As the results of November’s presidential election came in, many working-class and marginalized people all around the world watched in horror as Donald Trump secured a second victory. But not everybody had the same reaction.

Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, notorious for championing “Christian illiberal democracy” and declaring in speeches that “we do not want to become peoples of mixed-race,” was jubilant over Trump’s victory.

Also celebrating was Argentina’s self-proclaimed “anarcho-capitalist” president Javier Milei. Following Trump’s victory, Milei took a break from gutting social services and workers’ rights to visit Trump at Mar-a-Lago, the first foreign leader to do so since the election.

In spite of Trump’s nationalist “America first” rhetoric, the growth of the far right is a global phenomenon. Trump, alongside figures like Orbán and Milei, are the product of a broken international capitalist system. Trump’s victory is emboldening the global far right, opening the door for ramped up attacks on workers, women, immigrants, and queer people the world over. 

Mass struggle across national lines is needed to beat back not only Trump, but his international band of admirers.

Rise Of The Global Far Right

The rise of the right came alongside growth in left-wing ideas and movements as the neoliberal order was thrown into crisis around the financial collapse of 2008, when the global capitalist system was deeply delegitimized. Donald Trump’s first election came in 2016, the same election that saw Bernie Sanders come to prominence unapologetically championing the label “socialist” and calling for a “political revolution against the billionaire class.” The same polarization occurred internationally: Britain saw the rise of both left-wing Jeremy Corbyn and nationalist Nigel Farage while France saw the rise of both anti-corporate Jean-Luc Mélenchon and far-right Marine Le Pen.

In spite of the electoral gains of the left, the workers’ movement is still in the early stages of recovery following decades of neoliberal cuts, privatizations, and anti-union attacks. Despite the mass movements since the financial crisis of 2008, the working class has not yet scored a decisive victory. What gains the left did make were often squandered, allowing reaction to gain the upper hand. We saw this when Trump ended up being the main beneficiary of Bernie’s capitulation to the Democratic Party.

Argentina and Brazil have proud traditions of working-class struggle. But when nominally left and populist forces like Lula in Brazil or the Argentinian Peronists oversaw capitalist rule that could not fix the problems faced by workers and the poor, it opened the door for right-wing reactionaries like Milei and Jair Bolsonaro to present themselves as the anti-establishment outsiders.

While the far-right will continue to carry out major attacks against the working class, so far they have not won a decisive victory like the fascists did in the 1930s. Workers are and will continue to resist attacks from right-wing governments through protests, occupations and strikes. However, a major defeat that demoralizes the working class and normalizes the right-wing agenda would be a huge setback. This makes an appropriate response to the right all the more important.

What Response For The Left?

For much of the social democratic establishment, the response has been to lean away from class struggle and towards strengthening the capitalist state. The capitalist state isn’t a reliable force to defend against the far right. Empowering the state to take on the far right will backfire on workers, as seen when Boston police not only protected, but actively led, the “Men’s March” following Trump’s election.

When Britain was shaken by racist riots last summer, tens of thousands of anti-racists came out to oppose them. The response from the Labour Party, however, was to champion the police as the force to beat back the far right. Labour MP Stella Creasy went so far as to campaign for people not to attend the counter-protest and to “let the police handle it.”

In Brazil, with its long history of military rule, the stakes are much higher. When Lula defeated Bolsonaro in the 2022 presidential elections, Bolsonaro’s supporters staged their own analog of the US’s January 6 riots, posing a real danger of a military coup. But Lula’s response was to rely on the army and the courts, steeped with Bolsonaro supporters, to suppress the riots, rather than appeal to the working masses.

Relying on the capitalist state isn’t the only mistake the left can make. Some have chosen to pander to the far right. In Germany, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland has been on the rise and the left is in crisis. Symptomatic of this crisis is Sahra Wagenknecht, formerly a firebrand on the German left. She now has actively embraced transphobia and anti-immigrant xenophobia, railing that leftists “focus attention on ever smaller and ever more bizarre minorities” at the expense of German workers. Rather than winning back workers who are attracted to the far right, this approach only serves to legitimize the right.

The anti-racist protests in Britain and the strike wave that greeted Milei’s attacks in Argentina show the type of working-class solidarity that’s necessary to actually challenge the right. Struggle on its own, however, is not enough. To decisively turn the tide against the right, we need to rebuild powerful organizations of the working class, learning the lessons of recent struggles, and waging a struggle against the whole capitalist system. 

Trump’s victory is part of a broader international trend and the fight against him requires an international struggle. Socialist Alternative is part of International Socialist Alternative, which is trying to do just that, from Brazil to Britain to Nigeria. Join us!