Category Archives: Populism

Centrist politicians accept some ideas from the left and some from the right, making it all too easy to dismiss them as unprincipled cynics. But not only can centrism represent a distinct set of ideas; it is also necessary for protecting democracy against populist authoritarianism.

SANTIAGO Can the political center hold any meaning? That question has gained new urgency as politics becomes more polarized in the United States, Chile, the Philippines, India, and many other countries.

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In a recent Project Syndicate commentary, political scientist Jan-Werner Mueller delivers a categorical verdict: No. Exhibits A and B in his case are Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, the two Democratic senators who have frustrated US President Joe Bidens ambitious spending plans. They are not so much centrist as self-centered, Mueller argues, guided only by the imperative of getting re-elected. Theirs is a zombie centrism, devoid of any meaning.

But assessing the state of centrism by focusing on this pairs antics is like studying mountains by looking only at what Martin Luther King, Jr. called the molehills of Mississippi. A glance at the the mighty mountains of New York or the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado would be more revealing.

True, the political center is hardly full of towering leaders nowadays. But it still offers enough ground, both in theory and in practice, to build a vastly better alternative to the populism that now rules too many countries. It is the antidote to the post-truth polarization that dominates social media and electoral politics.

Mueller allows for only two kinds of centrism. The first he labels procedural, but a better label is pragmatic: when confronted with fragmented political systems, it is the centrists who anchor negotiations and create the conditions for a workable compromise. Such centrism is necessary but uninspiring. Purely pragmatic centrists leave themselves open to the old charge that they, like economists, know the price of everything but the value of nothing.

Muellers second type of centrism is positional: a centrist is merely equidistant between left and right, and therefore compelled to leave key choices in the hands of others. Think of the European center right, which felt the need to adopt anti-immigration positions when the far rights xenophobic politics became more popular. Or consider the Latin American center left, which is often forced to tolerate unsustainable debts and deficits because the far left demands ever larger spending packages. One problem with positional centrism is that it seldom succeeds at the polls: voters prefer twice the sugar and all the caffeine.

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Pragmatic and positional centrism amount to what the Italian philosopher Norberto Bobbio called a mediated third way, or practical politics without a doctrine. More interesting, Bobbio argues, is a transcended third way, or a doctrine in search of a practical politics.

Can the center represent its own distinctive set of ideas? Yes, and it has long done so.

When the right claims that it stands for liberty, it is referring only to what Isaiah Berlin callednegative freedom freedom from government coercion, excessive regulation, or punitive taxes. By contrast, centrists are concerned with both negative and positive freedom. Consider a child who is unlikely to attend Harvard and become a leading scientist or poet, simply because she grew up in poverty, attended mediocre schools, and suffered discrimination. Centrists see a role for government to secure the basic opportunities needed to render her truly free.

Similarly, the left claims to stand for equality, but it doesnt always specify whether it means equality of income, wealth, or opportunity. Lacking such clarity, it tends to overreach (allowing government to expand without limits) or to emphasize means rather than ends (such as by insisting that health or education be delivered directly by the state instead of focusing on the quality and availability of the resulting public services).

Centrists, by contrast, advocate a government that is neither larger nor smaller than the task of securing positive freedom requires. This makes them very different from US Republicans, who never met a tax cut they did not like, as well as from hard-left Democrats like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for whom no spending bill is ever large enough.

In fact, only centrists are ready to go beyond the hackneyed debate over the size of the state. They understand that markets do not arise from thin air, but instead are created by strong state institutions and firm government regulation. Wall Street would not be the worlds leading financial center without the US Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and a dozen other key financial regulators.

But, unlike far leftists, centrists understand that the role of regulation is to promote market competition, not stifle it. Monopolies were a threat to both efficiency and freedom a century ago, and they pose a similar threat today. As the University of Chicagos Luigi Zingales argues, it is time to bury the laissez-faire zombie, and to replace it with the kind of regulation that renders markets competitive and transparent.

Yet sound economics is not enough to give liberalism an edge in the fight against populism. Because populists will always pander to voters or shamelessly manipulate their deepest anxieties and fears, centrist politicians should treat voters like grown-ups, telling them the plain truth and nothing but the truth. In an age of low trust and rampant misinformation, plain speaking can offer a decisive electoral advantage. Indeed, Emmanuel Macron won the French presidency after telling voters candidly that their country had fallen behind and would need to make tough choices to recover the lost ground.

Mueller takes Macron to task for being not only a technocrat but also a liberal strongman, who allegedly denies democratic pluralism and assumes that there is always some uniquely rational response to any policy challenge. But this charge ignores the old quip that one is entitled to ones own opinion but not to ones own facts. Fighting the misinformation spread by Marine Le Pen on the far right and Jean-Luc Mlenchon on the far left is a contribution to democratic debate, not a denial of pluralism.

Democratic politics is all about compromise. But first we must establish that climate change is real, that vaccines do not cause autism, and that markets do more than serve the interests of Big Oil or greedy Wall Street bankers. As Hannah Arendt put it, facts inform opinions. There is such a thing as the truth, and it is centrists who are called upon to defend it.

Can we endow the political center with meaning? In the words of the successful centrist Barack Obama, Yes we can. The challenge now is to mold distinctly centrist ideas into a political program. The populist-authoritarian wave is far from over. We must get to work.

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The Political Center Does Have Meaning by Andrs Velasco - Project Syndicate

Across the globe, we are seeing a renewed focus on the role of elites in political life. Rising inequality and the rebirth of populism, embodied by movements like Brexit and Donald Trump, have shone a light on the gap separating highly educated liberals from the Right, whose leaders cast the Left as an out of touch elite. But while populist parties like the new GOP claim to speak for the working-class, liberals are quick to point that their economic agenda is still built around tax cuts for the rich and trickle-down economics; they are the real elites, the Left contends.

The truth is, both sides are right. Because there are two elites in the West, one cultural and one economic. And though both sides like to call themselves the side of the working class, both elites are pursuing their own economic interests behind their moral posturing.

The French economist Thomas Picketty was one of the first to point out the two elites, coining them the Merchant Right and the Brahmin Left. The Merchant Right is what used to be called the capitalist class, or what Marx called the petty bourgeoisie: small farmers, small business owners, small landlords. And while they are often culturally similar to members of the working class, their interests are not the same; the opposite, in fact: They are in tension with each other. A small business owner's interests are opposed to a 15 dollar minimum wage for the same reason landlords are against rent protection.

There is a big economic gap separating electricians and contractors from warehouse workers and waiters. And there is a gap in power and autonomy, too: Electricians don't have bosses, while wait staff and warehouse workers do. Many skilled laborers make a good living at work that gives them dignity, making their lives very different from the precarious lower parts of the working class who are answerable to the whims of middle management. And yet, the capitalist class in America frequently refers to itself as "working class" or postures as their champions.

It's political theater, but one that serves the economic interests of Right wing elites. After all, confusing wage earners with the Merchant Right only staves off the kind of class-based politics that would help those who most need it.

But the Right is not the only side doing this. On the Left, you'll find what is increasingly called the "professional managerial class," a top 10 percent made up of highly credentialed white collar office workers. But though their labor is remunerative, many in the PMC also see themselves as the side of the working class. And some go even further, seeing themselves as the "real" working class. For example, you frequently see appeals made for the government to pay off the student loans of millennials with graduate degrees on the grounds that they are the real beleaguered class, with earnings not up to the cost of living in the cities they populate.

Between these two elites, you find the mass abandonment of the working classby two highly paid sides claiming to be the real working class. And it's onto this economic divide that all of the culture wars get superimposed.

Thus, white men without a college degree in the Rust Belt will hear Republican elites shaming them for not being real men after they lost their jobsand they will hear Democratic elites saying that they don't deserve any compassion since they are white men and have had every advantage.

The Democratic elite pushes climate change as an existential threat, completely dismissing the poor in rural America who depend on their cars and gasoline to reach the nearest hospitalwhile the Republican elite argues that climate change is not real and that those hurricanes that are devastating Central America and the South are not a serious issue at all.

The economic Right and the cultural Left have destroyed social relationships and replaced them with the market or the state respectively, creating the loneliest civilization that has ever existed. Neither churches nor labor unions exist to nurture relationships between workersonly social media.

What both elites are hiding in cosplaying as champions of labor is that they have taken away the power of the working class, making them vulnerable to an increasingly hierarchical state or to the whims of corporations and the stock market. And they are able to do this because workers don't interact with each other anymore and can't organize, making it easy to redirect their justified rage at the elites of the other tribe.

The only way forward is to reconnect with our common humanity. We should be validating the feelings of the working class, not regulating them. Only through human interactions, real economic security can occur. It's only through labor unions, multiracial and international alliances of the working class, and a politics that redirects income towards the "essential" workers who actually do the labor, that we can heal what ails us.

At the end of the day, we only have each other. There is no one else.

Alan Matas Givr is a writer based in Argentina. He is a PhD Student in Physical Sciences (Biophysics) and has spent years volunteering in some of Buenos Aires' poorest neighborhoods. He is passionate about science and practices Nonviolent Communication.

The views in this article are the writer's own.

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Elites On Both Sides Are Claiming the Working ClassWhile Abandoning Them | Opinion - Newsweek

What would happen if you decided to cross the road without checking the traffic? Odds are that youd survive unscathed. But do it enough times and youre likely to come a cropper.

As a species, humanity is now playing with technological innovations that pose a small but real risk of ending our existence. Tens of thousands of nuclear weapons pointed at major cities. Biotechnology that could allow the creation of deadly pathogens. Computer technology that could create a machine that is smarter than us and doesnt share our goals. And all the while climate change could lead to unstoppable feedback loops.

As a teenager, I joined Palm Sunday anti-nuclear rallies. As an adult, Ive been a strong advocate of climate change action. But when I entered parliament in 2010, the issue of existential risk didnt loom large on my radar. My priority was peoples quality of life, not the end of life itself.

Ive come to believe that catastrophic risk is a vital issue. In my new book Whats the Worst That Could Happen? Existential Risk and Extreme Politics (MIT Press), I quote the estimate of Oxford philosopher Toby Ord that the chance of a species-ending event in the next century is one in six. That basically means that humanity is playing Russian roulette once a century. If we keep it up for another millennium, theres a five in six chance that humans never make it to the year 3000.

Like a person who crosses the road without checking for traffic, the odds are that youll eventually get hit.

Thats tragic for those who perish and for those who would never get to experience life at all. Weve got another billion years or so before the sun engulfs Earth. Thats enough time for another 30 million generations of humans. Not bad for a species thats only been around for about 10,000 generations so far. Far from being the stuff of science fiction, ensuring the safety of the human project should be a vital responsibility for all of us today.

What are the biggest risks? Naturally occurring hazards arent trivial. They include super volcanoes such as the one that formed Yellowstone National Park. An asteroid, of the kind that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Naturally occurring pandemics such as the Black Death. Such dangers are real and merit an appropriate response. In September, NASAs Planetary Defense Coordination Office will carry out an experiment in which it intercepts a nearby asteroid (not one that threatens Earth) and attempts to knock it off course.

But the biggest risks are the ones that our technologies have wrought. Unexpected climate change feedback loops such as the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets could lead to long-term temperature rises of 6C or more. Nuclear missiles kept on hair trigger alert might lead to a miscalculation that ends up in a large-scale nuclear conflict. The misuse of genetic technologies could see terrorists produce a bug that spreads as quickly as measles, but is far more deadly. When computers become smarter than humans, we need to ensure that the first superintelligence doesnt regard humanity the same way that most of us see the worlds insects.

Underlying all of this is the rise of populism: the philosophy that politics is a conflict between the pure mass of people and a vile elite. Since 1990, the number of populist leaders holding office worldwide has quintupled. Most are right-wing populists, who demonise intellectuals, immigrants and the international order.

Everyone who cares passionately about the future of humanity should view populism as a cross-cutting danger and consider how to stem its rise.

As Covid-19 demonstrated, populists angry approach to politics, score towards experts and disdain for institutions made the pandemic much worse. The same goes for other catastrophic risks. Donald Trumps unilateral withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and Paris climate accord made these two catastrophic risks worse. Forging an international agreement on artificial intelligence safety will likely prove impossible if the populists run the show.

What can we do about it? For each existential peril, theres a handful of sensible solutions. For example, to reduce the threat of bioterrorism, we should improve the security of DNA synthesis. To tackle climate change, we need to cut carbon emissions and assist developing nations to follow a low-emissions path. To lower the chance of atomic catastrophe, we should take missiles off hair-trigger alert and adopt a universal principle of no first use. To improve the odds that a super intelligent computer will serve humanitys goals, research teams should adopt programming principles that mandate advanced computers to be observant, humble and altruistic.

Beyond this, everyone who cares passionately about the future of humanity should view populism as a cross-cutting danger and consider how to stem its rise. This means sustaining well-paid jobs in communities hit by technological change. Ensuring that the education system is accessible to everyone, not just the fortunate few. And reforming democracy so that electoral outcomes represent the popular will. Instead of angry populism, the cardinal Stoic virtues courage, prudence, justice and moderation can guide a more principled politics and ultimately shape a better world.

Andrew Leigh is a member of the Australian parliament and the author of Whats the Worst That Could Happen? Existential Risk and Extreme Politics (MIT Press).

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What's the worst that could happen? Tackling existential risk - The Interpreter

Rodolfo Hernndez, former mayor of Bucaramanga, Colombia, in a file image.RR.SS.

In the crowded campaign for the presidency of Colombia, with more than twenty candidates, even the one who leads all the polls, Gustavo Petro, has noticed the presence of an atypical candidate who has managed to attract attention in that sea of Names. A figure like Rodolfo Hernndez is ascending, the discourse is that of anti-corruption, which is what we have fought for, he has not. But now he appears as an anti-corruption candidate, we are allowing ourselves to remove the flags by a communication team that has become more effective than ours, warns the leftist Petro in a video recorded during an assembly of his political movement that has sought to make his own viral mentioned, the former mayor of Bucaramanga who has taken advantage of his social media strategy despite being the oldest candidate.

Hernndez, an engineer with a short political career, still unknown to a good part of Colombians in the polls less than half of those consulted know him -, he does not define himself as being on the right or on the left, although several observers consider him a populist phenomenon to be taken seriously. Born in Piedecuesta, 20 kilometers from Bucaramanga, he considers himself a son of public education, and made his fortune as a construction businessman before being mayor between 2016 and 2019 of the capital of the department of Santander, a city of more than half a million of inhabitants in eastern Colombia. He speaks openly, with a popular language that does not shy away from insults and rudeness. He has distinguished himself by his broadcasts and videos on Facebook, Twitter and Tik Tok, some exercising to show that health is not a problem at 76 years old. He has also met with youtubers e influencers, and does not stop blaming the political mafia for having Colombia mired in poverty. Without a political party, it has positioned itself as the outsider on the long way to the Casa de Nario, the presidential palace.

His speech does not represent any ideological edge, he has said that he admires former president lvaro Uribe and has also said that in a second round in which he is not present, he would vote for Petro. This shows that it is a difficult phenomenon to pigeonhole, which attracts support based on a shared emotion of boredom for the corrupt, from the entire political spectrum , summarized the political portal The Empty Chair. His mayors office was peppered with scandals such as the slap he gave to a councilman which earned him a suspension from office or an investigation into irregularities in the hiring of the garbage service involving one of his sons. His detractors recall several episodes loaded with xenophobia or misogyny.

The presidential campaign is heading towards a coalition pulse, with three large blocs. The leftist Gustavo Petro, at the head of the so-called Historical Pact, forged to suit him, is the rival to beat; Sergio Fajardo, Juan Manuel Galn and Alejandro Gaviria compete in the Centro Esperanza Coalition, while Team Colombia, more heeled to the right, includes Enrique Pealosa, Federico Gutirrez and Alex Char, former mayors of Bogot, Medelln and Barranquilla, respectively. These three alliances will choose their sole candidate for the first round of the presidential elections, on May 29, 2022 in consultations that coincide with the March legislative elections. In that crowded field there are two orphaned coalition candidates, Oscar Ivn Zuluaga, the candidate of a government party in low hours that still asks for a clue in Equipo Colombia, and Rodolfo Hernndez, who has chosen to remain outside those blocks that compete for a place in the second round. I have no plans to ally myself with anyone. I got engaged the day I signed up to collect signatures that I was going independent. That of making inquiries is a trap , he reiterated in a recent interview with the newspaper Time.

While the continuing right bears the burden of the loss of prestige of President Ivn Duque, former President Uribe his political mentor and patronage, what Rodolfo Hernndez represents in the campaign is the non-continuing right, says the analyst and columnist lvaro Forero Tascn, who considers it a populist political project from the court of Donald Trump. All populism, he points out, offers in essence to defeat the corrupt elites that are in power, and Hernndez copies the Trumpist model of the rich businessman who does not need to steal, despite the questions. He cleverly does not want to let himself be located anywhere because the key is to be that lone ranger without debt to anyone, he adds about a phenomenon to which he attributes the potential to pick up the right if none of the Team Colombia candidates takes off. .

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In recent years, different studies have shown a growing feeling of boredom and saturation with the political system, framed in the anti-establishment line that is seen in various parts of the world. Rodolfo is the one who is picking up on this sentiment beyond the right-left dilemma, says Andrs Segura, a public affairs consultant. His colloquial, confrontational and denouncing speech is easily articulated with the image of being anti-establishment.

Rodolfo, as his followers know him, has been on the rise this December. The National Consulting Center gave it second place in a survey for the magazine Week, which brought to its cover an illustration of the former mayor riding a rocket, an idea that the candidate himself took advantage of to make animations on his networks. 25.4% of those surveyed in this study were inclined to vote for Petro, 11% for Hernndez and 7.3% for Fajardo, who usually appears in second place. Another Yanhass poll repeated that podium by giving Petro 25%, Hernndez 13% and Fajardo 8%. In both measurements, however, the sum of the candidates who are part of the Centro Esperanza Coalition which includes Fajardo far exceeds Hernndez. In all the first-round scenarios contemplated by pollster Invamer with unique coalition candidates, Hernndez falls to third or fourth place.

If a trend consolidates that places Hernndez as a serious opponent of Petro, it could displace the candidates on the right. The engineer has benefited from the confusion, he had the advantage of being able to concentrate on his campaign while other candidates were exhausted in negotiations to make their respective coalitions solidify, but the conformation of these blocks can now become his disadvantage. The consultations generate a turbo for the winning candidates, explains Segura. Rodolfos challenge is to maintain his anti-politicking discourse, in the alternative channels he uses, to maintain the idea that his opponents represent the institutionality that has saturated the country. Coverage and debates are already focused on alliances, reducing visibility in a career in which the scope of the networks, in which it has been so successful, is still uncertain.

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Elections: Rodolfo Hernndez, the lone ranger of the presidential elections in Colombia | International - Market Research Telecast

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis (third left) and Digital Governance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis (second) smile at the unveiling of the online Citizens Advice Bureau (KEP), an innovative citizens service application, in December 2020. [Dimitris Papamitsos/Prime Minister's Office/Via InTime News]

From the eve of Greeces 1821 War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire, the Orthodox Christian tradition and the Greek language that came with it fostered a cultural osmosis. The Italians of the Ionian islands, the Vlachs of mountainous and lowland Greece, the Arvanites of Morea (the Peloponnese peninsula) and of southeastern Roumeli (mainland Greece) and the various populations of the Epirus region all became an integral part of a unified nation state. The relocation of 700,000 Asia Minor Greeks to the countrys Macedonia region in 1922-23 consolidated its status as the Greek North.

However, settling in a homeland without relatives and guardians pushed many of the newcomers into radical political territory. Thanks to support from the refugees, the Greek Communist Party (KKE) gained enough strength to play a leading role in the resistance, the 1944 Battle of Athens known in Greece as the Dekemvriana and the 1946-49 Civil War.

It was a center-right state that eventually won the Civil War but the peaceful years that followed were influenced by left-wing intellectuals and teachers. The various manifestations of the Left, from EDA to SYRIZA, are still around and perpetuate the left-wing narrative. However, after KKE was legalized in 1974, it quickly shed its pro-European faction, whereas the more traditional counterpart remained very conservative in its revolutionary principles.

Social democracy is absent from the Greek Left (the center-left Movement for Change alliance, or KINAL, is perhaps an exception), and despite the predictions of the usually accurate Nikos Mouzelis, SYRIZA chief Alexis Tsipras failed to adopt a social democratic profile.

The reformist element in todays Greek government originates from Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, a descendant of prominent liberal statesman and prime minister Eleftherios Venizelos. Mitsotakis is surrounded by some good associates including Digital Governance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis, who is not a political product of New Democracy, and a few who actually are, such as Labor and Social Affairs Minister Kostas Hatzidakis and Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias.

The conservative party was pushed in a reformist direction by Constantine Karamanlis, a former president, prime minister and founder of New Democracy. His groundbreaking decision to separate right-wing populism from Greeces reformist relationship with the Europe of the Single Market left his socialist rival, Andreas Papandreou, without a clear reformist narrative.

It was actually Papandreous successor, Kostas Simitis, who succeeded in adapting Karamanlis reformist political credo to the environment of PASOKs intellectual economists and pushed Greeces integration into the European institutions (the Economic and Monetary Union, or EMU). Some of Simitis economists took over posts in the European bureaucracy, others worked with socialist Evangelos Venizelos and New Democracy in government. This collaboration, and especially the one between KKE leader Harilaos Florakis and Tzannis Tzannetakis in the conservative-communist coalition in the late 1980s, helped overcome old divisions and rivalries.

One thing that remains inexplicable to the present day is the clash between Georgios Papandreou, the founder of the Papandreou political dynasty, and young King Constantine, which facilitated the advent of the military junta.

The fluctuation between progress and decline still lurks and entails danger.

Thanos Veremis is professor emeritus of political history at the University of Athens and vice president of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP).

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Progress and decline - Kathimerini English Edition

In trying to take stock of 2021, its hard to draw definitive conclusions, given all the seemingly contradictory trends on display over the past 12 months. The year began with the almost miraculous rollout of coronavirus vaccines, less than a year after the onset of the global pandemic that upended life across the planet. But it ends with huge disparities in access to those vaccines among nations and regions, and a small but significant proportion of people rejecting them even in the wealthy countries that do have easy access to them.

Though it opened with scenes of shocking violence in the U.S. Capitol, the year also ushered in the inauguration of a U.S. president whose more conventional approach to U.S. foreign policy promised to shore up multilateralism and the international order. But it ends with an ongoing civil war in Ethiopia and a brewing one in Myanmar, and the threat of interstate war in Europe on a scale not seen since World War II. ...

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Populism, Nationalism Have Globalization on the Ropes - World Politics Review

The departure of Lord Frost is good news for Britain but very bad news for Boris Johnson. The Brexit ministers decision to flounce off the stage has rounded off the prime ministers week from hell with a nasty flourish as Johnsons authority wilts before our eyes, his incompetence mercilessly exposed and his inept leadership placed firmly in the spotlight. The resignation of arguably his closest ally in cabinet came after the drip-drip revelations about shocking lockdown-defying parties, his biggest backbench revolt over some comparatively mild pandemic restrictions and that stunning by-election defeat in North Shropshire.

Even Johnson whose career has been defined by blaming others, flouting rules and shrugging off setbacks that might have felled other politicians cannot avoid knowing in his shrivelled soul that his personal failures are the single thread that binds all his problems together. He is the leader who led the toxic populist takeover of the Conservative party, abandoned some of its central tenets, spat in the face of many traditional voters, tried to cover up sleaze and fostered a culture in Downing Street that seems so frighteningly contemptuous of the rest of us. Now he has been ditched by his pal whom he claimed to be the greatest frost since the great frost of 1709 in his party conference speech just two months ago.

Presumably the prime ministers admiration is now melting. Yet he should not be surprised to see Frost posing as a flag bearer for the libertarian right. The former Brexit minister is like him a shapeshifter who seems to constantly change. For many years Frost was a nondescript diplomat, whose colleagues say displayed no signs of the severe case of Euroscepticism that apparently infected him at some point. Next he emerged as head of the Scotch Whisky Association, where in 2016 he asked why anyone would want to leave the European Union or single market since it would lead to imposition of trade barriers. Lets not turn our back on the worlds greatest free trade area, he warned. Yet then he popped up as a Brexit hardliner, winning a seat in cabinet by spouting similar nonsense to Johnson.

Now he has quit with headline-grabbing concerns about the current direction of travel. Once again, this political chameleon proves there are no real friends in politics, one reason why it is such a ghastly profession. He highlights also the breathtaking hypocrisy of those chancers who pushed a hardline form of Brexit, then ran away like infants suffering a tantrum over an untidy bedroom when confronted by the mess they created. The Remain ultra Lord Adonis made an astonishing revelation on Twitter that Frost is the 47th ministerial resignation related to Brexit a revolution devouring its children he added.

Johnson and Frost sought to revoke their own deal only to be mugged by reality. Ireland showed, with weary predictability, the limitations to their stance since the need to prevent a hard border left the north in the single market for goods. Under their hardline Brexit, such a border had to go somewhere so the choice was inside Ireland or the sea. Ironically, Johnson even told Tories in Northern Ireland they had secured a great deal by staying inside the trade zone. Now he has backed away from threats to trigger a trade war by invoking article 16 of the Brexit agreement to suspend agreements on Northern Ireland, just as he dropped demands to block the European court of justice from being the final arbiter of trade rules there.

The governments crashing popularity seems to have weakened desire for a trade war, thankfully. Yet Frost has quit with a shameless letter that shows how much he seems to have learned from his former boss, master of such duplicitous missives. He warns against coercive measures to tackle Covid, although the latest curbs across much of our continent are far stricter, and claims he wants a lightly regulated, low-tax, entrepreneurial economy. So whose hardline Brexit was it that tied firms in needless red tape with customs declarations alone costing British businesses an extra 7.5bn a year? And reduced tax revenues by restraining growth? And crippled public services and entire swathes of the economy by inflaming staff shortages?

North Shropshires ballot indicated that even in a rural area backing Brexit, voters are seeing through these sort of self-serving politicians. Decent people, after all, do not lie constantly in daily life. Frosts departure only underlines the decline of the Tory party into crass populism and crude nationalism. Look at another resignation last week: the newly-appointed head of the Charity Commission, another friend of Johnson, shoe-horned into this vital and well-paid post despite being forced out as chair of a womens aid charity over inappropriate behaviour seven months earlier. It is all just a tribal game to these people but it is being played out at our expense regardless of the seriousness of the role, the importance of the responsibilities or the cost to the country in terms of finance, health or societal cohesion.

For all Johnsons bragging about British exceptionalism and Frosts pose as a patriot, the ultimate victim of their behaviour is our country. Yes, this prime minister is a symptom of wider problems that plague both the Tories and Westminster. Yet this hollow man with his shrinking circle of comrades is fuelling corrosion of faith in our political system at a time when it faces existential challenges on several fronts. Meanwhile, the divided Conservative Party looks an ungovernable rabble devoid of principles, lacking any clear sense of direction and being ripped apart by fanatics seeking some kind of ill-defined permanent revolution. Enough is enough, as one of their ring-leaders Steve Baker says not just of Johnson but the whole damn lot of them who are demeaning our democracy and desecrating our nation.

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Lord Frosts resignation as Brexit minister underlines the decline of crude populism in the Conservative Par - iNews

The industrial Heartland of America has played an outsized role in Americas economic history and our politics. The twelve-state region that stretches from Minnesota, Iowa, and Missouri in the west along the Great Lakes and Ohio River Valleys to Pennsylvania and New York in the east was the birthplace of great industries like steel, oil, autos, and aviation that powered the American century. Home, too, to hotly contested political swing states that helped deliver Donald Trump the White House in 2016, the region continues to be in the national spotlight in our political discourse.

Today, this section of the country, often unfairly brushed-off as the Rustbelt, is, in reality, two Midwests. One of former manufacturing communities that have made the transition to a new, more diverse economy in a changed world, alongside many factory towns that having lost their anchor employers, still struggle.

In Europe and the United Kingdom, there are similar historically significant industrial heartland regions that, as in the United States, are in an unevenly shared economic transition. Communities that still struggle within former industrial powerhouse regions offer fertile ground for leaders who play to attitudes of nativism, nationalism, and nostalgiaand often fuel anti-democratic behavior and sentiments. But as we have written for the Brookings Institution, where former Rust Belt communities do find new economic footing, the lure of resentful populism wanes, as residents grow more hopeful for the future.

Economic opportunity gaps by geography remain a root cause of our polarized politics. How do we offset these gaps? How can our leaders at the national and local level best support effective economic transition efforts both at home and among our democratic allies?

These were the questions we raised with 125 leaders from eight Western democracies at a transatlantic summit held earlier this year. Our newly released report shares insights and findings as leaders explored: the causes and challenges posed to democracies from populist movements; the links between economic conditions and populist sentiment; and effective policies and practices for economic transformation in struggling industrial regions.

There is an urgency for our leaders to implement policies, practices, and strategies that facilitate economic development and create new opportunities for residents of older industrial regionsif we are to address a fundamental cause of the appeal of populism that is polarizing our politics.

As the UKs Rachel Wolf, founding partner of Public First told us:

The reason we care so much about . . . these regions is fundamentally because we are very worried about politics. We are worried that across the developed world there are seismic changes happening in the kinds of politicians that are voted for, the kinds of parties that are voted for, and what that means for everything from transatlantic trade policy, tariffs, the principles of globalization and free markets, down to national immigration policy [. . .] and the degree to which were able to take action on climate change, as well as broad economic policy.

As we have observed in recent years, such polarized politics at home threatens the health of transatlantic cooperationand our democracies themselves. The most important conditions driving support for anti-democratic populism are economic and emerging from within our own borders. It is the failure to diminish geographic economic disparities and opportunity gaps, particularly disparities between thriving global city regions and communities in industrial heartlands, where many residents feel ignored, looked down on, and patronized by national politicians.

Residents economic anxieties, concerns about losing their place in a changing world, and perceptions of community decline can increase the appeal of populist messages of nativism, nationalism, isolationism, and economic nostalgia.

Those on both the Left and the Right are capable of fanning the flames of these populist movements and the accompanying polarization. But as we learned at the event, it is the right-wing variant that encourages anti-democratic behavior and distrust of institutions and the press, leading to a breakdown in support for the civil rights of others and nurturing a fierce political polarization that undermines democracies.

But even as many of the root causes of these populist movements are economic, the solutions are inherently political.

Leaders who want to address these root causes must win elections and then empower industrial communities to shape their own unique paths to a brighter economic future while providing the resources and support necessary to get there.

The good news is that there is a middle path that can bring people together and capture elections. Its an agenda about local pride, place, jobs, opportunity, and even making the planet a better place for their children to inherit.

But the challenge is how to get startedhow to effectively communicate and connect with residents of struggling economic regions and how to support them in invigorating local and regional economies.

To effectively aid struggling communities, leaders must first see things as residents do: sadness and anger over the hollowing out of communities; the flight of young people; the loss of local schools and sports leagues; degraded main and high streets; and lost cultural facilities, union halls, local papers, family-owned shops, taverns, and restaurants. The loss of opportunity and the decline of institutions that build and reinforce civic pride leads to a loss of a sense of identity.

In cities and towns that still struggle economically, leadership that focuses on the people, and pays attention to their tangible and immediate needs, can build permission to be heard on larger things. Bringing the resources and external investments needed to implement solutions to short-term signs of community distress and degradation can create trust between communities and national leaderstrust that will nurture support and acceptance of additional investments that can move their economies forward in more substantive ways, such as with larger-scale investments in people, infrastructure, skills, and innovation.

We also learned that an effective plan for community economic reinvigoration and renewal has to come from within. It must be owned and operated by community residents and leaders.

Change cannot be done to a community or perceived to be coming from others, even if the change is backed by good intentions. From West Germany coming into the former East to rebuild its economy, to the European Union telling Central European communities they must go green, to U.S. coastal progressives offering solutions for Heartland people and placessuch efforts, though well-intentioned, can have the unintended consequence of triggering negativity and resentment and reminding industrial-community residents of their loss of control.

And instead of treating older industrial communities as needing to change a hopeful new future can be built by embracing a communities historic identity and building on ittaking it into the future. Tapping the pride of residents in these heartland industrial communities and their legacies of making things and contributing to their nations economic and political success.

Perhaps the most important lesson for leaders is that in order to empower these industrial regions new success and nurture optimism among community residents is to refrain from talking down to them, patronizing them, or viewing them with pity. Residents dont like being called left behind (in the United States), or in need of leveling up (in the United Kingdom). They do not consider themselves postindustrial, living in Rust Belts, or in need of restructuring.

What residents need to hear from their leaders are: We see you. We understand why you are upset with the conditions of your community. You and your community and future success is a national priority. We are here to support and offer resources for you to build your own future.

There is a real urgency to this work. Anti-democratic populist movements still pose a threat to our democracies. The report of this summit provides a beginning guide to the messages our leaders must send, and the work leaders at all levels must do to catalyze real opportunity and optimism in these critical regions of our countries.

The future of the industrial heartlands and their residents need be at the center of our leaders agenda in the United States and with our allies in Europe.

The stakes are high. Unless local and federal leaders in the Western nations focus on and accelerate economic success for people and places where residents are alienated and feeling ignored or disrepected, these citizens will continue to drive a polarizing populist politics that is undermining both our democracies and our Western alliance.

John Austin directs the Michigan Economic Center and is a Nonresident Senior Fellow with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the Brookings Institution

Jeff Anderson is Professor in the School of Foreign Service and the Department of Government at Georgetown University.

Brian Hanson is Vice-President of Studies at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

Juergen Hein is Director Ruhr-Conference, State Chancellery of North-Rhine Westphalia.

Andy Westwood is Professor of Government Practice at the University of Manchester, UK.

Image: Reuters.

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Healing America's Fractured Politics Starts in the Industrial Heartland - The National Interest

North Carolina Congressional candidate Bo Hines released a campaign video flaunting his physicality. The piece showed him vigorously pumping iron and doing pullups in a gym bedecked with a prominently displayed Back the Blue flag. Over a background of rock music, a tough-guys voice says Hines will bring North Carolina gridiron values to Congress. Message: This guy is a stud. Vote for him.

Hiness ad is a particularly buffoonish artifact of a cultural trend on the right that should disturb all Americans who seek a healthy public sphere. That trend is the growing ubiquity of toxic masculinity in the Republican Party and, especially, the outgrowth of right-wing populism that has swallowed more and more space in the world of conservative politics. Leading a party heavily dependent upon male votes, more and more GOP politicians affect an unrestrained, belligerent masculinity that they portray as the key to crushing the liberal-left.

Bo Hines is hardly the only politician to place physicality and the capacity for dominance at the center of his public persona. As in most things, GOP politicians are taking their cues from Donald Trump. The ex-president electrified Republican voters with promises to bring back waterboarding and things a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding. When Ted Cruz took a qualified anti-torture stance, a (female) Trumper jeered pussy! Trump made bullying and uninhibited machismo the central trope of Republican political culture.

At the dark heart of this ethos is disdain for women. We see it across the GOP, with misogyny widespread and even the experience of rape no longer an automatic impetus for sympathy from the GOP establishment. Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, a brash and super-combative populist, blamed rape victims for the violence that was inflicted on them. That is Darwin, he sneered, as if being subject to sexual violence were a matter of losing the evolutionary race. I cannot help you. And of course Donald Trump got a higher percentage of the white evangelical vote than Mitt Romney just a month after the Access Hollywood grab them by the pussy tape.

The rise of toxic masculinity in the GOP stems from insecurities on the part of the Republican Partys male base. The core of the GOP coalition is the white male working class. Increasingly, these working-class white men are being joined by Latinos and even some Black men with culturally conservative leanings. The information economy has been kinder to educated women than to less-educated men, and rather than adjust their behavior and value sets to accommodate the rise of women, too many conservative men have lashed out in misogynistic rage. Republicans are answering their desire for gender vengeance by putting on a show of what conservative columnist Ross Douthat called performative masculinity.

The GOP is a remarkably male-dominated institution. In the United States House of Representatives, only 12 members of the Republican caucus are women. In the North Carolina General Assembly, 86% of the Republican majority are men. This is a failure to recruit representation for one half of the American population and has an impact on policymaking, but homogeneity alone would not necessarily make the GOP a dangerous institution. What makes the GOP the party of toxic masculinity is that they fail at one of the central tasks of any civilized society. Constraining male violence is a prerequisite for maintaining a peaceful, functional society. In this area as in so many others in the Republican sphere, things are falling apart.

Alexander H. Jones is a Policy Analyst with Carolina Forward. He lives in Chapel Hill.

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Alexander H. Jones: Toxic masculinity and the new right - Greenville Daily Reflector

In an attempt to avoid working on the last chapter of my dissertation a while ago, I was scrolling through my Twitter feed. Between pandemic updates and cat memes, a strange photo appeared. Friends had been sending me messages about the odd image.

Two things bothered me about the photo. The first was that the photo, apparently of a festive lamppost display, looked almost purposefully suggestive. The lights and garland were arranged to look like a part of the human anatomy. The original poster claimed this was a display put up by the City of Hamilton along with the comment how did these pass approval?!?

The second was that I had seen it many years ago on Reddit, albeit attributed to a different city. A quick internet scan revealed no fewer than 25 variations of the same photo claiming to be anywhere from Moscow to the suburbs of Detroit. A version of the photo even went viral in 2014 after being posted on the actor George Takeis Facebook page.

I cannot fault my friends for believing the photo was real. Not knowing their motivations, I cannot blame the original poster for perpetrating this cheeky hoax. What stood out to me, though, was their final comment: how did these pass approval?!?

I study the intersection of municipal politics and populism. One theme appears with regularity: distrust in government. Here in Hamilton, the iElect group conducted a survey and found little faith in our government. While survey respondents were highly skewed toward Wards 1, 2, and 3, the results still paint a striking picture. Over 70 per cent of respondents strongly disagreed with the statement Hamilton city council is transparent, accountable and demonstrates openness. Nearly 57 per cent believed council had not shown good leadership on issues that would improve their lives and the lives of those around them.

It is not hard to see why there is little faith in city hall. A formal inquiry is investigating how the city lost reports concerning the safety of the Red Hill Valley Parkway. A privacy obsessed council took the unprecedented step of reprimanding a citizen volunteer for criticizing local elected officials. And who can forget the secretive response to the revelation that sewage had been spilling into Chedoke Creek for years?

Events like these chip away at the foundation of trust between the city and residents. Some residents respond with apathy. They shrug their shoulders, blame those clowns down at city hall, and avoid the ballot box come election time. Others respond by ridiculing or shaming local politicians on social media. Local politicians respond in kind, dismissing outspoken residents as keyboard morons, Twitter trolls, or dissidents and perpetuating a culture of us versus them at city hall and on school boards. This is the present situation in Hamilton, where a culture of distrust has paralyzed our civic affairs.

In this atmosphere, no wonder people believed the city would inadvertently put up an obscene light display for the holidays. Without a culture of open and honest conversation between residents and city officials, Hamiltonians are so often dismissive and distrustful of our citys actions.

Even more concerning are the long-term implications of this culture of distrust. Populist demagogues thrive in places where people lack faith in their institutions. They exploit peoples cynicism and anger, offering shallow solutions and faux accountability. The chants of Drain The Swamp at Trump rallies in the United States show what can happen when a populist, seeing an opportunity for personal gain, weaponizes the distrust of people against institutions.

But the rise of a local populist is not inevitable. Local politicians can commit to transparency and open communication. City staff can work closely with neighbourhoods and impacted communities on important projects. And we, as engaged Hamiltonians, can promise to do our research, check our facts, and most importantly, question anything we see on Twitter.

Chris Erl is a doctoral candidate in urban political geography. You can find him on Twitter @ChrisErl.

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Hamilton's culture of distrust | TheSpec.com - TheSpec.com