In many democratic countries today, and particularly in France, Great Britain and the United States, public opinion is becoming increasingly polarized. We must not forget that this has always been fatal for democracies. And if it continues, it will continue to do so.
Everywhere in the West, extremes now account for a dominant share of public opinion. They are drawing into their orbit the governing parties that have hitherto formed the architecture of democracies: social democrats, centrists and liberal parties are either disappearing or being aligned. On the left, social-democratic parties, fascinated and intellectually dominated by the extremes of the left, feel it inevitable to build electoral alliances with them. The same applies, albeit a little later, to the right-wing governing parties, which are also increasingly resigned to serving as an auxiliary to far-right parties.
The result is that political continents everywhere are increasingly drifting apart, leaving a yawning gap between the two radicalities, in which only a few democrats and liberals, concerned with reason, tolerance, freedom, economic development, and sensible financing of the state and pensions, are left.
In the United States, the Republican Party has become nothing more than the fanatical militant armature of a president who some describe as “mentally unbalanced”, and who is putting in place all the instruments necessary to install a dictatorship of unlimited duration. To survive, the Democratic Party is reduced to employing the same means, choosing an extremist candidate in New York and letting the governor of California, himself a moderate, adopt Trump’s vocabulary and postures, convinced that this will secure him the nomination as the Democratic Party’s candidate.
In Britain, there’s almost nothing left between a retreating and increasingly Islamo-leftist Labour Party and a largely dominant and openly racist far-right. In France, we’re not far from the same situation. On the left, the ecological and communist parties are increasingly behaving like the useful idiots of LFI, a fate that also awaits the current leadership of the PS, busy saving a few seats by compromising. On the right, despite their cries of outrage, a large proportion of the Republican Party’s elected representatives would probably be quite happy to play the role of auxiliary to the Rassemblement National, again in order to survive.
Similar analyses could be made for Spain, Italy, Belgium, Poland, Hungary and other countries in Africa, Asia and Central and Latin America. Germany still holds out, because of its past.
Everywhere, the so-called “government” parties are pretending to believe that such an unnatural alliance will benefit them, and lead to the uselessness of the extremes, which would then be drained of their electorates. To my knowledge, there is only one instance where such an unnatural alliance has worked to the advantage of social democrats or liberal parties: in France, in the 70s and 80s, with the Union of the Left, which began with an ultra-dominant Communist Party and exploded a little later with a Communist Party in full decline. This required a tactical genius at the head of the Socialist Party that is nowhere to be found today.
The causes of this evolution are always the same: the world is going badly, it’s an anxious place; ecological threats, drum rolls, the upheavals heralded by AI, public debts constitute dizzying dangers. In the face of all this, the so-called governing parties are incapable of proposing credible programs. Voters realize this, and have no reason to follow them. They naturally turn to those who can at least voice their anger and rage, even if they know they are incapable of governing seriously.
These governing parties are content to play politics on the cheap, moving from one mediocre tactical issue to another, without ever putting the whole thing into a historical perspective. This would enable them to propose a lucid geopolitical strategy, a convincing sociological analysis and a credible program, the three conditions necessary to win back voters who have strayed to the extremes, without losing those who have remained bound by the constraints of reality.
Extremists have no interest in solving a problem in a sensible way. He has an interest in making it as acute as possible, so that there are no solutions other than radical ones. Whereas organizing social mobility, encouraging success and enrichment through work, sound management of public finances and integrating foreigners would render both extreme right and extreme left-wing projects obsolete.
The consequences of this drifting of political continents could lead to a situation far more terrible than the one we see today: the United States would become a quasi-fascist dictatorship. Great Britain would become a racist nation, refusing to pursue any policy of integration and contenting itself with expelling as many foreigners as possible. France would close in on itself and abandon the European project, which is the chance of its future. Capital would then turn away from these countries, even more than it does today, towards the powers of tomorrow, starting with China.
Picture : Divided Opinion (2018) by Tom Aberneithie