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The Davos set are cosying up to the far right - and scared of the left
Source: The Guardian
The Davos set are cosying up to the far right – and scared of the left
The World Economic Forum event revealed how elites are more afraid of leftwing populists, than rightwing ones like Bolsonaro
Cas Mudde
Tue 5 Feb 2019 12.52 GMT
Last week, the World Economic Forum (WEF) brought thousands of neoliberal elites – as well as an army of feted journalists and scholars – to the popular Swiss ski resort of Davos. There, the emerging relationship between the Davos set and far-right populists was plain to see. And it is far rosier than either party would like to admit.
In the absence of Donald Trump, the spotlight was on Jair Bolsonaro, the newly minted president of Brazil, who was also the keynote speaker at the WEF. Attendees were initially somewhat uneasy with the far-right president, who openly praised military dictatorship, and therefore mostly held their applause before his speech. But after he had touted “a new Brazil … that’s open to business”, the room warmed up rapidly.
Francesco Starace, chief executive at the Italian electricity multinational Enel, probably spoke for most people in the room when he said: “If it is populist or not populist, we don’t care – it is a reform agenda that we think is good for the country” – and for WEF attendees, obviously.
In addition, the Austrian chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, one of the most vocal supporters of the normalization of the populist radical right in Europe, was given a full panel to lay out his vision of a “new global architecture”. Of course, some critics of the far right were given airtime too. The historian Timothy Snyder, who has been issuing alarmist warnings about the threat of totalitarianism, was on two panels. But the overarching message being sent at Davos was: far-right populists are welcome here.
-snip-
Meanwhile, elites are railing against the kind of “populism” that actually threatens their interests: so-called “leftwing populism”, which in most cases is just old-school social democracy. ...
-snip-
The World Economic Forum event revealed how elites are more afraid of leftwing populists, than rightwing ones like Bolsonaro
Cas Mudde
Tue 5 Feb 2019 12.52 GMT
Last week, the World Economic Forum (WEF) brought thousands of neoliberal elites – as well as an army of feted journalists and scholars – to the popular Swiss ski resort of Davos. There, the emerging relationship between the Davos set and far-right populists was plain to see. And it is far rosier than either party would like to admit.
In the absence of Donald Trump, the spotlight was on Jair Bolsonaro, the newly minted president of Brazil, who was also the keynote speaker at the WEF. Attendees were initially somewhat uneasy with the far-right president, who openly praised military dictatorship, and therefore mostly held their applause before his speech. But after he had touted “a new Brazil … that’s open to business”, the room warmed up rapidly.
Francesco Starace, chief executive at the Italian electricity multinational Enel, probably spoke for most people in the room when he said: “If it is populist or not populist, we don’t care – it is a reform agenda that we think is good for the country” – and for WEF attendees, obviously.
In addition, the Austrian chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, one of the most vocal supporters of the normalization of the populist radical right in Europe, was given a full panel to lay out his vision of a “new global architecture”. Of course, some critics of the far right were given airtime too. The historian Timothy Snyder, who has been issuing alarmist warnings about the threat of totalitarianism, was on two panels. But the overarching message being sent at Davos was: far-right populists are welcome here.
-snip-
Meanwhile, elites are railing against the kind of “populism” that actually threatens their interests: so-called “leftwing populism”, which in most cases is just old-school social democracy. ...
-snip-
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/05/davos-set-far-right
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