Category Archives: Populism

Currently, Poland is grieving over the loss of Polish athlete Dayman Sobol, one of the casualties from the incident. Despite Israel taking responsibility for the incident, Polish citizens from the left, right, and center, are using extreme anti-Israeli rhetoric following the accident. Poland's popular "Gazeta" newspaper devoted an extensive amount of articles to honor Sobol's death.

In some of the pieces, Israel is accused of war crimes, where the IDF's mistake is being compared to the Hamas massacre of October 7. The presumptuous comparison of Hamas' atrocities and crimes against humanity with Israel's operational mistake in which one Polish citizen was killed with six others was not made by any other Western media outlets.

For some reason, we didn't see a public outcry from Poland in response to the kidnapping of Alex Dancyg, a 75-year-old Israeli-Polish historian by Hamas.

Meanwhile, Poland's Foreign Minister Radosaw Sikorski's condemnation in his conversation with Foreign Minister Israel Katz was balanced, fair, and accurate, similar to many Polish officials and the "World Central Kitchen" organization. However, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk tweeted that the incident is putting Polish solidarity with Israel to a "hard test."

Does Prime Minister Tusk think that someone in the country intended to harm a Polish volunteer of an international food organization to undermine that solidarity, which seems to be conditional? For some reason, we didn't see a public outcry from Poland in response to the kidnapping of Alex Dancyg, a 75-year-old Israeli-Polish historian by Hamas.

On Friday, there was also an official Polish demand for compensation to the family of the killed Polish volunteer. The demands are coming in supposedly since the IDF has yet to publish the findings of the investigation. When politicians are swayed by populist rhetoric, they adopt an extreme stance to appease the masses.

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The Polish response to the WCK incident exposes the dangers of populism - Ynetnews

Polands ruling pro-European coalition parties are hoping Sundays (7 September) local election will put an end to an age of populism represented by the previous nationalist government.

The vote is seen as a first test for the ruling centre-left coalition of Prime Minister Donald Tusk, which emerged from the October general election.

Voters in the EU and NATO member of 38 million people will choose mayors and local and regional government members from among almost 200,000 candidates.

On the national scale, the vote will be tantamount to a referendum on the political parties, Stanislaw Mocek, a professor at the Collegium Civitas university in Warsaw, told AFP.

Opinion polls show Tusks centrist Civic Coalition (KO) neck and neck with the nationalist Law and Justice party (PiS) which ruled the country until last year, with both scoring just under 30% backing.

The election could serve as a litmus test for the two parties on a national scale, but the vote will be crucial for the countrys 16 regional councils.

Members of the ruling coalition, running separately, are hoping to win in all but one of them.

The KO will be counting on its allies, the Christian-Democratic party Third Way and the Left party, to help the pro-European camp prevail.

The PiS, which currently rules in five regions, may team up with the far-right Confederation or minor regional groupings after the vote.

Anna Materska-Sosnowska, an analyst at the Stefan Batory Foundation, said that if the pro-EU alliance wins, it will confirm a rejection of undemocratic tendencies among the countrys voters.

Tusk, who served as the European Council head in 2014-2019, highlighted this during the campaign, saying the country was rebuilding the rule of law these days after the PiS rule.

His ally Rafal Trzaskowski, the mayor of Warsaw who is seeking to extend his term in the vote, said Friday that a second stage is needed in this march to end the age of populism represented by the PiS.

The pro-Western parties need a big win also because the Tusk government is facing criticism from some voters for a slow pace of reforms after the first 100 days in office.

For the PiS, which is still the largest party in parliament, the election is a chance to see what degree of support they can count on, said Materska-Sosnowska.

On the national level, the PiS is hoping to remain the countrys biggest party, fuelling its hopes of returning to power some day.

Its loss to KO could in turn result in a collapse of the party led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski in the longer term, analysts said.

Former PiS Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has recently warned that his party should get ready for a tough race ahead.

The PiS can count on its faithful voters in smaller towns and the countryside, especially in Polands rural east and southeast.

The ruling coalition is all but certain to prevail in large cities.

In Warsaw, Trzaskowski is tipped to win the mayors seat in the first round.

A second-round decider two weeks later would be perceived as a major surprise.

The election campaign was focused largely on local issues, such as transport, housing and the reinforcement of local and regional governments after years of centralisation pushed by the PiS.

The campaign was marked by farmers rallies in protest against the EUs Green Deal and cheap grain imports from Ukraine.

Protesters were also angry about financial scandals linked to the previous government and a rift in the ruling coalition over bids to liberalise the abortion law in the strongly Catholic country.

Turnout is expected to trail the record-high 74.4% from last years general election, which propelled the Tusk-led coalition to power.

Polling stations will open at 0500 GMT and close at 1900 GMT on Sunday, with exit polls to be published shortly afterwards.

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Polish pro-EU wing wants local vote to end 'age of populism' - EURACTIV

Populism is booming. The first US Republican primary is only weeks away and former president Donald Trump, who is a master of populist techniques, commands substantial support. Meanwhile one in three Europeans are now voting for populist parties.

My colleagues and I carried out research of politicians and news media in the US, UK, and Australia that revealed a significant populist strategy to present elites such as opposition politicians, lawyers and civil servants as setting out to misinform and manipulate the public.

At the heart of liberal democracy lies the principle of pluralism, that there are diverse views on how society should work and that numerous institutions operate independently to balance competing interests. For this principle to work, its important that the public trust that these diverse voices act in good faith.

However, populists seek to chip away at this by accusing a wide variety of organisations as either being run by elites, or working as agents of elite interests.

The specifics may vary depending on the national context, such as who exactly the elites are and why they supposedly collude. But the overall function remains the same: to discredit democratic institutions or the media.

This is because when people see institutions such as the judiciary, the media and universities as connected to them and working for the good of the public, the more likely they are to listen to or trust them.

This might sound familiar as prominent populist, Donald Trump, has regularly spoken of witch hunts and the deep state, making these central to his efforts to deflect accountability for his past actions as he heads for the 2024 Republican nomination for US president.

But this is not a new strategy for him. In his 2016 presidential bid, Trump often spoke of special interests in control who rigged the political and economic system and criticised various organisations of secretly working to undermine him.

In our research, my colleagues and I argued that this technique is so widespread because its psychological functions are to again erode social trust in democratic institutions. Its also important to note that the idea of elite collusion storylines and terminology are not easily addressed by using fact-based responses because they are not centred on what the information is, but rather, on who conveys the information.

Populists often present themselves as someone who truly works in the public interest, and fighting for the rights of the outsider or normal working people. For politicians, this can help propel them to power. It can also help cultivate an idea of shared experiences, such as when Trump recently claimed both he and the public suffered from the elites working against them.

However, buying into this populist way of thinking limits the range of information sources or media outlets that people can engage with or trust. Regardless of how convincing arguments may be or how robust their evidence may seem these others are then to be seen as enemies.

Its important, of course, not to have blind trust in every claim made by established democractic institutions. They can get things wrong, they can be biased, or cause significant harm.

Yet, voters should be equally wary of falling into a state of blind mistrust, where they reject anything a group or organisation says because they are labelled the elite.

But it is exactly this kind of generalised, extreme scepticism that populists such as Trump and another Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy try to cultivate.

There is a further danger in adopting this worldview because this idea of colluding with elites, whether they are opposition politicians, academics, writers or civil servants, is a key part of how populists justify dismantling democratic checks and balances.

A case in point is Hungarys prime minister, Viktor Orbn. His partys electoral rhetoric repeatedly lambasted national institutions such as universities and the state broadcaster as mouthpieces of powerful elites. Then, when they came to power, they worked to take direct control of these institutions.

As the US approaches the Republican primary season, and the long run towards the November election, this should serve as a significant warning.

Investigative journalists have exposed Trumpite proposals to remove democratic checks and balances and eliminate independent institutions through partisan appointments should he win in 2024. However, it is crucial to also see that, in an echo of Orbn, use of anti-elite talking points are a central part of populist candidates justification for taking control.

Not everyone who votes for populist parties harbours anti-democratic or anti-liberal sentiments. They can be critical citizens who value democracy. However, such individuals may be unaware that, despite populisms self-proclaimed role as the champion of the will of the people, it subtly undermines fundamental pillars of liberal democracies.

So, there is an opportunity to reach out to those who may be sympathetic to populist politics but could reject it if they grasped the full implications of, for instance, Trumps relentless attempts to undermine the US legal system before the 2024 election. To educate people about the impact of populist agendas could empower them to dismiss or question populist language.

Recent studies have demonstrated that educating people about the manipulative tactics employed by politicians and those with a political objective, whether its climate change pseudoscience or fake news, significantly reduces their effectiveness.

As the US gears up for the 2024 election, its crucial for people to understand how populists cultivate blind mistrust of independent institutions. By fostering this understanding, theres an opportunity to appeal to voters who lean towards populist politics. Getting them to recognise the potential dangers to liberal democracy could encourage choices at the ballot box that aim to safeguard democratic values.

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US election: how populists encourage blind mistrust and how to push back - The Conversation

Lonie de Jonge and Stijn van Kessel analyse the outcome of the recent Dutch elections and the success of the far-right Party for Freedom, highlighting that mainstream parties and the media play a role in the rise of populist radical right parties.

In the recent Dutch parliamentary elections, Geert Wilderss Party for Freedom (PVV) emerged as the largest party, securing an impressive 37 out of 150 parliamentary seats and garnering nearly a quarter of the votes. While the landslide victory of the PVV is substantial (particularly by the standards of the fragmented Dutch political landscape), its not unprecedented in the European context.

The PVV forms part of a cohort of far-right parties belonging to the populist radical right (PRR) that have gained prominence across Europe over the past decades. In recent elections, similar parties have made significant electoral gains in countries like Sweden, Italy, Finland, and Switzerland. In all of these countries, PRR parties have either entered government or offered parliamentary support for minority coalitions.

The PVV is characterised by nativism, authoritarianism, and populism, making it a textbook case of a PRR party. The PVV party manifesto is steeped in anti-immigrant rhetoric, advocating for stringent border controls to thwart off the alleged tsunami of asylum seekers. It promotes a ban on all Islamic schools, Qurans and mosques. In line with its authoritarian outlook, the PVV embraces law and order and demands increased allocation of resources to law enforcement. Finally, the party is also unmistakably populist: Wilders presents himself as the defender of ordinary people against a morally corrupt left-liberal elite.

Although the PVV assumes explicitly far-right positions, its supporters are not uniformly aligned with those views. In fact, research shows that the support base is heterogeneous, thereby debunking the stereotypical view of the poorly-educated angry white man. So why did nearly a quarter of Dutch voters cast their ballots for the PVV?

The success of this party (and PRR parties elsewhere) is a matter of demand and supply. On the one hand, there needs to be a breeding ground; in other words, sufficient voters who are susceptible to far-right ideas (demand). On the other hand, there needs to be a credible political contender that can translate lingering demand into actual voters (supply).

Voter demand

PRR parties across Europe primarily attract voters based on their core themes, namely: opposition to immigration and multiculturalism. Their voters are often characterised by a mix of populist anti-elite attitudes and support for anti-immigration stances. However, socio-economic issues were also high on the agenda in the run-up to the Dutch elections. Bestaanszekerheid (which roughly translates into existential security) was perhaps the key term of these elections.

The PVV linked this theme to immigration, for instance by attributing the housing crisis to the supposed prioritisation of asylum seekers. By using a so-called welfare-chauvinist discourse, Wilders appealed to voters who seek economic protection by the state (thereby essentially competing with left-wing parties), but who are culturally more conservative. Previous research indicates that there is a substantial electoral potential here: in the Netherlands (and beyond), many voters combine socio-economically left-wing views with culturally right-wing positions.

The fact that many of these voters cast their ballots for PRR parties suggests that the left struggles to reach this segment of the electorate. In the most recent Dutch elections, the left indeed experienced significant electoral losses, partly in favour of the newcomer party, New Social Contract, led by former Christian democrat Pieter Omtzigt.

However, there was no massive electoral exodus from the left to the right; in fact, most voters tend to move between ideologically similar parties. It is therefore mistaken to characterise the Dutch vote as a drastic shift to the right. In reality, voters attitudes and stances are fairly stable, and the breeding ground for the far right has existed for years. To explain why so many people voted for Wilders this time, we also need to look at the supply side.

Party supply

Mainstream parties tend to portray themselves as victims who are suffering the consequences of the success of PRR parties, but they actually play an important role in their rise. Voters respond to what the political supply side has on offer. Over the past decades, PRR parties politicised new socio-cultural divisions by focussing on themes like immigration, multiculturalism, and security. Centre-right parties have tapped into these themes, fearing electoral competition and aiming to regain or attract support.

Research indicates that when mainstream parties adopt far-right themes, it often boosts support for PRR parties. This was evident in the Dutch election, where the PVV attracted many voters from the conservative-liberal VVD in particular.

Early on in the campaign the VVD signalled openness to govern with the PVV. The new party leader, Dilan Yeilgz, thereby broke with the policy of her predecessor, Mark Rutte. This signalled to voters that the PVV was a credible political contender with coalition potential. At the same time, the VVD chose to campaign on migration a theme that voters primarily associate with the PVV. We know that when mainstream parties and the media focus on themes that are owned by the far right, it tends to increase support for these parties.

The milder rhetoric and willingness to compromise that Wilders displayed during the campaign will also have persuaded some to vote for the radical right instead of the centre right. (Though anyone who reads the PVV election manifesto will see that there are few discernible differences from previous editions.)

The media also played an important role in mainstreaming Wilders. For example, the public broadcasters childrens TV news programme showed Wilders visiting an animal shelter with young kittens. The item, titled Cuddling cats with Geert Wilders, was widely shared and is perhaps the most striking example of how the far-right politician was being normalised.

Lessons for the media and mainstream parties

The rise of the far right is not purely driven by citizens concerns and demands. Media and mainstream political parties determine which themes and parties are discussed and therefore influence political demand as well as supply. It is obvious that many mainstream parties, especially those on the centre right, are seeking to regain the confidence of voters who are attracted to far-right politics. But moving closer to the territory of PRR parties, a trend also observed among prominent centre-right parties in countries like Germany, France and the UK, is unlikely to bear much fruit.

By Dr Stijn van Kessel, Reader (Associate Professor), European politics, Queen Mary University of London, and Dr Lonie de Jonge, Assistant Professor, European politics and society, the University of Groningen.

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Lessons from the Netherlands on the rise of the populist radical right - UK in a Changing Europe

Drive northward in the United Kingdom, as I did with my family this past month, and beyond a certain latitude it becomes impossible to escape the Jacobites.

Not to be confused, as sometimes happens, with the rather different Jacobins, the Jacobites were the supporters of the exiled Stuart dynasty during its failed attempts at restoration, the sequence of unsuccessful risings that followed James IIs ejection from the British throne by the Glorious Revolution in 1688.

Tour Lyme Park, the gracious estate just southeast of Manchester that stood in for Jane Austens Pemberley in the Colin Firth version of Pride and Prejudice, and you will note that one of its owners, the 12th Peter Legh, was imprisoned in the Tower of London in the 1690s for allegedly conspiring to restore James II to the throne. Sweep northeast to Bamburgh Castle, a splendid bastion overlooking the Northumbrian beaches, and you will note that the family that held the castle in the 18th century produced a Jacobite general in the 1715 rebellion, as well as the sister who helped him escape from Newgate Prison after his military efforts came to grief.

Continue on to Edinburgh and a tour of Holyroodhouse, the royal familys Scottish palace, will quite overwhelm you with Stuart memorabilia including a well-placed Victorian painting, Bonnie Prince Charlie Entering the Ballroom at Holyroodhouse, a romanticized portrayal of Charles Edward Stuarts 1745 almost-successful rebellion, now proudly displayed by the descendants of the very royal family that he was attempting to displace.

Then the Highlands well, the Highlands are a vast monument to Jacobite defeat, their gorgeous emptiness partly a creation of the ruthless late-18th- and early-19th-century clearances, which drove out small farmers, finished off the clan culture of the region and replaced many of the restive Scots who rose for the Stuarts with a more tractable population of, well, sheep.

Among conservative nerds of a certain kind, the Stuart cause has long been a secret handshake or an inside joke. But the normal way to discuss the Jacobites is to portray them as a political anachronism, royal absolutists backing a Catholic king in a Protestant and liberalizing Britain, whose rebellion became a cultural phenomenon as soon as its political chances went extinct. Doomed but glamorous, the Jacobites were destined to be rediscovered by romantics in every generation, from Sir Walter Scotts novels in the early 19th century to the Outlander saga in the early 21st.

But nowadays the Jacobite era should feel a bit less distantly romantic and a bit more relevant to our own divisions and disturbances. This is true in a straightforward way for Britain itself, where the 17th and 18th centurys religious and ideological conflicts are long gone, but the not-entirely-United Kingdom finds itself once more divided along the geographic and cultural fault lines of the Stuart era.

In England proper, as Niall Gooch notes in a recent essay for The Critic, the particular circumstances of the Industrial Revolution gave the north two centuries of unaccustomed economic power. But now globalization and financialization have restored a more early modern landscape, with a wealthy south and southeast, a super-wealthy London, and disappointment and stagnation north and west, in regions where Jacobite sympathies once ran strong.

Meanwhile, the British exit from the European Union has widened the gulf between England and the rest of the United Kingdom, with both Scotland and Northern Ireland tilting more toward Europe just as their independent or rebellious ancestors once sought continental allies against London. In the long term theres a real possibility of disunion: Between the ambitions of Scottish nationalism and the slow demographic shift toward a Catholic majority in Ulster, the next few decades could see the Whig consolidations of the 18th century undermined or undone, in an effective reversal of the Jacobite defeats in Scotland and Ireland three hundred years ago.

This specifically British story, in turn, is a type of the larger pattern of politics in Europe and the United States, where the gap between thriving capitals and struggling peripheries, between a metropolitan meritocracy and a nostalgic hinterland, has forged a right-wing politics that sometimes resembles Jacobitism more than it does the mainstream conservatisms of the late 20th century.

Its not that todays populists (a few intellectuals aside) favor the restoration of an absolute or Catholic monarchy. (Donald Trumps mother was born in the Outer Hebrides, the Scottish isles where Bonnie Prince Charlie fled after his defeat, but the British crown is one title to which Trump does not pretend.) Rather, like the original Jacobites, they represent a hodgepodge of somewhat disparate causes, unified mostly by their oppositional and outsider status, their distance from and defiance of the Whiggish metropole.

As Frank McLynn points out in his history of the Jacobites, whatever specific designs the Stuarts had in mind, their movement always included a variety of competing ideological and religious tendencies. There were English Jacobites who wanted to see the Stuarts enthroned over all the British Isles. There were Scottish and Irish nationalists who wanted their nations severed and independent. There were Irish republicans as well as divine-right true believers. There were Catholics seeking toleration and Anglicans seeking religious uniformity. There were deep-dyed reactionaries and modernizers, mystics and partisans of the Enlightenment.

There were also plenty of opportunists, familiar from the grifter politics of our own day smugglers and privateers seeking relief from a centralizing British state, bankrupt gentry seeking relief for their accumulated debts. But at the same time there were many sincere adherents of what came to be called the Country ideology defined by opposition to high taxes, a soaring national debt, a standing army and various corruptions associated with the swamp and the deep state (if you will) of early-18th-century London.

You did not need to be a Jacobite outright to be a member of the Country party. Rather, the Stuart cause existed in a dynamic and ambiguous relationship with the more respectable and non-treasonous conservatism of the early-18th-century Tories again, much like populist parties interacting with the center-right establishment in Western Europe, albeit with armed insurrection as a more consistent aspect of the dance.

A contemporary liberal might take a certain comfort in this analogy, given the eventual fate of Jacobitism; perhaps populism is just another foredoomed revolt against the march of modern progress. Certainly it can seem sleazier and more self-parodic than its antecedent: McLynn emphasizes the high moral character of many of the Jacobites, whereas in todays populism the grifters are more often in the vanguard and whatever their faults, the Stuart claim to the throne was much, much more defensible than Trumps claim to have won the 2020 election.

But a serious look at the Jacobite era also suggests the limits of assuming that any political movement is simply predestined for defeat. What defined and ultimately defeated the Stuart cause was poor leadership and truly atrocious luck, including constant problems with the weather difficulties that might suggest a divine opposition to their project, but hardly manifested any iron law of history or modernity.

There was no plausible world in which the Stuarts could have achieved all of their objectives, assumed all the powers they aspired to hold, or steamrollered the political and religious realities of Parliament or Protestantism.

But given the complexity of their movement and the contingency of their defeats, its easy enough to imagine a world where that painting in Holyroodhouse depicts a triumphant Great Man of History rather than a doomed pretender, and where a Jacobite restoration in some no doubt complex form pushed Britain and modernity onto a meaningfully different path.

In the same way, the often inchoate and self-contradictory goals of contemporary populism cannot all be triumphantly achieved. But that doesnt mean that todays populism will simply and inevitably lose or that our self-doubting, superannuated Whiggism still has history on its side.

Fortune almost favored Charles Edward Stuart. It might still favor Donald Trump, even as hes pursued by prosecutors the way Bonnie Prince Charlie once was pursued by redcoats. And the close-run aspects of the past stand as a perpetual reminder of just how many different futures might await us.

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Opinion | From Jacobites to Populists - The New York Times

The task of addressing climate change and limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is already packed with various challenges. These hurdles may be further compounded by the recent rise of populist right-wing parties.

Right-wing parties have been gaining traction across various regions, particularly in Europe, where they have secured electoral victories and gained representation in parliaments.

This surge in popularity can be attributed to a combination of factors, including, for instance, the fallout from the global financial crisis, migration concerns, and the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

Appealing to their constituents, these parties often offer nationalist, populist, and anti-immigration solutions while challenging liberal values and norms.

On July 31, UKs conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak revealed plans for two new carbon capture and storage facilities and gave the green light to over 100 new licenses for oil and gas drilling in the North Sea, a move that has drawn criticism from environmentalists and opposition parties.

Sunak argued that the approval of new licenses for oil and gas drilling was entirely consistent with the UKs net zero target by 2050 and that it would boost energy security and protect jobs.

Undeniably, within the realm of right-wing populism, attitudes towards climate change vary widely.

While some reject man-made global warming, others endorse a form of nationalist environmentalism, supporting local conservation efforts while opposing international agreements like the 2015 Paris Agreement.

The presence of right-wing populist parties in governments has been shown to reduce the climate policy index by 24%, as indicated by a 2022 study conducted by economists and researchers at the University of Sussex and the University of Warwick.

Given the increasing environmental threats we face and the rise of right-wing parties, it is crucial to evaluate how right-wing politics affect climate policies and what the motivations of right-wing climate promises are.

A study by Adelphi, an environmental policy think tank in Berlin, found that out of Europes 21 official right-wing populist parties, only three Hungarys right-wing populist Fidesz, Finlands Finns Party and Latvias National Alliance openly endorse the scientific consensus on the climate crisis.

Moreover, there are various political figures in different parts of the world who deny the existence of climate change triggered by human actions.

Among the most well-known of these individuals are former US President Donald Trump, who withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement in 2020 and the former President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, under whom the average annual deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon rose by 75.5% compared to the previous decade.

Ultimately, many right-leaning parties are said to see climate action as a threat to their national borders, individual freedoms, and the working peoples prosperity.

As Javier Corts, president of the Seville chapter of Spains far-right Vox party, stated in an interview with Politico: We consider it to be a globalist movement that intends to end all borders, intends to end our freedom, intends to end our freedom for our identities.

In addition, Florida Governor and Republican party presidential candidate, Ron DeSantis, known for his far-right political views and denial of man-made climate change, openly dismissed climate science as mere politicization of the weather.

Furthermore, critics argue that some right-wing groups prioritise business interests over environmental protection. Especially fossil fuel companies are reported to support right-wing politicians.

Examples of how fossil-fuel companies are entangled in right-wing politics can be found in the donors list of the Trump 2020 presidential campaign.

Kelcy Warren, co-founder and board chair of Energy Transfer, the company behind the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline, is reported to have been one of the top donors to Donald Trumps 2020 campaign.

It is important to note that not all right-wing parties deny man-made climate change, and some even have policies that address the risks associated with it. Nonetheless, many often dismiss international climate action as elitism.

Further, it is said that the majority of right-wing populist parties do not support mainstream approaches, such as international agreements or carbon pricing, to address climate change.

Instead, many appear to promote nationalist environmentalism, which prioritises local policies when fighting environmental problems.

In fact, certain populist parties in Europe have reportedly transitioned from denying climate change to perceiving current international climate policy as yet another elite-driven initiative that adversely affects ordinary people, particularly those in the working class.

Furthermore, some argue that populists are using the topic of climate change to gain votes or support from those adversely affected by the economic changes required to combat climate change.

There is no more convinced ecologist than a conservative, but what distinguishes us from a certain ideological environmentalism is that we want to defend nature with man inside, the Italian far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said in her parliamentary inaugural speech on 26 October 2022.

The danger with a nationalist approach to climate change is that it not only fails to see climate change as a global issue that needs global action but also that nationalist ideologies can be disguised as climate policies.

For instance, in 2021, the Republican attorney general of Arizona, Mark Brnovich, filed a lawsuit demanding the reinstatement of Donald Trumps immigration policies, claiming that these individuals directly result in the release of pollutants, carbon dioxide, and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

The Vox party in Spain has voiced support for local environmental initiatives but has also denounced global environmental agreements, while calling for a green Spain, clean and prosperous, industrialized and in harmony with the environment.

Similarly, the National Rally in France is said to have embraced environmentalism to appeal to voters who care about climate change, yet simultaneously opposed immigration and the European Union and advocates for nuclear power and protectionism.

As extreme weather events become more frequent, the need to address global warming becomes more urgent. At the same time, the rise of right-wing parties is seen as worrying by many.

As the author, activist and Guardian columnist George Monbiot wrote on June 15 2023: The two tasks preventing Earth systems collapse and preventing the rise of the far right are not divisible. We have no choice but to fight both forces at once.

While some may dismiss concerns about climate change as a politicization of the weather, or a hoax, this offers only temporary comfort and ignores scientific facts and the need for concrete policy solutions.

Importantly, as the United Nations has highlighted, a united global effort is needed to address the impacts of climate change.

After all, climate change affects everyone, regardless of national boundaries, political views or background.

Editors Note:The opinions expressed here by the authors are their own, not those of Impakter.comIn the Featured Photo: London Graffiti partially submerged in water reading: I dont belive in climate change. Featured Photo Credit:Wikimedia Commons.

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Why Right Wing Populism Is Unable To Address the Climate Crisis - Impakter

Imagine the following: in response to last weeks disclosure that July 2023 was set to be the hottest month on record, and to the warning by United Nations secretary-general Antnio Guterres that the era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived, it is agreed at an emergency meeting of the UN security council that the time for incrementalism and half measures is over.

In a single, sequestered location a complex of buildings somewhere in Europe 2,000 of the worlds most brilliant climate scientists, engineers, green tech entrepreneurs, data analysts and public policymakers are convened with a single, unambiguous objective. By August 2025, they must produce a planetary manual of detailed reforms to ensure that the 2015 Paris Agreement is honoured; to halve carbon emissions by 2030; and to reach net zero by 2050.

Crucially, their 18-volume Green Book becomes the single item at the COP summit that follows its publication. The work of the 2,000 must be turned into a binding international treaty for immediate implementation, bristling with meaningful sanctions to be imposed upon non-compliant nations.

Hard to envisage, isnt it?

I have now seen Oppenheimer three times, and Im going again today (I know, I know). More than any movie I can recall, Christopher Nolans epic cinematic saga rewards repeat viewings. The central dilemma faced by J Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), the director of the Manhattan Project, is mythic in scale: how did a quantum physicist justify the creation of an atomic weapon so powerful that it killed 70,000 in a single blast? Was the success of his team a triumph of the intellect, or a betrayal of all that science stands for?

In this respect, the movie shreds the nerves and troubles the conscience to brilliant effect. But it also poses an unavoidable question: could anything resembling a Manhattan Project be organised today? Could the greatest minds and practical geniuses of our age be recruited to a single, integrated team to collaborate and tackle one of the many emergencies facing humanity: the towering challenges of artificial intelligence; of pandemic resilience; of global, national and intergenerational inequality; or of antibiotic resistance?

Probably the last undertaking to match this model was the Apollo mission in the 1960s, under the leadership of extraordinary individuals such as George Mueller, the head of Nasas Office of Manned Space Flight, and Gene Kranz, its chief flight director. And there were echoes of Oppenheimers work at Los Alamos or at least its urgency in the race to develop Covid vaccines and, in this country, in Kate Binghams leadership of the Vaccine Taskforce.

Dominic Cummings wrong about so much else was absolutely right that the government needed to take a lead once more in tackling the great problems of the age and tapping distributed expertise. The UKs Advanced Research and Invention Agency (Aria) that he championed is now up and running; explicitly modelled on Darpa, the US agency founded in 1958 that (for instance) drove the development of the internet. But Cummings is long gone from Downing Street and Aria however well-intentioned is scarcely a priority for Rishi Sunak.

It has often been argued that the Manhattan Project faced a unique threat: the danger that the Nazis might develop an atomic bomb first. In a similar vein, the success of the Apollo mission is frequently ascribed solely to the specific pressures of the cold war. But such claims are a cop-out. The existential perils faced by humanity today are different to those of the 20th century but no less pressing and certainly more numerous.

The true obstacle to new Manhattan Projects is the debasement of political culture. Modern populism recoils from intense strategic inquiries and state-of-the-art policy formulation: it thrives on the attribution of blame rather than the quest for solutions. Why pursue big ideas when you can persecute those in small boats?

Todays politicians prosper in loud and transient news cycles. As Richard Fisher puts it in his recent book, The Long View: Why We Need to Transform How the World Sees Time: The currency of political journalism is controversy: salient fights over issues in the present, with opposing actors, winners and losers. In this context, governments have lost the ability and the hunger to marshal talent and put it to work in the service of grand, focused strategies.

One of the thinkers most favoured in the resurgent Labour Party is the economist Mariana Mazzucato. In Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism (2021), she writes that what made [the moon landing] possible and successful was leadership by a government that had a vision, took risks to achieve it, put its money where its mouth was and collaborated widely with organisations willing to help.

Exactly so. In a speech in February, Sir Keir Starmer framed his core ambitions for government as five key missions. Yet, in recent weeks, the prospective prime minister has seemed intent only on keeping the Labour rocket earthbound especially in his panicked retreat from the green agenda after the Conservative victory in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election.

In the last lap before the general election, nobody should begrudge Starmer a measure of caution. But there is a difference between caution and stasis. If he hopes to be a consequential prime minister, rather than simply an office-holder, he must turn his back definitively on the era of populism and its bogus claim that there are easy solutions to complex problems.

As John F Kennedy declared in his great speech at Rice University in September 1962: We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.

The horizon facing the next PM will be full of hard things. Most of them are global rather than narrowly domestic in character. We stand badly in need of the spirit of Oppenheimers Los Alamos, of the intensity and courage of Apollos mission control. Will our leaders recognise the urgency of the hour?

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In our debased world, a new, benign Manhattan Project is ... - The New European

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To judge by the trailer, Ridley Scotts biopic of Napoleon will entertain, inspire and extravagantly miss the point. But then so did the paintings of the same subject by Jacques-Louis David. Napoleon wasnt, or wasnt just, a conqueror. He was, over and above all else, historys greatest bureaucrat.

What survives of him isnt the French empire (which he left smaller than he found it) but the Banque de France, standardised education, prefects who keep French regions in line with Parisian diktat and a Civil Code that still influences jurisdictions around the world. To this day, the adjective Napoleonic describes something centralised and perhaps officious, not something martial.

Prepare for a Napoleonic world, then. The most important governmental trend today is the rise of protectionism. In the US, Europe, China and India, the state is turning from open trade to the cultivation of domestic industries. One justification is strategic: dont count on frail or hostile regimes for essential goods. Another is progressive: give skilled manual labour a break for once. Both trace back to the election-winning arguments of Donald Trump in 2016.

And so we have something of an irony to chew on. Populism, which sets itself against the elite, against the deep state, is going to leave it more powerful, not less. The technocrat, vilified so recently, will be the string-pulling figure of our age, dispensing subsidies, guiding this economic sector, shunning that one. Corporate leaders will have an ever tighter and more collusive relationship with government, not as a corrupt byproduct of the system but as a central feature of it. Populism was meant to take the governing class down a peg or two. Its main legacy will be something close to the opposite.

When would you rather be a politician or civil servant: now, when you might shape a whole industry, or in pre-populist times? When would you rather be a lobbyist in the swamp: during the laissez-faire age, when government and business were at least nominally distinct, or the protectionist one, when no sector wants to miss out on public largesse? (If chipmaking is strategic, why not agriculture?)

The elites are going to be stronger and more incestuous as a result of populism, a movement dedicated to their downfall. Perhaps we should have seen the paradox coming. Populists have a rebellious style but a paternalist agenda. They hate the so-called blob, but want it to shape much of the private sector. They resent elites, but more often for abdicating power over markets, over national borders than for hoarding it. They have a thing for direct democracy but also for Singapore. This is a movement that was always in two minds on the question of faceless authority.

The contradiction is most obvious on the US right. Trump apparatchiks dream of taming the deep state if their man gets to govern again. So-called Schedule F appointments would make it easier to fire civil servants. In an executive branch version of what the right has done to the judiciary over several decades, partisan cadres are being groomed for bureaucratic posts throughout Washington.

At the same time, the Trump world demands more industrial strategy. Is there a record of it being done well, anywhere on Earth, without a permanent, independent bureaucracy, licensed to plan and invest regardless of the churn of elected administrations?

At some point, demagogues will have to choose which they hate more: free trade or the blob. Curbing the one tends to empower the other. Notice that, though Trump started the move to industrial protection, it has achieved real substance under a centre-left government. The right could never follow its antitrade logic to its natural conclusion, which is the aggrandisement of officialdom. Trump managed to fall out with the national security state, of all things. The idea that he could abide a US version of Japans former, and lordly, Ministry of International Trade and Industry, is fanciful. Yet that kind of technocratic power is what, via the hand of his successor Joe Biden, populism has inadvertently created.

I fear, though cannot know, that we are living through the biggest wrong turn in government policy of my lifetime. A decade into this protectionist age, we might regret the waste, the pork, the higher consumer prices (do workers not pay those?) and the fragmentation of the west into squabbling trade zones. But the wrongness of this trend is another column. For now, what stands out is the improbable winner of it. Imagine being told in 2016 that elites would have more clout, not less, and owe it to their own tormentors.

janan.ganesh@ft.com

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Populism has given the elites more power than ever - Financial Times

Have Labours strategists achieved the impossible? Not only is the party 20 points ahead and in with a shot of winning four by-elections, but, perhaps even more impressively, its leader finally appears to be shrugging off his custardy sheen of squareness. According to a recent Politico profile, Keir Starmer has a dark secret: he once tried to raise some cash by illegally selling ice creams on a lads holiday in France. And yet, as Labour starts to behave like a party on the brink of power optimistically hoping to finalise its policy platform later this month all might not be as it seems.

Though Starmer appears to be doing well, his lead is soft, with less than a quarter of voters rating him as good. This is partly because his success is born of Tory failure rather than any great love for Labour and its policies: there is not much difference between his popularity ratings and Rishi Sunaks, and only around 40% of voters think the Labour Party has the nations best interests at heart.

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This may not matter if Starmer only has to fight the Conservatives, but as he shores up the centre, he is at risk of leaving the partys Left flank vulnerable to the sort of populist insurgency the Tories have been dealing with for a decade. Labour is headed to power, like the Tories 10 or so years ago, with a centrist vision that leaves their more demanding supporters wanting more.

And so, a populist insurgency today is far more likely to take place on the Left than the Right. This isnt too surprising: in the current political climate, a party made up of largely disgruntled Tories would struggle to establish a new brand, would still be tainted by an association with the current administrations failings, and would struggle to pick votes from the Left, where about half the electorate now sits. Equally, it would not enjoy the policy influence that Ukip had in its heyday, when along with the Brexit Party it could knock off five or so points from the Tories polling.

Through the 2010s, this meant the difference between being in Downing Street or in opposition. As a result, the Tories were forced to keep them sweet by offering concessions, most obviously the EU referendum. But this kind of strategy would not work today. Given their dire performance in the polls, the Tories are likely to be defeated in the next election regardless of whether they lose votes to the Right. So, even if they do make concessions to an insurgent party, they will be in no position to enact them. Moreover, the Tories will be wary of any Right-wing coalition that might scare off moderate voters in the Lib Dem marginal seats in the south and east of England. In other words, now is evidently not the time for another Right-wing insurgency.

The situation on the Left, however, is very different. To form a government, Labour needs to win big and win across the country: an almost unprecedented electoral task. A Leftist party perhaps drawn from a few disgruntled MPs, outrider commentators and a celebrity or two picking up between 5-10% of the vote could cause a huge amount of damage without even winning any seats, especially if it gave the Tories the upper hand in some of the tightest marginals. In this instance, Starmer would be forced onto a civil war footing.

Moreover, there is a clear ideological gap for the Leftist insurgency to occupy. Starmers weakness is that on crime, on culture, on social issues and even on economics he is cautious about leaning into populist ideas. Not wanting to scare potential supporters, he talks little of nationalisation, seems sometimes beholden to identity politics and is squeamish about things such as reducing immigration to protect workers. But when it comes to economics, a large proportion of voters sit to the Left of Labour, especially Starmers version of it.

If one dares to look beyond Rachel Reevess sensible economic credentials, there is real scope for more radical economic policies to capture the public imagination, from ramping up tax rates to imposing rent controls. There is currently mass support for the nationalisation of energy something that Labour has been careful to step back from as well as for nationalising trains and water supply. A clear majority of British voters dont think the rich pay enough tax, and so a cost-of-living response that embraces some form of Universal Basic Income or increases taxes on the very richest would also go down well. Starmer, who knows he must appeal to the middle ground, wont dare to go down this path but a firebrand might.

All of which might start to sound a little like Corbynism rehashed, but the difference is that any successful Left-wing populist movement would have to be rooted in a patriotic vision that reflects the views of the British people. It could not be on the side of Stop the War or identity politics but would fly the flag and sing the national anthem. The new party would also embrace the Leftish vision of leaving the EU that appealed to many Brexiteers in left-behind regions: strengthening worker protections, for example, would be a popular policy with even Tory voters opposed to things such as zero-hours contracts and fire and rehire. It could also take a tough, Left-wing stance on crime and immigration, wresting these from the Right by portraying them as issues which protect the poorest.

Could the British Left learn from their European counterparts? Across the Continent, insurgent Leftists have recently achieved success by capitalising on the failure of both Right and Left and focusing instead on populist demands. Support for the centre-Left party Syriza surged in Greece after the financial crisis thanks to their anti-neoliberal, anti-globalist rhetoric; in Spain, while Podemos emerged as an anti-establishment option with Left-wing economics. Though these parties have now started to wane Syriza trailed nearly 23 points behind the conservative New Democracy party in the countrys elections this is no reason to discount their initial success (if anything, its a lesson in what happens once they start to stray from their initial pledges). A British Left-populist party could follow their example, first by developing a popular alternative to the old-Left establishment, and then by broadening their appeal towards big-tent populism.

Of course, electoral success would be harder to replicate here because of our first-past-the-post system but its far from impossible. At the very least, a new party could introduce itself to voters in next years general elections, and seek to capitalise on their results in 2025s locals. There are lots on the Left who seem alienated from Starmers centrism, especially those who espoused a sort of soft Corbynism. None yet seem committed to forming a new party, but it might serve them better in the short term than trying to wrestle the levers of Labour from him.

Forming a Left-wing populist party would not be easy. It would face the same hurdles as any other new party finding the funds, the supporters and the platform to get off the ground. Equally, it would have to find a way to delicately navigate policy traps that the Left has long struggled with, particularly surrounding the issues of immigration and social liberalism. But that doesnt make it impossible.

Farage and the various parties he led achieved their goal on Brexit because they parasitically latched onto the power of the Tories. Now that host is exhausted, but there is space for a Leftist visionary to take advantage of the rising Labour party. After all, the Conservatives won in 2019 by targeting Leftish voters who had grown tired of Labour, galvanising them both around Brexit and a more interventionist economy. This fell flat in government, but showed how populism could reach new electoral coalitions especially in disenchanted regions. Arguably, the SNP and Plaid Cymru have already succeeded in advancing some form of Left-wing populism, albeit framed around civic nationalism.

In a time of great political flux, where the main parties have been untethered from popular opinion, the opportunity for radical Left-wing thought has always existed. So far, it is unclear who will seize it, but that doesnt mean the conditions arent ripe for an insurgency. Politics can often act as a pendulum, and while Labour delights in the decline of Britains Right, they would do well to keep an eye on the rebirth of the Left.

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Starmer should beware a Left-wing insurgency - UnHerd

Okaz, Saudi Arabia, July 6

The end of the war in Europe in the late 1940s spawned a reconstruction process throughout the continent, led by France, which urgently needed labor. This necessity resulted in a large influx of Moroccans into the French job market. As the French economy experienced a recovery, the demand for this labor only increased. Many of these immigrants intended to stay in France temporarily, yet their stay eventually lengthened. These people lived in run-down neighborhoods close to the capital of Paris and other large cities. They formed a distinct community that posed a challenge to local urban areas. Consequently, the decision was made to construct social housing to concentrate these individuals in one place. This move created a barrier between immigrants and mainstream French society, plunging second-generation immigrants into marginalization and alienation. With their parents clinging to ties to their countries of origin, members of this new generation had no homeland to which they could truly belong other than France. Later generations of immigrants sought equality with their French counterparts, but the states efforts to improve the suburbs, however commendable, were not sufficient, particularly in terms of economic policy. As the 1990s marked the end of the Cold War, resurgent populist right-wing parties ushered in a new era of the nation-state. Consequently, the citizenship state that had emerged from the ashes of World War II began to gradually decline. Even greater identity, economic, and social crises increased populist support, culminating in right-wing groups coming to power in Italy and Austria. This right-wing ideology has even been adopted by traditional parties, such as the Conservative Party in Britain, leading to Boris Johnsons rise to power with his populism-driven rhetoric that enabled the adoption of Brexit, with all its negative consequences for Britons. Now in France, the situation has not changed. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the far-right has become essential in the French presidential elections. What is even more concerning is the fact that traditional parties have begun being influenced by this same far-right extremism, as long as it holds appeal in electoral contests. This has subsequently led to a normalization of xenophobic and racist discourse, as numerous politicians and public figures have attempted to establish their presence by exhibiting increasingly extreme views. ric Zemmours participation in the most recent presidential election is perhaps the most glaring example of this growing symbiotic relationship. Hate speech has found outlets in the media, creating a barrier between a significant section of foreign-origin French society and the populist right. Worst of all, these sentiments have seeped into security services, resulting in tension and distrust between youth in the suburbs and security services personnel. This pressure has been intensifying every day and reached new heights with the killing of the 17-year-old boy Nahel Merzouk, which has sparked riots in cities across France as well as the town of Nanterre to the west of Paris where he grew up. The extreme right is on the rise in France, transforming the state and society to an alarming degree. This transformation is coming at the expense of immigrantsa price that is too heavy for them to bear. Rami Al-Khalifa Al-Ali (translated by Asaf Zilberfarb)

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The French Far-Right Tsunami Is Coming - The Media Line