The Tufts Federalist Society and the Onero Institute recently hosted a panel to discuss the rise of the far right, both domestically and abroad. The panel featured Professor David Art, chair of the Department of Political Science, as well as appellate attorney and policy writer Dennis Saffran.
The panel’s topics included right-wing populism, factors that contributed to President Donald Trump’s re-election and the conservative shift among men in recent elections.
Saffran and Art were asked if they believe the political world is shifting to the right, and both panelists answered affirmatively.
“The leadership class, particularly of the Democratic Party and some of the similar liberal parties, like the Labour Party in Britain, have been moving away for many years from their working-class base,” Saffran said.
Saffran added that changes within the Democratic Party “created a natural impetus for a conservative populist movement in this country.”
Professor Art agreed with the notion that right-wing parties are surging across the globe, yet he noted that “what’s been reappearing is hard, energized nativism.”
He also noted a foreign policy change from “a typically hawkish position, what is associated with the right, to a dovish position.”
Panelists then explored the various factors that contributed to Trump’s election victory. Professor Art looked toward the economy for answers.
“Looking at what type of economic shocks really kill democracies or weaken democracies or throw out incumbents, it’s not so much recessions. Those are bad, but inflation is terrible,” Art said.
Saffran disagreed, pointing to cultural issues emphasized by the Trump campaign, including immigration and transgender rights.
“It was this whole sense that culture is absolutely out of control, and along with that, the feeling about immigration. What we witnessed in the last four years was unprecedented in American history,” Saffran said.
Freshman David Seaton, who attended the event, noted the importance of both economic and cultural pressures which led to Trump’s win.
“I think that we can see throughout history that incumbent governments with rampant inflation have tended to lose power,” Seaton said.
Seaton also said he hopes the Democratic Party further develops an “economically populist message that connects with working class people, that shows working people that we’re fighting for them.”
The discussion then changed gears to cover populism within the right. Saffran, when asked about whether he viewed Trump’s Republican Party as populist or not, stated that “it’s definitely populist, because as Professor Art said, it’s not about the issues that Reagan and Maggie Thatcher talked about. Nobody’s out there talking about tax cuts, with a big caveat there, that is still … the first big pandemic.”
Rather, Saffran described the new Republican Party as “much more about a set of cultural issues” coupled with “the kind of new agey, even hippie left.”
Professor Art added that shifts in the Republican Party have revolved around “a large dose of nativism on the politics of immigration and some other cultural issues.”
The final question of the panel centered around why young men have shifted to the right in recent elections. In the 2024 election, Trump greatly expanded his popularity with young men, increasing from 41% of the young men’s vote in 2020 to 56% in 2024.
Professor Art went first, highlighting the role that economics play on the political leanings of young adults.
“When you’re trying to start a family and putting everything into something more, you’re buying your first things, and then inflation hits … you were hurt very quickly,” Art said.
Education also came up as a cause for the electoral divide, given that 2024 exit polls found that two-thirds of white men without college degrees supported Trump. Saffran noted that men are disproportionately a non-college degree class.
“Some of it is just that guys look for leadership.” Saffran said. “They got Ronald Reagan after Jimmy Carter. They got Donald Trump, for all his faults, coming back after Joe Biden.”
At the end of the panel, Seaton noted, “I thought it was great to hear from two people with very different perspectives on the 2024 presidential election here in the United States, and getting more of that global perspective as well.”
Seaton also appreciated the ideological balance of the conversation, which involved both conservative and liberal viewpoints. He said that in this particular moment, it is important to continue having such conversations, since “we live in a moment where actually we have to get out of our liberal bubble here at Tufts.”
