The crisis of liberal hegemony

Philipp Schmid: The political development in Europe is extremely worrying. The fascist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party achieved 20.8 percent in the 2025 federal elections. At demonstrations in Germany, people say it’s not five minutes to midnight, but 19:33 hours. Is this panic justified?

Ilya Budraitskis: Yes, I think these fears are justified. We can observe how the influence of the various far-right parties in Europe, in the US, in Latin America, etc. is constantly increasing. Of course, this global trend manifests differently in various national contexts, but the danger is real. This is because it is linked to the will of some sections of the elites who wish to radically change the political configurations of bourgeois power and install a different kind of political regime. This has already happened in Russia, and the process is underway in the US. In Western Europe, the far right has achieved major electoral successes, but the transformation of political rule has yet to materialize. In view of the Right’s growing strength, however, this is a possible scenario for the future.

PS: What political order are they striving for?

IB: This can best be seen in the US. With Trump, the far right is back in power. They control the most important parts of the state apparatus, such as the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the Supreme Court. And now they are trying to restructure the political system from above in the direction of authoritarian rule. It is to be organised like a capitalist company. That is the goal of Trump and Musk. And as a consequence, this means abolishing liberal democracy and replacing this system with a kind of modern monarchy. They are striving for a regime in which authority is not based on democratic legitimacy, but on the principle of personalized power and an authoritarian leader.

PS: What is the ideological program of the far right besides the authoritarian restructuring of society?

IB: The core of their ideological program is that liberal democracy is at an end. It is fake and only a sham government behind which a hidden global elite hides, guided by false principles such as international law and tolerance. The far right criticizes the supposed morals and values of the liberal elite because they protect the weak and not the strong.

According to the extreme right, the only principle of international politics should be the power of the strongest. This is the “natural” way to govern society. This is the logic behind the way Trump and Putin govern. We see this in the example of Putin’s criticism of support for Ukraine: in his way of thinking, small nations that cannot defend themselves have no right to exist. And therefore their sovereignty, that is their existence as independent countries, is artificial in the eyes of the far right.

PS: How do you explain the rise of far-right and fascist forces in Europe over the last 10 years?

IB: There are many reasons for the increasing electoral success of far-right parties in Europe. One of the most important is the transformation of European societies as a result of the neoliberal reforms of recent decades. The progressive social atomization of people, the dismantling of trade unions and other forms of self-organisation of working people go hand in hand with the decline of democratic traditions, which are to be understood not only as a system of liberal institutions, but also as the ability of society to defend itself collectively and in an organized manner.

This is the material basis for the ideological crisis of the liberal elites, as people are increasingly disillusioned with bourgeois liberal democracy and its institutions. They feel unrepresented and unheard. The far right is skilfully tapping into these widespread feelings.

PS: The classical Marxist analysis of fascism has always understood fascism as a reaction to the crisis of capitalism and as the bourgeoisie’s response to the strengthening of the labor movement. Is this analysis still valid?

IB: Despite the historical differences, there are certainly similarities between the 1920s/30s and the situation today. The crisis of the political institutions of the Weimar Republic, the Great Depression from 1929 onwards, and the enormous social upheavals associated with it formed the breeding ground for the rise and takeover of German fascism. Although there was no immediate danger of a proletarian revolution, the labor movement in Germany was one of the strongest in the world. The social democratic SPD and the communist KPD were mass parties with which the fascists competed for influence. Due to the overall social crisis, there was mass disillusionment with the system of bourgeois-liberal democracy among the population. We can also observe the latter in today’s situation, which is also characterized by multiple crises of the capitalist order. However, there is one key difference.

PS: Which one?

IB: In the 1920s and 30s, the fascists competed with the labor movement for alternative visions of the future to the capitalist system. They propagated a vision of the future in which there would no longer be class conflicts and in which national glory would unite the population. And they had the ambition to create a new man who would be connected to society in the spirit of national solidarity and a kind of fascist collectivism. This is why this reactionary fascist utopia was so attractive to many people in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. And that is why it competed with the socialist utopia and the socialist vision of a different kind of human relationship. Today, I don’t see any competition between alternative visions of the future.

PS: But aren’t the fascists still propagating a different society with national borders, a homogenous people, and clearly defined gender roles?

IB: Yes, but the sense and understanding of time is very different from a hundred years ago in Europe. Back then, the question of a better future and social progress was at the center of social aspirations. Under the rule of late capitalism since the 1980s, the idea of a future has disappeared. People are primarily preoccupied with the present and the interpretations of the past that have led to today’s situation. We live in the now, in which an alternative future is unimaginable. This is precisely the result of the neoliberal reorganization of society. Margaret Thatcher’s famous phrase “there is no alternative” (TINA) has more or less become the social consensus. Trump’s political program shows this clearly. He makes no concrete proposals and does not propagate a clear vision of the future. He merely negates the “liberal now” in the name of a “truth” defined by him.

PS: Back to the characterization of the new extreme right. In his 2017 book ‘Les nouveaux visages du fascisme’, the well-known Marxist fascism researcher Enzo Traverso proposes the term post-fascism to characterize the new fascists. What does he mean by this?

IB: Enzo Traverso believes that today’s post-fascist parties, unlike their historical role models, are not trying to break with the mechanisms of bourgeois liberal democracy. Instead, they are successfully utilizing the mechanisms of democracy to expand their influence. They only want to use the system to come to power. This can be seen in the example of Italy. The post-fascist Giorgia Meloni has not turned the political system upside down and replaced it with a fascist regime. Such a scenario is also unlikely in the event of Marine Le Pen’s participation in government in France or the AfD in Germany. Instead, they will try to gradually change the mentality of societies and elites. There is still no consensus in the ruling circles to transform the political system into a new form of authoritarian fascism. However, this may change under the sustained pressure from the extreme right.

Already today, liberal and conservative governments are adopting the demands of the far right. We must understand that the use of bourgeois-liberal institutions and elections by the extreme right could represent a transition point for all these movements on the way to realizing their final political project. For these reasons, I think that the term post-fascism is useful to describe the similarities and differences between the contemporary far right and the historical fascists.

PS: Can this analysis also be applied to Russia and Putin’s regime?

IB: Yes, Russia has gone through exactly this process and is now an ultra-authoritarian regime. In the last 25 years of the Putin government, the Russian regime has changed fundamentally. In the first decade, in the 2000s, Russia was more of an authoritarian, technocratic, neoliberal regime. The global economic crisis from 2007/08 onwards led to a general political crisis not only in the Arab world, but also in Russia. Massive protests against Putin’s re-election took place in Moscow and other Russian cities in 2011/12. These civil society protests were perceived as a political and ideological threat and led the Russian elites to believe that an authoritarian transformation of their rule was necessary.

PS: What impact has this transformation had?

IB: The idea that social movements from below could overthrow a government is an existential threat to autocratic regimes. This is why Putin’s return to the presidency in 2012 was linked to an ideological shift towards so-called traditional, anti-democratic values. And these anti-democratic elements were based on the idea that the Russian state was not the result of a social contract, but the result of history. The Russian Federation is the direct continuation of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. This means that Putin does not have to be elected by the people, but is destined by fate to lead the country. Putin sees himself as the direct successor to Peter the Great and Stalin. These ideas were ultimately enshrined in the Russian constitution in 2020. At their core, these beliefs are also responsible for the violent reaction to the events in Ukraine during the Maidan protests in 2013/14.

PS: Why?

IB: The Ukrainians on the Maidan protested against Russia’s influence and in favor of Ukraine’s national sovereignty. The protests were not only labelled by the Russian regime as “staged from the outside”, but were also perceived as an internal threat to so-called “historical Russia”. In this second decade of Putin’s rule, military intervention in Ukraine began, including the annexation of Crimea. This was accompanied by the increasing authoritarianisation of Putin’s rule and his establishment as ruler for life.

PS: How did the democratically minded Russian civilian population react to these developments?

IB: Putin was once again confronted with a growing democratic protest movement and the dissatisfaction of large sections of Russian society. He also saw this wave of protest as a combination of external and internal threats. All revolutions, including the Russian Revolution of 1917, had been covertly controlled by Russia’s external enemies. The West had poisoned Russian society with false, liberal or socialist ideas. Putin’s response to the renewed protests was to invade Ukraine in February 2022. For Putin, the Ukraine issue is not just a question of the Russian state’s geostrategic interests in the global arena. He was not only concerned with competition with NATO, but also with the existence of his own regime. This is why the invasion of Ukraine was a turning point. Putin used the war to transform the regime into a repressive dictatorship.

PS: So, do you describe Putin’s regime today as fascist?

IB: Yes, why not? Of course, today’s fascism differs from historical fascism in many ways. In Russia, unlike in Germany and Italy, fascism has no historical model. Instead, there are various other authoritarian traditions that Putin’s regime can draw on. For example, Putin uses the extremely conservative, clerical tradition of the Russian Empire to justify his autocracy. Repressive practices from the Stalinist past have also been adopted, as the role of the FSB secret service (successor to the KGB) shows. Today, the FSB is the most influential element of the Russian regime.

PS: Part of the radical left in the West is ignoring – or worse: negating – the danger posed by the fascist regime in Russia.

IB: Exactly, and what is even more tragic is that it is also completely unprepared for the rise of fascism in its own countries. The rise of the new fascism is a major challenge for the left. In the US, for example, before Trump’s re-election, the radical left focused its criticism mainly on Biden and the Democratic Party, forgetting the real danger of Trumpism. Now it is completely lost. This can also happen in other countries. We know from history that the left was not prepared for the rise of fascism in the 20th century either. The Stalinist Communist International downplayed the fascist threat for far too long. The difference to today is that the radical left is much weaker than it was a hundred years ago.

PS: What other lessons can be learned from the anti-fascist resistance in the 20th century?

IB: The most important lesson from history is that fascism always leads to militarization and war. European anti-fascists did not realize this at the beginning of the fascists’ rise to power in the 1920s and 1930s. Today, it is much more obvious, and therefore, we should combine our anti-militarist and anti-imperialist propaganda with anti-fascist propaganda. The left should not limit itself to criticizing rising military spending. A regime like Putin’s rejects any form of peaceful coexistence and glorifies war as a means to rule the country and expand its influence. This is the logic behind the concept of the so-called multipolar world–a world in which there are no longer universal rights and rules, but in which the strongest nation prevails.

PS: What would an anti-fascism of the 21st century have to be based on in order to fight (post-)fascism more successfully than before?

IB: We must form broad coalitions against the rise of the extreme right. However, they must not invoke the defence of bourgeois-liberal institutions. That is not our task and would be futile. After all, the crisis of liberal hegemony is one of the reasons why so many people are losing confidence in the existing structures and turning to the extreme right.

In my opinion, the radical left should pursue two lines of attack: Firstly, we need to address social discontent, but offer other solutions. The far right wants to make people believe that migration is the cause of all their problems. The fact that this is not objectively true can be seen from the fact that the AfD won the most votes in the 2025 federal election, where the proportion of migrants in the population was lowest. This opens up a potential political vacuum that the left must fill by pointing out the true causes of people’s real problems.

PS: And secondly?

IB: Secondly, we should focus on the defense of “democracy”, and not a “democracy” that is limited to bourgeois democratic institutions and their functioning. We must combine the defense of “democracy” with the demand for equality and participation, because that is what its emergence in the 18th and 19th centuries was all about: the struggle of the lower classes for political influence and representation. Such a left-wing or socialist understanding of democracy as “power from below” can serve as a common basis for a broad anti-fascist coalition that brings together left-wing parties, trade unions, and the diverse forms of feminist, anti-racist, ecological, and neighborhood self-organization. It is precisely these projects that the post-fascists and neo-fascists want to destroy because they contradict their idea of a hierarchical state order that is structured like a capitalist company.

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Featured Image credit: jean louis mazieres; modified by Tempest.