictators’, studied global authoritarianism by quantitatively documenting the shift from overt and violent repression to manufacturing consent through rigged elections and a co-opted press.
Autocrats around the world understood that naked opposition to democracy and rapid crackdowns on freedoms would trigger consequences. Instead, a slow but steady erosion of rights and democratic-sounding justification worked. These autocrats manufactured enemies within their countries, sometimes calling them hurdles to progress and at other times traitors. In India, Muslims have been called both. Autocrats used such labelling to legitimise targeting certain groups and mobilise public opinion, often in the name of protecting the majority.
The attraction to such a philosophy has a lot to do with change. As the competition for a shrinking pie of resources, state benefits and jobs intensifies, it brings to the surface tensions over social and economic status and identity. Previously privileged groups see that those historically lower in the socioeconomic order are rising, laying claim to what the privileged took for granted was theirs. This change is scary and it means they can no longer count on simply their status for the privileges to flow towards them. Think of the middle aged white male in the US who is seeing people of a different colour surging past him because they have taken the trouble to educate themselves better or are working harder. The privileged groups are used to being better off than others simply because of who they are. This creates an anger that is ideal for the right wing to tap.
What it takes for resentment to mushroom into a movement is a trigger. In Europe, it was the refugee crisis. In 2015, violence in countries like Syria and Afghanistan created the greatest number of refugees since World War 2, many of whom landed up in Europe. The establishment, led by then German Chancellor Angela Merkel, was welcoming and this presented an opportunity for the far right to widen its support base among those who did not want an influx of people who looked different, ate different food and spoke a different language.
The European resentment towards immigration was exploited to stoke fears about a transformation in the ethnic composition and social hierarchy. In India, we witness a version of this with Hindutvawadis saying India is set to become a Muslim-majority nation in a few decades – a nonsensical claim disproved by any population data you consider.
Returning to Europe, a 2007 study across 20 countries showed that an unfavourable view of multiculturalism was the best predictor of opposition to immigration. Factors like unemployment or income had a negligible impact. This hostility was fertile for the far-right.
The result was that it made conservative voters choose anti-democratic politicians opposed to immigration over centrist ones that were more welcoming. These voters wanted to preserve the traditional white-dominant society and it didn’t matter if democracy was affected as a consequence of it.
The electoral dividend was reaped across Europe. In Hungary, for instance, the surge allowed an already authoritarian government to strengthen its grip on power.
It’s not just immigration. Economic trends have also strengthened the hands of the right. Europe found itself in a debt crisis. So, budgets were cut, some economies experienced recession and unemployment soared. Inflation, meanwhile, hurt households badly.
Again, this was blamed on poor economic choices of centrist governments and made to seem that resources legitimately belonging to locals were being passed on to immigrants. In the case of India, the narrative is that minorities, especially Muslims, are being given what should legitimately go to the Hindu majority.
There is also the nationalism factor. For centuries, western colonialism and technological leadership meant that they saw themselves as superior. There was a massive economic and psychological gap between, say, Europe and the poorer parts of the world. Europeans, even if they had a low economic status, had access to opportunities and goods that very few in the poorer countries could afford. This privilege was also a tool of social cohesion.
However, Europe finds itself in a different reality today. It is certainly richer than many other parts of the world but it is viewing others catch up with frightening pace. For example, on the technology front, Chinese electric vehicles are replacing German ones. Politically, Europe is weaker than before. For instance, it could do little to stop Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. All of this has a profound psychological effect.
This is what the right exploits by claiming that it was the soft approach of the centrists that weakened their powerful nations and that there is a need to now become strong again. Reminded of the ‘Make America Great Again’ slogan yet?
The sense of decline is fertile ground for the ultra-nationalist. So, the narrative of recreating a proud nation with a shared purpose of reclaiming its lost glory is an attractive one.
Fear, then, of the other, of change, of loss, of whatever comes next provides the underlying context of the political narrative today. It is the human condition that the nationalism offered by the populist right provides a false but compelling answer to. The more fearful a people of an uncertain, uncharted future, the better it is for right-wing populist parties.
Thank you all for listening. Please visit allindiansmatter.in for more columns and audio podcasts. You can follow me on Twitter at @AshrafEngineer and @AllIndiansCount. Search for the All Indians Matter page on Facebook. On Instagram, the handle is @AllIndiansMatter. Email me at editor@allindiansmatter.in. Catch you again soon.
