Don’t fall for the authoritarian hype – Reform and the hard right can be stopped in their tracks

The Guardian ^ | Sat 11 Oct 2025 05.00 EDT | Gordon Brown, UK prime minister from 2007 to 2010

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Nigel Farage portrays his Reform UK party as a unique phenomenon that has burst on to the global stage, its meteoric rise an exceptional epochal event. But this week, in every one of Europe’s major countries and from India and Thailand to the US and Argentina, hard-right, anti-immigrant, anti-globalisation parties like his are also ahead in the opinion polls.

In last Saturday’s Czech elections, the rightwing, pro-Putin populist Andrej Babiš toppled prime minister Petr Fiala. National Rally, which has just brought down yet another French prime minister, is leading the polls for both the French presidency and parliament. In Germany, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is currently the most popular party. Hungary’s Fidesz party, Robert Fico’s pro-Russian Slovakian coalition and the Brothers of Italy are already in government, while the Freedom party of Austria (FPÖ), the Netherlands’ Freedom party (PVV) and Belgium’s Vlaams Belang – all hardline nationalists – are part of an international coalition of anti-internationalists, inspired by far-right propagandists like Steve Bannon, seeking to dethrone the international rule of law, diminish human rights and destroy multilateral cooperation.

The populist nationalist surge exposes a new and unavoidable truth that democrats ignore at our peril: an authoritarian ethnic nationalism – once thought toppled with the Berlin Wall – has replaced neoliberalism as the dominant ideology of our age, giving us a world of firsts: “America first”, “India first”, “China first”, “Russia first”, “my tribe first” and often “my tribe first and only” regimes. It is this ethnic nationalism that helps explain why the world is now composed of 91 autocracies and only 88 democracies, and ethnic nationalism is the force behind the violations of international human rights law not just by Russia in Ukraine but in almost every one...

[dljordan]

“hard-right, anti-immigrant, anti-globalisation parties “

We are the devil incarnate.

[WeaslesRippedMyFlesh]

This is the terminal restlessness of the left.

Kind of enjoying it.

[hanamizu]

“...hard-right, anti-immigrant, anti-globalisation parties like his are also ahead in the opinion polls.”

---

And why do you suppose that is, Gordon Brown, former Prime Minister? Could it be that English people are tired of the fact that they are a minority in their own capital city? That they become unhappy when foreigners who rape their daughters get less time than those who dare comment on it?

[Disambiguator]

So enforcing border controls is now “authoritarian?”

How quaint.

[Steve_Seattle]

I looked at The Guardian's source for their statistics, and it has a chart depicting countries as "democracies" or "authoritarian." Nearly all of the authoritarian countries are communist, Muslim, or African. People in the West who oppose immigration from those countries do so because they want to PRESERVE democracy and freedom, not end it.

The chart also assumes that a democracy cannot be authoritarian, yet we have seen the increasing authoritarianism of democracies like England, Germany, and Australia. For the people who created the chart, right-wing government is ALWAYS authoritarian. For the people who created the chart, anyone who challenges THEIR authority ia "authoritarian."

[Vaduz]

Don’t fall for the authoritarian hype.

The same can be said about the left in this country they always have names for things but never logical answers.

[FlyingEagle]

Communists call themselves socialists and democrats.

I love seeing The Grauniad lamenting the end of the Road to Serfdom.

[lastchance]

Well someone’s got to wear the beanie.

[sauropod]

.

[DesertRhino]

Farange is at best, a Bush clone. And they act like he is a dictator. Freakin’ Brits.