The wheels are coming off the wagon of ‘progressive liberalism’. Trump wants to be returned to power for a third term. Post-fascist and ultra-nationalist parties are rising in the EU and Britain. And Brazil is a powerful example that social democratic parties are enabling the far right by imposing austerity policies that ensure that working people and our allies will experience no benefits, because any economic growth goes to ‘rentier’ bondholders, the financial sector and investors.
These tight neoliberal constraints fuel the rise of the far right. The responsibility for challenging the far right thus falls on far-left parties, like Brazil’s PSOL.
In this podcast, we explain the strategic challenges within the PSOL: the populist soft left, which aimed to stay within the footprint of traditional social democracy, and a radical left that was prepared to challenge the institutional passivity of the reformists.
If you’re already familiar with the Brazilian context, read this article next:
How Brazil’s Anti-Bolsonaro Struggle Exposes the Failure of ‘Progressive Neoliberalism’
Lula’s return to power was supposed to defeat Bolsonarism. Instead, his government’s austerity policies are strengthening the very forces he was elected to stop. This failure offers vital lessons for the British Left still reeling from the strategic defeat of 13 September 2025
