Mondon, A. (2025) ‘Really existing liberalism, the bulwark fantasy, and the enabling of reactionary, far right politics’, Constellations, 32(1): 47-58.

Abstract:

While Francis Fukuyama’s concept of the end of history has been thoroughly rejected in most serious analysis, it somehow continues to grip much of our political imaginary. It is through that lens that the election of Donald Trump, the Brexit victory in the UK’s referendum on the EU and the rise of the far right and its accession to power in many countries has been (mis)understood in much mainstream analysis. Therefore, despite countless lamenting headlines and articles about the rise of ‘populism’ and ‘illiberalism’, there has been very little reflection in the mainstream elite discourse on the wider implications of the failure of the liberal hegemony. In this context, this paper aims to explore the fantasy which has uncritically posited liberalism as a natural bulwark against reaction and has led to the current panic over ‘illiberalism’ and ‘populism’. What I argue instead is that this fantasy has led western democracies to a situation where fully-fledged reaction is at the gates of power, and yet, where there is still no appetite in mainstream circles to face the possibility that really existing liberalism has been an enabler rather than a bulwark. My key contention here therefore is to tease out whether what we are seeing is the rise of ‘illiberalism’ or ‘populism’ against liberalism, or whether liberalism always held reactionary tendencies in its core and can therefore act as an enabler.