Western democracies are suffering from a growing sense of disconnect between the political establishment on the one hand, and ordinary citizens on the other. This sense of estrangement seems to be accelerating: on the one hand, the gap between homeowners and renters is broadening, with many young people despairing of the possibility of owning their own home, making the notion of an equal opportunity society, one of the great promises of democracy, increasingly chimerical. On the other hand, rulers increasingly resort to coercive forms of social engineering to impose their plans on the citizenry, be it pandemic control, “15 minute cities,” climate policy, or education.
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This process of alienation was already well underway before the pandemic hit, as proven by the roaring success of anti-establishment movements like Brexit in the UK, the National Front in France, and Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement in the United States. The success of these movements continues to puzzle some analysts, but it is not really all that mysterious, given that political elites seem to be increasingly out of step with a large section of the citizenry on a host of issues, including:
censorship, including hate speech laws. For example, a Hate Offences Bill has been passed in the lower house of the Irish Parliament by a landslide majority, in spite of the fact that the Irish government’s public consultation revealed an overwhelmingly negative response from the public.
trans ideology, including efforts to indoctrinate children into trans ideology and campaigns to gain access for biological males to women’s changing rooms and womens’ sports. Many governments have remained silent on this issue, or quietly deferred to the trans agenda, in spite of the fact that there is no evidence to suggest that the public strongly supports these practices.
climate policy: The most egregious recent example of political rulers being completely out of step with ordinary citizens on climate policy is the Dutch government’s decision to threaten Dutch farmers with expropriation in order to comply with EU climate targets. This sparked a strong populist backlash, with the Farmer-Citizens’ movement (BBB) now holding more seats in the Dutch Senate than any other single party.
immigration and refugee policy: Clearly, the political establishment has badly misread public sentiment on this issue. Citizens’ concerns about security, public services, and housing and how they might be affected by a large influx of refugees and immigrants from different parts of the world have essentially been ignored, or simplistically equated with racism or xenophobia.
housing policy: In many cities across the West, the housing market, and in some cases, even the rental market, is now completely inaccessible to citizens on regular salaries. Politicians and civil servants are evidently not as affected by this problem as an average citizen, so they often do not seem to empathise with citizens who cannot afford to invest in a home, and must pour their earnings instead into expensive rental properties.
healthcare: good quality health services are either prohibitively expensive for families on modest salaries - as is the case for many US citizens; poorly managed and increasingly unresponsive to public demand - as is the case for Ireland and the United Kingdom; or largely unavailable for many patients, as was the case for many Western nations due to the draconian restrictions they placed on in-person medical attention. We are now seeing an unexpectedly high level of mortality in many Western nations, not only among older but younger generations. Politicians repeatedly blamed the pandemic for these failures, but citizens know that the problem with their health services is much bigger and more chronic than the pandemic.
the idea of a cashless society: Central bankers and political officials seem to be much more enthusiastic than citizens at large about the introduction of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), which would allow policymakers to have a much greater degree of control over citizens’ spending and cash flow. Many ordinary citizens are quite happy to have conventional bank accounts and credit cards, or even just plain cash, and are certainly not clamouring for the end of cash or the further empowerment of central banks.
The growing gap between public sentiment and elite attitudes across all of these policy domains - censorship, trans ideology, climate change, immigration, housing, healthcare, and CBDCs - is lamentable, but also represents a tremendous opportunity for a populist, anti-establishment party to champion the concerns of citizens that are being sidelined by traditional parties. A successful populist party would have to tap into voter frustration with the status quo and point out, in very tangible ways, how voters’ concerns and interests are no longer being represented by traditional parties.
It is not a question of uncritically embracing everything that comes out of contemporary populist movements. Rather, we ought to build on their successes and intelligently and responsibly adapt some of the most effective populist strategies of Trump, the Brexiteers, the Dutch Citizen Farmers, and Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia party in order to effectively channel the frustration and anger of ordinary voters into a political force capable of upsetting the “cosy consensus” of a large part of our political establishment around issues like censorship, “misinformation,” pandemic management, the “climate crisis,” transgender ideology, the democratic deficit of the European Union, and the role of international organisations like the WHO in subverting national sovereignty.
Many mainstream journalists have used the term “populism” as though it were a dirty word. But this is highly disingenuous: populism, in itself, is neither good nor bad. It is a style of politics that can appeal to ordinary voters, and can convert popular frustration with the political establishment into an anti-establishment vote. Given how entrenched illiberal and technocratic thinking appears to be within the established political classes of Western countries, populism may be the only force capable of mobilising enough voters to hold authoritarianism at bay.
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Thank you as always David. Great video too!
> immigration and refugee policy:
If people will think deeply about how animals are bread and breeds of dogs, cattle, cats, chickens etc. come about, it may be obvious why those who rule the world sponsor forced immigration and refugee acceptance by nations. It is a breeding policy. A means to cross breed creating new breeds of human animals. Pick the qualities wanted cull those not wanted and start another breeding round. Rinse and repeat.
These folks are looking for the kind of slave needed for tasks yet to be defined. I could be wrong but it looks suspicious to me.