One of the main ideological tensions on the so-called dissident Right – also known as the populist, nationalist or hard-right – concerns the role of the State. In fact, as with so many other aspects of what passes for right-wing political “thinking” these days, it is more a matter of confusion rather than tension.
There are broadly two types of views, each with their own variations. On the one side, constituting the great mass of right-wing activists, are those who believe in a strong State, and see it as a good thing. This is even a phrase that remains quite popular in British Conservative circles: Believing in “the good that the State can do”. In recent history, this idea was the guiding light of the Theresa May and then the Boris Johnson governments, which, in the wake of Brexit, thought it was time to bring back socialistic Industrial Strategy and Levelling Up policies – ie, state dirigisme and redistribution of national wealth by another name. It leads to absurdities such as building “space industry hubs” in places with no space industry.
And it’s not just the now-discredited Tories who embrace this statist model as a way to cut through the country’s problems. On the economic front, the fantasy of a powerful central government launching big new infrastructure projects across the land or “restoring manufacturing” by ministerial decree is one shared by the new insurgent right-wing parties as well. What they don’t propose is even more telling: You won’t hear much about any radical cuts to the obscene welfare system or to the bloated and horrendously inefficient National Health Service. Not for them any serious, Javier Milei-style chainsaw-ing of the public sector and the Civil Service with its useless, borderline traitorous mandarins at the top.
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