Ashley Church: Is the west really moving to the far right?

Why are voters really abandoning traditional political parties?

Election results, last week, confirmed a trend that seems to be moving across the western world: the rise of the far right.

Reform UK surged through councils across England, gaining 1,349 council seats, taking control of 14 councils, and winning mayoralties – establishing itself as a major political force and claiming territory once dominated by Labour and the Conservatives.

In Australia, we saw Pauline Hanson’s historic win with her One Nation party securing its first lower-house seat in a byelection.

These results follow similar moves to the right in other nations. Italy, France, Germany, Hungary and Argentina have all fallen under the control of far-right parties – with opinion polls in other countries showing the same trends emerging elsewhere.

The pattern is clear. Voters are increasingly rejecting the political direction their countries have taken over the last decade in favour of ideas and policies that media organisations are describing as ‘alarming’ and ‘extremist’.

But are they really?

Once you move past the media framing and the labels to actually examine the policies of these parties something interesting emerges: we find that their positions are not extreme at all:

• Equal rights under the law
• Controlled immigration.
• Strong borders.
• National sovereignty.
• National pride.
• Biological reality.
• Law and order.
• Individual merit over identity politics.
• Freedom of speech.
• Parental rights.
• Fiscal discipline.

These aren’t “far right” positions. There is no appeal to racial superiority, waving of swastikas, rejection of democracy, or calls for authoritarian rule. In fact, most of these values would have been regarded as entirely mainstream across countries like New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the UK for most of the last century.

But if these values aren’t “far right” – why are they characterised that way?

There are two reasons. The first is related to major changes which have taken place on the left.

Over the past 30 years the modern parties of the left have shifted their focus away from advocating for ‘equal rights’ for workers, women and ethnic minorities toward policies which favour selected groups over others, elevate identity above merit, weaken long-standing cultural norms, undermine traditional faith and family structures, and redefine equality away from equal treatment and toward unequal outcomes.

Promoted under the general banner of “progressivism” this mix of policies operates from the assumption that Western societies are fundamentally oppressive, unequal and structurally unjust, and therefore require constant correction, re-engineering and supervision.

But rather than improving societies, ‘progressive’ policies have been deeply destructive. Instead of uniting societies around shared values, they have divided them into categories of grievance, identity and historical guilt. Instead of strengthening social cohesion, they have fragmented them. Instead of treating people equally, progressivism increasingly asks governments, institutions and corporations to treat people differently depending on which group they belong to.

And millions of ordinary voters have had enough. Increasingly, they’re looking for parties that will return us to the kinds of policies which build strong societies and offer widespread opportunity.

Which raises another obvious question: If so many people are rejecting progressive politics, why are they not simply returning to the traditional parties of the right?

Because, in many countries, those parties have also moved leftward.

Over time, many traditional conservative parties have gradually absorbed large parts of the progressive agenda themselves and are now reluctant to defend national identity, are hesitant about border control, cautious about free speech, uncomfortable defending traditional cultural values, and increasingly willing to accommodate the same ideological assumptions being pushed by the left.

This has created a political vacuum which has been filled by new political movements- not because millions of voters have suddenly developed an appetite for extremism but because they are looking for a political home for values that mainstream centre-right parties have abandoned.

The same pattern is visible here in New Zealand. The frustration many kiwis feel toward the National Party is not primarily about economic management – it is due to a sad acceptance that National has acquiesced to the same progressive framework as conservative movements in other parts of the world.

This has pushed voters who were once completely loyal to National into the arms of New Zealand First, which more clearly speaks to concerns about sovereignty, cultural identity, free speech, social cohesion and resistance to ideological overreach.

So this isn’t a drift to the right – it is a return to the centre.

Which brings me to the second reason that it is characterised as a move to the “far right”. A huge imbalance in media perspective.

This isn’t just idle opinion. Recent research in New Zealand paints an extraordinary picture of an ideological bias within journalism. One survey showed that 81% of NZ journalists self-identify themselves as being on the left, with 20% of those describing themselves as ‘hard’ left. Just 15% identified themselves as centre right.

This matters because people interpret politics relative to where they themselves stand – so if most journalists sit on the “progressive” left, then traditional centre-right positions no longer appear normal from inside those institutions. They begin to appear extreme.

And that inevitably shapes coverage.

This imbalance has also been showing up in public trust levels over the past 5 years.

The AUT JMAD Trust in News report shows that those who most mistrust RNZ, TVNZ, Stuff, Newsroom, The Spinoff and ThreeNews sit clearly on the right of the political spectrum. It also found that those most trusting the news tend to vote for parties of the left, while those least trusting the news tend to vote for parties of the right.

That distrust did not happen in a vacuum. It happened because many ordinary people increasingly feel that they are being talked down to by institutions that no longer understand them.

They are tired of being told that longstanding cultural norms are dangerous and that patriotism is suspicious.

They’re tired of activist politics being presented as neutral journalism and of media organisations insisting one thing is true while ordinary people can plainly see something different unfolding around them.

They’re tired of identity politics that divides society into competing victim groups and of being told that merit should come second to ideology.

And they’re tired of being told that. if they object to any of this, they themselves are the problem.

So voters aren’t rushing toward extremism. They are returning to traditional norms.

But what does this mean for New Zealand? We can already see it playing out in the relative share of support amongst the three parties of the Governing coalition. Support for National is declining as voters become disillusioned with its headlong endorsement of a progressive agenda that they did not vote for. NZ First is on the rise as voters look past Winston Peters flaws and past mistakes because he is saying what most kiwis want to hear.

How this plays out in November, only time will tell – but if Peters achieves a large enough share of the vote, National will have little option but to hasten the restoration of values back toward traditional norms.

If that happens, the media class will almost certainly describe it the same way they have described similar movements overseas.

Dangerous.

Extreme.

Far right.

But the reality is much simpler.

What we are witnessing is not the rise of extremism – it is the return of traditional centre-right values after years of ideological experimentation that has failed.

So the next time you see, or hear, the media use the term ‘far right’ – you can understand what it actually means. They’re referring to you, me, and the traditional values that made our societies great….

Ashley Church is former CEO of the Property Institute of New Zealand and is an active social commentator. This article was sourced HERE