The Authoritarian Turn and the Challenge for Egalitarian Politics: The case of the New Democracy government in Greece since 2019

This presentation charts the trajectory of the ‘authoritarian turn’ in contemporary politics across the world and highlights its main causes, exploring Greece and the New Democracy government (2019-) as a case study. In the aftermath of the financial crises from 2008 onwards and the austerity policies through which they were addressed by ruling elites, neoliberal leaders converged with the authoritarian spirit of the xenophobic, nationalist and antiliberal far-right. In different ways and following diverse trajectories, Viktor Orban, Donald Trump and the Greek PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis embody this coalescence and the endeavour to achieve social consent by catering to the ethics and the logics of the most reactionary political currents. The outcome of this confluence is a sinister mix of policies through which political personnel serves the interests of big capital while subverting standard liberal institutions by interfering with justice, installing high-tech surveillance mechanisms and intercepting communications, exerting extensive control over mass media etc., eroding the rights of women and minorities, diffusing nationalist discourses and waging war on migrants (see Katsambekis 2019 on Greece). Assaults on LGBTQIA+, Muslims, migrants, feminists, human right activists -the ‘enemies’ of the fatherland, religion, race and nation- give vent to social disaffection and socio-economic antagonisms, displacing them from hegemonic forces towards scapegoats. State authoritarianism which corrodes core elements of liberal democratic constitutionalism is mainstreamed and normalized, curbing or deactivating citizens’ reflexes and political responses Xenophobic right-wing parties and ‘right-wing populism’ -the fastest advancing form of politics today (Crouch 2020) has spread from Brazil and the US to India, Russia, Italy, France, the UK, the Balkans and Turkey, while it widely popular in Scandinavia and Germany. In this form of politics, the sense of insecurity and discontent with cultural transformation is coupled with material deprivation or precarity or a fear of losing privileges, propelling social actors to seek protection from the state and state intervention. This complex quest for cultural and economic security is the most liable to be attracted to authoritarian policies promising to satisfy it. Since the center left and the left have given up on their politics of redistribution and social justice, or they are unable to implement it under neoliberal hegemony, the more conservative sectors shift towards political spaces which express the twin disposition of social conservatism and economic protectionism. If the global diffusion of regressive authoritarianism signals the ‘triumph of fear over hope’ (Norris & Inglehart 2019), the historical challenge for democrats is a new construction that enlivens hope by bringing on progressive transformations.