The progressive movement is slowing down worldwide, if not stopping. On Saturday, Ed Morrissey at Hot Air quoted a Wall Street Journal article on the subject of the decline of the progressive movement.
The article reports:
This past year showed that the progressive politics that dominated most industrialized countries over the past two decades or more is shifting to the right, fueled by working-class anxieties over the economy and immigration, and growing fatigue with issues from climate change to identity politics. …
Part of the shift is the normal pendulum of politics swinging back and forth between established parties on the left and right. The difference this time is a strong strain of populism and a growing rejection of traditional parties.
In country after country, many working-class voters—especially those outside the biggest cities—are signaling the same thing: They mistrust the establishment—from academics to bankers to traditional politicians—and feel these elites are out of touch and don’t care about people like them.
Years of increased migration and trade, coupled with low economic growth, have led to a backlash and a rise in nationalism, where people want more of a sense of control, political analysts say. The rise of social media has exacerbated divisions and led to an upsurge in antiestablishment parties.
The monopoly that the political left has had on the media ended on the radio when The Rush Limbaugh show went national and on the internet when Elon Musk bought Twitter. There is still some censorship on Twitter, but it is nothing compared to what it was before Elon Musk bought it.
The article at Hot Air reminds us:
Economics are part of this too, but are more of a symptom than a root cause. Western economics has suffered from climate-change hysteria pushed by the progressive Left as a means to seize control of energy production. Where that has succeeded, in Germany and the UK to some extent, it has produced economic hardship and promises more of the same for the future. Germany in particular has a crisis on its hands which will shrink its income and wealth unless it takes rapid steps to return to reliable and scalable energy production. The US went in this direction to a lesser extent in the Obama and Biden years too, but they didn’t have enough buy-in to do the kind of extensive damage that the radicals did in Germany.
Add in the lies about the pandemic, transgenderism, forced multiculturalism through open borders, and wokery in general. Those are the first causes of the rejection of the progressive “moment” and of the neo-Marxists who seized power through it. When it began to damage economies enough for voters to notice, not to mention all of the other quality-of-life indicators that matter to the electorate, then the rejection was not just predictable but long overdue.
People around the world welcome a change to work and become economically successful. The progressive movement historically has transferred wealth to a favored few.