Liberals, learn the politics of emotion to beat rightwing populists | Paul Mason

Attachment to place and identity can be part of a radical democratic project that speaks to people's hearts

In Europe, the United States and Brazil, authoritarian nationalism is sweeping to power through a mixture of negative emotion and elite connivance. But this is no mere re-run of the 1930s. In the first place, unlike in Germany, Italy and Spain at the incipient moments of their dictatorships, the existing elites neither want nor need fascism. Their problem is that they don't know how to fight it.

Over the past 15 years political science has engaged a well-evidenced but unfruitful debate over what caused the rise of parties such as Ukip, the Party for Freedom (PVV) in the Netherlands, or France's Front National. In general, I think it is proven that cultural rather than economic insecurities are what's driving politics to the right. But it does not follow from this that action at the economic level can't stem the tide of plebeian racism. In order to get the actions right, though, we have to understand that the political narratives of the centre are failing due to the way the free-market economy was designed.

People understood that emotion could only reinsert itself into decision-making if the system were disrupted

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