Across the world, there is a resurgence of right-wing extremism. At the same time, global inequality and wealth concentration is at the worst levels in centuries.
The modern worker does not own their existence; they rent it. In Sydney, Singapore or London, a teacher or nurse now spends more than 40 percent of their monthly income just to secure a roof, paying a landlord who produces nothing, while being forced into debt for a degree made increasingly worthless by commodification, credential inflation and venture-capital funded AI.
Political and economic structures facilitate global exploitation, inequality and conflict, and these structures are the drivers of the precarity, economic insecurity, social dislocation and perceived loss of status that far-right movements weaponise to recruit and validate their ideologies.
Examples of parties and politicians include AFD in Germany, One Nation and Pauline Hanson in Australia, MAGA, Trump and Peter Thiel in the US, Fidesz and Orban in Hungary, Reform and Nigel Farage in the UK, Otzma Yehudit and Itamar Ben-Gvir in Israel, PVV and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, Brothers of Italy and Giorgia Meloni in Italy, and so many more. Not to mention that even more extreme right-wing groups now feel safe to come out of the shadows: open neo-Nazi groups operating in plain sight in MMA and jiujitsu clubs and being interviewed on podcasts and Twitter shows.
These groups and parties are not spontaneous cultural movements or backlashes to progressive liberalism. They are the consequence of late-stage neoliberal capitalism, purposely supported and funded by oligarchs, tech-billionaires and multinational corporations.
The massive increase in wealth inequality and wealth extraction from the immiserated majority to the billionaire-class is the primary driver of right-wing extremism. The central economic driver of inequality is the “wealth pump“. This is an economic system where asset prices increase, wages stagnate and wealth is extracted upward from workers and the increasingly precarious middle classes to the ultra-rich elites.
Asset managers now control the essential infrastructure of life — housing, energy, water, and aged care. Rentiers define the Australian economy, and the economies of most western nations: The banks, mining and oil companies, property speculators and developers. These firms prioritise short-term yields over long-term investment, which drives up costs and lowers the quality of life for ordinary people. This financialisation allows in the ultra-wealthy to accumulate assets (like housing, shares, bonds) driving up prices and forcing the rest of the population into a cycle of rent and debt.
The consequences of this wealth pump extraction: fewer than 60,000 people — 0.001 percent of the world’s population — control three times as much wealth as the entire bottom half of humanity.
Neoliberalism caused the “proletarianisation of the middle class” and the debt-peonage of working people. Non-elites lose assets and go into debt while the rich accumulate vast resources.
This economic disparity fosters anti-elite sentiment and drives individuals toward authoritarian and exclusionary nationalism as they feel economically ostracised. Society is demobilised.
The desperation of the worker is distinct from but parallel to the reactionary panic of the petit bourgeoisie. Squeezed by multinational monopolies from above and fear of rising wages from below, they are the historic foot-soldier of the far-right. They do not turn to the far-right because they are “tricked”, but because they seek a cudgel to smash the workers’ rights, gender and race equality, and regulations they perceive as threats to their dwindling status and profit margins.
In the United States and the UK, this extraction pump started in the 1970s under Nixon, and super-charged under Reagan and Thatcher, leading to stagnating worker power and wages despite rising productivity. In Australia, neoliberalism really took hold in the 1980s and 1990s, and was fully unleashed under Howard after 1996.
Economic and social instability, created and worsened by increasing levels of precarious work, casualisation, and outsourcing are manipulated by the beneficiaries of the extraction — the ultra-wealthy and multinational executives.
Deflection and Scapegoating
As inequality worsens, the status quo becomes obviously untenable, leading the public to demand change, especially change away from wealth inequality and plutonomy.
The economic system creates powerful incentives for the economic elites to scapegoat — to redirect popular anger, toward marginalised groups.
Billionaires and economic elites have a powerful incentive to fund far-right movements. Figures like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk support anti-immigrant rhetoric because anti-immigrant hatred is one of the most powerful weapons the rich can wield to stop higher taxes and redistribution.
The far-right groups blame immigrants for failing public services and housing shortages. They present migrants as threats to jobs and economic stability, using them as “strawmen” to explain complex economic disadvantages, and to prevent change from taking the form of wealth redistribution (taxing the rich). The far-right’s solution is not to punish the employer who exploits cheap labour, but to brutalise the workers and the vulnerable.
They weaponise the kernel of truth — that capitalism does use migration as a reserve army of labour to suppress wages and break collective bargaining power and fracture solidarity. The problem isn’t the migrant, it is the billionaires wrecking unions to prevent workers having the power to enforce wage floors.
The billionaires and plutocrats thereby deflect anger away from exploitation wealth inequality, and protect the laws and systems that perpetuate low-taxes and wealth extraction.
It can be tempting to think of the workers and petit bourgeoisie that are attracted to far-right political causes as the “dupes” of the billionaires. Doing so would ignore the material reality of the working class and petit bourgeoisie. In reality, people aren’t tricked. They correctly identify that the neoliberal economic system of exploitation and extraction is broken.
Feelings of disempowerment, shame, and humiliation resulting from perceived unfairness are powerful motivators for radicalisation — but ultimately they are rooted in material economic causes not psychological conditions. The anger is rational. Behind the concerns of lost status and shame is the reality that people cannot imagine a future where their children’s futures are better. Right-wing extremists channel these emotions toward specific groups, institutions, or forces deemed responsible for the individual’s distress.
The far-right also relies on narratives of “relative deprivation” — the belief that you are worse off compared to others or to a ideal (often racialised and gendered) past. This includes a sense of grievance that the “system” is rigged against the individual. These narratives drive engagement with extremism and are turbocharged online through billionaire-owned platforms like Twitter, Instagram and Youtube.
The child of neoliberalism
The centrist imagination comforts itself by thinking fascism is a reaction against capitalism and the impacts of globalisation and inequality. It is not. It is a “frontlash” — a proactive acceleration of the logic of neoliberalism. When the market can no longer be justified by prosperity, it must be enforced through hierarchy.
Far from rejecting neoliberalism, the global far-right combines neoliberal market logic with hard borders and race science to justify inequality as a natural outcome of genetic or cultural differences.
The core thinkers of the far-right movements intertwine the old ideologies and dynamics of neoliberalism with race and hierarchy. Historically there were tight connections between white supremacy and the original inventors of neoliberal ideology. These right-wing theorists realised that democracy was a threat to property rights, which is why they typically support a strong state that enforces hierarchy and contracts, while repressing human freedom and democracy.
Leaders of the far-right parties are not trying to dismantle the systems causing exploitation, inequality, dislocation, precarious jobs or social isolation. This is why these groups are attractive to billionaires and oligarchs: the far-right program will result in no fundamental disruption to the exploitation and expropriation.
Obviously the far-right movements are not necessarily directly puppeteered by billionaires. The far-right and right-wing extremist groups are relatively autonomous. Figures like Thiel and Musk use these groups, but many — exemplified by the likes of Steve Bannon — possess an organic, albeit reactionary, vitality that exceeds simple manipulation.
Political disconnect
The rise of right-wing extremism is also facilitated by a cultural and political disconnect between the ruling class and the wider population.
Billionaires are structurally, economically and socially completely separate now from everyday people. The professional managers of the corporations, governments and other major institutions are also increasingly separate. The oligarchs and the professional managerial class are exposed to and value different cultural norms, pressures and morality.
This makes it very easy for the professional managerial class to ignore the economic realities of the working class while focusing on their own cultural preoccupations, creating a vacuum that right-wing populists fill by claiming to represent a manufactured “left-behind” cohort of deserving white workers and petit-bourgeoisie.
Similarly, the disconnect between the elites and the consequences of their actions allows for the dehumanisation needed to authorise bombings and mass drone assassinations. This is the residue of the War on Terror, a cultural permission structure underpinned by white supremacy and built, in the US especially, by the bipartisan consensus to maintain the American empire.
This dynamic is reinforced by the media — owned by billionaires. Through the normalisation of hate speech, the prioritisation of profit over quality journalism, and the amplification of extremist narratives, the mainstream media and far-right outlets shift the range of policies and ideas acceptable to the public.
Explicitly right-wing, billionaire supported media outlets like Fox, GB News, Sky News and One America News promote the flourishing of far-right extremism. The permissiveness of these media broadcasters channels the anger that benefits their owners into harmless (harmless to the billionaires) and reactionary behaviours.
Mainstream media coverage, even when intended to be critical or negative, can inadvertently aid extremist groups by increasing their visibility and reach. Coverage of far-right extremist groups creates greater awareness of their ideas and motivations. Groups actively harness this attention, a tactic known as “media baiting”, to gain support and grow their membership base.
The conduct of mainstream media has contributed to a decline in public trust. This lack of trust drives people to seek information from alternative sources, such as social media and extremist websites, where they are more susceptible to propaganda, conspiracy theories, and radicalisation.
The deal
The centre and the centre-left, which has been largely co-opted by the socially progressive faction of neoliberal capital (what Piketty called in 2018 the “Brahmin Left”), is unable to provide a compelling alternative. The liberal centre, obsessed with civility and blind to class war, cannot extinguish this fire. The centrists offer the public moral lectures; the far-right offers them a target.
The petit-bourgeoisie (small business owners, franchisees, contractors) historically and now are the primary class base for the far-right. They are squeezed by big capital (Amazon/Woolworths/Commbank), squeezed by labour (unions/minimum wage), and fear their own fall to proleterianisation. The far-right and the economic elites offer a deal to a racialised, gendered cohort of the petit bourgeoisie: “We will let you keep your whiteness/national status if you let us keep the money.” They turn to the far-right to crush labour because they cannot crush big capital.
The ultimate trick of neoliberalism and the far-right is not that it hides the exploitation, but that it misdirects the rage. It hands the impoverished worker and shop-keeper a flag and points at the migrant. The billionaire and the skinhead are not enemies. One supplies the capital, the other supplies the violence.
What ought to be done?
We must stop treating the rise of the far-right as a political weather event– unpredictable and inevitable. It is a calculated engineered product. The “switcheroo” is complete: the billionaire class has successfully sold the working class a narrative that their enemy arrives in a leaky boat, rather than a private jet.
The antidote is not more discourse, but more leverage. We must rebuild the institutions of solidarity — unions, tenant collectives, cooperatives and community networks– that actively decommodify survival. We need to direct the gaze of the precarious worker and shopkeeper upward, toward the penthouse, rather than downward at the immigrant Uber drivers and welfare recipients.
