The Radical Right During Crisis

US President Trump’s persistent official policy was to deny that climate change exists or, if it does, then it is neither human-created nor a major threat to the world. 8That policy implies a belief that there is no systemic cause-effect relationship between human activity, global warming/climate change, and extreme weather events. Therefore, no special preventative measures or contingency planning are required, and existing emergency response provisions are adequate since extreme weather events will remain rare, unpredictable, and non-catastrophic. In radical right terms, the “problem” and its risks are thereby reduced to zero, as they do not exist. The motive behind Trump’s extraordinary “wishful thinking” position is open to conjecture.

As another example, in radical right terms, MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) is reduced to a set of allegedly relatively minor health threats whereas [quoting discredited quack science from a struck-off physician] MMR vaccine is falsely cited as a major cause of autism in children. The underlying justification appears to emanate from the radical right’s fear of removal of the freedom of parental choice coupled with a belief that scientists who support vaccination (i.e., the vast majority, authorities such as the CDC, WHO, etc.) are part of a left-wing conspiracy to undermine conservative governance and the economy. Radical right supporters are heavily represented among anti-vax supporters, who include Trump. In February 2020, he also contradicted the CDC and WHO on the seriousness of the coronavirus threat, dismissing the scale of the threat as a “hoax” and claiming that his media enemies were using false coronavirus stories as a weapon to undermine him politically. Subsequently, he has persistently sought to “talk down” the COVID-19 threat to public health and has strongly advocated removal of the lockdown restrictions while the pandemic was still raging and before safe to do so, apparently on economic grounds, a belief that health experts were exaggerating the risks, and to avoid damage to his re-election chances.

While the radical right artificially deflates some risks, it also inflates others. For example, Trump has persistently inflated the incidence and risk of violent criminality among immigrants (whether legal or illegal) from Mexico, contrary to the known facts. He has also similarly falsely inflated the risk of terrorism from Muslim immigrants and visitors to the US.

The radical right exhibits a strong preference for any evidence, opinion, or assertion which they believe strengthens their case. While not unique in seeking to present their best case, the radical right stand out in the relentless and aggressive way they disseminate their propaganda by all forms of media, especially online and social media. Radical right leaders, politicians, ideologues, opinion formers, commentators, and supportive journalists selectively include in their narratives only those items and assertions that tend to confirm and support radical right objectives and, conversely, exclude any material that contradicts or challenges radical right ideology or that casts the radical right in a poor light.

Thus, for example, the recent sudden increases in MMR cases (including deaths) officially attributed to anti-vax campaigns supported by the radical right will be ignored, while stories of populist support for the anti-vax position will receive favourable publicity. Stories of heroism of firefighters and emergency services workers in the conflagrations in California and Australia will dominate the narratives of radical right administrations and their supporters, while climate change (if mentioned at all) will be vehemently denied as a primary causal factor in the fires. Viktor Orbán will boast of a huge success in his “Hungary for Hungarians only” policy in the way his massive border fencing and strict controls have stopped the alleged Muslim takeover of the country, while ignoring the fact that historically Hungary has only ever had a miniscule Muslim population—a classic false proposition to evoke fear in the native population followed by their relief when the (non-existent) threat is neutralized. If the non-existent Muslim hordes have not entered the country, then populists believe that clearly Orbán’s policy was correct and effective!

Radical right leaders and supporters persistently lie in order to advance their political ideology, persuade the public of their righteousness, and to cover up their own bad conduct. For example, according to the Washington Post , 9by October 2019 President Trump had made 13,435 false or misleading statements since taking office. By 10 December 2019, that number had risen to 15,413. 10While it may be anticipated that all politicians “stretch the truth” to their advantage, and some brazenly lie from time to time, the scale of Trump’s mendacity is exceptional and unprecedented. Trump, his administration and the radical right establishment have turned amoral calculation, lying, and dissemination of false facts and fake news into a central plank of official policy rather than just used as an ad hoc convenience.

Radical right reductionism has played well to a populist audience looking for some kind of salvation from perceived problems and threats. The radical right has been skilful in weaving into its narrative an artful rhetoric and imagery concerning problems and threats that are in some cases real but mixed up with far more that are exaggerated or invented. Playing on populist fears, the radical right then proposes itself and its policies as their only salvation. This populist support, based on psychological dependence, may work for a time if the promise of salvation seems plausible and realistic. However, ultimately support is likely to wane as enacted radical right policies fail in the face of real-world complexity.

Dr Alan Waringis a Policy and Practitioner Fellow at CARR and adjunct professor at the Centre for Risk and Decision Sciences (CERIDES) at the European University Cyprus.

1Ludwig von Bertalanffy, “The History and Status of General Systems Theory,” Academy of Management Journal 15 no. 4 (1972): 407-26.

2Peter Checkland, Systems Thinking, Systems Practice: Includes a 30-year Retrospective (Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 1999).

3Alan Waring, Practical Systems Thinking (Aldershot, UK: Thomson/Cengage, 1996), 62-4.

4Henry Mintzberg, The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning: Reconceiving Roles for Planning, Plans, Planners (New York: Free Press, 1994); Henry Mintzberg, “Rethinking Strategic Planning, Part 1: Pitfalls and Fallacies,” Long Range Planning 27 no. 3 (1994): 12-21.

5Michael Beer, Russell Eisenstat, and Bert Spector, “Why Change Programs Don’t Produce Change,” Harvard Business Review 68 no. 6 (1990): 158-166.

6“Andrew Sabisky, No 10 Adviser Resigns Over Alleged Race Comments,” BBC News , February 18, 2020, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-51538493.

7Alan Waring, “The Five Pillars of Occupational Safety and Health in a Climate of Authoritarian Socio-political Climates,” Safety Science 117 (2019): 152-63.

8Alan Waring, “The Alt-Right, Environmental Issues, and Global Warming,” in The New Authoritarianism Vol 1: A Risk Analysis of the US Alt-Right Phenomenon, ed. A. Waring (Stuttgart: Ibidem Verlag, 2018), 273-301.

9Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly, “President Trump Has Made False or Misleading Statements Over Days,” The Washington Post , October 14, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/10/14/president-trump-has-made-false-or-misleading-claims-over-days/.