Following there is a brief article or review by Mark Potok in 2016, formerly of SPLC the Southern Poverty Law Center, why? Because it is relevant when populist fascism, nationalism, eugenics tropes etc. have been reintroduced, evidenced by Helmut Kohl’s in ‘80s, Australia from 2001 and later Brexit, then Trump.
Of course the review was inspired by the latter i.e. Trump’s regime, but identifies key aspects i.e. middle class populism (of ageing white Christians) encouraged to rise up while othering outliers e.g. immigrants, Muslims, Jews, Chinese, Asians, educated people, unions, ‘the left’ etc; though one would argue this is coordinated by, and for, empowered white middle class?
Other contemporary aspects include Brexit, a radical right libertarian coup to implement neoliberal policies e.g. to withdraw from EU to avoid regulatory etc. constraints, but needed dog whistling of immigrants, Farage and Tanton Network to get the vote over the line (after decades of dog whistling). In the US context this means power through nativism for neoliberal policies round fossil fuels, finance and related, i.e. avoid constraints of climate science and related measures e.g. carbon pricing.
The review also cites issues of white working or middle class in the US feeling that they are missing out, but it’s unclear if this is grounded in reality versus constant negative media agitprop via Fox etc.; many may find they have more in common with ‘immigrants’ than their own leaders….. However, like many in the media who follow the old eugenics trope or myth that immigration causes downward pressure on income, but no evidence?
This leads onto ‘the great replacement’ and impacts on working age, but many protagonists, as witnessed at Capitol Hill riot or the Tea Party astroturfing appear dominated by middle aged, retirees and older white types for whom low level jobs are not important?
One would posit that it’s more about the success of and inroads made into public narratives and opinion, via media, by white nativists or nationalists promoting ‘the great replacement’ but through an ‘environmental’ or ‘economics’ lens.
In the Anglosphere this is due to the long game of Tanton Network development of PR architecture of influence to make refugees, borders, immigration and population growth as proxy issues; ‘deceased white nationalist’ John Tanton, of German parentage, was known as the ‘puppeteer’ of the immigration restriction movement, muse of Steve Bannon and the alt right.
Behind the nativism, populism and noise, unpalatable neoliberal economic policies can be enacted, that are neither in the interests of the protagonists, coming generations nor the specific nation; Brexit is the most compelling example of both Koch and Tanton Network think tanks, with media support achieving a revolution i.e. wall to wall negative agitprop.
Further, we know there were corporate links between US plutocrats and Nazi Germany, with support for eugenics research, then post WWII many old relationship continued under various guises, includes in the USA. To this day with the digital world, the alt right, white nationalism and neo Nazism has gone global in both the Anglosphere, Central Eastern Europe and even shared ideology in the Middle East i.e. outcome of the pre & post WWII distribution, of the anti semitic hoax ‘The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion’; the latter has now been adapted then morphed into the enduring myth i.e. the ‘Soros Conspiracy’.
From SPLC Intelligence Report a review by Mark Potok of ‘The Beast Reawakens’ August 3, 2016
‘From the candidacy of Donald Trump to the British decision to leave the European Union (EU), from the rise of a radical movement of anti government county sheriffs to a metastasizing rage aimed at political and economic elites, something important and incredibly dangerous is happening in the Western world.
The beast of right-wing populism is reawakening.
When author Martin Lee titled his 1997 book The Beast Reawakens, the phrase he coined referred to the resurgence of Nazism in Europe. Today, it describes a far larger and far more dangerous set of movements that threaten to tear apart societies in both the United States and Europe. Their ideology is populist — the idea that “pits a virtuous and homogenous people against a set of elites and dangerous ‘others’ who are depicted as depriving the sovereign people” of their prosperity and rights, according to scholars Daniele Albertazzi and Duncan McDonnell.
In the United States, Trump is appealing directly to working- and lower middle-class whites and suggesting that their very real problems and insecurities are the fault of self-interested social elites — traditional politicians of both parties and media leaders — and of “dangerous others,” particularly Mexicans and Muslims. And, in typical populist manner, Trump offers himself up as the strongman who can solve seemingly intractable problems with bold, simple strokes.
In Europe, the leaders of the “Brexit” campaign managed to convince some 52% of voters that the cause of their economic and cultural malaise was a refugee and immigrant crisis enabled by the leaders of the European bloc. Those who voted to quit the EU were overwhelmingly older whites, many of them from the British equivalent of Rust Belt states in America. The sad irony is that those are the very areas that have been subsidized with huge amounts of money from the EU.
In the United States, the disaffection is helping drive a radical movement that seeks to delegitimize government, something seen in the “constitutional sheriffs” movement and the Bundy standoffs examined in this issue. In Europe, beyond the United Kingdom, it is reflected in the rise of populist, and often anti-Semitic and racist, political parties in places like France, Germany, Poland and Hungary.
The causes are complex. Globalization has increasingly knit nations together in a world economy, spurring huge movements of both workers and capital and causing enormous dislocations as a result. Manufacturing wages have been declining across the West for decades, income inequality is at historic levels, and the digital revolution has left those without university-level education far behind.
At the same time, major cultural changes — the rise of large immigrant communities, for instance, and the advance of same-sex marriage — increasingly are making many whites feel that the world they grew up in is disappearing. The idea that the future holds better things is under assault in both America and Europe.
Anne Marie Slaughter, who heads the New America Foundation, compares the present moment to the upheavals seen at the beginning of the 20th century, another period of brutal change. “What we are seeing,” she told The Atlantic in July, “is anger at the disruption of our economy and, really, our social order — of the magnitude we saw when the agricultural age gave way to the industrial age.”
“The digital revolution … is completely upending how we work,” she said, “what the sources of value are, how people can support their families, if they can at all, and creates tremendous fear and rage in the sense that you are at the mercy of forces you cannot control.”
In an essay for the History News Network, scholar Stephen W. Campbell analyzed the roots of Trump voters’ anger but also pointed out that the white working class still has long had it better than American minorities. “Part of [their] anger stems from economic inequality, but a major part, whether they will admit it or not, stems from the fear of rapid demographic change,” he wrote. “They are losing the privilege that has accumulated and redounded to their advantage over generations and almost no one willingly gives up privilege without a fight.”
This kind of rage, nurtured by opportunistic politicians and pundits riding the wave of political discontent, can be hard to quell. In the past, it has led to historic horrors like the rise of populism and racial nationalism that very nearly destroyed Europe in the 1930s and ’40s.
In the wake of the Brexit vote — which was preceded days earlier by the assassination of a pro-EU legislator by a neo-Nazi — Britain experienced a major wave of hate crimes against a whole array of minorities. On our side of the ocean, anti-Muslim violence and terrorist plots against government agencies reflect the rise of populist fury.
To suggest that the West is headed into the kind of social turmoil that led to fascism in Italy and Spain and Nazism in Germany is, hopefully, going too far. But to put the beast of populism back to sleep will require the best efforts of wise leaders, thoughtful voters, and effective government programs — all of which have been in short supply in recent years.’
See below for more blogs or articles related to Demography, Environment, Immigration, Populist Politics & White Nationalism:
Ghosts of Galton and Eugenics Return – Society, Population and Environment in the 21st Century
The Bell Curve – Eugenics – IQ – Libertarian Levelling Up of Minorities and Society?
GOP Republicans’ Future – Democracy or Autocracy?
Anglosphere – Radical Right Libertarian Socioeconomics and Authoritarianism
NOM Net Overseas Migration – Immigration – Population Growth
Malthus on Population Growth, Economy, Environment, White Nationalism and Eugenics
55 Tufton Street London: US Koch & Tanton Networks’ Think Tanks – Radical Right Libertarians and Nativists
John Tanton – Australia – The Social Contract Press
Trump’s White House Immigration Policies and White Nationalist John Tanton
Education Training Society 