Rita Panahi: Why new breed of Right-wing leaders are winning popularity
The new breed of Right-wing leaders are conviction politicians who unashamedly pursue an agenda that sees them maligned by the establishment, but despite the doom-saying they are enormously effective and popular.
Opinion
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The rise of the Right, from Europe to South America, is seeing a new breed of leader emerge.
These men and women are an antidote to the lily-livered, performative socialist types the media has long adored, including the likes of Justin Trudeau and Jacinda Ardern.
This week we saw Argentina’s Javier Milei who media outlets have described as “far-Right, ultra-conservative and the Argentinian Trump”, and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele variously described as “far-Right and authoritarian” give firebrand speeches at the 79th United Nations general assembly.
Also in New York, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, who the media labelled a “fascist, extremist and far-Right” received the prestigious Global Citizen’s award from the Atlantic Council. Far from being the destructive forces we were warned they’d be, all three have thus far achieved enormous success in their respective countries, and in relatively short periods of time.
Meloni’s zero tolerance approach to people smuggling has seen a 64 per cent drop in the country’s illegal immigration numbers. She’s been so successful that Britain’s hard Left Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer met her earlier this month to learn how she has managed to tackle illegal immigration.
Meloni has not only been highly effective, she is also consistently one of the most popular leaders in Europe.
Milei came to power promising to reform Argentina, which went from a nation with an enviable living standard to one that was plunged into poverty and economic chaos by Socialist/Peronist rule.
His radical reforms are already bearing fruit but rather than boasting about his record, he used his UN address to slam the organisation for going from one that “pursued peace to an organisation that imposes an ideological agenda on its members.”
Referring to the UN’s support of Covid-era lockdowns he labelled the organisation as “one of the main proponents of systemic violations of freedom”.
In his first address before the UN General Assembly he also slammed the organisation for allowing despot nations to sit on its human rights council and lecture democracies in particular Israel.
“I’d like to issue a warning here we are coming to the end of a cycle: Collectivism and moral posturing and the woke agenda is coming up against reality,” he said.
El Salvador’s wildly popular president, who was re-elected earlier this year with more than 80 per cent of the vote, also addressed the UN with some pointed remarks for the Biden administration about regimes that prosecute and seek to imprison their political opponents.
President Bukele who has copped heavy criticism from the Western media for his hard line approach to crime reduction was unapologetic about the policies that have seen a dramatic drop in the country’s homicide rate.
The new breed of Right-wing leaders are conviction politicians who unashamedly pursue an agenda that sees them maligned by the establishment including the bulk of the mainstream media.
And yet despite the hysteria and doom-saying, they have proved to be enormously effective and popular.
Rita Panahi is a Herald Sun columnist
Originally published as Rita Panahi: Why new breed of Right-wing leaders are winning popularity
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