1.1 The Populist Right and the Need for a Populist Left
The ‘Right’ components of the ‘Populist Right’ refers to standard politically conservative policies on socialism and communism, income inequality and wealth differentials, trade unions and labour relations, environmentalism and climate change science, small government and fiscal conservatism, deregulation and the ‘nanny state’, abortion and homosexuality, etc.
What is strikingly new, however, is the ‘Populist’ bit of the ‘Populist Right’ label. This populism includes a number of key policy themes which dissent from the neo-liberal, capitalist globalisation politics of the mainstream Right and which chime with a growing, popular anti-establishment mood. The Populist Right is broadly nationalist in focus and opposed to globalism. It supports broadly nationalist political themes, including:
Support for economic nationalism (e.g. tariffs and other trade protectionist measures; revitalisation of domestic manufacturing, etc.).
Opposition to the off-shoring of jobs to low wage countries and the import of cheap immigrant labour.
Opposition to job-destroying and sovereignty-sapping ‘free trade’ agreements.
Coolness towards an interventionist foreign policy including unnecessary, costly and counter-productive wars (especially the ‘forever war’ in the Middle East).
Support for redirecting foreign aid funding towards domestic needs.
Dislike of the corrupting effect of political donations from corporate interests, especially those which are on the lookout for cheap labour.
Strong support for immigration restriction and tight border control, for both economic and cultural reasons.
Hostility to the ideology of multiculturalism which decrees that ethnic ‘Diversity’ is an unsullied good.
Antagonism to the stifling effect of multicultural ‘political correctness’ on free speech.
With these dissident parts of its platform, the Populist Right is stealing a march on the left by attracting the left’s traditional support base, the domestic (and still largely white) working class. The old-school, traditional Left once shared much of the dissident policy framework of the Populist Right. The Old Left, for example, led the ‘Occupy’ anti-globalisation protests, mobilised against neo-conservative wars (most notably in Iraq and Afghanistan), carried the trade union flag against capitalist ‘free trade’ deals, opposed the corporate purchase of politicians, fought against censorship and defended the fundamental right of free speech.
A Populist Left would resurrect this old socialist program. A Populist Left would:
Oppose global capital’s push for ‘free movement’ of people in an open-borders world. A Populist Left would be immigration-restrictionist i.e.:
Oppose mass Third World immigration with its flood of uneducated, culturally backward, unassimilable job thieves and welfare-seekers (whilst supporting their efforts to improve or revolutionise their home countries).
Oppose Muslim immigration because of that particular ideology’s many social pathologies.
Oppose ‘politically correct’ restrictions on free speech, restrictions largely imposed under the hegemony of multiculturalism.
Support economic sovereignty and democratic sovereignty at the nation-state level to advance the interests of the domestic working class, including:
Unqualified support for Brexit, and
Critical support for the quasi-populist Trump presidency