Ramón González Férriz (Barcelona, 1977) is a publisher, journalist and political essayist, among the most interesting on the European scene in recent years. His latest work, “The Dangerous Years” (close to the Argentine market but now available online), spoke with Clarion and explained how the political struggle leads the deepening of cracks and in the reduction of consensus spaces in the political centre.
As the European Union’s main political parties intensify their campaign ahead of June’s elections for the European Parliament – which could mark a turn to the right – González Ferriz analyzes the current moment and the prospects for the near future.
-“The Dangerous Years” tells us that politics becomes radicalized. Can we set a start date for this radicalization?
-If you look at the very long term you might find signs of exhaustion of the political and economic system a little earlier, but it is in the financial crisis of 2008 that many people, with many arguments and with many reasons, believe that the system what we traditionally call neoliberalism has stopped working and that political shiftism doesn’t work because many think that the left and the right are difficult to distinguish because their policies are very similar, there are only nuances of difference, perhaps more moral than economic. What is being questioned, therefore, is not a specific party, but the entire system. The feeling is that the system has failed.
-It’s not the same in Europe and the United States.
-In the United States, the Tea Party emerges, a right-wing interpretation of the crisis, which guarantees that American society is becoming socialist and that the government intervenes immorally in the lives of citizens and the economy.
Ramón González Férriz, author of “The Dangerous Years”. -And in Europe?
In Europe, movements such as the Spanish 15M emerge, which attack corruption and assure that this corruption has led the state to stop protecting citizens. These are the starting points. Then there is a wave of the left in Europe that hits traditional parties like the British Labor Party or the French socialists and brings out new left-wing parties that immediately win elections, like the Greek Syriza. The feeling that many people of my generation have is that this crisis is destroying a life, professional and almost identity project that was taken for granted in Spain and in much of Europe.
The digitalisation of the media
-This political radicalization reduces the spaces for consensus. Is the responsibility exclusively of politics or also of the media?
-I think there are two things. Center-left and center-right parties realize that they have to compete with extremist parties. This radicalizes them. And then in the last decade there is a process of digitalization of the media, the appearance and growth of social networks, which helps this radicalization.
-As?
-The large newspapers are in crisis because the sale of paper copies is decreasing and they advertise less, further reduced by the crisis. Digitalisation partially puts an end to the sale of paper. Then they find the business model of the clickbait e This gives you incentives to radicalize. That is, there are rational incentives for the media to say “we’re going to raise the temperature of our coverage and opinion a little bit, because that generates more visits and ultimately visits are a key part of our business model.” ‘ If, for example, on Saturday evening the television tradition was to broadcast films or competitions or fiction, they transform into debates, they pit four political scientists or journalists, half from the left and half from the right, into an argument, and it’s a good show. The meeting it generates influence in parties, so there are many incentives for the media to seek greater radicalism. Most of the time nothing happens in politics, but we need drama, we need to exaggerate politicians’ latest statements. And the politician also realizes that to appear on television he needs to make scandalous statements. It is therefore a sum of rational incentives for everyone.
The head of the Italian government, Giorgia Meloni. Photo: REUTERS -Geert Wilders wins in Holland, Giorgia Meloni governs in Italy, Javier Milei governs in Argentina, Donald Trump could return, there could be a right-wing majority after the next European elections. But there is nothing left in the radical left.
-I think what those left-wing movements couldn’t imagine was that in the long term the angry response that would triumph would not be that of the left but that of the right, but that’s what happened. The far left has become irrelevant. On the one hand, what part of that radical right wants is to replace the traditional right, to occupy that space, as Meloni does in Italy, saying that it is a normal right, little more right than Christian democracy.
-And what do you get?
-This doesn’t make them any less fearsome. I don’t think we are reaching the 1930s, I don’t think we are moving towards dictatorships or that democracy is really in danger, but I have the feeling that more and more citizens believe that we are living in an exceptional moment of new risks, of risk for the maintenance of European cultural identity, in which they believe that the left has gone too far with ideas such as feminism or gender or energy transition and ecology. On the right, many people think that there is no longer a common culture, a common identity, and this makes countries ungovernable. They believe that everything has been fragmented into identities and that to rebuild them a certain authoritarianism is necessary and I think we are in this, more authoritarianism to order societies that are disintegrating.
“What part of that radical right wants is to replace the traditional right, to occupy that space, as Meloni does in Italy.”
-The European elections can give a majority to the right and the far right. Could this shift continental politics?
I’m skeptical about this right-wing union. I think that especially the German right would have difficulty taking this step, even if it is true that on a local level they are trying to cooperate with the AfD (far right). It is true that the cordon sanitaire is falling everywhere in Europe and raises a legitimate question: can the big parties act as if the others, who have 20% of the votes, did not exist?
-What do you think?
-I don’t have a clear answer, but the cordon sanitaire is disappearing, although I am skeptical that this will happen in the European Parliament. What I believe is that within the traditional European right the idea is spreading that Europe has accepted the progressive package on too many things. I don’t think they’re climate change deniers, for example, but they don’t want to go that fast or they don’t want to cause that much distress to certain social classes.
-I read that you believe that football will end up becoming a right-wing sport.
-With polarization, things that used to be cross-cutting become assigned to one political bloc. Religion was transversal, the level of religiosity of the left and right was not very different and now religion is seen as a right-wing phenomenon. It also happens with diet. Something similar is happening with football. Due to the values it is believed to convey, of virility, competition or aggression, it may be increasingly associated with the right and perhaps women’s football will end up being assigned to the left. Which is terrible because I think these are things that deserve to be transversal. It’s good that there are things that all ideologies share, because otherwise we head towards much more fragmented societies that don’t even have anything to talk about.
Source: Clarin
Mary Ortiz is a seasoned journalist with a passion for world events. As a writer for News Rebeat, she brings a fresh perspective to the latest global happenings and provides in-depth coverage that offers a deeper understanding of the world around us.