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The Politics of the Right reviewed in Race & Class

Socialist Register 2016: The Politics of the Right

Socialist Register 2016: The Politics of the Right
382 pp, $29, ISBN 9781583675748
Edited by Leo Panitch and Greg Albo

Reviewed by David Edgar

“When it was made, Socialist Register’s decision to devote its 2016 issue to the far Right was prescient; when published late last year it was more than timely. Now, both it and this review are in danger of being overtaken by the phenomenon they’re describing. If the far Right was on the march in 2015, its progress is even more alarmingly visible now. Already this year far-right anti-immigration parties have made significant and unexpected gains in Slovakia and Germany and Austria’s post-fascist Freedom Party came within a whisker of winning the presidency. A street movement led by a hedge-fund manager has sought to overthrow the left wing Brazilian President, Donald Trump has pulled the Republican Party dramatically rightwards and the British EU referendum campaign has given a platform to anti-immigrant xenophobia. Following Hungary’s example, Poland’s new Law and Justice government has set about restraining the media and compromising the independence of the judiciary. And a new ideological fault-line—between xenophobic but welfarist populism and the liberal and neoliberal globalised elite—is solidifying across Europe….”

Read the entire review in Race & Class; PDF

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