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“The radical right has
appealed to all those
who feel threatened
by the more rapid
movement of capital and
people across borders.”
dirty technologies. By providing jobs
in countries currently experiencing
economic crisis throughout the Global
South, these GNDs would also reduce
the massive displacement of people
who would otherwise be forced to
migrate to find new opportunities—or
more habitable land—abroad.
The current global economic
system is clearly broken, which has
opened the way for a global far-right
reaction. By contrast, the Green New
Deal offers a set of principles of
sustainability that can help restruc-
ture the global economy so that it
helps people and the planet—while
undermining the far right’s appeal.
The radical right has won elec-
tions by ramping up fear: of others,
of the future, of do-nothing govern-
ment. It’s time to turn that around
and revive a politics of hope.
The 80 people I talked to pointed
to the student climate strikes as the
most promising movement at the
moment. But as those students under-
stand better than their elders, there’s
no politics without a planet. A Global
Green New Deal is perhaps our last
best hope to save that planet.
Ơ John Feffer directs the Foreign Policy
In Focus project at the Institute for Pol-
icy Studies in Washington D.C. He’s the
author of the new IPS study, THE BATTLE
FOR ANOTHER WORLD: THE PROGRES-
SIVE RESPONSE TO THE NEW RIGHT.