Why does right-wing populism emerge at all?
In normal times, when capitalism is functioning without crisis, there is little room for the far right. When capitalism does enter crisis, the political parties subservient to corporate interests evolve accordingly. This is why both the Democrats and Republicans have been veering to the right for decades; it represents the deterioration of American capitalism’s global position, which is related to the inability of US corporations to maintain their past rates of profit. When an economic crisis intensifies, as it is now, not only does the ruling class require a new political path, but a new vehicle too. In the 1980’s, when Japanese and European corporations successfully “caught up” with many US companies, Pat Buchanan prophetically remarked that “there was a political vacuum to the right of Reagan.” Buchanan and the other right-wing populists strove to fill that gap. Foreseeing that the so-called neo-conservative movement in the Republican Party was headed for utter failure (because of l
