Western Hubris and Neoliberal Triumphalism, Not Immigration or Liberalism, Caused the West's Decline
Source: Owen Jones. "Owen Jones: Western Hubris Created Today’s Crisis." September 30, 2026. jacobin.com
The Gist
Owen Jones argues that the West's current political turmoil—including the rise of the far right—wasn't caused by immigration or too much liberalism, but by decades of arrogant, greed-driven decisions made by Western elites after they thought they'd 'won' the Cold War. These decisions—deindustrializing economies, launching costly wars, and then imposing austerity to protect the system—created scarcity and anger that the far right redirected toward migrants and minorities instead of the elites actually responsible.
Conclusion
The decline of Western democracies and the rise of the far right are not caused by immigration or liberal culture, but are self-inflicted consequences of post–Cold War neoliberal and military triumphalism.
Premises
- After the end of the Cold War, Western elites embraced 'end of history' triumphalism, believing there was no alternative to their economic and geopolitical model.
- This triumphalism produced an increasingly financialized economy based on extraction (share buybacks, dividends) rather than productive investment, leading to deindustrialization and stagnating wages even before the 2008 crash.
- The same triumphalist logic fueled military adventurism (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya), which was costly and destabilizing, diverting resources from domestic economies and creating refugee flows and instability.
- To defend and restore the neoliberal system after the 2008 crash, elites imposed austerity, attacking living standards, public services, and social rights, which entrenched a sense of zero-sum competition for scarce resources among ordinary people.
- The far right has exploited this sense of scarcity and instability by scapegoating migrants, refugees, and stigmatized minorities (especially Muslims, racialized through the War on Terror) rather than the elite decisions that caused the crisis.
- In Russia, post-Soviet 'shock therapy'—another expression of Western triumphalism—allowed the Soviet bureaucratic caste to convert state privileges into private property, creating an oligarchy whose consolidation of power set the stage for later authoritarianism and conflict with the West.
- Political developments such as Muslim voter disaffection, the rise of the Green Party, and the Labour Party's leadership shifts (from Starmer to Burnham) are downstream effects of this same austerity-driven, elite-managed system, rather than being explained by cultural liberalism or immigration.
Assumptions
- Economic structures (financialization, austerity) are more fundamental causal drivers of political phenomena (like far-right rise) than cultural or identity-based explanations.
- Elite decisions in the 1990s and 2000s were driven primarily by ideological triumphalism rather than other competing factors (e.g., structural economic pressures, technological change, genuine security concerns).
- There existed a viable economic and political alternative to the neoliberal path that was foreclosed by triumphalist ideology.
- The far right's scapegoating of migrants and minorities is best understood as a symptom or displacement of economic anxiety rather than having independent ideological or cultural roots.
- Historical analogy between Trotsky's analysis of Soviet bureaucracy and the post-1991 Russian oligarchy is analytically valid and applicable to the current situation.
- Centrist/soft-left political shifts (e.g., Burnham's premiership) are cosmetic rather than substantive, and will inevitably reveal the same underlying contradictions as their predecessors.