I think the author intends EU when he writes Europe in this article, not its geographical boundaries, which can indeed lead to confusion. He is speaking of the rise of the far right in developed countries. But as you say, other places in the world do witness the same phenomenon. Recent elections in India also show a rise of conservatism there. And of course, all the islamist movements can also be seen as some form of populism / far right. It looks like a great part of the planet is facing the same issue, not only developed countries. The recent economic crisis can explain some of it. But I think there is more to it. I would be interested in reading some analysis about it.
Gael I have pondered this question on and off since you posed it. I am unfamiliar with the EU situation and cannot read that French article but my thinking went like this: humans seem to have an innate desire to work together for a common purpose, and also to organise into a hierarchy, leaders being "cult of personality" figures. So leaders can co-opt that communal desire to work together, either for good purposes or bad (good and bad being subjective terms of course). I have just come across an article that sets this out succinctly and even implies that it's amenable to simulation:
In episodes of crisis there is space for reorganization and innovation. Although that sounds attractive, there is a flip side to the coin. Uncertainty is high, control is weak and confused, and problems are often too complex to see clearly how they can be controlled. As discussed in Section 12.4, there is a niche for new "sense-making" in such complex situations of crisis, and a charismatic leader may cause the precipitation of confused feelings into a comprehensive new worldview. It is therefore a time when individuals have the greatest chance to influence events, and a time when not only a Gandhi but also a Hitler can shape the future. More generally, the often-heard opinion that "timing is crucial" in good management and politics may be seen as referring to the window of opportunity offered by the reorganization phase in the Hollings model.
This text is from Scheffer, M. (2009) Critical transitions in Nature and Society, Princeton University Press and the Hollings model is described in Gunderson, LH and Hollings, CS (2001) Panarchy: Understanding transformations in Human and Natural Systems, Island Press
So the far-right leaders are taking their opportunity to create a worldview that a disaffected populace can easily latch onto (for example the opinion expressed earlier that "our problems are due to infiltration of Europe and the US...").
How do we get out of this? Two things I think would be great would be 1) to have far more women running our societal systems and making policy, and 2) recognition that we are all citizens of the earth not just our own insular territories and nations - if only we could all have the astronauts view! 1 may be feasible, 2 perhaps not. Research showing that chimpanzees kill members of neighbouring tribes to acquire new territory (Mitani et al. 2010, Current Biology v20: p. 507-508) is sobering, although also from those authors "we are equally closely related to the other species of chimpanzee, the bonobo. The bonobo does not appear to engage in territorial behaviour and lethal coalitionary aggression."
Regarding point 2 I am very much drawn to Carl Sagan's quote about our pale blue dot:
From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
