Category Archives: Populism

Photograph Source: Metropolitan Transportation Authority of the State of New York SAS_1613 CC BY 2.0

The governors of New York and California the most populous states led by Democrats now symbolize how slick liberal images are no substitute for genuinely progressive priorities.

After 10 years as New Yorks governor, Andrew Cuomo is facing an uproar overrevelationsthat his administrationintentionally and drastically undercountedthe deaths from COVID in nursing homes. Meanwhile, in California, the once-bright political glow of Gavin Newsom has dimmed, in large part because of personally hypocriticalelitismand a zig-zag middle ground approach to public-health safeguards during the pandemic, unduly deferring to business interests.

The political circumstances differ: Cuomo has beenin conflictwith New York progressivesfor many yearsover key policy matters, whereas Newsom was somewhat of a golden boy for Golden State progressives if they didnt look too closely at his corporate-friendly policies. But some underlying patterns are similar.

Both Cuomo and Newsom know how to talk progressive, but theyre corporate Democrats to the core. On many issues in the state legislature, Cuomo has ended up aligning himself with Republican lawmakersto thwart progressive initiatives. In California, where a right-wing petition drive islikelyto force Newsom into a recall election, the governorsmoderate recordis hardly cause for the states huge number of left-leaning voters to be enthusiastic about him.

Anyone who thinks that the current Cuomo scandal about nursing-home deaths is a recent one-off problem, rather than reflecting adeep-seated corporate orientation, should take a look at investigative reporting by David Sirota thatappearednine months ago under the headline Cuomo Gave Immunity to Nursing Home Execs After Big Donations Now People Are Dying. Sirota wrote:

As Gov. Andrew Cuomo faced a spirited challenge in his bid to win New Yorks 2018 Democratic primary, his political apparatus got a last-minute boost: a powerful health care industry group suddenly poured more than $1 million into a Democratic committeebackinghis campaign. Less than two years after that flood of cash from the Greater New York Hospital Association, Cuomo signed legislation last month quietly shielding hospital and nursing-home executives from the threat of lawsuits stemming from the coronavirus outbreak. The provision, inserted into an annual budget bill by Cuomos aides, created one of the nations most explicit immunity protections for health care industry officials, according to legal experts.

On the other side of the continent, Newsom is second to none in sounding the alarm about climate change and the need to move away from fossil fuels. ButNewsweekreportsthat during his first two years as governor, Newsoms administration approved more than8,000 oil and gas permitson state lands. Hecontinuesto issuemany fracking permits. (As theWall Street Journalnoteddays ago, fracking is now the source of most oil and gas produced in the U.S.)

Gov. Newsoms immediate predecessor, Jerry Brown, became fond of crowing that he governed the way a person would steer a canoe, paddling sometimes on the left and sometimes on the right. The metaphor did not answer the question of where the boat was headed.

It may be relevant that Cuomo and Newsom grew up in the nurturing shadow of extraordinary privilege, making them ill-positioned to see much beyond the comfortable bubbles surrounding them.

Andrew Cuomos father Mario was New Yorks governor for three terms. At age 35, the younger Cuomo was appointed to be assistant secretary of Housing and Urban Development by President Clinton, who promoted him to HUD secretary four years later. Such powerful backers propelled him toward the governors mansion in Albany.

From the outset, Newsom has been enmeshed with power. As longtime California journalist Dan Walters recentlypointed out, Gov. Gavin Newsom wasnt born to wealth and privilege but as a youngster he was enveloped in it as the surrogate son of billionaire Gordon Getty. Later, Gettys personal trust fund managed by Newsoms father provided initial financing for business ventures that made Newsom wealthy enough to segue into a political career as a protg of San Franciscos fabled political mastermind, Willie Brown.

Its possible to transcend such pampered upbringings Franklin Delano Roosevelt certainly did but failures to show credible concern for the working class and serve their interests have put both Cuomo and Newsom in todays political pickles.

Like all politicians, Andrew Cuomo and Gavin Newsom are expendable as far as the corporate system is concerned. If their individual brands lose appeal, plenty of other corporate-power servants are eagerly available.

When elected officials like Cuomo and Newsom fade, the solution is not to find like-minded replacements with unsullied images. The problem isnt the brand, its the quality of the political product.

But it doesnt have to be this way. And some trends are encouraging.

Genuine progressive populism insisting that government should strive to meet widespread social needs rather than serve the special interests of the wealthy and corporate elites is threatening to disrupt the complacency of mainline Democratic leaders who have long coasted on merely being better than Republicans.

More than ever, many entrenched Democrats are worried aboutprimary challengesfrom the left. Such fears areall to the good. Progressive activism and shifts in public opinion have strengthened movements that are recruiting, supporting and sometimes electing candidates who offer far better alternatives.

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Cuomo and Newsom Symbolize the Rot of Corporate Democrats and the Dire Need for Progressive Populism - CounterPunch.org - CounterPunch

Boris Johnson and the Brexit battle bus

DETECTIVE Sergeant Harold Challenor set records for arrests, using the sus laws to slap cuffs on anyone he didnt like the look of.

He joined the Flying Squad in 1958, and earned notoriety for his no-nonsense approach, using his catchphrase: Youre nicked, my old darling.

But his methods would today see him sacked.

He was eventually forced to retire after fitting up three innocent people and Challenors downfall, considered to be a pivotal moment in the erosion of trust in the police, is one of many stories told in a new book by former barrister and judge Inigo Bing.

Populism on Trial: What Happens When Trust In Law Breaks Down considers of the rise of a toxic political trend that, Bing argues, is a step towards totalitarianism and what shocks is how his wide-ranging and accessible polemic illustrates that today in the UK we are caught tightly in populisms grip.

It has become a buzzword to describe the rise of authoritarian governments, undermining the cornerstones of democracy. He cites how the erosion of an independent judiciary and a diligent Commons in favour of the executive raises the spectre of unrestrained power.

Disturbingly, he recognises similarities between populist governments today and regimes that blighted history Hitler, Mussolini and other dictatorships. The legal expert defines what the phrase means and the effect it is having on the UK today.

Bing describes how, in 2019, MP Jacob Rees Mogg asked the Queen to prorogue the Commons to halt MPs discussing leaving the European Union. For Rees Mogg, it was a way of ensuring what he called the will of the people was honoured, but to opponents, it was nothing more than an attack on the sovereignty of the Commons and the role of the judiciary.

Bing argues it highlighted how populism threatens liberal democracy, nibbling away at the publics trust of the systems used to provide reflective and accountable government alongside an independent judiciary.

Bing explains how we are in the midst of a populist takeover. Boris Johnsons election victory was, he states, won by styling himself as a leader who somehow represented the people with his Eton-educated coterie of privileged right-wingers.

Liberal democracy in Britain is in crisis and there is scepticism about the traditional norms which provide the glue to hold societies together, states Bing.

Liberal democracies depend on society being vibrant, where a responsible free press reports true, not fake, news; where public discourse is polite, and where critical thinking is to be encouraged not reviled.

In one telling passage, he cites the use of language and the rotten dishonesty at the core of British populism. The Daily Express printed a headline at the start of the EU Referendum campaign that claimed: Major leak from Brussels reveals the NHS will be killed off if Britain remains in the EU.

It was in no way true but lies were a key plank of the populists game plan.

The language populists use is important, he adds.

It is capable of stoking anxiety and corroding trust. At populisms heart is an appeal to emotion, not facts.

He quotes Leave fanatic businessman Aaron Banks, who said: Remain featured fact, fact, fact, fact. It just doesnt work.

Added to this, we are faced with a digital culture full of rumour, guesswork, fake news and conjecture, which crowds out cool, objective assessments, Bing claims.

It has taken hold in Britain because the bedrocks of society elected legislatures, independent judges and a free press are threatened by intolerance, mistrust, online bullying and a cacophony of conspiracy theories.

This removes facts from debate before populism took hold, a veneration of facts had once been so strong that fact-checking was a necessity for any journalist writing a story. Populist culture has changed this.

He cites how evidence is replaced by meaningless mantras Brexit Means Brexit, Take Back Control, Get Brexit Done and Oven-Ready Deal.

The two bedrocks of Enlightenment culture facts and truth sit uneasily on the shoulders of populists, he adds.

Cherry-picked ideas are chosen to suit a preconceived opinion examples being the EU debate and, more recently, the pandemic.

This poisons the reservoir of social trust, he says.

Populism has accusations that are vague, unspecific and garnished with the spittle of prejudice, Bing writes, which in turn casts aside pragmatism, democracy and decency.

Bing delves back into recent history, charting populisms rise. Examples include how the 2008 banking crash was explained by a lie that austerity was necessary while the bankers, who caused the crisis, were absolved of blame.

That populists hark back to an ill-defined period where Britain was seemingly a better place is a cornerstone of such lies: cases such as the Guildford Four, Birmingham Six and the Maguire Seven are held up as examples.

And being against something is easier than standing for something another populist trait.

They are often uncertain about whether they are bold in their plans for the future or nostalgic for a lost past, he writes. They claim to be modernisers but underneath is a belief that somehow things were always better in the past.

Bing offers a detailed but accessible consideration of populism, and the dangers it presents. He explains how checks and balances are essential for a healthy democracy and how populisms con trick is to persuade otherwise, to the advantage of the real elite.

Populism on Trial: What Happens When Trust In Law Breaks Down. By Inigo Bing. Biteback Publishing, 20.

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What lies beneath - Islington Tribune newspaper website

Covid has damaged populists in power. But it has also assisted those in opposition, especially in Europe where the centre is struggling to protect its population, saysNICK COHEN.

To say the radical right is deceitful and malevolent is to state the obvious but miss the point. I do not mean to discourage you from fighting it. Go ahead, please, be my guest.But however righteous your anger, never forget that the ultra-nationalist wave does not only draws its power from the appeal of racism. Its prospects depend on the failures of the mainstream politicians liberals support to deliver.

They may appear sensible and tolerant but these are not good enough grounds to offer them a free pass. Indeed, you should constantly scrutinise them for a reason that can be hard to admit: the blunders of the mainstream drive voters to the extremes. At this moment, no mainstream failure is greater in Europe than the failure of the European Union to deliver a vaccination programme.

Hundreds of millions of people want the fear of death and the fear of unemployment lifted from them. Yet the European Commission cannot fulfil the first duty of government and protect its citizens.Already we are seeing riots in the Netherlands against lockdowns. In France, a poll shows Marine Le Pen almost running level with Emmanuel Macron.

It is just one poll and the presidential election is not until next year. But Macron already is so disorientated hes become a centrist version of Le Pen.In recent weeks, he has blasted out the Trumpian fake news that the AstraZeneca vaccine was almost ineffective for those over 65 in a transparent attempt to pretend that the European Commissions inability to guarantee supplies will not result in needless deaths.

Spooked by the anger brought by the threat of mass unemployment and business closure, and the sheer tedium of a pandemic without end, Macron went on to postponea third lockdown a gesture that will make him look dishonest and incompetent if he has to lockdown again as the British and South African variants spread.

The French vaccination rate was just over two doses per hundred people, as of the first week in February, compared with five in Denmark and 15 in the UK.But if Macron can slyly play to the strong anti-vaxx sentiment in France perhaps he can hope that the voters will overlook the abysmal performance.

Last months elections in Portugal, a country that had previously managed perfectly happily without a far-right movement, saw the Chega Enough party come from nowhere to 12% of the vote. On the one hand, its leader Andr Ventura spoke to old far right themes. To be a Portuguese citizen will not be enough to protect you in a Chega-dominated future, Ventura said. He did not intend to be the president of all Portuguese, but only of the good or decent Portuguese (Portugueses de bem).

The redefinition of the nation to exclude ethnic minorities, liberals, leftists and anyone else who does not support the far right is an authentic continuation of the fascist tradition. Yet Chega could also use Covid to attack the inability to manage and organise of the socialist government that was irreversibly undermining the confidence of the Portuguese in the vaccination programme.

In Belgium, the ultranationalist Vlaams Belang recently hit 26.3%, its highest poll rating and six points clear of its nearest rival. Vox, a Francoism re-enactment society, has won significant support in, of all places, Catalonia for the first time.

The one good feature of this miserable time was that Covid-19 was meant to have killed the radical right. You only have to look at the increasingly unhinged wails coming from the right wing of the Conservative party and the Tory press to see how unprepared they were for the world we are now in.

Covid has turned the experts Michael Gove had so little time for in the Brexit referendum into essential figures. A year ago, not one person in 10,000 could name the chief medical officer. Now epidemiologists and virologists are national figures.

Right wing commentators are sensing their own redundancy. A country where you cannot get away with saying Covid is no worse than the flu, or there will be no second wave, or lockdowns cost more lives than they save, is a harsh place for them.

Loudmouthed journalists, who once disgorged whatever prejudice came into their head, have suddenly found their every self-serving fantasy judged against the bleak reality of daily death statistics and hospitalisation rates.I cant prove this argument, but I believe it to be true that Boris Johnson dithered with fatal consequences for tens of thousands of his luckless citizens because a part of him is still the bragging, know-nothingTelegraphcolumnist, whose instinct was to dismiss Covid as a fuss about nothing drummed up by the medical establishment.

What applies to the professional ignoramuses of the press applies to the calculating ignoramuses of far right politics. JairBolsonaroin Brazil, Trump in the US, and many others denied and then downplayed the pandemic because they were strongmen who did not want to concede power or share the spotlight with scientists.They knew that once they did the aura of the great man delivering decisive leadership would vanish.

If it is not wild with anger already, the inevitable global cooperation Covid will enforce will send a section of the right over the edge. Out of self-interest as much as benevolence, rich countries will have to pump vaccines and money to poor countries to stop the virus overwhelming every country again.

From my point of view and what I take to be the point of view ofNew Europeanreaders, this scenario is all to the good. But the underlying assumption is that the 'grown-ups in the room' can deliver. The European Commission could not. It had no expertise in health and no expertise of drawing up deals with global pharmaceutical companies.

Its all very well saying that the pandemic revived the importance of experts. But Europes tragedy was that the commission did not have the expertise to handle Covid and did not possess the modesty and self-knowledge to admit it.

Instead, the Commission behaved as if there was no pandemic. It lacked urgency and compassion for the sick and the unemployed. It wasted time arguing about who would be liable if the production process went wrong rather than realising that there are times when you must forget aboutback covering, and a health crisis is just such a time.

It wanted to prevent vaccine nationalism rising among competing EU countries as they fought each other for scarce supplies. A laudable aim, but you have to be able to put laudable aims into practice. The EU could not and so ended up with nationalists uniting against the EU.

Le Pen in France and Matteo Salvini in Italy also had the advantage of being in opposition. At the start of the crisis, voters rallied round their governments, hoping that they could save them. In Britain, despite all the inexcusable mistakes of the Johnson administration, the success of the vaccination programme to date has partly vindicated those hopes.

In much of Europe, the advantage is now with the opposition because European government has failed. That failure may not last. But for the moment the European radical right does not have to advocate leaving the EU Britains experience has squashed that as a realistic political goal.

All it need do is ask why national governments handed over the power to control vaccines, and with it the power to decide who lives and dies who works or sits at home, to an incompetent Brussels.

Where is the accountability or the justice? No one will force Ursula von der Leyen to resign. There is opposition in member states but no opposition in Brussels providing a government-in-waiting ready to take over and remedy the defects of the old regime. The oldest question asked of European institutions is once again a good one: How can voters control you?

The crisis has made the impossible possible. In Britain, a Conservative government, that for a decade convinced a large portion of the electorate austerity was the only responsible policy, is spending incomprehensible sums. In the EU, the notion that member states should close their borders was once a demand confined to the far right. Today it is accepted everywhere.

Contrary to predictions, Covid has added weapons to the far-rights arsenal.Its revival illustrates truths that are too often forgotten in the heat of partisan warfare. You should always ask hard questions of your side.You should never make excuses, however intensely the urge to focus all your anger on the right becomes. On the contrary, you should demand more of the men and women you support than of your enemies because when your friends fail your enemies succeed.

What do you think? Have your say on this and more by emailing letters@theneweuropean.co.uk

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How Covid is fuelling the rise of European populism - The New European

The GameStop saga, for all the havoc it has caused to the global markets, is not just a tale of idealistic individual investors humiliating a bunch of arrogant hedge funds even if the tides turned on Tuesday, with a plunge in GameStops shares. For one, it feels like an unannounced sequel to the 6 January riots on Capitol Hill: both have featured a horde of angry, foul-mouthed social media addicts laying siege to the most sacred institutions of the deeply despised establishment.

However, while the Washington rioters were universally condemned, those leading the virtual crusade on Wall Street have fared much better. Having defended the stocks of musty, struggling companies against greedy hedge funds, they have garnered some sympathy across the political aisle.

The main lesson of the two riots, for the digital counterculture at least, seems clear. Today, the true shamans of the anti-establishment rebellion ought to master the arts of trading stock options and derivatives, not those of climbing walls and waving Confederate flags. The revolution may be livestreamed, tweeted and televised but its probably still a good idea to back up that Excel spreadsheet.

That the GameStop crusade seems dignified is partly a function of the hedge fund industrys rather controversial to put it mildly reputation. There is, however, another, less obvious reason for its acclaim in the public sphere: many of us are enchanted by the rhetoric of democratisation that has accompanied the rise of cheap online brokerage platforms.

One such platform Robinhood has provided the crucial digital infrastructure behind the GameStop rebellion, allowing ordinary people to buy shares in companies for small amounts of cash on their phones. Its own mission, repeated by its founders almost ad nauseam over the past few years, has been to democratise finance.

At first, it may seem just a natural outgrowth of the lofty mission embraced by index funds like Vanguard in the early 1970s. Back then, the idea was to create safe financial instruments that would make it trivially easy and cheap for ordinary people to invest into the stock market without having to accumulate much insider knowledge or expertise.

Robinhood, however, doesnt fashion itself as just another boring and utterly forgettable brokerage firm from Wall Street. Rather, it wants to be seen as a revolutionary, disruptive force out of Silicon Valley. Being seen as just such a digital platform does wonders to ones valuation: the benchmark being Amazon, not some unknown mutual fund.

Robinhoods rhetoric of democratisation is thus to be seen in a somewhat different light. Its heritage points towards the likes of Uber, Airbnb, and WeWork rather than Vanguard or BlackRock. All these digital firms promised to democratise one thing or another transportation, accommodation, office space and to do it fast.

Soon, this nascent industry, with its sweet promise of democracy as a service, couldnt quite contain itself: the global quest for democratising dog walking, babysitting, juice making and laundry-folding was on. This was pursued with the help of venture capitalists and various institutional investors who, squeezed by the low-interest rate legacy of the global financial crisis, were increasingly out of ideas on where to park their money.

This, however, wasnt the whole story: the drive to democratise everything was also fuelled by such unflinching beacons of liberal democracy as the government of Saudi Arabia. By partnering with Japans SoftBank, it bankrolled this myth, pouring billions into the likes of Uber and WeWork.

This huge influx of money, combined with genuinely new business models that rendered certain previously chargeable services nominally free, created an illusion of progress and social mobility. Many digital platforms were either heavily subsidised by their deep-pocketed backers or charged nothing at all; the lost revenue was to be made up by monetising more advanced related services and user data.

The inevitable process of democratisation touted by all the platforms as evidence of their own socially progressive nature, was often the result of simple arithmetic. In cases like WeWork, the maths did not even add up. Whether Robinhood, which has now raised an extra $3.4bn, will be luckier remains to be seen.

For most of these companies, the sweet promises of democratisation have made such maths irrelevant, at least in the short term. This explains how the tech industry has emerged as the leading purveyor of populism around the globe.

This may seem an overstatement. While we tend to reserve the dreaded P word for the Bannons, the Orbns and the Erdoans of this world, can we think of Bezos or Zuckerberg and the stock-trading Robinhood army in those terms?

We can and we should. With everyones eyes fixed on Trump-style populism primitive, toxic, nativist we have completely missed the platforms role in the emergence of another, rather distinct type of populism: sophisticated, cosmopolitan, urbane. Originating in Silicon Valley, this platform populism has advanced by disrupting hidden, reactionary forces that stand in the way of progress and democratisation all by unleashing the powers of digital technologies.

Platform populism is propelled by the almost conspiratorial insistence that the world isnt what it seems. The incumbent firms taxis, hotels, hedge funds have changed the rules of the game in such a way as to favour their own interests. Only by disrupting them can one hope to harvest all the benefits made possible by digital technologies. To that end, the platforms promise to unleash the forces of capitalism in order to civilise these savage remnants of the earlier, pre-digital civilisation.

Much of the rigidity of the pre-digital incumbents is a result of the regulations imposed by democratic (even if capitalist) states. However, in the topsy-turvy universe of platform populism, resisting democratic regulations by subjecting them to the sustained economic pressure of capitalist competition is incontrovertible evidence of democratisation. Hence the resistance from some of them to legislation designed to get them to treat their gig economy workers as actual employees.

That much in the rhetoric of platform populism is fake and that its ultimate winners will be the likes of SoftBank and Saudi Arabia doesnt matter either. Platform populism, featuring no coherent political ideology of its own, is all about process, not outcomes. The goal is to prove that, for all the machinations of government bureaucrats with their pesky regulations, our individual agency is still alive and kicking. Its definitely not to deploy that agency to accomplish any particular long-term political agenda.

Thus, many of the angry crusaders taking on the hedge fund industry are certainly aware that their own gains are temporary and fleeting. But who could deny them the pleasure of reaffirming their own agency by sticking it to the man, all while knowing that the only long-term gains of this process would accrue to other hedge funds and asset managers, such as BlackRock, which is estimated to have made billions on the GamesStop rush? Far from deepening democracy, platform populism turns into a farcical yet highly profitable theatre performance.

Evgeny Morozov is the founder of the Syllabus, and the author of several books on technology and politics

Originally posted here:

Why the GameStop affair is a perfect example of 'platform populism' - The Guardian

Since shortly after the outbreak of Covid-19, two theories about the pandemics likely impact have been circulating. One lets call it the bread thesis maintains that the crisis will reinstate respect for seriousness and competence. It will remind everyone that the nations of the world are interdependent and that the politics of expertise puts food on the table and keeps the diners alive.

The other lets call it the circuses thesis suggests that, with borders tightening, economic and social turmoil exacerbating old inequalities and anger over lockdowns rising and being directed at elites, the pandemic will benefit populists stirring culture wars.

The big political question this decade will be which thesis is more accurate. Enter Michael Burleigh, a British historian and recently the inaugural Engelsberg Chair in History and International Affairs at the London School of Economics. From his lectures in that post, Burleigh has composed Populism: Before and After the Pandemic. This slim book ranges across many of the subjects of his previous works 20th-century Germany, decolonisation and the Cold War, the decline of the West, the uses and abuses of history but concludes with reflections on Covid-19 and what comes next.

It sits at the juncture of three current publishing trends: globetrotting think-pieces on Covid-19 (Ivan Krastevs Is It Tomorrow Yet?, Fareed Zakarias Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World, Slavoj ieks Pandemic!), populism explainers (Anne Applebaums Twilight of Democracy, Michael Sandels The Tyranny of Merit) and explorations of post-imperial identity (Sathnam Sangheras Empireland, Robert Tombss This Sovereign Isle). Readers looking to understand the transformations brought about by the virus should start with Krastevs effort, but Burleighs book is a spirited, readable and thought-provoking tour through the forces defining our age. Populism only gets to the pandemic in its pessimistic conclusion, a short epilogue that follows three discrete but interlocking essays.

[see also:The fall of the Roman republic is a warning about todays degenerate populists]

Burleigh begins with an account of the recent populist wave and how elite interests have ultimately become the progenitors and beneficiaries of movements purporting to rally the masses against the rich and powerful. The Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde has written that populism is a thin ideology which can bind itself on to other political traditions (nationalism, socialism, conservatism, even liberalism) and Burleigh examines its many different international forms in that spirit, neither demonising populist support nor wrapping it up in sentimental odes to real people.

The second essay compares the post-imperial experiences of Britain and Russia. While Burleigh does not labour the parallels, he notes an important similarity. In both countries the carapace of empire obscured the nation underneath the Russian Soviet republic had no formal capital nor a communist party of its own, as England today has no parliament of its own and the retreat of empire is prompting new reckonings with that underlying identity.

The third essay takes in Poland, Hungary, China, South Africa, Britain and the US to show how history is being politicised in order to unify populations, or to divide them into rooted patriots wedded to myths versus elite cosmopolitan subversives. All of which resonates in the wake of the statue wars in 2020 and the storming of the Capitol in Washington, DC where the Confederate flag was held aloft within its walls for the first time ever.

Populism displays Burleighs eye for enlivening and memorable aperus, anecdotes and factoids. He compares the similarities between different forms of populism to the Habsburg jaw in portraiture, and Norman Englands supranational, Francophone aristocrats to Davos man in armour. The Chinese Communist Party, he informs us, once produced a boxed DVD set for its cadres on what Mikhail Gorbachev did wrong in the last days of the Soviet Union. By 2007, 20 years after Ronald Reagan abolished balanced reporting rules for broadcasters, 91 per cent of US radio stations had a conservative bias. Emmanuel Macron based his listening tour following the yellow vests protests of 2019 on a similar exercise by Pierre Poujade, the original French populist.

This mastery of the past helps with predicting the future. Burleigh sees Vladimir Putin, who, after a referendum last summer, can now stay in office until 2036, adopting a form of back-seat power akin to that of Deng Xiaoping in 1980s China. In the shortening of global supply chains due to the pandemic he sees similarities to the breakdown of large-scale tile and glass production in the late Roman empire. And in Brexit and the quandaries about Englishness he sees a risk that Britain will follow Russia in resolving its post-imperial identity by forging a new one defined sharply and antagonistically in opposition to Europe. That a bureaucratic dispute over vaccines between the EU and a post-Brexit Britain has so quickly degenerated into a culture war and merged with emotive debates about the future of the union lends weight to that argument.

[see also:The Big Squeeze: How financial populism sent the stock market on a wild ride]

All of which brings him out at the pandemic-era epilogue. Burleigh gives the case for the bread thesis ample space, citing the chaotic scenes after Indias populist prime minister Narendra Modi announced a national curfew with four hours notice, forcing millions of Indians to travel back to their home villages in scenes that resembled the chaos of partition in 1947. Such misgovernment, he notes, naming instances in Italy, Brazil, Britain, Russia and elsewhere, shows the limits of populist rule Donald Trumps election defeat being a prime example.

Yet the books conclusion sides with the circuses thesis. Culture wars are bubbling even during lockdowns. Protracted economic downturns will come when emergency fiscal support is pulled and bankruptcies and unemployment soar. Unlike after the financial crisis of 2008, there will be no popular patience with further austerity, writes Burleigh. Any signs that economic inequalities are not being addressed this time will not be so passively received He cites France, where a combination of previous socio-economic grievances, the economic blow of the pandemic, waning patience with lockdowns and a search for scapegoats could put Marine Le Pen back on track to attack Macron as the incarnated representative of the global rich exploiting the couches populaires. Recent events support this. The storming of the Capitol spoke to the enduring disruptiveness of Trumpism. The vaccine nationalism rising in Europe hardly augurs a new age of enlightened international cooperation. In France, a recent poll put a Macron-Le Pen run-off in next years presidential election at 52 per cent to 48.

The message of Populism is not entirely pessimistic. Burleigh argues for a more robust defence of liberal democracy, a confrontation with the forces of inequality and division, and a scepticism about the notion that we are slaves to historical precedent. But, as his compelling book argues on its detours through time and space, there is also a case for realism about what the coming period of turmoil might bring. Bread does not always beat circuses.

Populism: Before and After the PandemicMichael BurleighHurst, 10.99, 152pp

Link:

Populism in the pandemic age - New Statesman

The debate around the farm laws and the agitation to scrap them serves a copybook case for those studying politics of populism. History repeats itself, but it shouldnt be allowed to in such a grotesque manner. Right since Independence, the Congress party has always chosen safe ways over hard and politically courageous decisions. As the ruling party, it played to the gallery to avoid political reverses. As the opposition, it has always fished in troubled waters, riding piggyback on popular sentiments. For Indias GOP, low-hanging fruits have always proved to be too tempting to remember its long-term vision for the future of India!

The Congress partys populist politics has proved to be extremely costly to the nation. The three important issues that are routinely referred to as core issues of the BJP are a testimony to this. Regardless of the expressed constitutional mandate, successive Congress governments refrained from nullifying Article 370, enacting a common civil code and preventing the silent invasion of Bangladeshi infiltrators into Assam. While the Congress used all these three issues as a protective shield around its vote bank, they were in fact laying red carpets to multiple threats to the very unity and integrity of India.

An important factor common to these three issues was Muslims in India. Sadly, Congress leaders have viewed Muslims only from the perspective of losses and gains in elections. For them, Jammu and Kashmir was more of a Muslim-majority province and hence a showcase item to be cited as a living example of Indias commitment to secularism. The party was always hell-bent on exhibiting secularism than being truly secular. At the cost of J&Ks progress on the human development front, the Congress allowed secessionist elements to thrive under Article 370.

It turned a Nelsons eye to many things, from repeated terrorist attacks to injustice in Ladakh and from mindless corruption to denial of constitutional safeguards to women and marginalised communities there. The Shah Bano case was the pinnacle of its politics of populism through minority appeasement. Rajiv Gandhis decision to amend the Constitution in order to undo the impact of the Supreme Court judgment further emboldened obscurantist elements in the Muslim community. In effect, justice to Muslim women facing acute vulnerability due to the retrograde practice of triple talaq continued to remain a chimera. To secure its own vote bank, the Congress committed the sin of making the lives of Muslim women even more insecure. Similarly, the IMDT act enacted during former PM Indira Gandhis second tenure gave the illegal migration of Bangladeshis more fillip instead of preventing it.

Again, the example of Terrorists and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, introduced by Rajiv Gandhi, is equally educative. Later, the TADA was used and abused but it continued as a law. During the investigations into the 1993 Mumbai blasts, this Act proved to be very effective. However, in the face of a campaign by certain sections in society, TADA came to be portrayed as an anti-minority law and hence the Narasimha Rao regime meekly gave in to the pressures and repealed the act. Later, when the Vajpayee government decided to bring the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) in 2002, the NDA government was compelled to call a joint sessionsomething that happened only very few times in Indias parliamentary historyof both the Houses to get the law passed.

All these examples show how the Congress lacked courage of conviction in abiding by the guiding principles of the Constitution. Now, while actively supporting forces of manufactured unrest on the farm bills, the GOP and other opposition parties are doing a great disservice to parliamentary democracy. How can a group of a few hundred stubborn agitators pressurise the government to undo what Parliament has passed? If we allow this to happen, it would amount to stifling the voices emanating from the very temple of democracy! The government has been engaging with the agitators patiently and peacefully. It is time that the Congress and opposition parties shun populism and instead prepare the agitators so that wiser counsel prevails.

While doing so, they may do well in recalling what Edmund Burke had said almost 250 years ago: Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays you instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion. (Speech to the Electors of Bristol, November 3, 1774)

VinaySahasrabuddhe(vinays57@gmail.com)President, ICCR, andBJP Rajya Sabha MP

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The Congress Partys politics of populism - The New Indian Express

For those who flirted with parts of the ex-presidents populist message, there is a straightforward line of defense: While Trump obviously failed, real Trumpism was never tried.

The problem was the deeply flawed, unhinged and amoral champion of the populist cause, but not the cause itself, which continues to be relevant. As my AEI colleague Michael Brendan Dougherty writes, political conditions will continue to call for a Trumpist response for some time.

Trumps idiosyncrasies surely go a long way toward accounting for the wholesale failure of his policy agenda, as well as for his disgraceful departure from office. But conservatives have to confront the possibility that populism itself was an important component of the failureand indeed that any populist politics carries the seeds of policy failure.

The proposition will not sit easily with those who, in the wake of the Trump disaster, are seeking to rehabilitate the term. According to the American Compass Oren Cass, for example, theres a way in which populism also means taking seriously the concerns that people have, understanding that they will not all express them in the same terms a Beltway debate might.

But populism has a commonly agreed-upon definition: Namely, it is a type of politics that pits good and pure-hearted ordinary people against a self-serving, out-of-touch elite. As such, populism is inherently divisive as it singles out specific groups as distinct from the people (elites, immigrants, bankers, journalists). It is anti-pluralist as it treats the people as a homogenous entity. Finally, it has a penchant for authoritarianism: If one takes Trumps I am your voice seriously, why should there be any limits to the power of the presidency?

Moreover, through its Manichean nature, populism introduces passions into politicsas opposed to an interplay between interests and abstract principles. And passions are only rarely useful for threading the needle on public policy. In fact, if stirring passions becomes the aim of politics, policy outcomes take a back seat. Neither the border wall, nor the Muslim ban, nor any other of the ex-presidents signature policy ideas were instrumental to achieving any real-world objectives, such as helping those who helped to elect him. Instead, their sole purpose was to keep the audience engaged and emotionally invested in the populist spectacle.

Furthermore, the debate on the future role of populism within the Republican party ought not to be limited to lessons from the Trump era. The bigger picture is not an encouraging one. For every Israel under Benjamin Netanyahus leadership, there is a Hungary under Viktor Orbn, suffering from brain drain and dismantling its democratic institutionsor an India under Narendra Modi, gripped by social unrest and economic dysfunction.

In the GOP alone, recent manifestations go from Pat Buchanan through Sarah Palin and the Tea Party to Trump. Instead of yielding a governing strategy, the partys attempts to embrace populism were akin to efforts to ride a tigerbefore being eaten by it, like Eric Cantor or Lindsey Graham. Perhaps the tiger could be tamed, as the former U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May hoped with her efforts to reshape the Tories as a party of responsible nationalismonly to see herself be overrun by ever more extreme fringes.

It should not be too much to ask those who wish to keep populism as a lasting hallmark of conservative and Republican politics to address populisms real-world record, instead of retreating to a purely abstract defense of politics that would supposedly take the concerns of working-class Americans more seriously than the Beltway elites. Yet, much like Soviet elites of the 1970s and the 1980s, who were not keen to defend the track record of real socialism, the high priests of populism today are keen to sell us a promise of an idealized populism to come, instead of accepting accountability for any of the mess that real populism of the past decade helped create.

There are important policy conversations to be had on the political rightand the leftabout subjects such as immigration or industrial policy. But with its appeal to passions and grievance, populism is the worst possible vehicle for policy change.

In Denmark, the left-of-center government of Mette Frederiksen is seeking without much ado to drive the number of asylum claims to zero, following years of restrictive immigration policy by Social Democrats. Any number of conservative, right-wing, or free-market-friendly governmentsnot least the Reagan administration in the United States or Margaret Thatchers government in the U.K.have provided assistance to specific industries or protected them from foreign competition. Whatever one thinks of the merits of such policies, populism and the pursuit of the substantive agenda advocated by those who want the GOP to be a party of the working class are perfectly separable.

If anything, populism makes thoughtful conversations on immigration, industrial policy, or social safety nets essentially impossible. On both sides of the Atlantic, the combination of the divisive us-versus-them rhetoric of populism on the political right with demands to curb immigration has been a surefire way to attract racists. And combining populism with an expansive view of the states role in the economy has been a one-way ticket to irresponsible, short-sighted economic policy mixesas the legacy of economic populism in Latin America demonstrates.

By all means, let us judge each policy idea on its merits and leave no stone unturned. Yet insofar as insanity consists of doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result, to seek to perpetuate the GOPs populism in the wake of the Trump disaster would be positively insane.

Dalibor Rohac is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington D.C. Follow him on Twitter @DaliborRohac.

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The Problems With Populism Go Well Beyond Donald Trump - The Dispatch

Just as the disastrous digestion process of the Brexit referendum has become the best vaccine against anti-EU populism, so could the assault on the US Capitol become the mirror in which populists in Europe and other parts of the world see their reflections from now on, each time they try to impose their discourse of delegitimising institutions.

Such an American impact would be nothing new. With all its problems and limitations, US democracy has always stood as a beacon for all people around the world who wished to live in freedom and equality under the rule of law. When the French people gave the American people the Statue of Liberty in 1886, marking the first centenary of US independence, it was not just a gesture of recognition, but also a conscious transferral of the flame of freedom for preservation in a safe place while the old continent waited for better times.

As its designer, sculptor Frdric Auguste Bartholdi, said to the promoter of the initiative, French jurist and politician douard Laboulaye, I will endeavour to glorify the Republic over there, until the day we rediscover it among ourselves. But, far from being glorified, the Republic came close to being lost.

Democracy is contagious, as is populism. Until now, the US populist contagion reaching Europe has run along two lines: an indirect one, based on imitation; and a direct one, stemming from cooperation, with support from the US, especially via the activism of Steve Bannon and the financing of Brexit and European far-right parties (see, for example, the establishment of US far-right movement QAnon in Germany, and the Trumpism of Spains Vox on George Soros).

These two types of influence have come together in the use of social media and alternative media, with the result that the followers of populist movements reinforce their sense of grievance with the system and immunise themselves against the facts.

The Washington riots will have a significant impact on the worst of the populists in our midst.

But, now we have seen a mob assaulting the US Congress, this could change. From now on, each time someone attempts to set themselves up as the sole spokesperson of the people, urges protesters to occupy institutions, undermines the role of the courts as supreme arbiters of the law, or conceals their defeats behind baseless claims of electoral fraud, everyone will know how the story ends: your country out of the European Union, a clown in disguise at the parliamentary platform, violence in the streets, institutions in disrepute, and an illiberal democracy with reduced rights.

From now on, citizens will understand much more clearly why it is said that democracies die bit by bit, until they suddenly succumb and it is too late; understand that they must take a stand against each small violation of institutional independence, demagogical outburst by their leaders, incendiary and hate-filled speeches by political representatives, imposter journalists, fake media outlets, and disinformation campaigns that nurture and encourage populists.

Undoubtedly, these effects will be felt on both sides of the political spectrum. Even though the Trump phenomenon can be likened to the nationalist populism of the far right, left-wing populisms are also populisms. And, in all likelihood, the population will sharpen its eyes and recognise that, though the issues are different (religion, immigration, or the economy), the methods for gaining power are the same.

Beyond empowering European democrats and weakening forces that aspire to take power by assault, the Washington riots, added to Trumps exit, will have a significant impact on the worst of the populists in our midst those who have already reached power in Poland and Hungary, bolstered by Trumps United States both as an example and in policy terms.

For other EU member states and their institutions, the events in Washington are an important reminder that, from the dawn of time, the heavens have been breached first by assaulting public institutions and undermining the rule of law. After all, the Statue of Liberty holds a torch in her right hand, and a tablet of laws in her left. There is no liberty outside the law, only within be it in Washington, Paris, or Warsaw.

The European Council on Foreign Relations does not take collective positions. ECFR publications only represent the views of its individual authors.

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The other contagion: Why the US Capitol attack is a warning to populists - European Council on Foreign Relations

Alternative LendingDigital BankingSavings and Investment

Stock market mania isnt new or innovative but, nonetheless, the future of investing for both retail and institutional money is set for rapid change as more and more participants come online.

Weekly Leading Article

Its a strange situation that unites Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump Jnr. to a common cause.

Just one month in, irony looks set to be the best performing asset class in 2021, surpassing puppies' 500 per cent bull-run in 2020 when demand for pedigree pooches skyrocketed under lockdown.

Last week Robinhood, not exactly true to its folkloric namesake, shut off market access to retail investors in favour, according to six million Reddit users, of Wall Street's evil hedge funds.

What transpired? Was it collusion? What does it mean for the future of investing in the stock market? Was it all just a tad overblown?

No doubt, much of the activities on Wall Street last week, that saw an army of Reddit users push the price of a battered analogue business heavily shorted by professionals sky-high, were due to a combination of lockdown boredom, speculative greed and vitriolic desire to stick it to The Man. But, something more profound was at work too.

The power of the crowd, helped by lower barriers to entry to invest in the stock market and the giddying power of social media brought about a huge rise in the price of GameStop as well as a number of other stonks (stocks). It also pushed some formerly powerful hedge funds to hurry out of short positions in these companies and away with a bloody nose. It would be short-sighted to expect this to be the end of the story.

Robinhood, the biggest, most deep-pocketed and most well-known name in the digital wealth sub-sector of fintech, acted for unknown reasons when irritating its users, half of whom had piled into GameStop, but no doubt it did so because it had to.

The contagion was not just felt in the US. Freetrade in the UK, which provides a similar level of market access for UK-based investors had to put in a weekend of hard graft to work to off-set issues it had with providing US market access to its customers owing to its FX partner bank.

If there is a long term trend of greater and greater dominance of the retail investor in markets underway this is both a good thing in terms of fulfilling fintechs promise to democratise financial services but also carries the risk of uncharted populism that might well end in Trumpian catastrophe, not least for those investors bidding up the share price of a failing company that will ultimately crash.

Principally this is the kind of un-checked animal spirits that encourages people to bet using money they cant afford to lose. Decades of regulation have been driven by a belief in theneed to protect the retail market and encourage sensible practices. But in the age of the Reddit forum, much of it clearly needs updating.

More retail investors could spell long-lasting positive change, however. Shareholders also hold sway over companies values, future direction and executive compensation via voting rights. Traditionally, fund managers have voted on behalf of their retail and institutional clients at company AGMs but if the last week has shown us anything, its thatsocial medias populist power can quickly galvanise behind a cause. This could lead to meaningful positive change in areas such as climate change and persecution of minoritiesbut as the politics of the past five years or so have shown, populismcan also lead to chaos.

The AltFi Leader is a new weekly view for 2021 from our editorial team. Wed love to hear your ideas, thoughts, feedback and constructive criticism.editorial@altfi.com

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The AltFi view on Gamestonk: Populism is coming to fintech - AltFi

The American public has given President Biden favorable reviews since he took office last month, and the policies that he is hurrying to put in place appear broadly popular, according to polls.

And notably, as he signs a wave of executive actions and pushes a major $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill, Mr. Biden is facing muted opposition from Republicans so far a reflection of the partys weakened position as it juggles two increasingly divided factions.

I think that Republicans have found Biden to be much more progressive than they thought he was going to be, but I think were too busy trying to kill each other to really focus on it, said Sarah Chamberlain, the president of the Republican Main Street Partnership, a group of centrist Republicans that includes more than 60 members of the House and Senate.

This week, the Houses G.O.P. caucus met to discuss the fate of two lawmakers representing opposite ends of the partys identity: Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the chambers No. 3 Republican. Ms. Greene is one of the chambers most fervent loyalists to former President Donald J. Trump, while Ms. Cheney is pushing to unlink the party from his brand of populism.

The result of the meeting on Wednesday was a kind of stalemate, with the Republican leadership allowing Ms. Greene to keep her committee assignments despite a history of offensive and conspiracy-minded statements, and Ms. Cheney comfortably retaining her top position against a mutiny from Trump allies. On Thursday, the entire House voted to strip Ms. Greene of her committee positions over widespread G.O.P. opposition.

This intraparty division gives Mr. Biden the upper hand as he pushes his legislative agenda forward, said Doug Schwartz, the director of polling at Quinnipiac University, which released a nationwide poll on Wednesday. Hes advocating policies that have solid support in the public, so Republicans are in more of a defensive posture, as theyre opposing popular policies, Mr. Schwartz said.

The publics dissatisfaction with the state of affairs in the United States remains high: Roughly seven in 10 said they were unhappy with the way things were going, according to the Quinnipiac poll. But optimism is on the rise, and many are attaching their hopes to the new president. When asked about the coming four years under Mr. Biden, 61 percent of Americans described themselves as optimistic.

In a Monmouth University poll released last week, 42 percent of Americans said the country was headed in the right direction considerably less than half, but still more than in any Monmouth poll going back to 2013.

The Quinnipiac survey found that more than two-thirds of Americans supported Mr. Bidens coronavirus relief package, with wide majorities also backing certain key elements including a permanent increase to a $15 minimum wage and a round of $1,400 stimulus checks to individuals. On the question of the stimulus payments, even 64 percent of Republicans supported them.

On a range of other Biden policies, the poll found widespread support: rejoining the Paris climate accord, opening a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and ending Mr. Trumps ban on travel from some predominantly Muslim countries.

The New Washington

Feb. 5, 2021, 9:20 p.m. ET

It bears mentioning that pollsters across the country undercounted support for Mr. Trump in November for the second straight time; until survey researchers complete a full post-mortem analysis of 2020 polling, it will be impossible to rule out the possibility that some polls may still be missing a share of his supporters.

Still, in general, the smart Republicans are trying to pick their battles, said Robert Cahaly, a Republican pollster in Georgia who has worked with candidates in both the partys populist wing and its establishment.

Mr. Biden, for his part, will be looking to capitalize on Republicans compromised position. In the end, America wanted a president that was more empathetic, but people do not want a president that looks weak, Mr. Cahaly said.

But he and other Republican strategists cautioned that if Mr. Biden moved too hastily on legislation that was seen as left-leaning, he could face a backlash from some of the disaffected Republicans who supported him in November. Ms. Chamberlain said that if Mr. Bidens environmental policies were perceived as harming the economy, he could find himself in a hole. I think you let them pass laws left and right, and then you expose them for what they are, Ms. Chamberlain said of her suggested strategy for Republicans.

Americans are not holding their breath for a new dawn of bipartisanship. Just 21 percent of respondents in the Monmouth poll said they were highly confident that Mr. Biden would be able to persuade lawmakers in Washington to work together more. Another 39 percent were somewhat confident.

While Mr. Biden receives favorable job reviews over all, 16 percent of Americans in both the Monmouth and Quinnipiac polls said they hadnt made up their minds. Many of these people are onetime G.O.P. voters who lost faith in the party under Mr. Trump and are waiting to see how Mr. Biden governs, said the longtime Republican pollster Whit Ayres.

Basically, the approval numbers on Biden are the disapproval on Trump, Mr. Ayres said. But the disapproval numbers on Biden are lower than the approval number on Trump which suggests there are some people who are hanging back to see what he does.

And there is evidence that those who are hanging back are giving him the benefit of the doubt. In an Associated Press/NORC poll released on Thursday, in which respondents were pushed to give an answer, his approval rose to 61 percent. Thirty-eight percent disapproved.

Opinions of the Republican Party, meanwhile, are much darker.

In the Quinnipiac poll, 64 percent of Americans said the G.O.P. was moving in the wrong direction, including an overwhelming 70 percent of independents and 30 percent of Republican partisans, according to the Quinnipiac poll.

The partys rank and file is now heavily tilted toward the Trump faithful. The Trump base is so big as a share of the party because so many of my type of Republicans have left the party, said Ms. Chamberlain, the head of the centrist group. But they want to come back to the party.

These staunch pro-Trump Republicans express deep frustration with their representation in Washington. Most G.O.P. voters continue to think the vote in November was rigged, echoing Mr. Trumps false claims, and many are irritated that legislators in Washington were not able to keep him in power.

Partly as a result, only 50 percent of Republicans said they were satisfied with G.O.P. lawmakers in Washington, according to the Quinnipiac poll. Thats down from 83 percent among Republican voters nationwide in a Quinnipiac survey a year ago.

Two people can both look at the same house and dislike it, but for different reasons, Mr. Cahaly said. Theres just an element of Republicans that want their old party back and hate the new populism. Then there are Republicans who like the idea of this being a working persons party and wish the old Republicans would just go be Democrats. This fight is going to take place in primaries, in town halls. This party is in a little bit of a civil war.

See the rest here:

Bidens Policies Are Popular. What Does That Mean for Republicans? - The New York Times