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.
As governments seem to have lost control of their borders, voters want them back. According to Gallup, the percentage of Americans who wish to reduce immigration has soared from under 40 per cent in 2022 to 55 per cent in 2024. CBS polling from June shows that roughly 60 per cent of Americans support mass deportations, and this includes a majority of Latinos. A similar shift of opinion has occurred in Europe, despite the EU’s generally lax migrant policy.
Of course, controlled immigration remains a huge asset, and in low-birthrate countries, indispensable. But the movement of populations with few controls, sometimes with criminal or terrorist ties, as well as people unlikely to support themselves seems essentially self-destructive. Given time, many may lift themselves up but, in the process, burden the society for years, particularly threatening the gains of already established immigrants.
The lax border enforcement of progressives, instead of promoting immigration, has helped undermine its support. This has sparked a powerful shift to conservative parties, almost always labelled far right to distinguish them from the respectable, globalist, libertarian right that has largely evaporated. This can be seen in Europe. Viktor Orbán, the bête noire of progressive Europe, now has company in the form of Italy’s Meloni and perhaps future French president Le Pen.
Read the rest of this piece at National Post.
Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas in Austin. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.
Photo: Fibonacci Blue via Flickr under CC 2.0 License.
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