The wave of contemporary right-wing movements in the West

A powerful and novel wave of right-wing politicians and intellectuals is sweeping across the world, unlike anything seen in several decades. In the political arena, names such as the always impeccable Santiago Abascal in Spain, the acerbic Viktor Orbán in Hungary, and, my favorite, the Italian powerhouse Giorgia Meloni, set the pace. Obviously, Marine Le Pen in France, Donald Trump in the United States, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Javier Milei in Argentina, and a long list that includes the new German right of Alternative for Germany (AfD) are also present.

However, these names are merely the spearhead of a much deeper movement: a philosophical and ideological current that presents itself as a counterreaction to the Frankfurt School, that laboratory of thought which, since the 1920s, recycled cultural Marxism, emigrated to the United States, and from there spread throughout the world.

The new right revisits texts and references that had been sidelined for decades: from liberal classics such as The Fatal Conceit by Friedrich Hayek to the sharpest essays of Antonio Escohotado. Among the most influential thinkers in our language, it is worth highlighting Agustín Laje, who, with his books The Cultural Battle and Idiot Generation, articulates a direct critique of dominant progressivism.

You may also be interested in this article about a hidden episode from a former Uruguayan president's past, which challenges the heroic narratives of Latin American progressivism.

These movements have marked local differences, but also very clear common elements: they are ideologically defined, and therefore, they do not fear polarization, debate, or confronting the paradigms established by cultural leftism. They reject supranational integration mechanisms when these affect sovereignty, prioritizing the interests and agendas of their own countries.

As a logical consequence, they defend strong investment in national defense, the citizens' right to bear arms, and are critical of the traditional political class. They promote greater institutional transparency: elimination of closed party lists, more direct access to referendums, and representatives who keep their jobs alongside their positions, as happens in Switzerland. They do not believe in the "caste" or the "deep state", and they demand, every day, the reduction of political privileges. They are sovereigntists: power must return to the people, not remain with their representatives.

You may also be interested in this sarcastic take on the aesthetics of social democracy, with visual examples and references to Uruguayan institutional decline.

In summary: polemical rather than conciliatory, nationalist rather than integrationist, sovereigntist rather than globalist. What the people say in a secret ballot is what is done.

These movements, throughout the West, are products of their time. Sooner or later, they will also reach our shores, because they respond to concrete problems of our era. Does it make sense for a Uruguayan deputy to earn more than a Swiss one?

One last characteristic: these new right-wing movements are composed, in large part, of young people. Young people who put new wine into old wineskins. Who seek to give meaning to their lives by committing themselves to radical political changes in the context in which they live.

Meloni, in an already iconic video, exclaims: "Rome is the capital of Europe." Because the capital can't be where the seats of power are located, but where the ethical and moral foundation of a community lies.

Rome is, without a doubt, the capital of Europe. Because beyond the Caesars, there was a Peter who, as he left along the Appian Way, heard the question: "Quo vadis?" Peter returned, knowing that certain death awaited him. But upon his tomb, we built the West.

Let us be what we must be... or we will be nothing.