What if we are wrong about reasons for rise in far-right support?

The National

a day ago

A year into government, it faces criticism for its economic decisions. The promise of change has quickly curdled into disappointment.
And yet Labour won – beating both the SNP and Reform UK, which came in third with more than a quarter of the vote.
It was a bruising night for the SNP. On Sunday, First Minister John Swinney appeared on television to defend his campaign strategy. He had framed the by-election as a two-horse race between the SNP and Reform – the implication being that a vote for anyone else was a wasted vote that might let the far right in.
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That message didn't land. Swinney fell back on a now-familiar script: Reform voters are angry. They're frustrated. They feel ignored. But what if that's the wrong diagnosis? What if the real problem is not anger, but resentment – a quieter, more insidious emotion? And what if the people voting for the far right know exactly what they're doing?
What if they are not reacting blindly but actively choosing a vision of society that speaks to them more clearly than anything being offered by the political mainstream?
This uncomfortable argument is at the core of Michel Feher's work. In his book Producteurs et Parasites (Producers and Parasites), he explores why far-right movements are gaining traction and why their vision is compelling to voters.
His central thesis is simple, yet difficult to swallow – the far-right vote isn't just about anger, it's about moral vision. Voters aren't simply rebelling against the status quo; they are choosing a worldview that resonates with their sense of who belongs and who deserves to be part of society.
Far from portraying far-right voters as dupes or nihilists, Feher asks us to take their world-view seriously. He suggests that parties like France's Rassemblement National and, by extension, Reform UK, are not winning votes in spite of their ideology, but because of it.
What they offer is not anger, but moral reassurance. Not a protest vote, but a deeply satisfying imaginary in which voters see themselves as the true contributors, the real backbone of the nation.
Feher's concept for understanding this logic is 'producerism'. It divides society into two archetypes – producers and parasites. But unlike Marxist class analysis, this is not an economic structure of labour versus capital. It's a moral division.
The producer is imagined as someone who works hard, plays by the rules, doesn't ask for much, and just wants to enjoy the legitimate fruits of their labour. The parasite is the person who benefits without contributing – the scrounger, the speculator, the bureaucrat, the outsider.
This is not a vision of oppression – it's a vision of theft. And the emotional tone is not indignation at injustice, but resentment; not 'how can we fix this?', but 'why do they get more than they deserve?'.
Feher highlights a second layer. Producerist imaginaries don't see a single enemy but two. Parasites come in two flavours: those from above – speculators, financiers, 'globalists,' intellectual elites; those who profit from circulation rather than production. And the parasites from below – the 'welfare class,' immigrants, bureaucrats; those who live off redistribution, taking more than they give.
This brings Feher to a striking distinction – producerism is not quite populism. Populism traditionally casts the 'people' at the bottom of a pyramid, rising up against a corrupt elite. Producerism instead imagines society as a bell curve: a decent, hard-working middle ground, flanked by parasitic extremes. In this worldview, the political mission is not to empower the bottom, but to purify the middle, to restore a world in which only those who contribute are allowed to remain.
That's why it sounds so moderate to those who believe in it. It's not radical or extremist in tone, it's moral, tidy, 'common sense.' And this is what makes it so dangerous. Once structural injustice is replaced by moral blame, the solution is no longer reform — it's expulsion.
Feher is writing about the Rassemblement National in France, but his framework travels well. In Britain, Reform UK has little of the traditional anti-financial elite tone that Marine Le Pen's party has adopted in the past decade.
(Image: Stephanie Lecocq, REUTERS)
Reform's leadership – Nigel Farage, Richard Tice, Zia Yusuf – are millionaires. The party doesn't rail against financiers or landlords. Quite the opposite: it champions them. But that doesn't mean it's not producerist. It simply defines 'producers' differently.
In this imaginary, the ideal citizen is not necessarily working class, they are self-reliant. A homeowner, a small investor, a taxpayer. Someone who doesn't take handouts. Someone who resents the idea their contributions are being diverted to the undeserving. In that world, a millionaire investor doesn't contradict the narrative. He embodies it.
One of Feher's most sobering insights is historical. Producerism was not always a right-wing idea. It was born in the revolutions of the 17th and 18th centuries – in the cry of the French Third Estate against a parasitic nobility living off land and bloodlines.
In its early form, producerism was a left-wing demand for justice. Those who worked deserved dignity; those who inherited wealth deserved scrutiny. But over the 19th century, especially as Marxist class analysis took hold on the left, producerism drifted rightward. Thinkers like Proudhon began to attack not just rentiers and tax collectors, but Jews and foreigners — the scapegoats of modern nationalism. The figure of the 'good producer' became nationalised and moralised.
What had begun as a critique of structural privilege became a fantasy of national purification, a return to a society made up only of hard-working, self-sufficient 'real' people.
That legacy still shapes the far right today. When Le Pen talks about giving money 'back to the French,' or when Reform UK say they want to 'take back control' and reward British workers, they are drawing on this same moral economy.
The appeal of producerism is not just that it names a culprit, it reassures the voter that they are on the right side of the ledger. That they give more than they take. That they are good. But, as Feher warns, that clarity comes at a cost. It replaces the politics of solidarity with the politics of resentment. It prepares the ground for policies that punish the weak, not the powerful.
To confront this, the left needs more than economic fixes or anti-fascist slogans. It needs a competing moral vision – one that celebrates interdependence, that revalues care, that speaks to people's desire for dignity without turning it into a demand for exclusion.
In the final pages of Producteurs et Parasites, Feher argues that the 2024 French legislative elections – triggered by Emmanuel Macron in a gamble to stop the far right – shattered a comforting illusion, the idea that Rassemblement National voters were merely 'angry,' not truly adherent. What the results revealed, Feher writes, is that this was no protest vote, it was one of conviction.
Jordan Bardella, RN's rising leader, had bent over backwards to reassure the markets before the second round. He pledged not to repeal the pension reform, not to cut VAT on basic goods and to postpone a new wealth tax.
None of this cost him votes. On the contrary, Feher notes, commentators across the spectrum were forced to admit the obvious: this was a vote of adhesion – proud, informed, desired.
Faced with this reality, Feher argues, the only response is a counter-force of equal moral intensity. And here, surprisingly, the left responded, not because of polls or media tactics but because it remembered antifascism is its foundation.
Facing an existential threat, the left united around core values, a shared way of life, and an unwavering commitment to its principles. Its campaign, built on a clear platform of rebuilding public services, strengthening common security, championing rights, and rejecting discrimination, surpassed all expectations.
Their success wasn't about tactics; it was about remembering their fundamental purpose. Maybe there's a valuable lesson to learn there.