The Politics of the Right and the Dilemmas of the Left
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- Published on Thursday, 05 November 2015 22:00
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1183 .... November 6, 2015
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The Politics of the Right and the Dilemmas of the Left
The 2016 Socialist Register
The Preface to the 2016 Socialist Register, The Politics of the Right, includes the following paragraphs:
"There is a great strategic importance in a sober analysis of the strength of new right today, and the impasse of the left emerges here as a central concern. In confronting almost everywhere different permutations of right wing populism gaining further ground in this phase of neoliberalism, and the increasing state authoritarianism seen in new modes of surveillance and policing, we need to recognize the complicity of liberal and social democratic political agents in this. Both this and the limited political capacities of the radical left have provide space for the rise of... the right and the new authoritarianism in the current conjuncture.
"As a good many of the essays in the 2016 Register show, the severe contradictions in which the far right finds itself enmeshed often make its project quite fragile. We should therefore be wary of unnecessarily frightening ourselves, while nevertheless carefully monitoring the radical right in the current conjuncture. If the far right were on the verge of closing the space that liberal democracy allows for freedom of association and free speech, then socialists would be obliged to engage in popular-front style cross-class alliances to defend that space. This would severely restrain radical socialist mobilization and program until the threat was defeated.