Jacobin | Prabhat Patnaik | As India’s leader, Narendra Modi has deepened the neoliberal framework in place since the early 1990s. The social crisis arising from that model drives Modi’s government to rely more and more on a dangerous, authoritarian discourse of social division.

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Elected on a promise to modernise France, Emmanuel Macron has revealed what the political centre looks like in practice – a war on workers, authoritarian demagogy and a further emboldening of the far-right.

Mario Draghi’s new Italian government has been hailed for uniting all political forces from the center-left to the hard-right Lega. Yet the adulation of the former European Central Bank chief as a “national savior” continues a trend elevating technocratic economic decisions above democratic choice — and it’s working-class Italians who’ll suffer.

In order to understand what is happening to us [India], we can look at other countries which have suffered the same fate, some years in advance of us. Among major Third World economies, Mexico has traveled perhaps the furthest down the path of neoliberal globalisation. The model being adopted in India today is similar to that imposed on Mexican agriculture since the onset of IMF-dictated ‘reforms’ in the 1980s; and more particularly since 1994, when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed between the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

France was once the heartland of revolution. Today, its left is battered, and its far right is rising. To understand why, we have to look at François Mitterrand’s socialist government’s turn from radical reform to neoliberal austerity in the 1980s.

The Italian president has appointed former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi to form a "nonpolitical" government. In fact, this is the latest in a string of technocratic administrations designed to impose unpopular austerity measures — a deeply ideological program that Italians have never voted for.

From schools to hospitals, up and down the province, Manitobans are sitting in confined death traps. As of December 1, 312 people have died from COVID-19. Judging by the leisurely response of Premier Brian Pallister, it appears the sick and dead act as nothing more than sacrificial lambs to the political divinity of neoliberalism in Manitoba.

We can’t talk about the rise of right-wing populists like Donald Trump, reactionary and bizarre conspiracy theories like QAnon, and the increasingly pervasive sense of nihilism across global politics without talking about neoliberalism.

'Another, probably more severe pandemic has been predicted. Scientists know how to prepare, but someone must act. If we choose not to learn the lessons that are right before our eyes, the consequences will be dire.'