What decides political adhesions? How much do rational arguments, ideas, and how much the affective or passionate dimension weigh in these identifications? The social, economic and climate crisis that was exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic caused many people to be exposed to great vulnerability and feel a great need for security and protection, as well as much indignation against injustices that the State fails to mitigate. In this context, it is the new right-wingers who have been able to hear the anger, disappointment and resentment of vast social sectors and channel it politically, while the left seems to insist on spent strategies.
In this powerful and inspiring essay, Chantal Mouffe challenges progressive forces so that, above all, they can recognize that both programs and the ability to awaken common emotions matter in politics. The left invests a lot of energy in enunciating slogans and listing the wonderful measures it will implement once it accesses power, ignoring that what drives people to get involved are not abstract theories, in which they cannot recognize their everyday problems and frustrations. Instead, what you should ask yourself is how to lead people to want those policies, to identify with them and to feel part of it.
The challenge also is to get out of the complacency of questioning only their own, the convinced, assuming that the voters of the right-wing parties are taken over by hatred, homophobia, racism, or that they have a kind of “moral” disease that makes them irrecoverable. The challenge, in short, is to try to understand why people are attracted to authoritarian approaches.
How can we redefine the democratic project so that it will remobilize majorities for social justice and the decision to preserve a habitable planet? Against the neoliberal offensive, Chantal Mouffe proposes to build a new narrative, a myth that, echoing the most urgent tasks, traces the way to move from anger to hope and, from there, articulate socio-political and ecological struggles in a progressive direction.