Polycrisis and the Rise of Authoritarianism

The polycrisis is an interdisciplinary framework that offers an effective way of holistically assessing multiple interconnected crises. The term refers to the complex interplay of economic, social, environmental, technological, and political factors. The rise of authoritarianism illustrates the dynamics of these interrelationships. The information technology revolution has reshaped societal norms, eroded traditional communities, and triggered an identity crisis. This upheaval has caused disorientation and fueled the rise of cultural conflicts that challenge the power of urban elites.

After centuries of destructive human activities, the fault lines of our political, economic, and social systems are becoming increasingly apparent. Humans are destroying the natural world and unraveling the social ties that unite us. In just over 50 years, humans have altered 3.8 billion years of evolution. In that time, we have lost almost 70 percent of wildlife populations, and more than one million species are currently at risk of extinction. The social fabric is being frayed by inequality and democracy is under threat from illiberal politics. As UN Secretary-General António Guterres said, “We are in the fight of our lives, and we are losing”.

Despite ominous warnings and incentives to act, our efforts have been woefully insufficient. We are not acting because our systems prevent us from grasping the perilousness of our trajectory. We are constrained by myopia, blinded by greed, and blinkered by growth. Corporate power, politics, and digital media impede our efforts to address the issues. We fail to acknowledge the dangers of our reliance on dirty energy or the extent to which our economic and social systems are rife with broken assumptions.

Polycrisis: Maelstrom of interacting crises

“A polycrisis is not just a situation where you face multiple crises. It is a situation…where the whole is even more dangerous than the sum of the parts”

– Adam Tooze

Sonia Seneviratne, head of land-climate dynamics at ETH Zurich in Switzerland starkly asserts, ” We are in the middle of a crisis.” The fact is we are facing multiple crises all at the same time. These crises are described differently depending on the discipline or vocational lens through which they are perceived. Biologists call it the 6th great extinction, politicians use the term cascading crisis, while Europeans describe eco-social collapse (collapsologie in France). It has also been called the Great Unraveling, the Great Turning, the Great Simplification, the Shift, or simply the End.

The interaction of environmental, social, economic, political, and technological crises is comprehensively referred to as a global polycrisis. The term originated in the 1970s and has been popularized by the historian Adam Tooze. In a 2022 paper, researchers Michael Lawrence, Scott Janzwood, and Thomas Homer-Dixon characterize the global polycrisis as entanglements between multiple global crises that diminish humanity’s prospects. They argue that global polycrisis is a “necessary and productive framework with which to understand and address major problems afflicting humanity today.”

In 2023, the World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Risks Report explained the need for the term, saying we need a new descriptor for the multiple crises we are facing. They define a polycrisis as the compounding interaction of present and future risks. The elements of these interrelated crises interact, entangle, and mutually reinforce one another. Salient individual aspects of the polycrisis include the climate emergency, COVID-19, inequality, polarization, Russia’s war in Ukraine, and Israel’s war in Gaza,

Aspects of the polycrisis interact in several ways. The impacts are experienced differently depending on the local conditions, and the networks of connected risks at play. Davies and Hobson identified seven challenges presented by the polycrisis (Davies and Hobson, 2023):

Simultaneity: The co-occurrence of multiple crises, or a succession of crises by which one is in the shadow of (or affects) another.
Feedback loops: Several crises interact in both foreseen and unexpected ways.
Amplification: The interactions between separate crises that magnify effects.
Unboundedness: The blurring of the distinctions between crises in time and space, as different problems bleed over each other and merge.
Layering: The concerns of interest groups related to each distinct crisis overlap to create layered social problems.
Action at cross purposes: The ways that addressing one crisis impedes the resolution of another, either through demands on scarce resources and attention or through conflicting solutions.
Morphism: Emergent problems that come together synergistically to create situations that are more than the sum of their parts (i.e. beyond the sum of a series of crises)

Source: Derived from Omega data

Revolutionary and counterrevolutionary trends

“Radical advance is followed by backlash and a yearning for a past golden age imagined as simple, ordered, and pure.”

– Fareed Zakaria

The rise of right-wing populist authoritarianism in Europe and North America provides an excellent illustration of the interconnected dynamics of a polycrisis. This movement is at least in part a response to the radical change augured by the neoliberal globalization project. However, its causes and sequelae are a complex interconnected web of social, political, economic and environmental factors.

Journalist and author Fareed Zakaria’s newest book, “Age of Revolutions Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present,” argues that liberalism is a revolutionary movement and the 21st century is a revolutionary age. He cautions us not to mistake the undertow (counterrevolution) for the wave. The book chronicles the history of revolutions in the Western world over the past four centuries. He looks at the Dutch and English Revolutions in the 17th century as well as the French Revolution in the 18th century and the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. Zakaria argues that all of these revolutions were driven by information. In an episode of Battle Lines, Zakaria sets the stage for America and the West in a new age of revolution:

“Revolutions, they’re the dramatic often blood-soaked milestones of history the moments of sudden change when the old order is to be replaced with something strange and new there are the political revolutions the abrupt overthrow of states and regimes driven by mass protest and sometimes extreme violence we think of America in 1776 France in 1789 Russia in 1917 and then there are the cultural economic and technological revolutions that change the way we think about ourselves and how we live. The classic example is the 19th century Industrial Revolution but we’re used to thinking of these as episodes from the past what if we now are entering our own age of revolutions?”

Zakaria argues the rise of populism we are seeing is not a revolution it is a counterrevolutionary movement born in response to the anxiety people are experiencing and as a backlash against globalized information technology. Counterrevolutionary movements accompany revolutions because profound change is highly disruptive. While the educated and urban may benefit from recent changes, others have been left behind. Zakaria explains “America has always had this kind of amazing inventiveness and Innovation but for people in the bottom third of America it’s a much tougher life than it is in any other rich country”.

Demise of community

“the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable Object”

– Blaise Pascal

To explain how America finds itself in this predicament, Zakaria references Pascal’s idea of “the infinite abyss” which addresses the spiritual crisis in the post-Christian West. Once the center of Western life, religious communities are disappearing. As Zakaria points out, people are moving away from tradition and religion by choice, “churches would not be empty if people went to church it is the act of people choosing freely not to go to church that makes them empty”. We are abandoning the traditions that were once at the center of our lives, and as Zakaraia explains, “We haven’t filled that hole in the heart”.

The loss of community and the state of disconnection from the loss of shared religious affiliations is being exacerbated by sociopolitical changes. We no longer rally around common concerns. Global geopolitical preoccupations have abated. During the Cold War, communism and the Soviet empire united the Western World. We rallied together to defend freedom and democracy. As these concerns receded, we unplugged from the social matrix and plugged into digital technology. We substituted real-life interactions with remote work and virtual recreation.

Post-material identity crisis

“I think we’ve set the stage for a new a new era of politics that is less about economics and more about these post-material cultural identity issues.”

– Fareed Zakaria

Over the last four centuries, the disruption caused by revolutionary change has almost always been accompanied by an identity crisis. In the 21st century, our sense of identity is being uprooted by rapid economic and technological change. This affects how we see ourselves and interpret our experiences. As explained by Zakaria, issues surrounding identity “stir people’s souls”.

Identity is at the heart of the brand of nationalism we see on the right today, but the current identity crisis is an iteration of a recurring historical theme. Over the last four centuries, technological and economic progress has produced identity transformations in Britain, the Netherlands, and the U.S. According to Zakaria, “These two structural revolutions almost always produce a kind of identity revolution”. He argues that change produces a backlash as people yearn for the simple ‘old ways,’ what he calls “the politics of nostalgia”

“Those identity revolutions almost always become part of a cultural Maelstrom that then produces a backlash and what I would argue is we’re now living through the enormous backlash of 30 years of extraordinary change economically technologically and identity terms in the Western world but even beyond,” Zakaria said, adding, “we’ve moved up the Maslow’s hierarchy we’ve created mass middle classes in much of the western world and that was the historic aspiration of the left and we have moved to a post-materialistic politics that seems much more defined by identity issues”

Anti-immigration politics

“Illegal immigration is a crisis for our country. It is an open door for drugs, criminals, and potential terrorists to enter our country. It is straining our economy, adding costs to our judicial, healthcare, and education systems.”

– Timothy Murphy, former Republican member of Congress

Support for the right is rooted in their opposition to immigration. Less educated white people, including a disproportionate share of those on the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum, are vulnerable to fearmongering. Sandel says people are drawn to racism, xenophobia, and misogyny. They identify with the right’s adoption of the white nationalist conspiracy known as the Great Replacement, (replacement theory or great replacement theory). This is the false belief that non-white immigrants are replacing white political power as part of a global plot.

This concern permeates the right in both Europe and America where polls show that immigration is at the top of the problem list. “[P]eople are deeply gripped by our immigration,” Zakaria said, adding the issue is “rocket fuel for the populist right”. People are upset about what they perceive as a “borderless world of globalization”. People blame immigration for their woes and they reject the liberal agenda with its emphasis on multiculturalism and diversity.

Right-leaning leaders capitalize on the antipathy towards immigrants to enact draconian policies. Fomenting hatred for immigrants has impacted policy in America. Sarah Repucci, Freedom House’s Senior Director of Research and Analysis summarized the Trump administration’s four years in office as being defined by “discriminatory and often arbitrary or abusive immigration policies.” According to a Freedom House report, when it comes to immigration the US is now equivalent to Ghana, and below Albania.

Immigration is also being weaponized. Good examples of this dynamic are at play in both Europe and America. After being propped up by Russia, the Belarusian dictatorship streamed Iraqi migrants into EU countries. In the U.S., Republicans publically rail against immigration while blocking immigration reform legislation.

Rebellion against the elite

“There is a growing global anti-establishment revolt against the permanent political class at home and the global elites that influence them, which impacts everyone from Lubbock, Texas, to London, England.”

– Steve Bannon

While populism is more common on the right, it sometimes comes from the left (eg Mexico and Argentina). Whether from the right or the left populists are all outsiders. These people are leading rebellions against the power of the liberal, cosmopolitan, urban elite. In the U.S., France, Germany, India, and Turkey, politicians draw support by pandering to the ire of less educated, rural people. These people have deep-seated animosity towards educated city dwellers and these frustrations are evident in Brexit, and the popular support for Trump, Le Pen, Bolsonaro, Modi, and Erdogan. Zakaria explains the resentment towards the liberal agenda is due to the perception that change is coming, “top-down [from] a bunch of political elites”.

In his 1926 story, The Rich Boys, F Scott Fitzgerald wrote, ‘Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better”. Four decades of neoliberalism have spawned an ideology that frames financial success as a function of individual agency and merit. In a Guardian article, Will Hutton wrote, the rich were led to believe in the delusion of entitlement. They believe they deserve their wealth and privilege. They even believe that they have the “right to transgress social mores as they choose”.

The political philosopher Michael Sandel’s book The Tyranny of Merit explains how the dividing line between elite and non-elite (well-educated/poorly educated, rich/poor) is about “winners” and “losers”. In an interview with Glenn Loury, Sandel said, it is not an equal playing field so the winners “don’t deserve their success,” and this is driving the sense of grievance against elites. America offers the false promise of a meritocracy. The idea that hard work propels people to be successful is not borne out in practice, everybody’s chances are not equal. In a 1958 book titled The Rise of the Meritocracy, Michael Young reviewed these structural inequalities and correctly predicted a populist revolt against the meritocracy.

Like Zakaria, Sandel sees the cause of the counterrevolutionary rebellion against elites as both economic and cultural: “The animus, the anger, the grievance against well-educated elites the professional classes that a great many working people felt after years—and here’s where it connects to the economy. It’s cultural and it’s economic because many of these voters were the ones who suffered from four decades of the kind of neoliberal globalization project that involved the outsourcing of jobs, stagnant real wages over four decades.”

Culture wars and the backlash against the woke agenda

“Woke. I have heard of the term, I think sociopaths use it in an attempt to discredit the notion of empathy“

– John Cleese

Right-leaning politicians are leveraging the malaise caused by social change. They are fueling culture wars by amplifying conflict between liberals and conservatives and in the process, they are deepening the divides that separate us. Astrophysicist and best-selling author Neil deGrasse Tyson references climate change to explain how culture has become entwined with politics:

“We now have people where the facts of climate change conflict with their political worldview. It’s really a cultural worldview that manifests in politics. Your cultural worldview is ‘I don’t want to lose my coal job,’ ‘ I’m heavily invested in oil companies’ ‘I like oil and I don’t care that it pollutes.’ So that is your cultural standpoint and that standpoint resonates with certain industries and if you are a politician who wants to favor those industries you’ll come out and say that ‘global warming is not anything that I care about if it going to constrict these cultural and political plans that I have.’”

According to Zakaria, the left is no longer winning the cultural war because it pushed too far too fast. The climate crisis, biodiversity loss, inequality, and other elements of the polycrisis demand that we act quickly and this exacerbates the counterrevolutionary backlash. The result is a groundswell of antipathy towards “the woke agenda” from people who believe they are “losing their country”.

Voter priorities have shifted such that culture is now a more important issue than the economy. This is clear in the U.S. where the incumbent president has historically low approval ratings despite America’s exceptional economic performance. Zakaria explained that the less educated people who constitute the conservative base are upset that they earn a tiny fraction of what knowledge workers earn. “Revolutions produce rising inequality,” he said, however, he points to the growing specter of fascism in Sweden’s egalitarian society, causing him to conclude that the prevailing dissatisfaction is about something more than the economy and inequality. The issue for many is dissatisfaction with a changing culture.

The reason that the right appeals to large swaths of voters has everything to do with the fact that we are in what Zakaria calls the “age of cultural warfare”.The right is framing issues through the lens of culture to exploit and exacerbate divisions for political gain. They support a range of culture-based legislative initiatives but as Tyson explains, “If you bring your personal truth onto the level of legislative truth, then that is the beginning of the end of a free democracy”.

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