Think back to late June and early July. The French far right was favored to win a snap parliamentary election. Trumpist judges in the United States were conveniently resolving the legal woes of the former president, who seemed to be gliding to victory after President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance. And while Britain was getting a Labour government, a new anti-immigration party led by the chief Brexiteer, Nigel Farage, had made unprecedented gains. Faced with it all, pundits warned that a wave of populist, “anti-incumbency” rage was sweeping across the world’s democracies.
The commentariat’s bleak outlook should since have been tempered by new sources of political hope. Not only is there little evidence of a “populist wave” — a metaphor that conjures images of far-right parties inevitably rising to power in many countries — but recent experience suggests workable strategies for countering such forces.
One lesson from the past few months might sound like a truism: All parties that value democracy must unite to face down anti-democratic threats. This is what happened in France, to many pundits’ surprise. Left-wing parties formed the New Popular Front, evoking memories of the fight against fascism in the 1930s, when the socialist leader Leon Blum led a coalition of communists, socialists and liberals to defend the republic.