A left-wing defence of more right-wing parties

Whenever compulsory voting comes up in the public debate (see stories about the QLD Government considering scrapping compulsory voting), it inevitably leads to a longer discussion about the nature of our democracy. How can ensure that people are enfranchised in our electoral system? How can we get people involved in politics? Does our system do this?

Whenever this debate arises, it always astounds me when proponents of compulsory voting come out against proportional representation. More problematic is when ‘left-wing’ people come out against prop-rep because it leads to too many ‘radicals’ entering Parliament. Left-wingers look towards the rise of the British National Party (BNP) in the UK, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and the Swedish Democrats in Sweden and say ‘we don’t want that here’.

I’m absolutely no fan of extreme right-wing parties. But I’m also no fan of excluding people from our political processes because we determine them to be ‘too radical’. So here goes my defence of allowing more radical parties into our Parliament, and why the left should be happy to risk some extreme right-wingers as well.

My arguments fall across three general categories; enfranchisement, political debate, and political power.

Firstly, in a general sense, I think proportional representation is probably one of the most important elements to ensure, that at least within our current system, that people can stay enfranchised. It is much more important than compulsory voting.

In many ways we’ve grown up in a world where we’re expected to fit within two political boxes – left or right – and then vote for one of two major parties along those lines. The reality is however, that the world doesn’t work like that, and even along the left-right spectrum there are lots of different colours. It is without a doubt that, under our current democratic systems, proportional representation is one of the best ways to ensure that this spectrum is represented.

The reality of this of course is that we can end up enfranchising people we don’t like – radical, racist, sexist, homophobic right-wingers. But if we want to talk about an engaged and enfranchised community, this is a reality we have to deal with, and one we should confront, rather than try and hide from using the political system.

This leads onto my second argument, the argument of political debate. Hiding radical right-wing parties simply hides the debate we need to have. Whilst we may achieve a result in that radical people are pushed into centre parties, and therefore have their views stifled, it doesn’t mean that the views and issues go away. They are just left to fester, without any real political debate. I don’t think this is a healthy way to defeat the ideologies we oppose.

If we look at countries that have some form of prop-rep, we can see that allowing the extreme out into the open can allow genuine debate to occur. Take a look at the issue of racism and immigration for example. In the United Kingdom, the BNP took the mantle of racism on over the past couple of decades, and had members elected to the European Parliament. Yet, the rise of the BNP also lead to some serious discussion around racism in the UK, and in particular, some strong left-wing campaigns around the issue. The result of this is the recent decimation of the BNP, as left-wing communities mobilised against the open racism they promoted. That doesn’t mean racism has been solved in the UK, but it certainly is being addressed.

But, I think the refusal to have that political debate probably hides the biggest reason many in the left are anti-proportional representation: power.

Despite what I may think about many far-right parties, I think in some ways they are very similar to those on the far-left. Whilst we end up with very different conclusions, both those on the far-left and (most elements of) the far-right are fighting against the current system as it stands. The reason we are seen as radical is that we are challenging the fundamentals of the way the world works in order to completely overhaul it for something that we see as being better.

The refusal to engage in this debate therefore is one of power. The reality of ‘centre-right’ and ‘centre-left’ parties in modern democracies is that they are no longer real ideological creatures engaging in great debates about the nature of our world. They have agreed fundamentally on the system we have and simply want to tinker around it in different ways to achieve slight different goals.

Keeping other parties out therefore is simply a way to hold onto that power – to ensure we don’t even start a debate that questions our current system. Whilst, as a left-winger, you may not want to change our system, forcing out discussion as a way to ensure you keep your own power is certainly the highest form of disenfranchisement.

If we ever achieve proportional representation in Australia, I will be one of the first on the front lines fighting against any new right-wing parties that may emerge. But in using the current political system to stop new parties from being able to enter Parliament, the left is doing itself no favours.