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The coming economic crash and the far right

I’ve been plagued by a thought for the last few days: the current level of mobilisation of the far-right is taking place at a point where the economy is still growing, albeit sclerotically. As I wrote about here, the zero-sum politics of stagnant growth creates conditions in which the far-right thrive: inflation and growing wealth inequality, in the absence of productivity growth, create an elite incentive to scapegoat an out group in order to manage the social consequences. The centrist approach to capitalism, in which growth is used to manage harms through redistribution around the edges, becomes untenable under these conditions. The economic foundation of Blairism doesn’t exist anymore and TBI’s enthusiasm for AI is, inter alia, an attempt reignite the conditions that social model was predicated on.

So what happens when the bubble bursts? What happens if we see a crash on the scale of 07/08? What happens if we see another great recession or worse? The fault line driving the mobilisation of the far-right rapidly grows in salience, while the incentive structure facing elites becomes even more pressing: if there’s no other way to stop the majority of the population turning on you then why not embrace fascism? In this sense I think we need to build not just for where we are now, but where we will be in 12-18 months when the fissure which capitalism has spent the last 15-20 years papering over explodes open fully for the first time. I did a four quadrants scenario exercise with GPT 5 and I’m rather depressed:

Authoritarian neoliberalism (soft-hard continuum).
Emergency budgets, debt-hawkery, protest restrictions, punitive welfare, securitised borders, AI used for compliance/surveillance. Far right sets the agenda even if centrists govern.

Open embrace of revanchist politics.
Coalition of segments of capital + nationalist right: protection for “insiders,” organised cruelty for “outsiders.” Uses crisis to normalise exception (media control, judiciary pressure). This is the “why not embrace fascism?” branch.

Emergency Keynesianism/Green productivism.
State backstops finance and invests (grid, housing, care, decarbonisation), pairs industrial policy with labour standards. Requires breaking with 2010s austerity reflexes and re-empowering public capacity.

Fragmentation and drift.
Rolling mini-crises, policy whiplash, weak governments. Civil society fatigue; intermittent street surges. This can be a corridor to either (1) or (2).

I think we’re already seeing the start of an oscillation between (1) and (2). The familiar lib/lab dynamics of post-war Europe could be become far bleaker under these conditions.

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