Response to this video:
Simon lists a few examples to show the rise of radicals, and I’m going to throw in one more for good measure, in the argument that there is a global populist wave and this is going to be succeeded by a return to normalcy.
Also, is there a reasonable politician or party who has been able to command popular approval without needing their opponents to be compared to Donald Trump?
First, the examples
| Country | Year | Radical | % of vote | Note | Still in power |
| Turkey | 2007 | Gul/Erodgan | 80% | Voted by assembly | yes |
| Hungary | 2010 | Orban | 53% | Opponent was a hard core Russophile | yes |
| United Kingdom | 2010 | Cameron | 36% | ||
| India | 2014 | Modi | 39% | yes | |
| United States | 2016 | Trump | 46% | ||
| Philippines | 2016 | Duterte | 39% | ||
| Brazil | 2018 | Bolsonaro | 55% | Worker’s Party was crippled by corruption scandals | |
| South Korea | 2022 | Yoon | 49% | ||
| Slovakia | 2023 | Fico | 23% | yes | |
| Argentina | 2023 | Millei | 56% | Second round, predecessor had 100% inflation | yes |
| United States | 2024 | Trump | 49.8% | yes | |
| Italy | 2022 | Meloni | 43% | yes |
As we can clearly see, most of these populists received less than half the votes. The four cases where the populist won over 50% were either not voted for directly, or they were running against a deeply unpopular and corrupt incumbent, giving them a major advantage.
But the more interesting thing is how rare these cases really are… there are 71 countries ranked as a democracy or flawed democracy by the Democracy Index, and there are only a handful of examples of these politicians winning. When we see coalitions forming like in Italy, it is invariably because they received the endorsement of centrist parties like the Five Star Movement.
Let’s investigate these cases in detail:
Netherlands
If we look at other countries which have not seen the rise of radicals, the Netherlands comes to mind. Geert Wilders’ party won the most votes, but he was unable to form a government. The Dutch Prime Minister is now Dick Schoof. The funny thing is that Geert Wilders is the only Dutch politician who gets much coverage in English-language media, but as soon as he is relegated to the back benches I think Dutch politics has disappeared from English language papers. PM Schoof is from the Labour Party which is a member of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament, a mainstream left-of-center party which is pro-EU and public healthcare and education.
We find the same thing in most countries in Europe. They will have a radical Euroskeptic politician like Mateusz Morawiecki in Poland, but when they are then forced to make a coalition government they consistently fail and a standard Europhilic centrist party continues to hold power with a coalition as normal. The Netherlands is pretty normal.
Italy
Put simply, Italy’s election system is best explained as the type of system you would get if you put a heroin addict in charge. It doesn’t make any sense and regularly goes against the wishes of the majority of voters. This is how Giorgia Meloni was able to get a majority of the seats with 43% of the vote. It’s absolutely insane and Italy needs election reform as badly as the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. Maybe more, and that’s saying something! Seriously Italy, your election system is insane. Fix it for your own sake.
Hungary
I’ve written about Hungary before.
Slovakia
This brings us to the interesting case of Slovakia. Their president is Peter Pellegrini. He is your standard left of center social democratic European president. He won with 53% of the vote last year. A landslide. His opponent was a member of the center-left Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe/Renew Europe. Renew Europe is portrayed as center-right on Wikipedia, but this is incorrect. They are also center-left. The most popular Radical, Stefan Harabin won only 11% of the vote. He was crushed. The Prime Minister Robert Fico is from the Smer party, which won a landslide of 23% of the vote in the 2023 parliamentary election. Smer is supposedly a center-left to left-wing party but also Euroskeptic. Fico organized a grand coalition with parties from across the political spectrum after the last election. Slovakian politics are a total mess. The fact that the other parties were willing to even discuss growing a coalition with Fico shows that despite over 75% of voters directly voting against his party the parties did not listen to how voters chose to vote for a heavily Europhilic president when they actually were able to directly vote for the direction of their country. This is the inherent weakness of parliamentary democracy. Slovakians want to be part of Europe and support Ukraine, but their parties betrayed them in forming a coalition with Fico. Expect a major realignment in the next Slovakian election.
Slovakia did not fall to radicalism because their previous government did anything severely wrong. They were betrayed by the party leadership. Fico has very little support. The party Hlas/Voice – Social Democracy is a left-wing party which aligned itself with Fico to form the new government. Hlas has seen a 5% drop in the polls since the election, with their former support dividing across parties which chose not to form a government with Fico.
Slovakia teaches us a very important lesson. Ally yourself with radicals and lose support.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom teaches us a different lesson to Slovakia, but with similar threads. It’s also the most complex to come to my conclusion. The 2010 election saw The Tories win 36% of the vote with the best performance of the Liberal Democrats in decades. This was after over a decade of Labour rule. The Liberal Democrats made an alliance with the Tories in response, which shot their party in the foot to the present date. David Cameron is a radical Euroskeptic who is in favor of money laundering. Cameron is ultimately a rather pathetic man who always goes for what he sees as easiest, with no guiding morality to his actions. The most dangerous form of politician. He is a coward who resigned after the Brexit referendum. He is less honorable than Gollum. In response to his radical agenda the Labour Party elected Ed Milliband, who is a very moderate but still Europhilic politician. He failed to provide a vision however to the United Kingdom and was unable to win the 2015 election. 2015 was the first election which saw Nigel Farage grow to prominence under his UKIP branding. David Cameron moved his country to the right which gave room for Nigel Farage given the shifting Overton Window. He is solely responsible for the rise of Farage. David Cameron then endorsed UKIP’s vision after the 2015 election by pushing for the Brexit referendum, similar to how Smeagol surrendered to Gollum in the Two Towers. Jeremy Corbyn is once again another Euroskeptic centrist who failed to provide any alternative to David Cameron’s position.
Centrist? Corbyn however identifies as a socialist. People refer to him as a mainstream Scandinavian social democrat?! How could I identify him as a centrist? For the following policies I argue Corbyn is not a member of the left-wing of the Labour Party but actually a moderate:
- He has always been a Euroskeptic, contrary to the position of basically every left-wing party in Europe.
- He supports Brexit.
- He supports nationalizing British rail, which is a mainstream position in Europe.
- He has no opinion on Scotland independence.
- He opposes the Norway model (so much for being a Scandinavian socialist)
- He supports a customs union with the European Union but not EU membership, so a Turkey like model
- He opposes NATO, which is contrary to basically every left-of-center party in Europe.
- His support for Palestinian liberation is mainstream
- He claims Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was “not unprovoked”
On every issue he is either in the European mainstream, no opinion, or simply an isolationist. So yes, I do not believe Corbyn is socialist. He’s mainstream in most of his viewpoints aside from his Euroskepticism. The rest of his viewpoints align almost perfectly with the interests of Vladimir Putin. So given an option with a corrupt Brexit-supporting Tory party, a corrupt Brexit-supporting Labour Party, and a fully discredited Liberal Democratic Party given their coalition agreement, Britain voted to keep the Tories in power. They had no good option. This was true in both 2017 and 2019.
By 2024 Brexit had finally happened and people were exhausted with constant bullshit coming out of the Conservative Party. Britain’s economy has been running on fumes and Labour finally won.
But the reason why Labour finally won in 2024 is not because Keir Starmer is a super popular and charismatic leader. He’s quite the opposite really. They simply won because Reform UK, the rebranded UKIP under the human sack of radioactive waste Nigel Farage got 14% of the vote which in the British first past the post election system stole enough votes from the Tories to give Labour the victory. Reform is now the most popular party in the United Kingdom. Keir Starmer has failed to lead the United Kingdom away from the colossal failure of Brexit and right now looks like he will be the man who leads Britain into the First Farage Cabinet of 2029.
Let’s pray the Liberal Democrats win instead and do not form a coalition with the bloody Tories.
Britain shows over the last 15 years that the term of one radical does not mean they will be succeeded by a moderate. The election of Starmer proves this tenet is false.
Conclusion
So it is tempting to say that the choice between radicals and centrists is clear but on a closer look when we investigate most of these cases the radical government was either formed through a corrupt bargain or through a spoilt election.
Most democracies however do not see the rise of populist politicians like Trump, Fico, Starmer, Cameron, and Orban.
We see the rise of pretty mainstream politicians like Emmanuel Macron in most stable democracies around the world. Macron might be extremely unpopular, but at least he’s not completely crazy or living in a fantasy land like most French politicians regardless of political affiliation.
This is the way it works in most European democracies. Sometimes you get an absolute asswipe Euroskeptic like Karl Nehammer of Austria, but that’s unusual, and they are constrained from pursuing their most radical policies by the threat of human flight. Austrian politics has always been the most insane in Europe.
But aside from the absolute train wreck of Austrian politics post-Charlemagne the rest of Europe is usually relatively sane. Most politicians are somewhere near the middle, they support the European Union, they support NATO, and move their countries towards better policies through sane and balanced policies.
So when we come down to it, the rise of most radical politicians comes from coalition agreements against the will of the people or by having an absolutely disastrous governance under a highly corrupt or moderate politician who was unable to direct the national narrative. Having a weak head of government in a democracy opens up the dialogue in ways which are almost never beneficial to society. We need our prime ministers and presidents to have the ability to propose reasonable policies and have control over the narrative. They need to direct the country in a good direction.
Because if they choose not to there is an endless supply of nefarious actors who will make big promises based in fantasy land.
When you elect a head of government thinking that they will be moving your country one direction, and they instead work on promoting the policies of the party that most people voted against, people lose faith in politicians and go towards radicals.
That is why strong progressive leadership is the best bastion against fascism alongside freedom of movement. The pattern of centrist – radical – centrist – radical observed in the video is real in a lot of countries. But this is unusual. Most stable democracies alternate from one normal party to another normal party, one of which is more left-wing, one is more right-wing, but both parties agree with the post-Holocaust consensus that cooperating with your neighbors and building a strong economy is the best option for the people. Most democracies in reality alternate between two normal parties which champion cooperation between countries giving little room for the rise of extremists like Starmer in their countries.
So the real trick for countries like the United States, United Kingdom, and Italy is to start electing normal somewhat boring politicians who champion cooperation through free trade, visa-free travel, social liberalism, and offer a strong vision for the future, instead of this alternating back and forth between the vapidness of Starmer or the insanity of Cameron. We need to be more like the Netherlands, less like Austria.
Let’s break the doom loop and elect normal people.