Trump in the US, Milei in Argentina, Meloni in Italy, Modi in India, Netanyahu in Israel, Putin in Russia, Erdoğan in Turkey… There is no doubt that we are seeing a global consolidation of nationalism and the populist right. In the UK, this is characterised by the electoral successes of parties like Reform UK and Restore Britain, billionaire donations, mass street mobilisations, the mushrooming of smaller but more radical local groups, and even the return of race riots. In order to be able to politically respond to this phenomenon, we need to first understand why it is happening now.

Migration – A Factor of Human Life

Let us take the UK as an illustrative example. The earliest signs of archaic human activity in what is today known as the British Isles are believed to date back some 900,000 years. It was not however until some 12,000 years ago, when the climate became more habitable, that a stable and continuous human presence was established. This would have been back when the British Isles were not quite isles yet – thanks to the connection to the European continent, hunter-gatherers were able to make the journey here in search of food. It was one of the many waves of migration that would demographically define and eventually create the British Isles as we know them today. From the Roman conquest of Celtic Britain, followed by the Germanic settlers who forged an Anglo-Saxon culture, through the Viking incursions, to the Norman conquest of the Kingdom of England. All this long before the UK was even formally constituted with the union of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Later, significant Irish migration to Britain followed as a result of the Great Famine in the mid-19th century, and after the Second World War many migrants arrived from the former territories of the former British Empire.

In other words, the idea of some pure and independent British identity, like every other national identity, is a fiction. It was always shaped by migration and interaction with the wider world, sometimes peaceful, sometimes not. Without migration, human settlement on the British Isles wouldn't have been possible in the first place.

The Great Replacement?

Concerns about demographic change in the UK which express themselves in anti-migrant sentiment are not new. In 1919-21 there was a series of race riots targeting Black, Arab and Chinese communities. In the 1970s, groups like the National Front mobilised their supporters against Asian and Black communities. More recently, talk of Eastern Europeans stealing British jobs was used by a faction of British capital to push for Brexit in order to reformulate their relationship with European capital. However, it is the refugee crisis, which first entered news headlines in 2015, that has now become the primary talking point of the populist right. Migrants from the Middle East, Africa and Asia, are demonised and presented as a demographic timebomb.

The concept of a great replacement was first formulated in the early 2010s by niche right-wing thinkers in France (though its roots can of course be traced back to much earlier similar narratives, such as Enoch Powell's infamous "Rivers of Blood" speech). It has since gained enough traction that it is even actively echoed by the Trump administration. The argument is that white Europeans are being intentionally replaced by an influx of non-white, particularly Muslim, migrants. This is variously blamed on liberal international institutions, left-wing politicians, or the Jews (linking up with classical anti-semitic theories).

In reality, one does not need a conspiracy theory to explain what is happening. The capitalist system – with its wars, famines, epidemics, and poverty – has made a living hell of many countries on its periphery. It is only natural that people will try to escape and look for a better life elsewhere, even if it takes dangerous or illegal methods to do so. Most small boat crossings involve individuals from countries such as Eritrea, Afghanistan, Sudan, Iran and Somalia, many of them also victims of human trafficking and modern slavery. Different factions of capital respond to this objective phenomenon in different ways – some exploit it as a source of cheap labour-power, others utilise it for their divide-and-rule political narratives, some do both. This is nothing new. More than a century ago, revolutionaries could already see how this process was playing out:

Capitalism has given rise to a special form of migration of nations. The rapidly developing industrial countries, introducing machinery on a large scale and ousting the backward countries from the world market, raise wages at home above the average rate and thus attract workers from the backward countries. Hundreds of thousands of workers thus wander hundreds and thousands of versts. Advanced capitalism drags them forcibly into its orbit, tears them out of the backwoods in which they live, makes them participants in the world-historical movement and brings them face to face with the powerful, united, international class of factory owners. There can be no doubt that dire poverty alone compels people to abandon their native land, and that the capitalists exploit the immigrant workers in the most shameless manner. … The bourgeoisie incites the workers of one nation against those of another in the endeavour to keep them disunited. Class-conscious workers, realising that the break-down of all the national barriers by capitalism is inevitable and progressive, are trying to help to enlighten and organise their fellow-workers from the backward countries.

Lenin, Capitalism and Workers’ Immigration, 1913

A Consequence of Capitalist Crisis

The rise of nationalism and the populist right is both a defense mechanism of the ruling class and a consequence of high levels of social inequality. Moreover, the two factors are closely interlinked.

The post-war boom came to an end in the 1970s. Since then the ruling class has tried to administer various palliatives: outsourcing, deregulation, globalisation, financialisation, automation... None of them have resolved the central contradiction of the profit system nor been able to restart a new cycle of accumulation (which is impossible without colossal devaluation of capital values), and now they are running out of options. This is leading increasingly to internecine conflicts for energy, resources, markets, and territory. In other words, we are seeing a drive towards generalised war. And the drumming up of nationalist sentiment is, of course, an inseparable element in preparation for war.

What the ruling class has however managed to do over the last 50 years is enrich itself at an unprecedented rate. The erosion of welfare states and job security, the privatisation and outsourcing of services and production, the rise of fictitious capital, all these things haven't cancelled out the tendency for diminishing profitability in the "real" economy, but they have created a situation where the richest 0.001% now own three times more wealth than the poorest half of humanity combined. The consequences of this are felt and seen even in relatively richer countries like the UK. Many can no longer afford food, and are forced to rely on food banks; they can't afford rent let alone a mortgage, and end up homeless; they seek some form of temporary escape, and find more misery (whether that be drugs, alcohol, or increasingly digital addiction); they try to seek help for their various physical and mental ailments, only to be put on endless waiting list thanks to a crumbling health service.

How does one justify a system like this? A system in which the majority at the bottom are expected to suffer for the financial interests of the very few at the top? The obvious answer is blaming the "other" for your misfortune, be they migrants, asylum seekers, LGBT people, benefit claimants, etc. This scapegoating is meant to appease white workers left behind by economic restructuring, even though they are likewise bound to lose out if their preferred party wins (it is symptomatic that much of the voter base of populist right parties has little clue what their policies actually are, aside from "mass deportations" or “stop the boats”). Decades of tabloid propaganda and the gradual destruction of a collective class instinct since Thatcherism have however made it all the easier.

Historical Fascism and the Populist Right Today

In this context, many have understandably raised the spectre of a fascist revival. There are some obvious parallels. All the recent social movements against austerity have failed, and instead the economic crisis and imperialist war is once again fuelling the rise of nationalist and authoritarian regimes across the world. If previously the ruling class seemed generally content in managing the situation through the framework of liberal democracy, that framework is now increasingly being questioned by world leaders and the super rich alike (with the US leading the way). Back in the 1920s it was the big industrialists who financed the fascist parties, today it is the fossil fuel investors, tech oligarchs and crypto billionaires who finance the populist right (Elon Musk and Peter Thiel being prime examples, or in the case of the UK, Christopher Harborne and Ben Delo). But, as we have argued before,

We cannot avoid history – it is the collective memory of humanity and, apart from our direct personal experience, it is the only basis for informed thinking about the future we have to go on. We can though be misled in our interpretation of it since we try to look at history through the discernible patterns of the past. This runs the danger that we don’t always grasp the significance of what is new in the epoch we live in.

CWO, Are We Going Back to the 1930s?, 2018

The factions of capital afraid of renewable energy undermining their business, those who have made their wealth thanks to the AI bubble, and those who want to bypass government regulations on their financial activity, may be using ideologies like ethnic nationalism and religious fundamentalism to mobilise their footsoldiers, but they have a different agenda. Their reference point is not really Fascist Italy or Nazi Germany. Instead, it is unfettered markets and a minimal state run by a technocratic elite. A right-wing libertarianism for the age of AI, where global corporations rival the power of nation-states (a set-up already being experimented with in the case of freeports and special economic zones). These puppet-masters sell us a future of "freedom", "abundance" and even "immortality", but in the meantime they are delivering mass surveillance, social media addiction, AI manipulation, and super-exploitation on a planet wrecked by endless conflict and climate collapse.

Alternative Futures

While we are in the realm of science-fiction…

Hard times are coming [and we'll need voices] who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. ... We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings.

Ursula K. Le Guin, Speech in Acceptance of the National Book Foundation Medal, 2014

Those who want to plant the seeds for such "alternatives to how we live now", cannot call for a preservation of the present or a return to the past. In the 1930s, "anti-fascism" trapped workers in alliances with liberal factions of the capitalist class to save their own system. But it is the failure of liberal democracy to deal with the capitalist crisis that inevitably creates its own reaction. The right has accomplished what the reformist left has been recently failing to do. They have linked their political agenda to the economic reality of many people. In fact, "mass deportations" won't of course put food on the table, just as Brexit did not save the NHS. But the slogan has done its job in terms of mobilising a reactionary social movement that serves the interests of the illiberal ruling class.

The "real grounds for hope" still rest with the working class – the social force on whose labour this entire system is built. The first step is recognising our common interest as a global class and organising in our workplaces and communities to defend those interests from attacks of the ruling class (be they on the right or left of capital). The second step is putting forward our own independent political programme for an alternative future. A world without borders, states, money, or classes, where we produce things according to need and utilise new technologies not for profit-making, but for improving our standards of living, reducing our workload, and allowing us more time for creative activity. A world which will finally consign war and poverty to the dustbin of history.