Reactionary Democracy by Aurelien Mondon & Aaron Winter

Author:Aurelien Mondon & Aaron Winter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books

MAINSTREAMING IN PRACTICE

The line between what is liberally acceptable and what is not is thus in constant flux, and always contingent. It is generally assumed that much of the political discourse in liberal democracy has been based on what is good for the majority or the mainstream, while frequent warnings are issued about the threat posed by radical politics, whether from left or right. Yet this prevailing, commonsensical understanding of politics has failed, often wilfully, to engage with the more complex, constantly evolving nature of ideology. What is considered mainstream or moderate today was radical or reactionary only yesterday, and may once again be so tomorrow. The resurgence of reconstructed far-right parties and politics in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century has helped blur these lines further, changing the level of acceptability of certain discourses. While it is commonly assumed that political change takes time, recent events have demonstrated otherwise. For example, in Australia, Robert Manne pointedly noted about a racist letter published by political newcomer and future far-right leader Pauline Hanson, ‘that by the political standards in early 1996, it was dynamite … by the political standards of 1998 such a letter would occasion hardly a stir’.9 While the Australian case is not central to this book, it remains an interesting example, as we have argued elsewhere that it has been at the forefront of the mainstreaming of far-right politics, particularly through its treatment of asylum seekers.10 After the short-lived success of Pauline Hanson’s amateurish One Nation party, conservative Liberal prime minister John Howard declared after his election in 1996 that ‘the pendulum [had] swung too far’. He managed to succeed in turning the clock back, returning to a parochial vision of the Australian nation based on stringent immigration and asylum laws and strong nationalist rhetoric. This approach was incredibly successful, and the discourse around it has become hegemonic across the political spectrum and population, despite the inhumane treatment suffered by refugees in offshore centres.11

To illustrate the various ways in which the mainstreaming process has taken place in recent years, the US, French and British cases provide interesting insights. In each of these countries, mainstreaming has occurred in a distinctive fashion. In order to understand the true character of the issue, the holistic approach explored above must be applied in particular contexts.

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