How are we supposed to tell the difference these days? Jeremy Corbyn called for NATO to be disbanded, while the far right now sees NATO as being responsible for the war in Ukraine. The left-wing anti-globalisation protests of the 1990s led to the far right finding a solution – nationalism, because the far right don’t like globalisation either. They just have a different fix for it.
Brexit is blamed on the right wing, whilst people conveniently forget that Brexit was Labour Party policy in the 1980s. And who’d have thunk that the far left would steal the Far Right’s leitmotif, Antisemitism?
Or are these just twin cheeks of the same arse?
Of course it didn’t stop there
Free speech used to be a demand of the far Left. From the Berkeley Free Speech Movement to anti-war protests, the Left argued that the state, the police, and conservative elites were using censorship to suppress anti-establishment ideas. The Right was heavily associated with using the state to police morality, ban “offensive” art, and restrict broadcasting (think of Mary Whitehouse’s campaigns or the banning of Sinn Féin voices on TV).
Today, the Right are the “free speech warriors,” campaigning against what they see as institutional “wokeness,” “cancel culture,” and hate-speech legislation. Meanwhile, significant portions of the progressive Left now argue that speech must be regulated or restricted to protect marginalized groups from harm, combat misinformation, and prevent the spread of hate online.
The Left was traditionally highly suspicious of mega-corporations, monopolies, and “the establishment,” viewing them as exploiters of the working class. The Right was unashamedly pro-big business, arguing that corporate power and free markets brought prosperity, and that state intervention should be kept to a minimum. So what happened?
The Left has formed a complex alliance with modern corporate culture, particularly “Big Tech” and multinationals that embrace Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) metrics, progressive marketing, and environmental goals. Conversely, the modern populist Right now routinely attacks “Woke Capital” and Silicon Valley. Figures on the Right now argue that tech monopolies censor conservative viewpoints and promote a globalist agenda.
During the COVID-19 pandemic,the Right was associated with anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine protests, but practically forbidden from protesting these government mandates. And the Left had shifted to an authoritarian/communitarian view: that individual choices must be regulated or mandated by the state for the collective healthcare safety of the population. It was also noted that the Left were allowed to protest during lock-down.
To put this into context, this is how PoliticalCompass.org views the 2024 elections
Some might argue that Reform UK is not that authoritarian, but we can see why the term ‘Uniparty’ is used to describe Labour and the Tories
The Labour Party was literally founded to represent the industrial working class (miners, factory workers, dockers) against the wealthy, educated, urban elites represented the middle and upper property owning classes.
We all know what Labour’s Dame Emily Thornberry thought about him!
The modern Left has increasingly become the domain of the educated, middle-class, urban, and suburban “professional” class.
Meanwhile, the populist Right (manifested in the collapse of the “Red Wall” in the UK) has successfully captured the socially conservative, post-industrial working class.
The Right now frames itself as the voice of the “ordinary worker” against a “remotely managed, highly educated, metropolitan Left elite”, while the Left continually claims intellectual superiority and points out that the views of the Right prevail only in the poorly educated. Some on the Left take the view that the opinions of people less educated than themselves aren’t really valid.
Another three or four more years and students will be using the term Untermenschen and talking about Eugenics.
The professionals, aka the ‘Ologists’ have various explanations for this new world order:
Some references:
EU Membership
https://web.archive.org/web/20150330053201/
http://www.labour-party.org.uk/manifestos/1983/1983-labour-manifesto.shtml
Globalisation
https://theconversation.com/how-anti-globalisation-switched-from-a-left-to-a-right-wing-issue-and-where-it-will-go-next-90587
https://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/anti-globalisation/
NATO Membership
Far Left
https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-corbyn-did-call-for-nato-to-disband-but-its-labour-policy-to-stay-in
https://www.stopwar.org.uk/events/stop-the-war-in-ukraine-no-to-nato-edinburgh-stwc-peace-rally/
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/02/23/nzup-f23.html
Far Right
https://www.ft.com/content/556ed172-d0b9-11e4-982a-00144feab7de
https://hopenothate.org.uk/2022/03/25/patriotic-alternative-putins-fascist-sympathisers/
Antisemitism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQidlpuEGDM&list=WL&index=11
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/08/opinion/an-anti-semitism-of-the-left.html9999
https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/68854/pdf/
