Amid all the public discourse about the threat of political extremism – especially of the Right but also of the Left – and the constant fretting about “division” and “polarisation” in society, it is remarkable how little intellectual and practical concern or even interest there is in actual Revolution. A whole generation – across more than 35 years – of often turbulent, occasionally violent, but nonetheless democratically-bound, constitutionally-guided European politics have all but eliminated the very idea of revolution from the political thinking of our times. The word only survives as a metaphor, not as an operative concept of political activity.
It is true of course that in politics, proper revolutions that topple entire socio-economic and political orders – not just an oligarchy or a network of interests associated with a particular strongman’s regime – are few and far between, at least within the West. The Arab Spring occasioned the most recent true revolutionary moment that touched Western politics directly, but even this took place beyond our borders. And out of these revolutions only Tunisia succeeded as such, anyway; the other uprisings led, in the first instance, only to civil wars and chaos (Libya, Syria) or to the old regime reasserting itself (Egypt).
The Euro-Atlantic world itself hasn’t experienced genuine revolution since the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe. The so-called “colour revolutions” in Georgia (2003) and Ukraine (2004), and many other moments of political upheaval in contemporary European history, involved mass popular protests and major political changes at the top – in some cases involving the clear-out of entire corrupt party-networks – but within the broad parameters of the existing constitutional order and of the socio-economic structures, in each case.
For what a true revolution means, look, of course, to the French revolution, the Russian one in WW1 and of course the democratic wave that swept Communism away from Berlin to Moscow in 1989 and thereafter. All of these led to wholesale system change, where new categories (not just “groups”) of people and their interests got the run of the state and replaced the previous Ancien Regime at the top of the state’s power structure. The French king and nobility, the Tsar and the Russian imperial system, the Communist parties and their nomenklaturas were supplanted by entirely different “elites” – Jacobins, Bolsheviks, Western-style “democrats” – with entirely different worldviews. They proceeded to radically alter how the state worked and how power flowed.
At a time when the West, and Europe in particular, is plainly sinking ever deeper into its own ineptitude, failing on almost every aspect of policy, with restive, unhappy – and often nihilistic – populations increasingly baffled at this general degeneracy and decline of the world they knew and that seems to have no solution, the Question – the only question that matters – is how to deliver real change. How to break this spiral of doom, where increasing authoritarianism and repression on the part of the globalist elites currently in charge almost everywhere goes hand in hand with the worsening of the economic, social and cultural life and future prospects of what was (until not too long ago) the fount of modern civilisation and an oasis of prosperity.
No one has got any good answers, at least not in Europe. The Populist Right doesn’t really have a clear, unified political project for Europe overall, at the EU level – i.e., how to actually deal with Brussels, how to take it over and how to transform the Union. There are generic variations on the old idea of a “Europe of Nations”, including rolling back EU integration – institutions, regulations, perhaps even legislation – but there’s certainly no agreement, whether within the ECR or the PATRIOTS groups in the European Parliament, on exactly what the goal is – much less on any kind of actual political strategy to get there.
The Populist Right is really focused on the national level: RN on winning in France, AfD on Germany, PiS on Poland, Farage on Britain, and so on. They all fight against the existing euro-elite establishments in their countries and have various plans for reforming them. The premise of their political struggle is “fixing what’s broken”, i.e. various types of course-correction on policy after the devastation wrought by the liberal political classes across the board, from immigration to “green”, to woke and so on. It is a nice dream, and it sounds good on paper; but when considered in the harsh light of political-legal reality the truth is that the expected and much hoped-for Populist “reform” is bound to disappoint, over and over again.
One problem is actually getting a working majority in national parliaments. These days the Populists are leading in the polls but nowhere are they expected to win over 50 per cent of the vote. Everywhere you look it is at least a three-way fight: the Populists against the mainstream Right and the mainstream Left, of whatever stripes and flavours they might be. In most countries the picture is much more fragmented still, with up to five or six competitive parties on the political battlefield.
Therefore, from the start, even if they do win the election and form a government in a country, the Populists will likely have to be in a coalition, and therefore will have to compromise on their programme. In the best case scenario, they might also control the presidency – in countries where that office exists and is endowed with some important executive powers, like France – but the overlap will likely last for only a few years, if it happens at all.
But the even bigger problem for the Populist Right and its reformist agenda is that even if they do achieve an overall parliamentary majority – hard enough! – they will likely find, as everyone including Trump in his first term has found, that they are in government but not in power. Carried to office by some massive populist wave in the elections, they will find that it is the sprawling permanent bureaucracy and the “deep state” which actually control the machinery of government.
Any radical proposal for reforming some aspect of policy will run into implementation hurdles, delayed by “procedures” and “paperwork”. The pressure from Brussels will increase to crushing levels, with lurid threats of national fines and suspension of funds bandied by the usual eurocrats. Meantime, the powerful network of EU-funded domestic NGOs will start organising “protest movements”. And then there are the judges, who will likely frustrate and strike down any radical new legislation that might have a chance of actually fixing anything. Months of this chaotic, multi-front fight will begin to splinter the Populist party in charge, and then before you know it, three years have gone by and the next election looms. Hardly any of the big issues have been actually resolved; it might even be that the chaos has made things worse, and everyone is blaming the government. The Populists are discredited for years, and the EU-backed establishment coalition returns to power and proceeds to hound them for all the so-called “abuses” they are now found guilty to have carried out in office.
This is a familiar pattern to any observer of European politics. If anything, it is rather too optimistic because, as mentioned, the Populists will rarely if ever have the luxury of governing alone in the first place. The great Question thus remains: how to deliver real change? And it may be time to admit the hard truth that the answer is less about “policy ideas” or even “electoral strategy”, but about the nature and scale of the change they seek.
It may be that the real problem of the Populist Right is not that it’s too “extreme” in its political demands and methods, as its enemies try to frame it – but that it is too restrained and limited in its vision, too conformist and traditional in its methods. Much of this comes from the conservative element in today’s right-wing populism; indeed most of the anti-establishment movements on the political scene self-identify as “conservative” of one type or another. But the core instincts of conservatism are diametrically opposed to revolutionary thinking; there is no need to know your Burke in order to understand that. Therefore, the Populist Right, as currently constituted at least in Europe, contains within itself the limiting factor of its own development.
No better evidence can be adduced here than to point out that the only place where genuine revolutionary progress is being made in terms of actually solving the great political problems of the day, is America. Why? Because MAGA is not, fundamentally, a “conservative” movement; rather, it operates on a revolutionary DNA. It has succeeded in taking over Republican conservatism through “vanguard party”- style tactics, and its original mastermind was Steve Bannon, a self-professed Leninist in terms of political organisation and strategy. Now Trump’s MAGA is using the GOP as a vehicle for answering the Question noted above and delivering real change – starting with sealing the border and with mass deportations.
Despite some superficial similarities on the level of ideology and policy aims, the “populist politics” of America is actually very different from that which is practiced in Europe – because, real politics, especially that of the revolutionary kind, happens on the level of the praxis and organisation, not of rhetoric and posturing.
European Populists keep trying to win at the elites’ game where the establishment make the rules and holds all the cards. Instead, perhaps a completely new game must be played, with different means. This requires new thinking beyond just issues of “policy”; it requires proper theoretical work to adapt old concepts to the context of our times. A new generation may conclude that peaceful revolutionary change rather than change through reform may be what is now required. Otherwise, in Europe at least, the Populist Right is likely to remain locked in the pattern in which it makes inroads as a major force and causes the occasional “upset”, but never manages to alter the overall trajectory of this continent. And that is unsustainable.
How will Europe respond?