Category Archives: Populism

L to R: Geert Wilders of The Netherlands, Italys Matteo Salvini, Germanys Jrg Meuthen, and Frances Marine Le Pen, May 2019 (Luca Bruno/AP)

Mainly because the world has changed around us. Many media outlets and some academics keep defining European right wing populist parties as challengers or outsiders. They appear to have taken no notice of what has happened in the last two decades in Europe well before one Donald Trump even started campaigning .

Lets leave aside for a moment whether you and I are convinced by their proposals and their communication.

Lets rather start with the facts: right wing populists have been very successful in electoral terms in many contexts, and it is now common for them to be invited to join government coalitions. See the Swiss, Italian, Austrian, Dutch, Norwegian and Finnish cases, to cite just a few. Not only that, but they are increasingly managing to capture the government on their own, like in Hungary and Poland.

And if this were not enough, in many countries they have had a substantial media presence for some time now and very much influence the public agenda. This has contributed to triggering processes of co-optation of their ideas by their non-populist competitors. Just think of the current primaries in France.

In other words, it is apparent that many right-wing populist parties should now be considered part of the mainstream, too. They are indeed the new normal.

We are not advocating this or that outcome, we are simply taking stock of what has happened in the last two decades. And, of course, as I have argued in a book co-edited with Davide Vampa, Populism and New Patterns of Political Competition in Western Europe, right-wing populists are still evolving at great speed, and it is important to recognise the many differences that there are between them, too.

This is also true when we think of the normalization of these parties.

The Swiss Peoples Party, the Austrian Freedom Party, and the Italian Lega were already established populists, taking part in government coalitions, before the financial crisis of 2007.

The Finns Party moved from the status of challenger to that of established by entering governments after the crisis.

See also Swiss Peoples Party Walks a Fine Coronavirus Line Between Government and OppositionThe Finns Party Risks Becoming a Corona Party

The Party for Freedom in the Netherlands and the Danish Peoples Party moved towards being established, thanks to their backing of minority governments

At the same time, the UK Independence Party, the German AfD, Flemish Interest in Belgium, and the RN in France have all gone on being ostracised by other parties at the national level. So, I am not saying that right-wing populists are the new normal everywhere in this sense the title was a little provocative. But this is the direction of travel, and it is important to analyse what is happening, like it or not.

See also Belgiums Right-Wing Populists Defy Expectations Over Coronavirus

You have hit the nail on the head. How do we assess the impact of a political party?

In some contexts, electoral success may be paramount, but we can also simply focus on their policies.

In this sense, one could argue that UKIP has been the most successful right-wing populist party in Western Europe, since it contributed to getting the UK out of the EU.

Equally, we see policies on immigration and asylum being tightened across the continent, not just by the populist right but also by the so-called mainstream parties, left and right, that are trying to prevent their populist competitors from accessing government. I always mention the case of the supposedly centre-left Italian Democratic Party, whose minister Marco Minniti was the first to sign agreements with the Libyan authorities to stop potential asylum seekers from crossing the Mediterranean sea. It led to thousands of them being incarcerated and tortured in Libyan prisons after being captured, thanks to Italian money and support.

Right-wing populists may not be the new normal everywhere, but their impact on others changes what is perceived as normal.

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Right-Wing Populism in Europe Is A "New Normal": An ...

While anti-vaxxers continue to clash with police in various European cities, a whole media discourse has been formulated around the political leanings of these angry crowds, describing them in matter-of-fact terms as conspiracy theorists, populists and right-wing fanatics.

While it is true that populist, right-wing movements throughout Europe and elsewhere have actively exploited the anger, confusion and lack of trust in governments for years, it is still necessary to understand the roots of the mistrust, as opposed to readily contributing to the stifling division.

A Gallup poll, published in 2013, revealed the extent of mistrust that Americans, for example, have in their own government, and the decline of that trust when compared to the previous year. According to the poll, only 10% of Americans trusted their elected Congress, only 19% trusted the countrys health system, 22% had trust in big business and 23% in news media.

This crisis in democracy took place years before Donald Trump even considered running for presidency, years before the violent storming of the US Congress, and long before the COVID pandemic inspired resentment and conspiracies.

The trend of lack of trust in government continues unabated to this day, though Trump is no longer the president. In fact, it is a phenomenon that has afflicted most Western societies, though to varying degrees.

It may seem irrational that millions of people refuse to take the COVID-19 vaccine, a potentially life-saving medicine required in order for collective immunity to be achieved. But the problem exceeds that of seemingly crazy, fanatic, conspiracy theorist and, for good measure, also racist multitudes, simply refusing to save their own lives or the lives of loved ones, out of sheer ignorance and mere stupidity.

There are other issues that deserve to be considered, too. Lack of trust in government is an accumulative process, resulting from long experience and a prevailing conclusion that governments represent the interests of the rich and powerful, not the poor and vulnerable. That cannot be wished away as a result of a supposedly scathing editorial written by establishment newspapers such as The New York Times or The Washington Post.

The inequality gap in the United States, for example, has been constantly widening in recent years. A 2017 study by the Boston Consulting Group concluded that, by 2021, nearly 70% of the USs wealth would be concentrated in the hands of millionaires and billionaires. Can we truly blame a poor, working-class American for mistrusting a government that has engendered this kind of inequality?

Liberal political parties, whether the Democrats in the US, or the Parti Socialiste in France, or the Partito Democratico in Italy have, in fact, orchestrated much of this inequality and the subsequent mistrust and resentment harbored by millions of their citizens. Their politicians and news media insist on a reductionist reading of the rise of populism in their societies, simply because they want to maintain the self-serving status quo.

The so-called moderates are the ones who are mostly articulating the political discourse of the time, simply because an authentic, grassroots-propelled political left is almost completely absent from the scene. The resultant vacuum has rendered entire communities, people with real grievances, vulnerable to far-right opportunists, the likes of Marine Le Pen in France, Trump in the US and Matteo Salvini in Italy.

The above are self-serving politicians with disturbing political ideas, often chauvinistic ideologies and, of course, personal ambitions. With no one else challenging mainstream politicians and corporate media, they are often welcomed as liberators, draining the swamps of Washington and wherever else political elitism exists.

Some of us may avoid this uncomfortable discussion altogether, probably out of fear of being branded as belonging to the wrong crowd or, possibly, as a result of our insistence on understanding the world from our own limited political and ideological vantage points. But, by doing so, we are failing at truly analyzing the roots of the current political mayhem.

True, there have been attempts in mainstream media to offer a third way of thinking on the subject, but most of these ideas remain limited in their scope and context, and often bashful in their language. For example, a recent New York Times article linked the anti-vaccination movement to the COVID cultural war in Europe, but hardly delved deep enough into the economic and class component of that division.

While the vaxxers and the anti-vaxxers may carry on to mobilize around whatever system of beliefs they hold dear, it is not the responsibility of the intellectual to follow the diktats of superficial identity politics. What is required is a true understanding of the roots behind these cultural and political phenomena, with the hope of engaging and fixing as opposed to simply condemning the other side.

The late Italian anti-fascist intellectual, Antonio Gramsci, had written about the intellectuals error of judging without truly understanding, feeling and being impassioned. According to him, no knowledge is possible without feeling the elementary passions of the people, understanding them and therefore explaining and justifying them in the particular historical situation.

There are hundreds of millions of people with real grievances, justifiable fears and understandable confusion. If we do not engage with all people on an equal footing for the betterment of humankind, they are left to seek answers from the prophets of doom - far-right chauvinists and conspiracy theorists. This cannot possibly be the only option.

Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons (Clarity Press). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) and also at the Afro-Middle East Center (AMEC). His website is http://www.ramzybaroud.net

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Elitism is Not the Answer to Populism: On 'Anti-Vaxxers' and Mistrust in Government - Milli Gazette

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How good is Queensland?

Prime Minister Scott Morrison may well have some reason to curse that immortal rhetorical question about the state that delivered his Coalition an unlikely election-night victory in 2019.

After a tumultuous parliamentary sitting week in Canberra, Sunshine State MPs have delivered Morrison a government beset by conflict and dysfunction.

The week has also brought into sharp focus how, once again, Queensland will play a critical role at the coming federal election.

Same as it ever was.

Politically, Queensland is an enigma. Those in the Canberra-Sydney-Melbourne triumvirate have a habit of looking down upon the state as a refuge of rednecks, a wild frontier of right-wing populism easy wins for the conservatives.

But it is the state that delivered The Lodge to Labor in 2007.

It has only countenanced a Coalition state government in six of the 32 years since Tony Fitzgerald handed down his landmark report into political and police corruption in 1989.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuks tough-handed approach to pandemic health measures have been widely popular in the state, but have served as a lightning rod for the right to coalesce around a common purpose: freedom.

Scott Morrison sung Queenslands praises on election night 2019.Credit:David Gray/Bloomberg

As a result, the federal election in Queensland is shaping up as a quasi-battle between the Commonwealth and state governments, helped in no small part by border restrictions that have kept federal leaders out of the state for months.

Labors been out of office since 2013. It will be nearly nine years its been out of office, and theyre not really landing too many blows on whats looking like a tight Coalition government, said Paul Williams, a Queensland political expert from Griffith University.

Thats certainly the case in Queensland, so that will play into Labors hands if its a fight between Palaszczuk and Morrison, more than a fight between Morrison and [federal Labor leader Anthony] Albanese, particularly among older provincial voters who voted Labor last year on their gratitude for COVID management in 2020.

The last time Labor won from opposition, it was largely thanks to Queensland. And it certainly didnt hurt that the partys leader at the time, Kevin Rudd, was a Queenslander.

We know that Albanese is no Kevin Rudd, hes not cutting through to a sort of range of demographic cohorts, Williams said.

And, particularly in Queensland hes a drag.

Hes obviously probably better than [predecessor Bill] Shorten, but hes not performing at the standard where Labor should be able to flip Queensland at this point of the electoral cycle.

Theres no doubt Queenslanders respond better to one of their own, hence the importance of Palaszczuk in the coming federal poll.

Indeed, the state governments pandemic response is shaping as the defining line of attack against Labor in Queensland.

Voters gave Palaszczuk a stunning endorsement last year, returning her government for a third term and consigning the accidental Anna label to history.

But to the right, her tough stance has been like a red rag to a bull, with several of the Coalitions federal Queensland MPs leading the charge.

That response will include vaccine requirements for many public activities from December 17.

On Monday, five government senators crossed the floor to support One Nations anti-vaccination mandate bill.

Among them were Queensland LNP senators Matt Canavan, who sits in the Nationals party room in Canberra, and Liberal Gerard Rennick.

What the hell happened to My body, my choice? Canavan, who headlined an anti-abortion rally in Brisbane in May, said in the Senate on Monday.

Matt Canavan giving his speech in the Senate on Monday, with Pauline Hanson looking on remotely.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Why are we making pregnant women undergo a medical procedure that they dont want to have? That is what these laws are doing.

Then, on Wednesday, Dawson MP George Christensen was widely condemned for appearing to condone, if not encourage, civil disobedience in response to state governments public health measures.

While an extreme example, it was part of a theme for the Morrison government, which has made a habit of taking the fight to Labor state governments since the start of the pandemic.

Mandates apply in every other state, but he will single out Queensland, said John Mickel, a political scientist at the Queensland University of Technology.

Mickel, a former Queensland parliamentary speaker and member of the Beattie state Labor ministry, said there were two reasons for this approach.

One is to try to show Queenslanders, or undermine Labors position in Queensland, or at least maintain [Morrisons] own position, he said.

And the second reason, and why you got that equivocal answer the other day when it came to violence and this whole anti-vaxxer movement, where he said its about time you could go into a coffee shop in Queensland.

He didnt say that about Tasmania, South Australia, New South Wales, because that doesnt suit his purposes, but the purposes it does fit in Queensland are [Clive] Palmer, [Pauline] Hanson and [Campbell] Newman and they represent the attack on the Libs from the right.

As a result, Williams said, the likes of Christensen, Canavan and Rennick were signalling to the right-wing populists that they did not need to abandon the LNP.

The LNP would be far more worried by the right-wing populists than they are the Labor Party, Williams said.

And those right-wing populists are uniting.

Former foes Newman and Palmer announced a preference deal on Tuesday, an alliance that would have been unthinkable not that long ago.

Former Queensland premier Campbell Newman and billionaire Clive Palmer of the United Australia Party will trade party preferences at the next election.Credit:Zach Hope

Mickel said their success or otherwise would ultimately be if they could deliver the preferences to the LNP.

Palmer can deliver the money, but can he deliver the preferences? Now, certainly in 2019, they showed they could because the National Party vote didnt move much, he said.

What happened was Labor got drubbed when the minor parties added to their primary vote and then walked it straight across to the LNP.

Now, can they repeat that exercise? And thats what the winks and nods that are going on are all about.

But the flirtation with the fringes was not without its risks for the LNP.

Christensens vow to not be beholden to party room discipline when voting in the House of Representatives, for example, had the potential to destabilise the Morrison government.

With Christensens vote not assured, the Coalitions razor-thin majority comes into sharp focus. Including Christensen and the Speaker (another Queenslander, Andrew Wallace), the Coalition controls 76 of the House of Representatives 151 members.

If Christensen were to cross the floor, the Morrison government would require the support of Labor or a crossbencher to pass legislation.

Its damaging the government, because the government looks uneven, Mickel said.

Somebody said it looks like part of the days of the McMahon government.

Internal warfare, unable to pass legislation, lack of leadership to try to bring the disparate or the warring parties together. If it carries on, it presents an image of incompetence about the government.

But is that something Labor can capitalise on in Queensland?

They will if Albanese can capitalise on it, Mickel said.

What Albanese needs to do is sharpen up his line of attack. His line of attack at the moment is probably, according to some of the insiders, far too verbose.

Worse for Morrison, Mickel said, was the emerging narrative surrounding his trustworthiness.

That was turbocharged in the wake of French President Emmanuel Macron outright accusing him of lying in the lead-up to the sinking of the countries submarine deal.

The Betoota Advocate had a political insiders thing of Scotty from Marketing and that was a bit of a giggle for those who know politics, he said.

When Rudd came back from [the 2009 UN climate change summit in] Copenhagen, he was gutted and it may be that when Morrison came back from Glasgow, he was gutted not from the climate experience, but from Macron giving him that character assessment.

Because from then on, that whole you cant trust this guy theme has really taken off.

French President Emmanuel Macrons comments to Australian journalists in Rome would define Scott Morrisons European trip.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Whether that would play out at the ballot box in Queensland was another matter.

It could do, but its always the starting for everybody that all politicians lie, Mickel said.

Its going to come down to a question of do they trust this character? And if they dont, thats when hes in trouble.

Originally posted here:

In Queensland, the federal election will be a matter of trust - The Sydney Morning Herald

While "anti-vaxxers" continue to clash with police in various European cities, a whole media discourse has been formulated around the political leanings of these angry crowds, describing them in matter-of-fact terms as conspiracy theorists, populists and right-wing fanatics.

While it is true that populist, right-wing movements throughout Europe and elsewhere have actively exploited the anger, confusion and lack of trust in governments for years, it is still necessary to understand the roots of the mistrust, as opposed to readily contributing to the stifling division.

A Gallup poll published in 2013 revealed the extent of mistrust that Americans, for example, have in their own government, and the decline of that trust when compared to the previous year. According to the poll, only ten per cent of Americans trusted their elected Congress, only 19 per cent trusted the country's health system, 22 per cent had trust in big business and 23 per cent in news media.

This crisis in democracy took place years before Donald Trump even considered running for presidency, years before the violent storming of the US Congress, and long before the COVID pandemic inspired resentment and conspiracies.

The trend of lack of trust in government continues unabated to this day, though Trump is no longer the president. In fact, it is a phenomenon that has afflicted most Western societies, though to varying degrees.

READ: 2 coronavirus patients killed in fire at Egypt hospital

It may seem irrational that millions of people refuse to take the COVID-19 vaccine, a potentially life-saving medicine required in order for collective immunity to be achieved. But the problem exceeds that of seemingly 'crazy', 'fanatic', 'conspiracy theorist' and, for good measure, also 'racist' multitudes, simply refusing to save their own lives or the lives of loved ones, out of sheer ignorance and mere stupidity.

There are other issues that deserve to be considered, too. Lack of trust in government is an accumulative process, resulting from long experience and a prevailing conclusion that governments represent the interests of the rich and powerful, not the poor and vulnerable. That cannot be wished away as a result of a supposedly scathing editorial written by establishment newspapers such as the New York Times or the Washington Post.

The inequality gap in the United States, for example, has been constantly widening in recent years. A 2017 study by the Boston Consulting Group concluded that, by 2021, nearly 70 per cent of the US' wealth would be concentrated in the hands of millionaires and billionaires. Can we truly blame a poor, working-class American for mistrusting a government that has engendered this kind of inequality?

Liberal political parties, whether the Democrats in the US, or the Parti Socialiste in France, or the Partito Democratico in Italy have, in fact, orchestrated much of this inequality and the subsequent mistrust and resentment harboured by millions of their citizens. Their politicians and news media insist on a reductionist reading of the rise of populism in their societies, simply because they want to maintain the self-serving status quo.

The so-called 'moderates' are the ones who are mostly articulating the political discourse of the time, simply because an authentic, grassroots-propelled political left is almost completely absent from the scene. The resultant vacuum has rendered entire communities, people with real grievances, vulnerable to far-right opportunists, the likes of Marine Le Pen in France, Trump in the US and Matteo Salvini in Italy.

READ: The Middle East looks likely to be a focal point for the post-pandemic 'Great Reset'

The above are self-serving politicians with disturbing political ideas, often chauvinistic ideologies and, of course, personal ambitions. With no one else challenging mainstream politicians and corporate media, they are often welcomed as liberators, 'draining the swamps' of Washington and wherever else political elitism exists.

Some of us may avoid this uncomfortable discussion altogether, probably out of fear of being branded as belonging to the wrong crowd or, possibly, as a result of our insistence on understanding the world from our own limited political and ideological vantage points. But, by doing so, we are failing at truly analysing the roots of the current political mayhem.

True, there have been attempts in mainstream media to offer a third way of thinking on the subject, but most of these ideas remain limited in their scope and context, and often bashful in their language. For example, a recent New York Times article linked the anti-vaccination movement to the 'COVID cultural war' in Europe, but hardly delved deep enough into the economic and class component of that division.

While the "vaxxers" and the "anti-vaxxers" may carry on to mobilise around whatever system of beliefs they hold dear, it is not the responsibility of the intellectual to follow the diktats of superficial identity politics. What is required is a true understanding of the roots behind these cultural and political phenomena, with the hope of engaging and fixing as opposed to simply condemning the 'other side'.

The late Italian anti-fascist intellectual, Antonio Gramsci, had written about the "intellectual's error" of judging without truly understanding, feeling and "being impassioned". According to him, no knowledge is possible "without feeling the elementary passions of the people, understanding them and therefore explaining and justifying them in the particular historical situation".

There are hundreds of millions of people with real grievances, justifiable fears and understandable confusion. If we do not engage with all people on an equal footing for the betterment of humankind, they are left to seek answers from the 'prophets of doom' far-right chauvinists and conspiracy theorists. This cannot possibly be the only option.

READ: Pandemic-related waste raises alarm for environmental health

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

Excerpt from:

Elitism is not the answer to populism: On 'anti-vaxxers' and mistrust in government - Middle East Monitor

Targeting the AAP over its sop announcements ahead of the Punjab Assembly elections, state Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu on Wednesday said that people won't fall prey to populist measures without the backing of a policy framework, defined budget allocations and implementation metrics.

He said true leaders do not give "lollipops" and instead focus on building the foundations of society and economy.

In the run-up to the Punjab polls, Aam Aadmi Party supremo Arvind Kejriwal has announced a slew of sops for different sections of society. On Monday, during a visit to Punjab, he promised that if the AAP is voted to power, its government will transfer Rs 1,000 per month into the account of every woman in the state and dubbed it the "world's biggest women empowerment" programme.

Earlier, he had promised up to 300 units of free electricity for each household, 24-hour power supply and free treatment and medicines at government hospitals.

Speaking to reporters in Amritsar, Sidhu took on Kejriwal for making tall promises to different sections, including the youth and women.

He said Kejriwal's financial assistance scheme for women and other promises will cost thousands of crores of rupees and exceed the state budget.

He said the AAP leader is giving "lollipops" to people.

Sidhu's comments came a day after Kejriwal praised the Congress leader for raising public welfare issues.

On various announcements made by Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi for different sections, Sidhu said, "Whatever our chief minister has said... the party will back him and stand by him."

He said Channi has done in two months what former chief minister Amarinder Singh could not do in four-and-a-half years.

"His (Channi's) intent is right," the state Congress president said, adding that the chief minister has the party's backing.

Later, in a series of tweets, Sidhu said people won't "fall prey to populist schemes".

"UPA Govt formulated policies to transform India's society & economy. Today Punjab needs policy-based structural transformation of its economy. People won't fall prey to populist "schemes" without any backing of policy framework, defined budget allocations & implementation metrics," he said.

The Congress leader said populist schemes are a fast-paced reaction to popular demands, without any thought being given to governance and economy.

"History tells (that) populist measures only hurt people in the long run. True leaders will not give lollipops but will focus to build foundations of society and economy," he said.

"Credit games don't last, they put more baggage of debt and depressed economic growth onto the society. Punjab needs a policy-based redemption and soon every Punjabi will be wealthy and prosperous as we were in earlier times. Punjab model is only way forward!!," he added.

Sidhu, a former minister, said in 2017, he introduced the Punjab Entertainments Taxes Bill before the state cabinet "to end cable mafia to strengthen local operators".

He said he wanted to end the alleged monopoly of one operator, making it pay the due taxes to the government as "only then the benefit of cheaper connections can be transferred to people".

"Will bring solid "policy-based" Punjab model. Give redemption from monopolies formed by Badals, such as Cable mafia. SOPs will empty state-treasure and kill livelihoods but does nothing to truly uplift the poor and eradicate tyranny of Multiple Systems Operator...," he said.

The Punjab Assembly elections will be held early next year.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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Sidhu hits out at AAP over poll sops, says people wont fall for populism - Business Standard

Protectionism and isolationism have been growing throughout the world, in what became known as the backlash against globalisation. Using newly assembled data for 23 industrialised, advanced democracies and global trade data,Italo Colantone, Gianmarco Ottaviano, and Piero Stanig analyse voting behaviour and track trade policy interventions. Theywrite that international trade is not the only factor causing the upheaval. Society must manage the distributional consequences of structural change in a more inclusive way.

A lively discussion has flourished around the recent surge of populist parties across advanced democracies. One of the most salient phenomena related to the populist wave is the so-called globalisation backlash. In our recent CEP discussion paper, we characterise this phenomenon as the political shift of voters and parties in a protectionist and isolationist direction, with substantive implications on governments leaning and enacted policies. Globalisation emerges as a relevant driver of the backlash, by means of the distributional consequences entailed by rising trade exposure. Yet, the backlash is only partly determined by international trade. Other factors, such as technological change, immigration, crisis-driven fiscal austerity, as well as cultural concerns are found to play a similar role in driving the observed political shift. Borrowing from the medical literature, we describe this multi-causal nature of the phenomenon through the concept of comorbidity, by which different factors compound to generate the backlash.

To document the globalisation backlash, we employ newly assembled data for 23 industrialised, advanced democracies, spanning Europe, North America, and Asia. The analysis covers the period 1980-2019. We start by providing descriptive evidence of the backlash in terms of voting behaviour. Specifically, Figure 1 displays the electorate location in terms of protectionism and isolationism. For each country, in each national election, this is obtained by combining two ingredients: (1) the vote share of each party; and (2) an ideology score, called Net Autarky, which reflects the stance of each party with respect to trade policy and multilateralism, based on party manifesto data. The electorate location is then computed as a weighted summation of party scores, using vote shares as weights. It is essentially the ideological centre of gravity (COG) of the electorate. The top panel reports all countries (grey lines) along with the cross-country average (dark line). The bottom panel highlights specific countries, such as the US, or groups of countries, such as southern, western, and northern Europe. Looking at the grand mean, there is a visible decline from the beginning of the 1980s until the early 1990s. This globalist wave is then followed by a protectionist shift from the mid-1990s onwards. Such a pattern is clearly detectable across most countries. The only exceptions seem to be Australia and New Zealand, which start from relatively high levels of net autarky, and display a decline in recent years. Very similar evidence is obtained when looking at the ideological location of legislatures and executives. This suggests that the shift in voting behaviour has been consequential for the composition of decision-making bodies.

Figure 1 Electorate location

A protectionist shift is also detectable in terms of trade policy developments. In this respect, there are many recent cases in point, ranging from Brexit to the US-China trade war and the stall of the WTO Appellate Body. More systematic evidence is shown in Figure 2, based on Global Trade Alert data, according to which protectionist trade policy interventions have been growing faster than liberalising ones from the financial crisis onwards. Yet, besides such dynamics, more trade-friendly developments can also be observed. For instance, the number of active regional trade agreements (RTAs), and especially free trade areas (FTAs), has kept growing even after the financial crisis. In parallel, average tariffs have kept declining over time. However, temporary protection measures such as anti-dumping and countervailing duties have been increasingly activated, and with rising ad-valorem rates, entailing stronger protectionist effects. Overall, the evolution of trade policy seems consistent with the political dynamics described above. The picture gets instead more nuanced as we look at individual attitudes. We do not find systematic evidence of a generalised worsening in public opinion with respect to globalisation. However, large minorities, and in some cases strong majorities, of survey respondents believe they are not actually benefiting from international trade (e.g., 39% in the US and 60% in Italy).

Figure 2 Rise in protectionist measures since the financial crisis

What are the drivers of the globalisation backlash? A large literature has developed in recent years around this broad research question, investigating both economic factors and cultural determinants. Several studies have emphasised the role of trade, focusing particularly on exposure to surging imports from China between the early 1990s and the financial crisis. Regions more exposed to the China shock, owing to their historical industrial specialisation, have been shown to be negatively affected in many ways, ranging from higher unemployment, lower labour force participation, increased use of disability and other transfer benefits, reduced wages, as well as lower provision of public goods and worsening health conditions. This phenomenon has had political repercussions as well, leading to rising support for protectionist, isolationist, and nationalist parties and candidates. The available evidence allows us to conclude that the globalisation backlash is thus endogenous to globalisation itself. However, other factors have been found to tilt electorates in similar ways. In particular, technological progress, by means of automation of production through robots, has been shown to generate distributional consequences that are akin to those of trade, leading to similar political responses. The same holds true for crisis-driven fiscal austerity as well as immigration, which acts both as a catalyst of structural economic grievances, and as a direct determinant of political backlash.

Conclusion

Overall, it seems that globalisation is at stake also due to reasons that are not strictly related to trade. The political sustainability of globalisationand arguably of the international liberal orderwill depend on how successful society will be at managing in a more inclusive way the distributional consequences of structural change.

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Note:The postgives the views of its authors,notthe positionUSAPP American Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.

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Italo Colantone Bocconi UniversityItalo Colantone is an Associate Professor of economics at Bocconi University, Italy.

Gianmarco Ottaviano Bocconi UniversityGianmarco Ottaviano is Full Professor in the Department of Economics at Bocconi University, Italy. He is also affiliated with LSEs Centre for Economic Performance.

Piero Stanig Bocconi UniversityPiero Stanig is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social and Political Sciences at Bocconi University.

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The rise of populism in advanced economies: blame it on globalisation? - USAPP American Politics and Policy (blog)

Although some pundits and grifters may claim otherwise, theres nothing new about populism. It comes in waves, often but not always in response to sharp economic downturns, and is driven by outrage against the mistakes or misdeeds of political elites.

Sometimes that populist outrage is well-earned and its consequences beneficial. But at other times, the flames serve as little more than propulsion for demagogues seeking to become the new political elites in place of the old. George Orwell had their number. So did The Who, who invited listeners to meet the new boss same as the old boss.

If you go looking for clear definitions of the policy content of populism, youll come away disappointed. But theres a common rhetorical denominator: Populists tend to say things like the People have spoken even though they are actually in the minority and the People have done no such thing.

Its currently fashionable to denigrate right-wing populism, of the sort that produced the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. Although Im no slave to fashion my closet is full of clothes older than my grown children I have repeatedly criticized such populist impulses myself, not only when expressed as conspiracy theories about stolen elections but also when directed against free trade, entitlement reform, and other causes that in my view cannot be abandoned by an American conservatism worthy of the name.

Today, however, I will focus on left-wing populism, of the sort that has produced its own violence and chaos but nowhere near the level of condemnation it deserves.

The riots of 2020 alone resulted in dozens of deaths and north of $1 billion in property damage. Of course, most people protesting the homicide of George Floyd were only expressing political views. They werent rioters. By refusing to maintain order, however, state and local governments allowed some protests to devolve into riots. It was a colossal error.

This manifest failure to enforce basic rules of conduct in public spaces had antecedents. Some happened right here in North Carolina. On Aug. 24, 2017, a mob led by anarchist and communist activists toppled the Confederate monument that once stood in front of Durhams old courthouse. Thanks to some combination of clumsiness and purposeful malfeasance by local law enforcement, no one was ever really held responsible for the crime.

Almost exactly one year later, another mob (including some of the same activists) tore down the Silent Sam statue on the Chapel Hill campus of the University of North Carolina. Again, there were no serious consequences for those responsible. Again, the mob was rewarded by having the statue removed permanently rather than restored to its original location, as it should have been, until such time that it might be removed by proper authorities employing legal means.

As I wrote at the time, I was never sold on keeping those statues permanently in place. I dont think past generations get to decide in perpetuity what persons or images should populate campuses, courthouses, and other public spaces. Confederate monuments have a history of their own, one that at best mixes familial desire to honor fallen ancestors with Lost Cause mythology and white supremacy.

Should Silent Sam and comparable statues and memorials have been moved elsewhere or just dismantled? That was a legitimate question. It was not, however, answered by The People, but by a self-anointed few who figured theyd get away with it. They were right.

Most North Carolinians didnt agree. They opposed removing the Silent Sam statue, which was on state property. That remains the prevailing national sentiment about the larger issue, as far as I know. In a 2020 ABC News/Washington Post poll, for example, only 43% of respondents favored removing statues honoring Confederate generals from public places.

Think the majority is wrong about this? Then persuade them otherwise. But dont take the law into your own hands and cloak yourself in populist claims that the People have spoken. They didnt.

John Hood is a Carolina Journal columnist.

More here:

John Hood: The People never spoke on statues - Greenville Daily Reflector

Although some pundits and grifters may claim otherwise, theres nothing new about populism. It comes in waves, often but not always in response to sharp economic downturns, and is driven by outrage against the mistakes or misdeeds of political elites.

Sometimes that populist outrage is well-earned and its consequences beneficial. At other times, though, the flames of populism serve as little more than propulsion for demagogues seeking to make themselves new political elites in place of the old ones. George Orwell had their number, which he counted as legs. So did The Who, who invited listeners to meet the new boss same as the old boss.

If you go looking for clear definitions of the policy content of populism, youll come away disappointed. But theres a common rhetorical denominator: populists tend to say things like the People have spoken even though they are actually in the minority and the People have done no such thing.

Its currently fashionable to denigrate right-wing populism, of the sort that produced the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. Although Im no slave to fashion my closet is full of clothes older than my grown children I have repeatedly criticized such populist impulses myself, not only when expressed as conspiracy theories about stolen elections but also when directed against free trade, entitlement reform, and other causes that I feel cannot be abandoned by an American conservatism worthy of the name.

Today, however, I will focus on left-wing populism, of the sort that has produced its own violence and chaos but nowhere near the level of condemnation it deserves.

The riots of 2020 alone resulted in dozens of deaths and north of $1 billion in property damage. Of course, most people protesting the homicide of George Floyd were only expressing political views. They werent rioters. By refusing to maintain order, however, state and local governments allowed some protests to devolve into riots. It was a colossal error.

This manifest failure to enforce basic rules of conduct in public spaces had antecedents. Some happened right here in North Carolina. On August 24, 2017, a mob led by anarchist and communist activists toppled the Confederate Monument that once stood in front of Durhams old courthouse. Thanks to some combination of clumsiness and purposeful malfeasance by local law enforcement, no one was ever held responsible for the crime.

Almost exactly one year later, another mob (including some of the same activists) tore down the Silent Sam statue on the Chapel Hill campus of the University of North Carolina. Again, there were no serious consequences for those responsible. Again, the mob was rewarded by having the statue removed permanently rather than restored to its original location, as it should have been, until such time that it might be removed by proper authorities employing legal means.

As I wrote at the time, I was never sold on keeping those statues permanently in place. I dont think past generations get to decide in perpetuity what persons or images should populate campuses, courthouses, and other public spaces. Confederate monuments have a history of their own, one that at best mixes familial desire to honor fallen ancestors with Lost Cause mythology and white supremacy.

Should Silent Sam and comparable statues and memorials have been moved elsewhere, then, or just dismantled? That was a legitimate question. It was not, however, answered by The People. It was answered by a self-anointed few who figured theyd get away with it. They were right.

Most North Carolinians didnt agree. They opposed removing the Silent Sam statue, which was on state property. That remains the prevailing national sentiment about the larger issue, as far as I know. In a 2020 ABC News/Washington Post poll, for example, only 43% of respondents favored removing statues honoring Confederate generals from public places.

Think the majority is wrong about this? Then persuade them otherwise. But dont take the law into your own hands and then cloak yourself in populist claims that the People have spoken. They never got to.

John Hood is a Carolina Journal columnist.

More here:

John Hood: The People never spoke on statues (copy) - Greenville Daily Reflector

This story was originally published by The Guardian and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Standing in front of the partial ruins of Romes Colosseum, Boris Johnson explained that a motive to tackle the climate crisis could be found in the fall of the Roman Empire. Then, as now, he argued, the collapse of civilization hinged on the weakness of its borders.

When the Roman Empire fell, it was largely as a result of uncontrolled immigration the empire could no longer control its borders, people came in from the east and all over the place, the British prime minister said in an interview on the eve of crucial UN climate talks in Scotland. Civilization can go into reverse as well as forwards, as Johnson told it, with Romes fate offering grave warning as to what could happen if global heating is not restrained.

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This wrapping of ecological disaster with fears of rampant immigration is a narrative that has flourished in far-right fringe movements in Europe and the U.S. and is now spilling into the discourse of mainstream politics. Whatever his intent, Johnson was following a current of right-wing thought that has shifted from outright dismissal of climate change to using its impacts to fortify ideological, and often racist, battle lines. Representatives of this line of thought around the world are, in many cases, echoing eco-fascist ideas that themselves are rooted in an earlier age of blood-and-soil nationalism.

In the U.S., a lawsuit by the Republican attorney general of Arizona has demanded the building of a border wall to prevent migrants coming from Mexico as these people directly result in the release of pollutants, carbon dioxide, and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. In Spain, Santiago Abascal, leader of the populist Vox Party, has called for a patriotic restoration of a green Spain, clean and prosperous.

In the U.K., the far-right British National Party has claimed to be the only true green party in the country due to its focus on migration. And in Germany, the right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany has tweaked some of its earlier mockery of climate science with a platform that warns harsh climatic conditions in Africa and the Middle East will see a gigantic mass migration towards European countries, requiring toughened borders.

Meanwhile, Frances National Front, once a bastion of derisive climate denial, has founded a green wing called New Ecology, with Marine Le Pen, president of the party, vowing to create the worlds leading ecological civilization with a focus on locally grown foods.

Environmentalism (is) the natural child of patriotism, because its the natural child of rootedness, Le Pen said in 2019, adding that if youre a nomad, youre not an environmentalist. Those who are nomadic do not care about the environment; they have no homeland. Le Pens ally Herv Juvin, a National Rally MEP, is seen as an influential figure on the European right in promoting what he calls nationalistic green localism.

Simply ignoring or disparaging the science isnt the effective political weapon it once was. We are seeing very, very little climate denialism in conversations on the right now, said Catherine Fieschi, a political analyst and founder of Counterpoint, who tracks trends in populist discourse. But in place of denial is a growing strain of environmental populism that has attempted to dovetail public alarm over the climate crisis with disdain for ruling elites, longing for a more traditional embrace of nature and kin and calls to banish immigrants behind strong borders.

Millions of people are already being displaced from their homes, predominately in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, due to disasters worsened by climate change such as flooding, storms and wildfires. In August, the United Nations said Madagascar was on the brink of the worlds first climate change famine.

The number of people uprooted around the world will balloon further, to as many as 1.2 billion by 2050 by some estimates, and while most will move within their own countries, many millions are expected to seek refuge across borders. This mass upending of lives is set to cause internal and external conflicts that the Pentagon, among others, has warned will escalate into violence.

The response to this trend on the right has led to what academics Joe Turner and Dan Bailey call ecobordering, where restrictions on immigration are seen as vital to protect the nativist stewardship of nature and where the ills of environmental destruction are laid upon those from developing countries, ignoring the far larger consumptive habits of wealthy nations. In an analysis of 22 far-right parties in Europe, the academics found this thinking is rife among right-wing parties and portrays effects as causes and further normalizes racist border practices and colonial amnesia within Europe.

Turner, an expert in politics and migration at the University of York, said the link between climate and migration is an easy logic for politicians such as Johnson as it plays into longstanding tropes on the right that overpopulation in poorer countries is a leading cause of environmental harm. More broadly, it is an attempt by the right to seize the initiative on environmental issues that have for so long been the preserve of centre-left parties and conservationists.

The far right in Europe has an anti-immigration platform, thats their bread and butter, so you can see it as an electoral tactic to start talking about green politics, Turner said, adding that migrants are being blamed in two ways first, for moving to countries with higher emissions and then adding to those emissions, as right-wing figures in Arizona have claimed; and secondly for supposedly bringing destructive, polluting habits with them from their countries of origin.

A mixture of this Malthusian and ethno-nationalist thinking is being distilled into political campaigning, as in a political pamphlet described in Turner and Baileys research paper from SVP, the largest party in Switzerlands federal assembly, which shows a city crowded by people and cars belching out pollution, with a tagline that translates to stop massive immigration. A separate campaign ad by SVP claims that one million migrants will result in thousands of miles of new roads and that anyone who wants to protect the environment in Switzerland must fight against mass immigration.

The far right depicts migrants as being essentially poor custodians of their own lands and then treating European nature badly as well, Turner said. So you get these headlines around asylum seekers eating swans, all these ridiculous scaremongering tactics. But they play into this idea that by stopping immigrants coming here, you are actually supporting a green project.

Experts are clear that the main instigators of the climate crisis are wealthy people in wealthy countries. The richest one per cent of the worlds population was responsible for the emission of more than twice as much carbon dioxide as the poorer half of the world from 1990 to 2015, research has found, with people in the U.S. causing the highest level of per capita emissions in the world. Adding new arrivals to high-emitting countries doesnt radically ramp up these emissions at the same rate: a study by Utah State University found that immigrants are typically using less energy, driving less, and generating less waste than native-born Americans.

Still, the idea of personal sacrifice is hard for many to swallow. While there is strengthening acceptance of climate science among the public, and a restlessness that governments have done so little to constrain global heating, support for climate policies plummets when it comes to measures that involve the taxing of gasoline or other impositions. According to a research paper co-authored by Fieschi, this has led to a situation where detractors are taking up the language of freedom fighters.

We are seeing the growth of accusations of climate hysteria as a way for elites to exploit ordinary people, Fieschi said. The solutions that are talked about involve spending more money on deserving Americans and deserving Germans and so on, and less on refugees. Its yes, we will need to protect people, but lets protect our people.

This backlash is visible in protest movements such as the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) in France, which became the longest-running protest movement in the country since the Second World War by railing against, among other things, a carbon tax placed on fuel. Online, favoured targets such as Greta Thunberg or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been shown in memes as Nazis or devils intent on impoverishing western civilization through their supposedly radical ideas to combat climate change. Fieschi said the rights interaction with climate is far more than just about borders it is animating fears that personal freedoms are under attack from a cosseted, liberal elite.

You see these quite obviously populist arguments in the U.S. and Europe that a corrupt elite, the media and government have no idea what ordinary peoples lives are like as they impose these stringent climate policies, said Fieschi, whose research has analyzed the climate conversation on the right taking place on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social media platforms.

This sort of online chatter has escalated since the COVID-19 pandemic started, Fieschi said, and is being fed along a line of influence that begins with small, conspiratorial right-wing groups spreading messages that are then picked up by what she calls middle of the tail figures with thousands of followers, and then in turn disseminated by large influencers and into mainstream centre-right politics.

There are these conspiratorial accusations that COVID is a dry run for restrictions that governments want to impose with the climate emergency, that we need to fight for our freedoms on wearing masks and on all these climate rules, Fieschi said. There is a yearning for a pre-COVID life and a feeling climate policies will just cause more suffering.

Whats worrying, Fieschi continued, is that more reasonable parts of the right, mainstream conservatives and Republicans, are being drawn to this. They will say they dont deny climate change but then tap into these ideas. She said centre-right French politicians have started disparaging climate activists as miserabilists, while Armin Laschet, the leader of the Christian Democratic Union who sought to succeed Angela Merkel, has said Germany should focus on its own industry and people in the face of cascading global crises.

The interplay between environmentalism and racism has some of its deepest roots in the U.S., where some of the conservation movements totemic figures of the past embraced views widely regarded as abhorrent today. Wilderness was something viewed in the 19th century as bound in rugged, and exclusively white, masculinity, and manifest destiny demanded the expansion of a secure frontier.

John Muir, known as the father of national parks in the U.S., described Native Americans as dirty and said they seemed to have no right place in the landscape. Madison Grant, a leading figure in the protection of the American bison and the establishment of Glacier National Park, was an avowed eugenicist who argued for inferior races to be placed into ghettoes and successfully lobbied for Ota Benga, a Congolese man, to be put on display alongside apes at the Bronx Zoo. This focus on racial hierarchies would come to be adopted into the ideology of the Nazis themselves avowed conservationists.

There has been something of a reckoning of this troubling past in recent years a bronze statue of Theodore Roosevelt on horseback flanked by a Native American man and an African man is to be removed from the front of the American Museum of Natural History in New York and at least one conservation group named after the slaveholder and anti-abolitionist John James Audubon is changing its name. But elsewhere, themes of harmful overpopulation have been picked up by a resurgent right from a liberal environmental movement that now largely demurs from the topic.

Republicans, aware that many of their own younger voters are turned off by the relentless climate denial as they see their futures wreathed in wildfire smoke and flood water, have sensed an opportunity. The right is reclaiming that older Malthusian population rhetoric and is using that as a cudgel in green terms rather than unpopular racist terms, said Blair Taylor, program director at the Institute for Social Ecology, an educational and research body.

Its weird that this has become a popular theme in the U.S. west because the west is sparsely populated and that hasnt slowed environmental destruction, he added. But this is about speaking to nativist fears, it isnt about doing anything to solve the problem.

The spearhead for modern nativism in the U.S. is, of course, Donald Trump who has, along with an often dismissive stance towards climate science itself, sought to portray migrants from Mexico and Central America as criminals and animals while vowing to restore clean air and water to deserving American citizens. If there is to be another iteration of a Trump presidency, or a successful campaign by one of his acolytes, the scientific denial may be dialled down somewhat while retaining the reflex nativism.

The Republican lawsuit in Arizona may be a prelude to an ecological reframing of Trumps fetish for border walls should the former president run again for office in 2024, with migrants again the target. We will see weird theories that will spread blame in all the wrong directions, Taylor said. More walls, more borders, more exclusion thats most likely the way we are heading.

A recasting of environmentalism in this way has already branched out in different forms throughout the U.S. right, spanning gun-toting preppers who view nature as a bastion to be defended from interlopers a back to the land ideology where you are an earner and provider, not a not soft-handed soy boy, as Taylor describes it to the vaguely mystic wellness practitioners who have risen to prominence by spreading false claims over the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.

The latter group, Taylor said, includes those who have a fascination with organic farming, Viking culture, extreme conspiracy theories such as the QAnon fantasy and a rejection of science and reason in favour of discovering an authentic self. These disparate facets are all embodied, he said, in Jake Angeli, the so-called QAnon shaman who was among the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Angeli, who became famous for wearing horns and a bearskin headdress during the violent insurrection, was sentenced to 41 months in prison over his role in the riot. He gained media attention for refusing to eat the food served in jail because it was not organic.

Angeli, who previously attended a climate march to promote his conspiracy-laden YouTube channel and said he is in favour of cleansed ecosystems, has been described as an eco-fascist, a term that has also been applied to Patrick Crusius, the Dallas man accused of killing 23 people in a mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in 2019.

In a document published online shortly before the shooting, Crusius wrote: The environment is getting worse by the year So the next logical step is to decrease the number of people in America using resources. If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can become more sustainable. The shooting came just a few months after the terrorist massacre of 49 people in two mosques in Christchurch in New Zealand, with the perpetrator describing himself as an eco-fascist unhappy about the birthrate of immigrants.

Such extreme, violent acts erupting from right-wing eco-populist beliefs are still rare but the alt-right has been adept at taking concerns and making them mainstream, said Taylor. It has fostered the idea that nature is a place of savage survival that brings us back to original society, that nature itself is fascist because there is no equality in nature. Thats what they believe.

Advocates for those fleeing climate-induced disasters hope there will be a shift in the other direction, with some advocating for a new international refugee framework. The UN convention on refugees does not recognize climate change, and its effects, as a reason for countries to provide shelter to refugees. An escalation in forced displacement from drought, floods and other calamities will put further onus on the need for reform. But opening up the convention for a revamp could see it wound back as much as it could be expanded, given the growing ascendancy of populism and authoritarianism in many countries.

The big players arent invested in changing any of the definitions around refugees in fact the U.S. and U.K. are making it even more difficult to claim asylum, said Turner. I think what youre going to see is internally displaced people increasing and the burden, as it already is, falling on neighbours in the Global South.

Ultimately, the extent of the suffering caused by global heating, and the increasingly severe responses required to deal with that, will help determine the reactionary response. While greater numbers of people will call for climate action, any restrictions imposed by governments will provide a sense of vindication to right-wingers warning of overreaching elites.

My sense is that we wont do enough to avoid others bearing the brunt of this, Fieschi said. Solidarity has its limits, after all. Sure, you want good things for the children of the world. But ultimately you will put your children first.

Research for this article was made possible with the support of the Heinrich Boell Foundation, Washington D.C.s Transatlantic Media Fellowship.

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The right uses the climate crisis to decry immigration - National Observer

Dr. Josef Schuster was elected President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany in 2014 and re-elected for another four years in 2018. He recently described the German federal elections as an expression of living democracy while warning that the fight against right-wing populism and right-wing extremism must be continued and intensified.

In our meeting in Dr. Schusters home town of Wrzburg, I set out the Council of Europes established and strong policy of combatting antisemitism, recalling the Secretary Generals speech at the Malm International Forum on Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Antisemitism Remember-ReAct in October and ECRIs General Policy Recommendation on preventing and combating antisemitism.

We shared our concern about the rise of antisemitism online and offline in Germany and across Europe, noting in particular the violent antisemitic outbreaks in several European cities in May this year. These outbreaks of antisemitism are often attributed to the migration of refugees into Germany in 2015. However, Dr. Schuster recalled that similar violent outbreaks occurred in 2014, which underlines that the dangerous antisemitism cannot be blamed on the refugees alone.

We agreed on the vital importance to safeguard freedom of thought, conscience and religion (Article 9 ECHR) for the Jewish communities in Europe.

I assured Dr. Schuster that the fight against antisemitism in all its forms and the protection of Jewish life in Europe would continue to be a top priority for the Council of Europe.

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Meeting with Josef Schuster, President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany - Council of Europe