In the aftermath of WW1 and the depression, liberal democracy, especially in continental Europe, was hanging by a thread.
Whereas the Commonwealth and America were making moderate reforms to liberal democracy with the ascendancy of the Labor Party in the former, Teddy Roosevelt’s square deal and FDR’s new deal in the latter, in 1917 Marxists took over Russia and in 1933 anarchists nearly toppled the Spanish government.
That was the far left, as for the far right, the fascists came to power in Italy in 1922 and the Nazis in Germany in 1933.
I mention all that because I believe we’re about to go through a similar era.
History never repeats but often rhymes.
The Thatcher/Reagan era to 2016 was like our gilded age, where some people got filthy rich while many were left in the dust.
People are losing confidence in liberal democracy again.
Increasingly we’re going to see them turn to reformers and revolutionaries, some left of center and others far left, some right of center and others far right.
Many of these reformers and revolutionaries will have ulterior motives, be controlled by special interests.
One of the things that interests me most this time around is how radicalism appears to be coming to America most of all.
Another is how big business and the upper classes are embracing Marxism when historically they embraced either (crony) capitalism or fascism.
If big business and the upper classes overwhelmingly embrace the far left this time around, will the working classes overwhelming embrace the far right?
Will we see upperclass leftwing fascists (socially far left, fiscally far right) square off against working class rightwing communists (socially far right, fiscally far left)?
That’d be one of history’s great ideological reversals.
Another would be if left, and rightwing radicals took over the Commonwealth and America this time around rather than continental Europe and Russia.