Post-2008 austerity discredited center-left parties and radicalized a generation into populism

Evidence

The long-term erosion of these center-left parties thus laid the groundwork for the “populist explosion.” So when and how exactly did it finally detonate? Here, the left’s populist moment possessed more recent roots. Although the 2008 crisis initially took off in the United States, its fallout quickly reached Europe, toppling private banks that had engaged in risky overseas lending and now began to appeal to governments for help. With liquidity bound up in their banking sector, several European countries opted for draconian austerity measures that decimated their public sectors. In the United States, the effects of crisis-fighting pushed a generation into debt dependency and low wages, and yet growth rates did not implode. In Southern Europe and the UK, however, a doom loop between private and public balance sheets drove the economy further downhill and discredited ruling center-left parties. Faced with a shrinking public sector and dwindling job prospects, millennials disillusioned with neoliberalism began to radicalize. Austerity continued unabated, however, as the measures in question were accepted by the political class; both die-hard conservatives and social democrats found themselves toeing the austerian line. — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 25

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘doom loop’ and austerity radicalization parallel the Frankfurt School discussions of social-democratic complicity and base erosion under pro-market conversion. — connects to: The 2008 bank bailouts delegitimized the political centre ground myth — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1475; Post-2008 left populism failed from being either too left-wing or too populist — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment: The Left After the…, 31; Center-left parties’ embrace of austerity fueled the European populist upsurge — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment: The Left After the…, 111 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Center-left parties’ embrace of austerity fueled the European populist upsurge #corroborates (0.95) — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 111
• European austerity’s doom loop discredited center-left parties while US growth held #expands (0.85) — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 25
• Unequal austerity generates populism, nationalism, and violent movement instead of revenue #corroborates (0.82) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 63
• Post-2008 left populism failed from being either too left-wing or too populist #expands (0.80) — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 31
• The 2008 crisis disoriented the left instead of vindicating its economic worldview #complicates (0.75) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 46