How the Right radicalised its own voters

Mainstream conservative parties helped create the conditions for the Far-Right's rise by normalising divisive politics on gender, race and climate change, writes Dr Victoria Fielding.

There is not one thing that has driven the rise of the Far-Right in many democracies around the world, including the U.S., UK and Australia.

Yet, one important cause that gets very little attention is how major right-wing parties themselves radicalised their base and drove them towards the Far-Right.

This radicalisation was caused by right-wing politicians’ refusal for over a generation to do the right thing and be bipartisan with left-wing politics in solving social and environmental challenges. On the issues of gender, cultural and religious equality, and climate change action, the right has always refused to work productively with the left to solve these global problems.

Worse still, instead of being bipartisan, right-wing major parties weaponised these issues against the Left, characterising them as “left-wing woke ideology”. Anyone fighting to address these problems has been attacked by right-wing politics and media through every means available, to the point where right-wing supporters and media audiences believe this abuse is entirely normal.

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In doing so, right-wing parties mainstreamed the idea that misogyny and abuse of feminists is just an opinion, White supremacy and racism are legitimate and that attacking climate action with disinformation is a fair and reasonable political position.

Sexism is, of course, not a “left-wing issue”; it’s an issue impacting women of all political opinions and ideologies across the globe. Yet, right-wing parties have never championed the rights of gender equality. Instead, like we saw when Julia Gillard was Prime Minister, misogynistic abuse reigned.

A symbol of this misogynistic abuse was the day in 2011 when Tony Abbott and other Liberals stood in front of abusive, misogynistic placards that read: ‘Ditch the witch’. After the end of Gillard’s too-short time as Prime Minister, society did have a meaningful conversation about gendered abuse in politics. I was naïve enough to think society might have evolved through this experience.

Yet, when I look back, it was never right wing politicians who joined this chorus calling for an end to misogyny. It was only the left doing that. The Liberal Party also did nothing to further the representation of women in their party. Now, 15 years later, the Ditch the witch placards are back in paid advertisements no less – again targeting a Labor leader, Victorian Premier Jacinta Allen.

Nothing has got better for women. Indeed, in many ways, in the post-Andrew Tate manosphere-influencer world, things have got worse for women. I don’t just blame social media for this problem, though. It is mainstream political actors who have normalised misogynistic abuse against anyone fighting for gender equality.

Major right-wing parties, like the Liberal Party, like the UK Conservatives, like the Republican Party before Trump, did nothing to stamp out sexism and instead waged war on left-wing parties for trying to further women’s equality. That is a big reason why far-right leaders like U.S. President Trump can be elected president twice, even after he boasted of grabbing women “by the pussy” and was convicted of sexual assault.

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Right-wing politicians weaponised sexism and the Far-Right have profited from the resulting radicalisation of anti-feminist men.

The same phenomenon has happened in relation to cultural and religious tolerance and anti-racism agendas. Far-Right parties like Trump’s Republicans, Reform UK and One Nation are making political hay of anti-immigration narratives. But let’s not forget who normalised racism as a legitimate political position, rather than working in a bipartisan way to address this toxic, socially destructive problem.

Right-wing major parties have always taken the craven, dishonourable path of attacking immigrants and cultural minorities when it suited their political ambitions. It was former UK PM Boris Johnson who emboldened and capitalised on anti-immigration sentiments in the Brexit referendum. It was the Liberal and National parties who opened Pandora's Box of racism in Australia with the “No” campaign against the Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

Major right-wing parties are the ones who failed to tackle racism and, instead, weaponised it. They radicalised their own voters to believe this was an acceptable position. Those voters are now flooding away from formerly major right-wing parties to the even more racist version of the right parties — the Far-Right.

And this brings me to climate change. Thirty years ago, right-wing parties could have done the right thing and accepted that, whether it hurt the profits of their fossil fuel capitalist friends or not, the right thing to do by the world would be to work with the Left to take a bipartisan approach to addressing climate change.

There have been some right-wing leaders who have made attempts to deliver this bipartisanship — think Malcolm Turnbull, Theresa May and, to a lesser extent, Mitt Romney. Yet, ultimately, right-wing parties destroyed these leaders and instead gave in to their worst selves, continuing to attack climate action and to undermine the science of climate change at every opportunity.

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What this lack of bipartisanship did was to tell a whole generation of right-wing voters that climate change is a left-wing issue that only “woke lefties” care about. On top of that, right-wing parties framed the Left’s climate action as too radical, as too disruptive to the economy and as harmful to the public.

This attack on climate action has had the desired result of making it incredibly difficult for the Left to form a consensus around climate action without being met with a backlash from voters who have been told for 30 years by the Right that no action is needed.

Yet, what is not often talked about is how right-wing major parties have wedged themselves through their anti-climate action politics. Consider the rise of the Teals in Australia and how the Liberal Party has shed inner-city voters who are fed up with their climate denial.

Yet, when the Liberals try to win those voters back by, for instance, adopting the 2050 net zero goal as they did briefly for the 2025 Election before dumping it again, their voters who have been radicalised against climate action, who see climate action as a left-wing woke ideological assault on their prosperity, just as the Liberals designed, will not accept net zero.

This is why the Liberals are shedding their radicalised voters in droves towards One Nation, which has always opposed net zero and would cancel all climate action given the opportunity.

The Liberal Party, like the UK Conservatives, like the Republican Party before it was Trump’s far-right MAGA toy, only have themselves to blame for their radicalised voters flocking to hard right-wing parties, which are just more extreme versions of them.

They are the ones who told their voters that misogyny, racism and climate denial were legitimate political positions. Their voters heard them and have acted accordingly.