Lobbyists and Media – Push Politicians to Right – But Not Voters?

Interesting article from The Conversation ‘Politicians believe voters to be more conservative than they really are’ analysing the mismatch between media and politicians versus the electorate and society at large in Europe, US and Australia, why?

‘on a majority of issues, politicians consistently overestimate the share of citizens who hold right-wing views.  Importantly, politicians’ overestimation of how many citizens hold right-wing views is consistent across the ideological spectrum. Politicians hold a conservative bias regardless of whether they represent left- or right-wing parties’

According to the researchers, they suggest much has to do with right wing voters, even though a minority, are more active and have a higher profile, in addition to the impact of lobbyists and one would suggest, oligarch funded right wing ‘libertarian’ think tanks, especially refined architecture of influence in the US. 

The Anglosphere of US, UK and Australia, have become stark in how right wing or ultra conservative and nativism infected politics, economics and society, targeting and developing above median age right wing voters. This has been achieved by supposed free market think tanks and the fossil fueled Koch Network including CNP Council for National Policy, Heritage Foundation, Heartland Institute and ‘bill mill’ ALEC American Legislative Exchange Council. 

Further, this is supported by white nativism masquerading as environmental solutions of the Tanton Network, which shares Koch Donors Network, funded by but deflecting from fossil fuels, highlighting ‘immigrants’ and ‘population growth’ as environmental issues, then Murdoch led media ecosystem spreads, repeats and reinforces the negative talking points, informed by GOP pollsters and lobbyists. 

In the UK the same elements exist with both Tanton and Koch Network NGO or charities sharing Tufton St., while Murdoch et al. are central in media to do the communications; ditto Australia.

From The Conversation:

‘Politicians believe voters to be more conservative than they really are

In Germany, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) won a district council election for the first time on Monday. Robert Sesselmann’s victory as district administrator – the equivalent of a mayor – in the Eastern town of Sonneberg comes only a day after Greece’s conservatives clinched an outright majority in the country’s parliamentary polls, topping left-wing parties Syriza and Pasok. Meanwhile, the Spanish left is also bracing for an early general election on 23 July, after losing to the Spanish conservative Partido Popular (PP) and far-right Vox parties in May.

Such developments might send a signal to European politicians to lean further to the right in a scramble to save votes. Yet our latest research, published this month, shows that politicians’ perceptions may not actually reflect voters’ true interests and opinions. Worse still: it appears to be an error that many other politicians have already made.

866 officials surveyed

In an influential 2018 study, David Broockman and Christopher Skovron showed that US politicians overestimated the share of citizens who held conservative views. On questions related to state intervention in the economy, gun control, immigration, or abortion, the majority of both Republicans and Democratic representatives surveyed believed that a greater share of citizens supported right-wing policies than what public-opinion data revealed.

Our findings are clear and straightforward. In all four countries, and on a majority of issues, politicians consistently overestimate the share of citizens who hold right-wing views.  Importantly, politicians’ overestimation of how many citizens hold right-wing views is consistent across the ideological spectrum. Politicians hold a conservative bias regardless of whether they represent left- or right-wing parties.

The result of lobbying?

The big question is why politicians perceive public opinion to be more right-wing than it truly is. One explanation provided by Broockman and Skovron for the United States was that right-wing activists are more visible and tend to contact their politicians more often, skewing representatives’ information environment to the right. We tested this explanation in our studied countries, but could not find evidence to support it. The right-wing citizens in our sample are not more politically active, and therefore visible, than their left-wing counterparts. Yet the idea that politicians’ information environment might be skewed to the right can find support in other work.

Earlier research has shown that politicians tend to receive disproportionally right-skewed information from business interest groups. Social media, which politicians use more and more, also tends to be dominated by conservative views, and as politicians spend more time online, and their news media diet is growingly filtered through social media feeds that create interactions and feedback skewed to the right, their views may be accordingly distorted. It has also been shown that politicians tend to pay more attention to the policy preferences of more affluent and educated citizens, and those citizens vote more often and hold more often right-wing views, at least on economic issues.

A threat to representative democracy

Irrespective of the sources of the conservative bias, the fact that it is persistently present in a variety of different democratic systems has major implications for the well-functioning of representative democracy. Representative democracy builds upon the idea that elected politicians are responsive to citizens, meaning that they by and large attempt to promote policy initiatives that are in line with people’s preferences. If politicians’ ideas of what the public thinks – let alone their own party’s voters – are systematically biased toward one ideological side, then the political representation chain is weakened. Politicians may erroneously pursue right-wing policies that do not in fact have the popular support, and may refrain from working to advance (incorrectly perceived) progressive goals. 

But if citizens are less conservative than what politicians perceive them to be, the supply side of policy is at risk of being consistently suboptimal and may have broader, system-wide implications such as growing disaffection with democracy and democratic institutions.The recent social unrest in France regarding raising legal pension age might be an example of a policy debate in which governments perceive public opinion leaning more to the right than it actually is.

The situation is not without hope, however, and access to accurate information seems to play an important role. A 2020 study in Switzerland has shown that a sustained use of direct democracy might help politicians better understand public opinion. In the same logic, a recent study of US elected officials show that they tend to misperceive support for politically motivated violence among their supporters. But when exposed to reliable and accurate information, they update and correct their (mis) perceptions. Building on such studies, we believe that more work needs to be done both to understand the sources and prevalence of conservative bias, and to identify additional ways of offsetting it.

For more related blogs on Ageing Democracy, Australian Politics, Conservative, Demography, EU European Union, Immigration, Koch Network, Media, Political Strategy, Populist Politics, Tanton Network and Younger Generations:

Collective Narcissism, Ageing Electorates, Pensioner Populism, White Nativism and Autocracy

Narcissistic Political Leaders – NPD Narcissistic Personality Disorder – Collective Narcissism – Cognitive Dissonance – Conspiracy Theories – Populism

Nationalist Conservative Political Parties in the Anglosphere – Radical Right Libertarian Ideology and Populism for Votes

Ageing Democracy, Nativism and Populism

The Anglosphere Faux or Fake Left and Centre Heading to the Populist Right?

Growth of Conservative Hard Right Wing or Nativist Authoritarian Regimes

Strange Conservative Political Links – The Anglosphere, Hungary and Russia

Radical Libertarian Disinformation Machine – Koch Network by Nancy MacLean

Immigration Restriction – Population Control – Tanton Network

Anglosphere Nativist Libertarian Social Economic Policies or Return of Eugenics?

In the past decade we have witnessed a political shift to the nativist and libertarian right in the Anglosphere, but described as ‘conservative’, appealing to the important above median age voter, less educated, more socially conservative, obedient and monocultural, but e.g. in UK leading to austerity measures?

Most of these ideas come from the classical or liberal economists of the past including Calvin, Smith, Ricardo et al. and also includes old eugenics based ideas of dour Christian men like Malthus on population, Galton on social Darwinism or eugenics, and worse, Madison Grant in the US who influenced Hitler.

What we observe now are attempts to implement these restrictive and regressive policies by ‘conservative’ parties, but it’s very chaotic, and destructive to parties e.g. hollowing out with fewer informed members.  However, their policies are mostly unpalatable to thinking citizens e.g. Brexit, Trump, pro fossil fuels, anti climate science, demands for significant cuts to government spending with tax cuts for the 1-10%, ongoing attacks on ‘elites’, ‘wokeness’, women, minorities, education and science for a disempowered society.

This reflects influence of Koch Network ‘radical right libertarian’ Atlas think tanks which are now global but especially influential in the US, Tufton Street UK e.g. IEA Institute of Economic Affairs and equivalents IPA (founding partner was Murdoch’s father) and CIS in Australia, with opaque funding sources and donors. These think tanks actually do more PR or lobbying of policies versus informed research and seem to run protection for media oligopolies themselves, right wing governments, fossil fuels and big (global) business; with a clear crossover to John Tanton Network white nativism or eugenics, masquerading as environmental ‘hygiene’ round refugees, immigrants, population growth, minorities and the ‘great replacement’.

Now pro bono UK trade advisor and former Australian LNP conservative PM Tony Abbott, was given suggestions by the Koch linked think tank IPA in Melbourne, for a potential new government in 2012.  In fact seventy five suggestions, below the article excerpts, give a clear indication of antipathy towards government, taxes, budgets, public spending, social security, health care, climate measures, environmental management etc.

Any informed media and journalists need to be aware as they may challenge MPs, think tankers etc. but with neither deep insight nor analysis of causes, does not inform anyone? 

If one uses an Australianism, that’s just ‘too easy’ and comfortable while retaining access to decision makers, with the latter given too much unearned respect for old ideas masquerading as moden policies.

Be Like Gough: 75 Radical Ideas To Transform Australia

Written by John Roskam, Chris Berg and James Paterson

5 August 2012

If Tony Abbott wants to leave a lasting impact – and secure his place in history – he needs to take his inspiration from Australia’s most left-wing prime minister.

No prime minister changed Australia more than Gough Whitlam. The key is that he did it in less than three years. In a flurry of frantic activity, Whitlam established universal healthcare, effectively nationalised higher education with free tuition, and massively increased public sector salaries. He more than doubled the size of cabinet from 12 ministers to 27.

He enacted an ambitious cultural agenda that continues to shape Australia to this day. In just three years, Australia was given a new national anthem, ditched the British honours system, and abolished the death penalty and national service. He was the first Australian prime minister to visit communist China and he granted independence to Papua New Guinea. Whitlam also passed the Racial Discrimination Act. He introduced no-fault divorce.

Perhaps his most lasting legacy has been the increase in the size of government he bequeathed to Australia. When Whitlam took office in 1972, government spending as a percentage of GDP was just 19 per cent. When he left office it had soared to almost 24 per cent.

Virtually none of Whitlam’s signature reforms were repealed by the Fraser government. The size of the federal government never fell back to what it was before Whitlam. Medicare remains. The Racial Discrimination Act – rightly described by the Liberal Senator Ivor Greenwood in 1975 as ‘repugnant to the rule of law and to freedom of speech’ – remains.

It wasn’t as if this was because they were uncontroversial. The Liberal opposition bitterly fought many of Whitlam’s proposals. And it wasn’t as if the Fraser government lacked a mandate or a majority to repeal them. After the 1975 election, in which he earned a 7.4 per cent two-party preferred swing, Fraser held 91 seats out of 127 in the House of Representatives and a Senate majority.

When Mark Steyn visited Australia recently he described political culture as a pendulum. Left-wing governments swing the pendulum to the left. Right of centre governments swing the pendulum to the right. But left-wing governments do so with greater force. The pendulum always pushes further left.

And the public’s bias towards the status quo has a habit of making even the most radical policy (like Medicare, or restrictions on freedom of speech) seem normal over time. Despite the many obvious problems of socialised health care, no government now would challenge the foundations of Medicare as the Coalition did before it was implemented.

Every single opinion poll says that Tony Abbott will be Australia’s next prime minister. He might not even have to wait until the current term of parliament expires in late 2013. The Gillard government threatens to collapse at any moment. Abbott could well be in the Lodge before Christmas this year.

Abbott could also have a Fraser-esque majority after the next election. Even if he doesn’t control the Senate, the new prime minister is likely to have an intimidating mandate from the Australian people. The conditions will suit a reformer: although Australia’s economy has proven remarkably resilient, global events demonstrate how fragile it is. The global financial crisis, far from proving to be a crisis of capitalism, has instead demonstrated the limits of the state. Europe’s bloated and debt-ridden governments provide ample evidence of the dangers of big government.

Australia’s ageing population means the generous welfare safety net provided to current generations will be simply unsustainable in the future. As the Intergenerational Report produced by the federal Treasury shows, there were 7.5 workers in the economy for every non-worker aged over 65 in 1970. In 2010 that figure was 5. In 2050 it will be 2.7. Government spending that might have made sense in 1970 would cripple the economy in 2050. Change is inevitable.

But if Abbott is going to lead that change he only has a tiny window of opportunity to do so. If he hasn’t changed Australia in his first year as prime minister, he probably never will.

Why just one year? Whitlam’s vigour in government came as a shock to Australian politics. The Coalition was adjusting to the opposition benches. Outside of parliament, the potential opponents of Whitlam reforms had yet to get organised. The general goodwill voters offer new governments gives more than enough cover for radical action. But that cover is only temporary. The support of voters drains. Oppositions organise. Scandals accumulate. The clear air for major reform becomes smoggy.

Worse, governments acclimatise to being in government. A government is full of energy in its first year. By the second year, even very promising ministers can get lazy. The business of government overtakes. MPs start thinking of the next election. But for the Coalition, the purpose of winning office cannot be merely to attain the status of being ‘in government’. It must be to make Australians freer and more prosperous. From his social democratic perspective, Whitlam understood this point well. Labor in the 1970s knew that it wanted to reshape the country and it began doing so immediately.

The time pressure on a new government – if it is to successfully implant its vision – is immense. The vast Commonwealth bureaucracies and the polished and politically-savvy senior public servants have their own agendas, their own list of priorities, and the skill to ensure those priorities become their ministers’ priorities. The recent experience of the state Coalition governments is instructive. Fresh-faced ministers who do not have a fixed idea of what they want to do with their new power are invariably captured by their departments.

Take, for instance, the Gillard government’s National Curriculum. Opposing this policy ought to be a matter of faith for state Liberals. The National Curriculum centralises education power in Canberra, and will push a distinctly left-wing view of the world onto all Australian students. But it has been met with acceptance – even support – by the Coalition’s state education ministers. This is because a single National Curriculum has been an article of faith within the education bureaucracy for decades; an obsession of education unions and academics, who want education to ‘shape’ Australia’s future. (No prize for guessing what that shape might look like.) A small-target election strategy has the unfortunate side-effect of allowing ministerial aspirants to avoid thinking too deeply about major areas in their portfolio.

So when, in the first week as minister, they are presented with a list of policy priorities by their department, it is easier to accept what the bureaucracy considers important, rather than what is right. The only way to avoid such departmental capture is to have a clear idea of what to do with government once you have it.

Only radical change that shifts the entire political spectrum, like Gough Whitlam did, has any chance of effecting lasting change. Of course, you don’t have to be from the left of politics to leave lasting change on the political spectrum.

Both Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan proved conservatives can leave a paradigm-shifting legacy. Though Thatcher’s own party strayed from her strongly free-market philosophy, one of the major reasons the British Labour Party finally removed socialism from their party platform under Tony Blair was because of Margaret Thatcher.

Ronald Reagan not only presided over pro-market deregulation and tax cuts during eight years in the White House, but also provided the ideological fuel for the 1994 Republican revolution in the House of Representatives, led by Newt Gingrich, which enacted far-reaching welfare reform.

Here we provide a list of 75 policies that would make Australia richer and more free. It’s a deliberately radical list. There’s no way Tony Abbott could implement all of them, or even a majority. But he doesn’t have to implement them all to dramatically change Australia. If he was able to implement just a handful of these recommendations, Abbott would be a transformative figure in Australian political history. He would do more to shift the political spectrum than any prime minister since Whitlam.

We do not mean for this list to be exhaustive, and in many ways no list could do justice to the challenges the Abbott government would face. Whitlam changed the political culture. We are still feeling the consequences of that change today. So the policies we suggest adopting, the bureaucracies we suggest abolishing, the laws we suggest revoking should be seen as symptoms, rather than the source, of the problem.

Conservative governments have a very narrow idea of what the ‘culture wars’ consists of.  The culture of government that threatens our liberty is not just ensconced in the ABC studios, or among a group of well-connected and publicly funded academics. ABC bias is not the only problem. It is the spiralling expansion of bureaucracies and regulators that is the real problem.

We should be more concerned about the Australian National Preventive Health Agency – a new Commonwealth bureaucracy dedicated to lobbying other arms of government to introduce Nanny State measures – than about bias at the ABC. We should be more concerned about the cottage industry of consultancies and grants handed out by the public service to environmental groups. We should be more concerned that senior public servants shape policy more than elected politicians do. And conservative governments should be more concerned than they are at the growth of the state’s interest in every aspect of society.

If he wins government, Abbott faces a clear choice. He could simply overturn one or two symbolic Gillard-era policies like the carbon tax, and govern moderately. He would not offend any interest groups. In doing so, he’d probably secure a couple of terms in office for himself and the Liberal Party. But would this be a successful government? We don’t believe so. The remorseless drift to bigger government and less freedom would not halt, and it would resume with vigour when the Coalition eventually loses office. We hope he grasps the opportunity to fundamentally reshape the political culture and stem the assault on individual liberty.

1 Repeal the carbon tax, and don’t replace it. It will be one thing to remove the burden of the carbon tax from the Australian economy. But if it is just replaced by another costly scheme, most of the benefits will be undone.

2 Abolish the Department of Climate Change

3 Abolish the Clean Energy Fund

4 Repeal Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act

5 Abandon Australia’s bid for a seat on the United Nations Security Council

6 Repeal the renewable energy target

7 Return income taxing powers to the states

8 Abolish the Commonwealth Grants Commission

9 Abolish the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission

10 Withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol

11 Introduce fee competition to Australian universities

12 Repeal the National Curriculum

13 Introduce competing private secondary school curriculums

14 Abolish the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA)

15 Eliminate laws that require radio and television broadcasters to be ‘balanced’

16 Abolish television spectrum licensing and devolve spectrum management to the common law

17 End local content requirements for Australian television stations

18 Eliminate family tax benefits

19 Abandon the paid parental leave scheme

20 Means-test Medicare

21 End all corporate welfare and subsidies by closing the Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education

22 Introduce voluntary voting

23 End mandatory disclosures on political donations

24 End media blackout in final days of election campaigns

25 End public funding to political parties

26 Remove anti-dumping laws

27 Eliminate media ownership restrictions

28 Abolish the Foreign Investment Review Board

29 Eliminate the National Preventative Health Agency

30 Cease subsidising the car industry

31 Formalise a one-in, one-out approach to regulatory reduction

32 Rule out federal funding for 2018 Commonwealth Games

33 Deregulate the parallel importation of books

34 End preferences for Industry Super Funds in workplace relations laws

35 Legislate a cap on government spending and tax as a percentage of GDP

36 Legislate a balanced budget amendment which strictly limits the size of budget deficits and the period the federal government can be in deficit

37 Force government agencies to put all of their spending online in a searchable database

38 Repeal plain packaging for cigarettes and rule it out for all other products, including alcohol and fast food

39 Reintroduce voluntary student unionism at universities

40 Introduce a voucher scheme for secondary schools

41 Repeal the alcopops tax

42 Introduce a special economic zone in the north of Australia including:

a) Lower personal income tax for residents

b) Significantly expanded 457 Visa programs for workers

c) Encourage the construction of dams

43 Repeal the mining tax

44 Devolve environmental approvals for major projects to the states

45 Introduce a single rate of income tax with a generous tax-free threshold

46 Cut company tax to an internationally competitive rate of 25 per cent

47 Cease funding the Australia Network

48 Privatise Australia Post

49 Privatise Medibank

50 Break up the ABC and put out to tender each individual function

51 Privatise SBS

52 Reduce the size of the public service from current levels of more than 260,000 to at least the 2001 low of 212,784

53 Repeal the Fair Work Act

54 Allow individuals and employers to negotiate directly terms of employment that suit them

55 Encourage independent contracting by overturning new regulations designed to punish contractors

56 Abolish the Baby Bonus

57 Abolish the First Home Owners’ Grant

58 Allow the Northern Territory to become a state

59 Halve the size of the Coalition front bench from 32 to 16

60 Remove all remaining tariff and non-tariff barriers to international trade

61 Slash top public servant salaries to much lower international standards, like in the United States

62 End all public subsidies to sport and the arts

63 Privatise the Australian Institute of Sport

64 End all hidden protectionist measures, such as preferences for local manufacturers in government tendering

65 Abolish the Office for Film and Literature Classification

66 Rule out any government-supported or mandated internet censorship

67 Means test tertiary student loans

68 Allow people to opt out of superannuation in exchange for promising to forgo any government income support in retirement

69 Immediately halt construction of the National Broadband Network and privatise any sections that have already been built

70 End all government funded Nanny State advertising

71 Reject proposals for compulsory food and alcohol labelling

72 Privatise the CSIRO

73 Defund Harmony Day

74 Close the Office for Youth

75 Privatise the Snowy-Hydro Scheme

For more related blog and articles on Australian Politics, Climate Change, Conservative, Economics, Fossil Fuel Pollution, Global Trade, Libertarian Economics, Media, Political Strategy, Radical Right Libertarian, Science Literacy, Taxation and WTO click through here and below:

Radical Libertarian Disinformation Machine – Koch Network by Nancy MacLean

BBC: 55 Tufton Street London – Libertarian Think Tanks – Koch Network

Libertarian Nativist Lobbying Against EV Electric Vehicles in Support of Fossil Fuels

Immigration Restriction – Population Control – Tanton Network

Rishi Sunak and US Radical Right Libertarians in UK – Koch Atlas Network Think Tanks

Russian Dark Money – Influencing British Politics, the Conservative Party, the GOP and European Right

55 Tufton Street London: US Koch & Tanton Networks’ Think Tanks – Radical Right Libertarians and Nativists

The Beast Reawakens 1997 – Review – Radical Right Populism in Europe and the Anglosphere

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