The author says the far right’s governing record is poor—Brexit’s economic hit, Trump’s second-term wars and tariffs, Colombia’s Abelardo De la Espriella beating peace-deal figure Iván Cepeda, Keiko Fujimori in Peru—yet voters still choose it. Similar wins or holds are listed in Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, the Philippines, Israel, India, and Russia, with a surge in Europe. Exceptions named: a dip for Sweden Democrats, Orbán’s April loss, Lula over Bolsonaro.

Saxony-Anhalt: AfD took 39 seats, matching the rest minus BSW’s five. Merz’s federal CDU is cited at 13% approval. Immigration still matters, but the piece stresses cheap energy, anti-Ukraine spending, and east-German “second-class” feeling after 1990. BSW may deal with AfD on some issues, weakening the old firewall. If AfD can govern alone federally, the author expects U.S./Russia/Hungary-style lock-in.

“Punch down” (anti-LGBTQ, misogyny, anti-immigrant) is read as a backlash against post-1960s rights wins; “punch up” at “globalists” while backing national oligarchs is the bait-and-switch. The left, the close says, never sold a popular alternative to globalization; a Green industrial policy that creates jobs without a resource sacrifice is the ticket the author wants against an “Old Brown Deal.”

The track record of the far right, when it has wielded power, has been pretty dismal.

The UK is still reeling economically from its exit from the European Union, a departure orchestrated by Nigel Farage and his band of xenophobes. Despite Brexit shrinking the British economy by as much as 8 percent, voters in the local UK elections this year ran screaming from both the Labor and Conservative parties and into the arms of Reform UK, Farage’s far-right scrum.

The U.S. government bungled its pandemic response in the last year of Donald Trump’s first term in office, among a number of other misfortunes perpetrated by the scamster-in-chief, and yet American voters returned him to office in 2024. This time around, he has used his mandate—and his mind control over a Republican Congress—to destroy the country with wars, tariffs, and government “restructuring.”

The far right in Colombia expanded and prolonged the country’s civil war, supported death squads, and likely maintained connections to narcotraffickers and organized crime. Again, despite this history, voters elected Abelardo De la Espriella in this year’s presidential election. As a young man, De La Espriella supported right-wing paramilitaries and then, as a lawyer, defended narcotraffickers, while adopting their lifestyle of “luxury cars, private jets, and Italian designer suits.” He ran against and beat Ivan Cepeda, a philosopher and human rights activist who helped negotiate a peace deal that substantially reduced the violence of the country’s civil war. It was as if Al Capone won against Gandhi.

In Peru, the daughter of Alberto Fujimori—who extended his power through a coup and then was jailed for corruption and massive........

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