1.1 The Populist Right

1.1. The Populist Right

The ‘Right’ part of the Populist Right refers to standard conservative positions such as defending income inequality and wealth differentials, opposition to trade unions and ideological antagonism to environmentalism (and the science of global arming in particular), a penchant for winding back state regulation and inveighing gainst the ‘nanny state’, old-style resistance to abortion, gay rights and other progressive social issues, and a routine condemnation of socialism and communism.

What is strikingly new, however, is the ‘Populist’ part of the Populist Right tag. This 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, for example, supports broadly nationalist political themes, including:

• • Support for economic nationalism (e.g. tariffs on cheap, low wage imports, 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;

  • Resistance to an aggressive foreign policy including its unnecessary, costly and counter-productive wars;

  • Support for redirecting foreign aid funds to address domestic needs;

  • Dislike of the corrupting effect of political donations from corporate interests on the lookout for cheap labour and removal of national barriers that protect jobs and industries nationally;

  • Strong support for Immigration restriction and tight border control;

  • Hostility to the ideology of multiculturalism which decrees that ethnic ‘Diversity’ is an unsullied good, and

  • Antagonism to the stifling effect of multicultural ‘political correctness’ on free speech (for fear of trespassing on the identity sensitivities of population sub-groups such as blacks, Hispanics, indigenous peoples, refugees and Muslims).