Workers of the world did not unite: How the far-right hijacked inequality?

Over two decades have passed since my undergraduate years at the Faculty of Economics and Political Science. I vividly recall how the developmental discourse of that era centered on the ambitious Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a consensus forged by UN member states aimed at eradicating poverty, empowering the marginalized, and advancing the cause of economic parity.

That discourse rested upon a foundational premise: that inequality was primarily a byproduct of resource misallocation. It studiously avoided the more visceral questions of power, of who claims the lion’s share of the economic pie and who is left to scavenge for the crumbs.

To a young student in his early twenties, this framework invited little skepticism. At the time, our primary challenge seemed to be integration into the globalized economic and cultural order; the American neoliberal model that had seemingly achieved total hegemony by crushing its Soviet rival.

It would take a decade of lived experience—and the cataclysm of the 2008 financial crisis—to realize that questions of distributive justice and the equitable allocation of income and wealth had been almost entirely marginalized, if not systematically erased, from the neoliberal paradigm. The ultimate paradox, however, is that when our collective consciousness finally reawakened to the chasm of inequality as the core of the crisis, it did not ignite a socialist resurgence. Instead, it fertilized the soil for the rise of a reactionary, far-right current.

On the heels of this year’s International Workers’ Day, the question of the economic drivers behind this “neo-fascist” resurgence is more pressing than ever. This vast working class, which early socialists imagined would become the vanguard of a “Red Revolution” under the weight of exploitation, has instead emerged as the primary constituency for figures like Donald Trump.

The illusions of the late twentieth century

The current global landscape is staggering: approximately 53% of global income and 75% of global wealth are concentrated in the hands of the top 10% of the population. More pointedly, the top 1% alone commands 20% of total income and 37% of global wealth. These figures are the direct consequence of the neoliberal decades that began in the 1980s, an era defined by the dismantling of the post-WWII welfare state and the unchaining of financiers, real estate speculators, and others cut from the same cloth as Trump.

Neoliberalism enjoyed an era of relative immunity from broad critique until the 2008 crisis shattered its perceived invincibility. The collapse exposed the profound fragility of the financialized system it had engineered. For many, globalization was transformed from a promise into a nightmare as they witnessed its destabilizing effects ripple across the global economy.

In the wake of the crisis, as the specter of stagnation loomed, mainstream economists called for a reinvigoration of consumer spending. This demand inadvertently reignited the discourse on inequality: how can a population be exhorted to consume when they occupy the bottom half of the wealth pyramid, struggling to meet their most fundamental needs?

Because 2008 was, at its core, a financial crisis, it also revealed how the neoliberal model manages the inequality it produces: by drowning the middle and lower classes in debt. In the US, borrowing became the solitary path to homeownership for millions. Once financial institutions were deregulated, vast swaths of society were lured into cycles of debt they could never hope to service.

Compounding this economic failure was the erosion of political legitimacy. It became increasingly clear that the hegemony of the ultra-wealthy had translated into a legislative capture of resources. Consequently, faith in the capacity of liberal democracy to enforce mechanisms of oversight and accountability began to wither.

The reawakening and the reactionary turn

Nearly twenty years after the financial crash, the renewed public awareness of inequality is empirically visible. The 2025 Pew Research Center survey, which sampled 36 nations—predominantly high-income states but also including Global South powerhouses like Mexico, Brazil, and India—confirms this shift.

In these representative democracies, a significant majority of citizens now view economic inequality as a “major problem.” In the United States, 83% of respondents held this view (with 51% identifying it as a crisis of the highest order).

Figures were similarly stark in Canada (86%), France (86%), Germany (92%), and the United Kingdom (85%). The sentiment was no less pervasive in the Global South: India (81%), Mexico (83%), and Brazil (82%).

This marked a belated liberation from the illusions of the 1980s and 90s. Yet, a new illusion took hold: the belief that this recognition of inequality would naturally drive the masses toward the Left. Instead, recent decades have demonstrated a popular drift toward the Left’s absolute antithesis: the far right. While some progressive representatives have secured localized victories, the primary beneficiary of the neoliberal collapse has been the fascist Right.

The logic of neo-fascism

In place of the socialist uprisings we anticipated, we have witnessed the strategic rise of fascists amid the dual crises of economics and democracy at the capitalist core. They have advanced a discourse that is aggressively authoritarian and xenophobic—targeting immigrants, women, minorities, and environmental protections.

The triumph of this movement was catalyzed by the presidency of Donald Trump and the fundamental transformation of the Republican Party. We saw it in the populist shift within the British Conservative Party that culminated in Brexit.

It manifested in the New Right’s ascent to power in Hungary, Austria, and Italy, and its substantial gains in the Netherlands and Germany. Most recently, this religiously conservative, populist Right has claimed victory in the Global South’s most vital democracies: India, Brazil, and Argentina.

How do we explain the convergence of heightened inequality awareness with the gains of the New Right? While the ideological and organizational atrophy of the Left plays a role, the primary cause lies in the Right’s own narrative framing. These extremist movements do not characterize rising inequality as the plunder of resources by a wealthy minority. Instead, they pivot to racial, religious, and gendered scapegoating—arguing, for instance, that Central American migrants are the root cause of American unemployment.

The fascist Right succeeded in convincing the victims of neoliberalism that these identitarian explanations—whether ethnic, gendered, or religious—were the only logical answer to their suffering. This “bait” was cast in the desperate years following the financial crisis, catching these vulnerable sectors at their most precarious moment, winning their votes, and ascending to power on their backs.

Having seized control, they turned their sights on the very globalization that a fractured neoliberalism left behind. They launched an assault on free trade and investment, operating on the premise that “outsiders” from China, India, and Southeast Asia were the architects of the average citizen’s misery. This gave rise to Trump’s trade wars and his hostility toward the very institutions that facilitated neoliberal expansion, such as the World Trade Organization.

The logic of the fascist Right may be repugnant and shortsighted, but it has proven sufficient for mobilizing the masses. It mirrors the era between the two World Wars, where the crisis of classical liberalism gave rise to Hitler and Mussolini amidst the Great Depression. Today, the crisis of neoliberalism has birthed its own iteration: neo-fascism.

History records that we once escaped the nightmare of fascism—albeit at a staggering human and economic cost—when an alliance of liberal democracy and communism defeated Nazism. Can the world navigate its current geopolitical and environmental crises while its collective imagination remains captive to the New Right?

I am reminded of a biting remark by the late satirist Galal Amer. When asked, “Where is this country taking us?” he replied, “Shouldn’t you have asked before you got on board?”