Ideology Is Not Enough
The runaway conservative may not be a representative figure. Bolsonaro Jr of Brazil’s cross-border adventure to reach Miami after an election defeat tells a story: ideological extremism alone is not enough to win the people. Lula, the imperishable patriarch of the Latin American Left, prevailed because he possessed something more than Marx: a charisma undiminished by the excess of power. Elsewhere, the right has already become comfortable with power—and made the race for power the most natural expression of the alternative. Still, their struggle is more visible than ever, and it is about identity and adaptation.
It is being played out most dramatically in France, where a violent protest has brought together the anxieties of students and the demographic explosiveness of the Republic with borders that the immigrants find most benign. And as a columnist observed in the Wall Street Journal, the glass windows of Louis Vuitton are more resistant than the state to the street fury, which has assumed a distinctive Islamic flavour lately.
On the Gallic wreckage stand two figures, one shaky and the other steady, a comparative study of redundancy and renewal. Macron once loomed over Europe as the continent’s renaissance redeemer. The intellectual élan of the middle-path president was a relief from the staid establishment figures. The modernity of Europe’s most refined centrist was built on inflexible secularism, which makes the separation of Church and State inviolable. The demographic mix of Christians, Muslims and Jews is such that God can no longer resist the temptations of the street. Macron was too engrossed in a concert to see that. The last sophisticate of European liberalism is inching towards an inglorious exit.
Set against the centrist is the right’s patient torchbearer, who has been waiting for so long. Along the way Marine Le Pen of the National Rally has shed the inheritance of rightwing extremism. It is not just the desperation for wider acceptance while keeping Nation First republicanism that has made her a natural contender for the Élysée Palace. As the streets exploded, she was not there as the flamethrower, a role played by her leftwing counterpart. She has realised that adaptability is more virtuous than orthodoxy in any serious bid for power.
Which applies to staying in power too. Across the Atlantic, the profligate presidency of Trump may ignore the disgust of liberals and the displeasure of Republican Brahmins. And he may have normalised the immoralities of a narcissistic presidency. Still, it is his refusal to be a slave to ideology that has consolidated his base, and the verdict of the midterms won’t take away the importance—or the ignominy—of being the man who shook America. He has replaced lofty Reaganism with instinctive conservatism, all the while making national interest and personal interest easily interchangeable. It may not have worked for liberal sentiments at home and abroad.
It has worked for him so far.
Enduring power without the erosion of mandate requires a creative adherence to ideology, and that is what eludes the doctrinaire ruler. The forever arbiters of national destiny, be it Xi or Putin, owe their power to fear. Ideology is an instrument for maximising it. Whether it is from the left or right, Lula or Meloni, the most saleable of them matches ideological elasticity with charisma. And elasticity doesn’t mean opportunism. It allows them to be inclusive—and not to be swayed by one big slogan at the cost of many voices from below.
It takes us naturally to the most enduring of them all in a democracy, and still untouched by a single allegation of personal gain through power, a distinction few can claim today. Prime Minister Modi mostly appears in Western media as a Hindu nationalist, which is not wrong, but it is used as a term of cultural and administrative exclusivism, as if governance in India is subordinated to his cultural identity. Modi doesn’t govern India solely as a doctrinaire Hindu nationalist, whose Hinduism is as ideologically codified as communism. He is not your textbook rightwinger either. It is said that, irrespective of your campaign plank, you govern from the centre. Moral pragmatism, social empathy, and the conviction of a moderniser that define Modi’s power don’t turn his ideological inheritance into a burden. Creative politicians update ideology without compromising on cultural beliefs—and Modi shows how.
History punishes the excessiveness of ideology. Those who wield it with a creative purpose win history too.