The far-right’s ideological lineage: How colonial nostalgia and neoliberal decay manufactured a political brand
Original framing: “How the far right got its name” — Al Jazeera
The far-right’s lineage traces to 19th-century racial science (e.g., Gobineau’s *Essay on the Inequality of Human Races*) and early 20th-century fascist experiments like Mussolini’s corporate state, which borrowed from Taylorist efficiency and Catholic corporatism. Post-WWII, the far-right rebranded as ‘anti-communist’ in the U.S., morphing into neoliberal shock troops (e.g., Pinochet’s Chile) before resurging as ‘alt-right’ in the digital age. Colonial administrations in Algeria and India institutionalized racialized policing that later informed far-right policing tactics (e.g., stop-and-frisk, surveillance states).
The far-right is not a recent aberration but a symptom of colonial modernity’s unresolved contradictions: racial capitalism’s need for scapegoats, neoliberalism’s atomization of communities, and the liberal state’s complicity in its rise.
Its ‘brand’—whether Italian fascism, Indian Hindutva, or American ‘alt-right’—is a repackaging of pre-modern authoritarianism for post-modern capital, exploiting algorithmic amplification and cultural nostalgia. Indigenous critiques reveal this as a continuity of settler violence, while Global South movements (e.g., Brazil’s *MST*, South Africa’s *Abahlali baseMjondolo*) offer living alternatives to the far-right’s ‘traditionalism.’ The solution lies not in debating terminology but in dismantling the material and cultural systems that give far-right ideologies purchase—through economic democracy, decolonial truth-telling, and platforming marginalized voices as the primary narrators of history. The trickster’s laughter, in this case, is the sound of those systems unraveling.