In a way not seen since the days of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Brian Mulroney, the right is on the march. Donald Trump’s victory Tuesday was the signature event, but also reflective of an already mounting political shift. So, too, are the rising figures in supposedly progressive western Europe including France’s Marine Le Pen, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, Britain’s Nigel Farage and the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders.
In Canada, Pierre Poilievre seems likely to take over in Ottawa, promising policies to curb the rising cost of living and control immigration, presented with less stridency and ridicule than Trump. This is not a shift, as often suggested by the elite press, towards some form of authoritarianism. The Trump, Poilievre and European Union rightists may have supporters from the extreme edges of the traditional right wing, but they for the most part represent a reflexive urge to preserve liberal society and basic values like merit, equal justice and accountability.
In all these societies, entrenched elites who largely control education, mainstream media and the bureaucracy resent being told that their expertise does not make them sovereign. The instinct of the syndicate, blob or any name you choose is to defend their privilege by labelling their opponents as “far right,” associating non-believers with fascism and Hitler, as was done ad nauseam with Trump. Yet you can’t dismiss over half of Americans, or the strong pluralities behind Poilievre or any of the other rising figures, as extremists any more than suggesting politicians like Trudeau and Kamala Harris are communists, as Trump sometimes stupidly suggests.
By labelling the GOP as “a party of prigs and pontificators,” Bret Stephens of the New York Times maintains, Democrats see their defeat as reflecting a nation steeped in racism and misogyny. Yet, polls suggest repeatedly that two issues — cost of living and immigration — are almost always on top. As in the United States, immigration has become a top concern across the EU as well as Canada.
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