Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
The political-electoral crises facing French President Emmanuel Macron and U.S. President Joe Biden put many things at risk, perhaps the least of which is their re-election.
Both societies are being pressured by populist leaders’ proposals that exploit their deep-seated fears. In both cases, there is a growing aversion to waves of legal and illegal migrants. On the other hand, there is a call for isolationism, expressed in a proposal of exacerbated national sovereignty with a strong authoritarian emphasis.
The concrete expressions in common are striking. First, there is the promotion of anti-immigrant laws. As an expression of isolationism (misunderstood as national sovereignty), there is a refusal to participate in efforts to support Ukraine, which contains tacit support for Putin’s authoritarian and illegal invasion of that country. Populism (right and left) feeds on sovereignism, isolationism, support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and a fascination with authoritarianism and the illiberal bloc in the world.
Underlying all of this are overtly authoritarian and anti-democratic suggestions and statements in the proposals of Le Pen in France and Trump in the United States. Global populism is based on conservative values. They reject nationalities that they deem inferior or loaded with negativism and are considered carriers of dangerous social diseases (sic). Logically, the repudiation of sexual diversities leads to the targeting of these communities by promoting legislation contrary to their freedoms and with acts of authority, which may even mean imprisonment or compulsory psychological treatment.
It also permeates traditional thinking about the family and the role of women in society as a subject subordinated to the imperatives of caring for her husband and children. The rejection of abortion in any form is a generalized public policy among those who share populist policies.
In political action, populism promotes fear, ancestral hatred, and social polarization as useful methods to consolidate its mass leadership and, thus, reproduce its political power. Populism is, in essence, militaristic.
There is a political crisis in Europe and the United States, as from Macron’s defeat in France, coming third in the general votes (it remains to be seen how the numbers of deputies in the General Assembly will turn out), and Joe Biden’s debacle in his debate with Trump, which left him politically mortally wounded and in the prelude to an almost certain defeat in the presidential elections next November.
Both rulers, together with the government of Great Britain (there are elections to choose a new Prime Minister next Thursday and where the current ruling party is doomed to defeat), have been the mainstay of support for Ukraine in its fight against Russian totalitarianism, in addition to representing the values of republicanism and democracy in their countries, and in the world.
The prospect of being defeated by anti-republican and anti-democratic populist forces that support Putin’s aggression against Ukraine and espouse conservative values makes them a danger to the democratic world.
The extremist forces of fear, hatred, and polarization are breaking down the dams of restraint against anti-democratic populism. Liberalism around the world is under threat of extinction. For this not to happen, countries require leaders who, far from their outbursts, guide their people along the path of democracy and tolerance of their internal differences, with respect for majorities and minorities.
Coincidentally, this scenario fuels the growing anxiety of investors and world rulers as they observe recent events in Mexico: a governing discourse associated with populism and promoting the destruction of institutions that could fuel the authoritarian impetus of the current and future governments.
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