Instability is due to right-wing populism that today is ‘establishment’

Author of the book “The Invisible Alliance”, on the “Cruzade of the Global Far Right to Destroy the Modern World,” now published in Portugal, Benjamin Teitelbaum recalled in an interview with Lusa that most of the current world conflicts are fueled by far-right movements that are in power, whether the invasion of Ukraine, attacks on Iran or repression in Gaza.

Far-right politicians “present themselves as being outside the ‘establishment’, but they are already the ‘establishment’. They are part of the power”, said the author, professor of international relations in Colorado (USA) and who wrote a book about what unites the ideologists of right-wing populist movements, such as Steve Bannon, the Brazilian Olavo de Carvalho or the Russian Alexandr Dugin.

About Portugal, Benjamin Teitelbaum admitted that he did not pay much attention, because “the country was not at the forefront of what seemed to be a European movement” of the far right, but “things have changed”.

The Portuguese case is “similar to what happened in Germany”, or “in all Scandinavia, where there is also an old political ideology of center-left that was difficult to dethronate, but the populist right came on the scene and almost took control, becoming the second largest party, as it happens now in Portugal”, he explained.

Systems tend to react in two ways: either by a sanitary cord around the far right, as happened in France and Germany, “which always leads to an electoral reinforcement of populism” or by the inclusion of these movements in the orbit of power.

Where the growth of the far right “has opened a little bit was in the countries that have actually formed a kind of right-wing coalition that included populists”, he pointed out, giving the example of Denmark, where “it was necessary for power to become right-wing populist for some time.”.

“ I think that, if we look at the international level, we will see that the main victim of right-wing populism is not targeting the extreme left, nor the center-left, but the center-right”, he explained.

In the Portuguese-speaking world, Bolsonaro’s defeat may have given the illusion of a fall in the influence of the far right, but “that was against a global trend in which right-wing populism has in fact become more consolidated and more stable”.

However, this “institutionalization of right-wing populism also made it less receptive to the kind of eccentric intellectual life it had previously,” when its leaders could say that “they were not part of the political system” and so “there were no concrete solutions for people.”.

“The centre-right was the political territory where populism caused a real rage,” but today these marginal ideologists and political leaders “are now occupying and directing the ‘establishment’,” he said.

Today, the extreme right “is the elite” against which he rebelled, with the “opposition to be the ‘outsider’ and the rebel”, he summed up.

To react to populism, Benjamin Teitelbaum recommended that the “policy should have content” and that the political debate should go into concrete matters.

“ It is important to bear in mind that the populism we are talking about does not arise outside democratic logic, but from within. And that is why it is politically powerful, because it claimed that the people are not being represented by the ‘establishment’, he added.

Today, “this chaotic movement is power” in many countries, but “it continues not to respond” to “its own populist promises,” he said, stressing the nationalist ideological basis of the parties also “makes the existence of a kind of populist spiritual alliance of the international right very difficult”.

The “ crucial moment of this was, in fact, the invasion of Ukraine by Russia” and “it is at that moment that it is seen that, despite all the sympathy for Russia demonstrated by the Trump administration, and even though Orban [Hungary] is as aligned with Russia as possible, it is still found that the deepest geopolitical fractures in our world will persist and that populism will not erase them all to draw a new map,” he said.

“The confrontation between the East and the West is still present” and “the alliances between these populist movements had a limit and this has been demonstrated”, as is now the case in Iran or even Palestine.

In the book, the author speaks of traditionalism, which integrates reactionary and mystical values, evokes great pasts of each country or culture, hates modern systems and representative democracy.

Religion, the author says, is, in some cases, an instrument to seek old values, which contradict the liberal discourse of contemporary societies.

This ideological construction then adapts to each country with greater or lesser intensity, but has as common focus the destruction of international cooperation, economic networks and democratic regimes within.

“ While in one plan there is a disintegration of the world that is pleasing to traditionalist populism, in another there is mass integration. Technology is standardizing our lives and “participation is practically mandatory. Through our actions we show to recognize the existence of a greater power, although we do not call that power God. We call it Artificial Intelligence”, wrote in the note for the Portuguese edition.