Monthly Archives: July 2022

With Trump, Johnson and Morrison, right-wing populism isn't going away Get Access Code.

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Voter disaffection and the self-serving behaviour of business will ensure that the threat of people like Donald Trump doesn't go away.

Yesterday we looked at how News Corp remains a powerful propaganda tool for right-wing extremists and populist leaders in the US, the UK and Australia. The messaging infrastructure that played such a key role in the growing extremism of US Republican voters -- from the Tea Party through to Trump, and now as the "resistance" to Biden -- remains ready to work again for the right candidate.

But crucially, the economic conditions that underpinned that growing extremism and polarisation also remain. If anything, they are growing worse with surging inflation and rising interest rates. If ordinary workers in the US, the UK and Australia have endured wage stagnation in recent years (especially in the UK and Australia), they now face real wage falls, and substantial ones.

In Australia, households with falling real wages also face rising interest rates that will drive up the cost of mortgages (in the UK and the US, most mortgage holders have fixed-rate loans, sometimes long-term fixed loans). Recall that would-be populist leader Clive Palmer promised to cap interest rates at 3% -- something that failed to register during the election campaign but might have greater appeal if rates continue to rise.

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Bernard Keane

Politics Editor @BernardKeane

Bernard Keane is Crikey's political editor. Before that he was Crikey's Canberra press gallery correspondent, covering politics, national security and economics.

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With Trump, Johnson and Morrison, right-wing populism isn't going away - Crikey

In 1958, businessman Robert Welch founded a right-wing political advocacy group The John Birch Society based on conspiracy theories.

He believed that elements in the American government including the president were part of a secret apparatus that were in line with the Soviets and there would be a one world government," Ted Miller, professor at Northeastern University, says.

Welch found ways to influence American society, and politics. Among other tactics, he set up ad hoc committees to advocate for conservative causes.

The ad hoc committee called TRIM supported lower taxes, and it became crucial to the anti-tax proposals that Reagan pursued," Miller says. "But the people that joined these ad hoc committees didnt really know they were getting involved with the John Birch Society."

Today, On Point: The origins of right wing conspiracy theories from the John Birch Society to Trumpism.

Edward Miller, associate teaching professor at Northeastern University. Author of A Conspiratorial Life: Robert Welch, the John Birch Society, and the Revolution of American Conservatism. (@eh_miller)

Jack Beatty, On Pointnews analyst. (@JackBeattyNPR)

ANTHONY BROOKS: The John Birch Society was an ultra right-wing political movement that feasted on conspiracy theories.

It was founded in 1958 by businessman Robert Welch, who claimed, among other things, that President Eisenhower, a staunch Republican, was a dedicated agent of the communist conspiracy that Black Southerners' push for civil rights was fomented entirely by the communists.

Welch even blamed communists for putting fluoride in public water supplies with the passion of today's anti-vaxxers. And like Donald Trump and his devoted base, Birchers refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of their political opposition.

At its peak, the John Birch Society had 100,000 members, and it represented an opportunity and a challenge for Republican elites, not unlike the challenge they face today. While some denounced the Birchers as dangerous paranoid extremists, others feared losing their political support.

Among them, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater. During his run for the presidency, he criticized Robert Welch, but embraced his followers. He said they're good people. They believe in the Constitution, in God, in freedom. And when he accepted the Republican presidential nomination in 1964, Goldwater delivered this memorable line.

BARRY GOLDWATER [Tape]: I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.

BROOKS: Goldwater lost the '64 presidential election in a landslide to Democrat Lyndon Johnson, and the influence of the John Birch Society eventually faded, but its ghosts remained. In fact, in 2016, another far right populist Republican with the support of conservative conspiracists, won the presidency.

So how has the spirit of the John Birch Society lived on? And what does the history of the John Birch Society teach us about far-right populism in America today?

A history of Robert Welch and the John Birch Society

Edward Miller:"Robert Welch was born in North Carolina. He was the son of a farmer. He had a long history of family farmers. And he came to Boston to study Harvard Law. Leaving Harvard Law School, because of the liberal policies of Felix Frankfurter. Then he went into the candy business and was a very successful candy manufacturer, creating such childhood favorites as the Sugar Daddies, the Junior Mints.

"But he had aspirations beyond the candy business. He wanted to go into politics, himself. He would run for lieutenant governor in 1950. He had aspirations to beat John F. Kennedy in 1958. Lofty aspirations, nonetheless. And despite failing in his inaugural bid for lieutenant governor, he did very respectably, he came in second to the former Republican state treasurer in the primary. He decided that he needed to pursue an educational organization.

"In 1958, he founded the John Birch Society, which was a conspiratorial organization. He became renowned and notorious for his claim that President Eisenhower was communist. This led to a response from his nemesis on the respectable right, William F. Buckley, who tried to drive him out of the movement. He was unsuccessful, I argue. But Welch stayed in there. He changed his tactics."

What kind of Americans were drawn to this movement?

Edward Miller: "The John Birch Society appealed primarily to those people who were disappointed with the Eisenhower presidency. They thought that Eisenhower was going to roll back the New Deal. They thought he was going to liberate Eastern Europe. So, many Midwestern conservatives who had backed Robert Taft in 1952, and believed that the 1952 Republican nomination was stolen by Robert Taft, it was stolen by Eisenhower from Robert Taft, came to support a more far-right brand of conservatism, which the John Birch Society embodied.

"They were Midwestern industrialists. They were the men of Main Street, not Wall Street, which Eisenhower represented. They were the everyday men and women who were concerned about where their country was heading in the 1950s. And despite the fact that Eisenhower is seen as a grandfatherly figure of modern conservatism, they rejected that notion and came to the conclusion that Eisenhower had nefarious aims."

On concerns of political violence committed by the John Birch Society

Edward Miller:"There were concerns. And Welch, one of the tragic aspects of Welch, is that he participates and continues to engage in many letters with segregationists and even people who are of a more violent persuasion. And so there was some consideration of potential violence that the John Birch Society would commit."

How do you see the influence of the John Birch Society today?

Edward Miller:"Even, you know, two days ago, I think that ... Governor DeSantis, said something about the smuggling of some nefarious ideas into the schools. He was very ambiguous about what he meant by that statement. But I think he was talking about the idea that school children are being introduced with ... what he sees as strange ideas.

"One of the key intellectuals of the John Birch Society, E. Merrill Root, wrote a book, Collectivism on Our Campuses. He also wrote a book about collectivism in our high schools. And he was concerned about how these ideas were creeping into our schools, and they were infecting the minds of our children, and liberalizing them."

On the influence of the John Birch Society in 2022

Edward Miller:"It's not necessarily the society itself. It's the idea that the society itself promoted. It's the idea that the Second Amendment is to be taken away. And that wasn't something that the NRA supported initially. That was something that the John Birch Society supported.

"So I think it's more the ideological aspects that the John Birch Society continued. I in no way suggest that the John Birch Society in my book is is making a significant comeback. It's the ideas that remained. And the John Birch Society provided some of the seedlings for this growth."

What should we take away from the John Birch Society's influence today?

Edward Miller:"I would just tell folks that the history that we have right now is incomplete. There are a number of great scholars at work John Huntington, David Austin Walsh, Seth Cotlar, who are rewriting the narrative of the conservative movement. They are research based university professors and they're doing great work.

"Rick Perlstein started this, you know, in a very important essay in which he wrote that, you know, 2016 convinced me that I was wrong about the conservative movement. And Rick Perlstein was the chronicler of four books on the conservative movement. Maybe he'll revisit those like a Lucasfilm."

Excerpt from A Conspiratorial Life: Robert Welch, the John Birch Society, and the Revolution of American Conservatism by Edward H. Miller, published by The University of Chicago Press. 2021 by The University of Chicago Press. All rights reserved.

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The history of far-right populism, from the John Birch Society to Trumpism - WBUR News

This episode of Hub Dialogues features Sean Speer in conversation with Henry Olsen, a Washington Post columnist and senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, about the rise and durability of populism as a major political force around the world. Olsen is also the author of the must-read book, The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of BlueCollar Conservatism.

You can listen to this episode of Hub Dialogues on Acast, Amazon, Apple, Google, Spotify, or YouTube. A transcript of the episode is available below.

Transcripts of our podcast episodes are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.

SEAN SPEER: Welcome to Hub Dialogues. Im your host Sean Speer, editor-at-large at The Hub. Im honoured to be joined today by Henry Olsen, whos a Washington Post columnist, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, the author of the must-read book, The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of BlueCollar Conservatism, and a leading commentator and analyst of global politics. If theres an election somewhere in the world, theres a good chance that Henry has well-developed views about the issues and candidates.

Im grateful to speak with him about his interesting career, as well as some of the big ideological and sociopolitical trends, including the rise of populism, that are shaping modern politics around the world. Henry, thank you for joining us at Hub Dialogues.

HENRY OLSEN: Thank you for having me, Sean.

SEAN SPEER: Lets start with your personal biography. You graduated from the University of Chicago law school and then clerked at the United States Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Yet, you subsequently walked away from the law to pursue a career as a think tank scholar and political commentator. Why? What drew you away from the law and into the world of ideas and politics?

HENRY OLSEN: I had been involved in the world of ideas and politics well before going to law school. I studied political theory at Claremont McKenna College as an undergraduate, and I had been involved with the American Republican Party since my days in middle school. I thought, well, maybe I should go try and make some money after doing this and went to law school. What I found was that I wanted to go back to what I had left, only approach it in a slightly different way.

Thats what led me into the think tank world and ultimately into the political commentary/opi3nion journalism world. I only spent three years practicing law and then I jumped ship and became the executive director at the Commonwealth Foundation, which is Pennsylvanias conservative think tank.

SEAN SPEER: The rest, as they say, is history. As I mentioned, Henry, you have unparalleled knowledge and expertise about politics around the world. Let me ask a two-part question. First, how have you developed such broad yet deep awareness of global politics? Second, which countries politics do you think are underrated in terms of the level of ideas and debate?

HENRY OLSEN: Lets take the first question first. I just love politics and campaigns. What I discovered is that once I was able to gain access to international information, that theres a lot that you can learn about your own country by looking at other countries. Debates about things like nationalism and trade and the viability or the democratic legitimacy of international institutions are sometimes more important in one country before they surface into another country. Of course, those questions were often more debated in Britain before they became obviously debated in the United States with the rise of Trump.

I also started to look on the internet and found that I could satisfy my political nerd side by looking up election data and using Google Translate to find out what people were saying in their own language about politics. Essentially its a hobby. While other people are watching television or going to live concerts, Im fiddling around on the internet, looking at the political demography of Belgium. Want to know where Vlaams Belang is doing well? Im your man.

SEAN SPEER: I should encourage listeners if theyre interested in learning more about electoral dynamics around the world they should follow Henrys Twitter account as well as his frequent Washington Post column which doesnt just cover U.S. politics, but truly reflects his expertise in political trends all over the world.

Henry, one final biographical question before we get on to some of these big political trends. You once won $250,000 as a contestant on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. What was that experience like?

HENRY OLSEN: Thats $250,000 American, I should say, not Canadian. Ive been a nerd and a trivia hound all my life. When I was living in Los Angeles after graduating from collegeor universityI tried out for a lot of game shows in the early 1980s and found that I would often pass the knowledge quiz. They always test you to see whether you can have enough knowledge in their format to do credibly, but then I failed the contestant quiz because really how many boring white nerdy guys do you want on a game show? Millionaire was different. They did not have a contestant quiz. You just got on by passing the knowledge quiz, and it took me a year and a half to get on.

Then it was just surreal. Its 36 hours in New York, they took me on stage, introduced me to the hostRegis Philbin at the timeran me through some practices, and then brought me under the bright lights to see if I could perform. I have cool hands, hit my mark, and as you say, the rest is history. And darn those Three Stooges.

SEAN SPEER: Very cool. Ive watched the episode before, and its funny watching you try to explain to Regis what a think tank is and what a think tank does.

Lets move on, Henry, to the rise of populism. Theres a tendency to focus on the Trump election and the Brexit referendum when one thinks of present-day populism. Yet, as I mentioned earlier, your Washington Post column frequently highlights populist expressions elsewhere around the world, including Norway, Chile, Bulgaria, and so on. These political developments have often come at the expense of traditional conservative politicians or parties. Help me and our listeners understand whats going on. Why have we seen the rise of political populism in so many countries in recent years? How much of the explanation is common and how much of it is contingent?

HENRY OLSEN: What I would say is different countries have different contingencies, but the trends are relatively similar in many countries because the populism of today is arising out of the failure of traditional political parties, leaders, and viewpoints to address the problems that have emerged since the turn of the century. There are really three types of populisms in the world, and youll see them in different countries to different degrees, depending on the country. Theres left-wing populism, theres right-wing populism, and theres centrist populism.

Left-wing populism is the sort that you might see in Bernie Sanders in the United States, or Sinn Fin in Ireland, or Jean-Luc Mlenchon in France, which is that they take an old-school critique of capitalism and apply it in non-traditional ways, often combined with nationalism. So it becomesin a sense, you could view the Scottish Nationalist Party as a left-wing populist party. They are extremely important in many political parties around the world.

Then you have right-wing populism, or more accurately nationalist populism, that tends to come from a blue-collar background. People who have been economically and culturally moved aside in the last two decades and often will say things like I want my country back. Again, this is typified by the Peoples Party of Canada, its typified in a softer way by Doug Ford or Franois Legault in Canada. Its typified by Trump, typified by Brexit, and I could go on and on about people all around the world.

Then you have centrist populism. Thats the sort that was often part of one of these two, but sometimes it stands on its own like in the Czech Republic or Czechia with Andrej Babi, and with the Five Star Movement in Italy, or in many of the countries in Bulgaria where its essentially not trying to critique an economic or cultural policy but simply says the elites are corrupt, its time to govern from common sense. As I said, you can hear those themes in both left-wing and right-wing populists, but its a distinct strain and sometimes it emerges in a distinct way to, in some ways, sometimes elect the leader of the country.

SEAN SPEER: Youve written that if populisms main strength is its ability to bring expression to unaddressed or underdressed problems, its main weakness is the lack of an affirmative policy agenda. As you wrote in January 2021, Henry, the populists often have a clear set of instincts, but little in the way of a detailed policy programme. Whats the main obstacle here? Is there something inherent to populism that limits its capacity to produce a clear, coherent governing agenda? Or are there institutional barriers that explain the lack of such an agenda?

HENRY OLSEN: I think theres a little bit of both. The first is that the sort of political entrepreneur who can see the populist movement tends to be the person who can grasp a new situation and communicate in strongly emotional language, whether thats the language of Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the United States, or Nigel Farage in Britain, or Matteo Salvini in Italy. These are people who are ahead of the trend and can communicate an idea to the masses. They tend not to be policy experts and because theyre coming from outside of an established political order, they dont have a lot of policy experts hanging around them. They attract people who share those ideas or those instincts, and then people develop a policy agenda if those people or those parties start to gain traction.

There is an institutional barrier and that is that, again, populism necessarily is coming from the outside of an established political order. Which means it also tends to come from outside of the entities that credential people to run government, whether its the academy or whether its people who serve in government, either in legislative or executive roles. These people tend to have bought into an existing worldview.

Consequently, the people who are trying to shatter the worldview dont have access to those people, and those people dont necessarily then flock to the new leader and say, Oh, let me help you. Eventually, what happens over time as you develop that expertise the longer somebody and an institution or party shows traction, but particularly in the early stages, you have both a dispositional and an institutional hindrance to actually having a detailed, costed out, workable policy agenda.

SEAN SPEER: Lets turn the conversation to your book, Working Class Republican, about Ronald Reagan, which I would strongly encourage listeners to read. The book challenges the conventional narrative that the Reagan presidency was marked by a strong fidelity to a libertarian economic orthodoxy. In fact, you effectively make the case that President Reagan was something of a populist himself. Let me ask you a two-part question. First, can you elaborate on the books thesis? Second, why do you think the mythology of Reagan has come to deviate so much from his actual record?

HENRY OLSEN: With respect to the thesis, I can summarize it pretty quickly, which was that to understand Ronald Reagan, you have to take him seriously when he says, as he did many times, that he didnt leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left him. He was a person who was on the conventional left in his youth, in the 1930s, the 1940s, and into the 1950s. He was a member of the Democratic Party. He was the head of Hollywood for Truman-Barkley in the 1948 presidential campaign. He voted enthusiastically for Franklin Roosevelt in all four of his presidential efforts.

This is a guy who, conventionally, is understood to be in favour of more government. And then he becomes somebody on the right. And so, what Reagan was, was somebody who interpreted Franklin Roosevelt rather than directly opposed him. He was somebody who wanted to increase the degree of popular self-control. In his early speeches, hes talking more about bureaucracy and how it is strangling popular control and freedom than he is talking in the abstract ways of libertarians about natural rights or about state control of the economy. He often endorses a lot of interventions in the economy but says theyve gone too far, or theyre no longer what the people want, or things along that line. So, my thesis that to understand Reagan is to understand that he was about the internal self-government and the dignity of the individual more than anything else.

And so, how did he get misinterpreted? Well, first of all, he got misinterpreted because hes a great politician. He built a coalition around his ideas. He was not an academic trying to explain his ideas. So, what would happen is, as with any good politician, different parts of the coalition came to him for different reasons. And the libertarian side of the coalition, the people who were at making abstract arguments against government, saw part of what they wanted in him and then they became people who interpreted him for others.

So, theres a lot of people who have never read Reagan, never listened to a Reagan speech, but theyve heard of Reagan through the libertarian interpreters of him, and consequently when I say things to them like, You know Ronald Reagan supported compromise rather than dying on principle? Or Did you know Ronald Reagan supported tax increases when it was necessary? Or Ronald Reagan believed that you shouldnt discriminate against gays at a time in 1978 when he took that stand when it was quite popular to discriminate against gays? Because theyve never heard of him directly, they are surprised when I say this and thats because the high priests of Reaganism, as Ive said, took over the church of Reagans teaching and just pushed the actual teaching out of the temple.

SEAN SPEER: Its worth noting that one of the reasons that Canada ultimately came to the table on a bilateral, and ultimately North American, free trade agreement was because of the Reagan administrations use of tariffs that threatened Canadian access to the American market. Its a concrete example, as you say, of the willingness of President Reagan and his administration to occasionally deviate from libertarian orthodoxy in the name of broader political or national goals.

If I can come back to a contemporary populist conservative agenda, how much of it, in your view, should be focused on economic issues including, for instance, middle-class stagnation versus cultural issues including the rise of so-called wokeism? Maybe, to put it differently, Henry, is it your view that a challenge to left-wing ideas about race, gender, and identity, is a political winner for conservatives in the United States and Canada currently?

HENRY OLSEN: Every country has its own different political balance and every politician has to be acutely and finely tuned to that balance. What works for Doug Ford in Ontario or Franois Legault in Quebec is different than what would work for a populist in France, which was different than what would work for a populist in the United States.

The first thing you have to do if you are looking at it is look at what is the centre of public opinion in the country rather than make a broad brush that this always works anywhere and everywhere. Thats being an ideologue. One thing Ronald Reagan taught me is to eschew ideology in favour of principles. What is generally good everywhere is embracing a theory of the nation and making that into a positive statement. That is, a nation as something that embraces both rights and responsibilities of all of its citizens. Its one thats unafraid to talk about facts, scientific and moral, and human nature, physical nature, things that cant be changed by the person or the party in power.

I think with respect to the general question of wokeness, a generally acceptable conservative populist theme is that we can be tolerant of and approving of people who are in a minority of people who are, say, biologically in between male and female, or in other ways, but that you cant simply deny the facts of human biology or the facts of human interaction.

The idea is to unite people rather than to divide people. Some people on the left, I dont know if this is the case in Canada but certainly the case in the United States and the United Kingdom, they just say I dont know what a woman is. You dont have to be condescending or mean but most people on the street know what a woman is. Even if they want to treat somebody who is transgendered as if they were, but they can define whats in front of them.

Thats a sort of manner of speech and the manner of expression about those issues that I think will work for a populist. Broadly speaking, these cultural issues properly addressed are winners. Particularly if you put it in the context of a nation that works for all of its citizens socially, economically, and culturally. It applies in things like advancing opportunity for everybody, not just gender or race minorities but for people who have been left behind in any way, intentionally or unintentionally.

Thats something that Prime Minister Harper, in his recent book Right Here, Right Now, talked about that when he signed trade deals, he didnt just take an ideological view like Americans tended to and just throw the doors open and take a devil may care attitude, but he tried to make sure that certain sectors that were important to Canadas economy or to certain segments of the Canadian community werent devastated by the trade deals. That he was looking at it not just from an economic efficiency standpoint but from a social stability standpoint. Thats an example in the economic sphere of what a conservative populism ought to be trying to do

SEAN SPEER: In your answer, Henry, you used the word balance a few times. Let me ask you, are there any contemporary politicians around the world who in your view are achieving that kind of balance, and who should aspiring populists be studying?

HENRY OLSEN: Yes, I think that in Canada, both Doug Ford and Franois Legault have done a very good job of balancing conservative economics and populist economics, as well as conservative cultural concerns with the concerns of tolerance and inclusion. Again, theyre different politics but theyre addressing different polities, different sets of voters. I think overseas, Isabel Daz Ayuso, who is the governor of Madrid, she is somebody who is now the leading Spanish conservative politician because she talks about conservative culture, but also inclusion.

This is a woman who talks about the conservative nature of Spain and talks about Western civilization, who is an unmarried, non-believing madrileo who has a Depeche Mode tattoo on her wrist because shes rather modern. Its that sort of thing where you balance off the old and the new, the social with the individual in a way that still provides for human freedom and social stability. I think shes going to be prime minister of Spain, maybe sooner than later, but shes certainly somebody in the here and the now who can be looked to along with the Canadian examples.

SEAN SPEER: A fascinating example, precisely because it shines a light on the difference between social conservatism and cultural conservatism. Do you want to maybe just elaborate a bit on what those differences are, and what the different political fecundity may be of a cultural conservatism, particularly as it relates to some of the points you made earlier about the power of nationalism as a unifying idea for a contemporary populist?

HENRY OLSEN: Social conservatism in the Anglo-American world, or the U.S.-Canadian world, can tend to have a religious context. You can also see this in places in Europe that still have strong religious cultures like Poland or Italy, where a social conservative will talk in religious language and in a way that supports a particular theology. Cultural conservatism transcends that. It includes it, but it transcends that.

It is something that can speak to people regardless of background about their shared experiences, and their shared human nature. That a parent has concerns about their children, and about their dignity, and about their role, independent of whether they derive it from a particular sacred text or from some other cultural experience. A cultural conservatism is one that includes what is typically considered to be social conservatism, but it transcends it by driving it away from particularistic roots and language into a more stable and more broad-based font and approach.

SEAN SPEER: Let me ask you a penultimate question, Henry. Are we living in a populist moment, or a populist era?

HENRY OLSEN: Were living in a populist era, not a populist moment. We are now, depending on how one characterizes it, well over a decade into populism as a political feature. The denizens of those who chatter continually say populism is a spent force and it is over, and yet you continually see populists doing well in elections, and populist themes left, right, and centre re-emerging.

I think when our children, 40-50 years from now are in their careers or in university and writing the histories of the era, they will say that what were living through now is an era that is defined by populism. Itll be defined by which type of populism came to power and how well they succeeded once they came to power. The question isthey will come to power, they are already coming to power, and more will come to power in the next few years, left, centre, and right. Thats because the pre-populist experts and elites simply have no answers to the problems. They apply old answers to new problems. They get old solutions and then ask you to double down on the obviously unsuccessful solution, and people are getting tired of it.

If we look back in 40 years and we are still free politically, if we are still tolerant socially, if were still wealthy economically, then we will say that populism will have met its challenge. It will be looked at as we today look back on what can be called the labour/social-democratic era that upset the 19th-century dualisms of politics to create a new order to address the new challenges that industrialization and urbanization brought.

If were looking back and saying, gosh, how is it that the West became subject to autocratic forces? How is it that all the wealth passed from us to other nations? How did we go wrong? In other words, if were more like the early fifth century Roman empire than an ascendant reinterpretation or reawakening of Western civilization, well, then well look back and say that populism had failed.

I just dont see any way that were going to get through to 2040 and not have seen populism tried in many leading countries. Its already being tried in the United States and in Britain. Itll eventually come to Germany, France, and others. We will find out whether it succeeds. I think a prudent populism of the centre-right will renew Western civilization, but the proof is in the pudding.

SEAN SPEER: I said that was the penultimate question, but if I may just sneak one in before we come to a final question, a prediction about the future of American politics. One of the things that is so admirable about you, Henry, as an analyst and a commentator, is that from early on, youve taken the rise of populism seriously as a political force. On the other hand, youve been pretty clear-eyed about its weaknesses and able to analyze it dispassionately. That has precluded you from being swept up and forced to make false yet powerful binary choices about your own political affiliations and commitments.

What do you think has enabled you to do that? What in your approach to analyzing politics has served you so well in this period of turmoil and polarization?

HENRY OLSEN: I have a habit of mind of moderation. I dont like to get swept up in enthusiasm. I think in terms of probabilities rather than certainties. Oftentimes youll find people on one side or the other take a probability and exalt it into a certainty, and I just dont let myself do that. I also think it comes from the fact that theres nobody that exactly represents me. Its hard to get trapped up in enthusiasm when theres nobody who is singing exactly from your playbook. One of my favorite quotes is from Treebeard in The Lord of the Rings when he is asked by Merry or Pippin in the Fangorn Forest, Whose side are you on in the war? Treebeard says, Im not on anybodys side because nobodys exactly on my side.

SEAN SPEER: You said that youd prefer probabilities rather than certainties, but Id be remiss if I didnt ask you, as a final question, do you think Trump will be the GOP nominee in 2024?

HENRY OLSEN: Well, Ill quote another line from Lord of the Rings, when Sam meets Gildor in the forest. He asks Gildor for advice and Gildor gives him nuanced advice and Sam says, Well, thats why they say what they say. Go not to the elves for advice for they will tell you both yes and no.

Heres the thing, I dont know whether Trump will be the nominee. What I can say is that Trump is a political balloon that is slowly descending. Hes not descending so quickly that it would be unthinkable that he could win the nomination, but hes also not descending in a manner so that we would be sure. Hes not descending so slowly that we can say, oh, hes definitely going to keep his altitude and be the nominee.

I would say right now its a toss-up. I would slightly lean against him being the nominee, but Im also not a Trump fan. I have to be upfront about that. What I will say is that Trump is somebody who I think is hurting his own cause with his fixation on the past. That Trump now says little except They stole the election from me and I want it back. And thats not an attractive message.

And then you look forward and say, well, what can he, if Trump gets out of his narcissistic bubble and he decides to actually do what he did in 2015, which is offer a new message, what would he say that other Republicans arent? Hes a follower on policy now. He was a leader in 2015. Hes a follower now. So, its entirely plausible that somebody, Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida, others that I know like senators Marco Rubio or Tom Cotton or Josh Hawley, could basically very credibly say, I represent everything that you want. I want to be a fighter against the woke culture. I believe in inclusion, and I believe in a strong nation. I am in favour of free markets, but Im not a free-market fundamentalist. But Im not Donald Trump.

And I think that the centre of the Republican Party is increasingly wanting that. They may still like Trump. They do like Trump. But they are increasingly wanting to consign him to the past rather than to the future. And so, I think that well see over the next year whether thats going to become more obvious, or whether Trump is going to become the leading dominant figure against whom no one can stand. Right now its too early to say, but I think those are the trends that are vying with one another. And I would like to believe that a populist conservatism can rest on a firmer ground, but it remains to be seen.

SEAN SPEER: Henry, well have to have you back on in the coming months and years to update our listeners, not only on this race but some of these deeper trends of populism here in North America and around the world. This conversation has been the tour de force that I had anticipated.

Henry Olsen, Washington Post columnist, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and author of The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue-Collar Conservatism. Thank you so much for joining us today at Hub Dialogues.

HENRY OLSEN: Thanks for having me on, Sean.

Continued here:

'We're living in a populist era, not a populist moment': Political analyst Henry Olsen on populism, Reagan, and whether or not Trump's star has faded...

This is Ian Dunts Week, a subscriber-only newsletter from i. If youd like to get this direct to your inbox, every single week,you can sign up here.

Good afternoon and welcome to another week in which Tory leadership hopefuls compete in an arms race of idiocy. By the time this contest ends, theyll presumably have promised the end of the tax system altogether. Its an absolute bonanza of bullshit out there. Pack an umbrella.

This weeks column is below, along with some recommendations for what to do so that you stop watching the news. I take a step back to look at what the hell happened last week and what it might tell us about the future of populism. I wish I could say that the answers are reassuring, but of course theyre not.

We still havent processed what happened last week. Its all been too fast, too frenzied for us to catch our breath. No sooner had Boris Johnson resigned than the race to replace him kicked off a ferocious, non-stop whirlwind of news. Even as he sits in Downing Street, it becomes increasingly easy to forget that he ever even was Prime Minister.

But what happened last week was seismic, and not just in terms of who happens to lead Britain. It defined what populism is, the threat it poses, and the kinds of defences we have against it. We will be studying it for decades, even if we are ignoring it now.

Johnson, like Donald Trump in the US, finished his time as leader by engaging in the classic populist gambit: insisting that his personal mandate superseded the constitutional and political restraints against him. No matter that Trump had lost an election or that the public had turned against Johnson. Their supposed mandate overrode all other considerations.

Trump pursued the far more spectacular strategy of encouraging rioters to target the Capitol. Johnson did it in the rather more buttoned-up manner of threatening a snap election rather than accept the partys demands that he go. But constitutionally, it was the same principle.

Now, as the dust settles, Britain looks in a much better place than the US. Johnson was shuffled away. A leadership contest is taking place. Sometime after that maybe months, maybe years therell be a general election in which everyone is likely to accept the result. Things have gone back to normal. In the US, democracy feels fragile and tenuous, with a large part of the Republican party no longer recognising election outcomes.

Why? Whats the difference between them? Its natural to assume that the distinction might lie in the constitution. America has a single written constitution and numerous checks-and-balances. Britain has neither. Maybe, counter-intuitively, this more relaxed system holds up better than a formalised one.

But that is a blind alley. The key to what happened isnt about codified constitutions. Its about social norms. Did the political class act as if constitutional principles mattered? Did it behave as if these standards were true?

At the crucial moment, the Cabinet did precisely that. MPs said they had no confidence in him. Secretaries of state resigned. His ministerial ranks were left so depleted that government effectively ceased to function. And eventually, after some unseemly belligerence, he went.

But theres no room for complacency here. That is not the whole story. If you look at the last few years, rather than the last few weeks, a very different picture emerges.

From 2019 until earlier this summer, the party acted like Johnson was perfectly respectable. It did it through the unlawful prorogation of parliament, the purging of the parliamentary party, the attempt to dismantle the standards system, the dismissal of the ministerial code, the lies, the law breaking, the corruption. None of that made Tory MPs turn against him.

They never turned on the basis of morality or constitutional propriety. They turned on the basis of popularity. And that, ultimately, is the crucial distinction between the UK and US examples.

Johnson lost his popular support. Trump did not.

Even now, the former US president retains huge public backing. Fellow Republicans are too scared to come out against him. The same is not true in Britain. Johnson lost his support over Partygate and never got it back.

It was on that basis that Tory ministers and MPs finally moved to oppose him. If Johnson had still been cruising high in the opinion polls, those letters would never have gone in. He would still be in place now. Any talk of integrity or standards from those who served in his Cabinet is meaningless.

What if the public did not turn against him? What if Johnsons personal hold was stronger, or his political approach more effective, or his self-restraint more substantial? What if he had sufficient personal control not to attend parties in lockdown, as almost any other politician in the world does? Nothing in the British system would have stopped him from continuing on the path he had set: eroding standards, dismantling accountability, degrading truth.

But there is no recognition of this fact in the Conservative Party. There is no introspection. There is only the constant whirlwind of news. Onto the next thing.

On LBC last night, leadership candidate Penny Mordaunt was asked about her claim during the Brexit campaign that the UK would not be able to stop Turkey joining the EU. It was a false claim. The UK, like every other member state, had a veto. She could have now admitted it was false, apologised, and said she would try to do better. She could have taken this moment to reaffirm the value of truth in political discourse. Instead, she doubled down.

We need politicians who will uphold the norms of our culture regardless of whether they are popular or not. We need people who will stand up for what is right regardless of the opinion polls. That is what sustains our system.

At the moment it is clear that we do not have them. The Tory leadership hopefuls barely even mention Johnsons misbehaviour, let alone promise not to replicate it. They are now already starting to engage in it themselves.

Theres just silence, and distraction, and the constant whirlwind of news. No lessons are being learned. No principles are being affirmed. And that, more than anything, raises the danger of this happening again.

Next time, we might not be so lucky.

I stumbled across this 1970s debate between Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault recently. Its a remarkable artifact. This is Chomsky before he became rather more eccentric. It is serious heavyweight stuff on the existence of universal human attributes. That all sounds abstract, but it reveals an intellectual crack, which would eventually lead to a fundamental split on the left between identity politics and socialism.

Afterwards, Chomsky would say: He struck me as completely amoral, Id never met anyone who was so totally amoral. I mean, I liked him personally, its just that I couldnt make sense of him. Its as if he was from a different species, or something.

I know, its two blokes half a century ago debating philosophy. Not the easiest sell. But it is genuinely gripping.

I first came across this Australian programme, which is packaged up into a podcast after broadcast, when I appeared on it years ago. I soon became a regular listener. It is perfect late night radio, Adams reassuring gravely tones providing serious intellectual heft to stories from across the world. From Hawaiis use of detention facilities to the European colonialist view of Australias mammals, it features items you just dont get to hear anywhere else. Patient, thorough and curious: an antidote to the usual tone of current affairs programmes.

You might know this from the Natalie Portman film on Netflix. That was great, but the book is better. Its the very best kind of sci-fi: mysterious, terrifying, operating somewhere beyond the range of human comprehension. It gives you that same feeling you get when looking at the recent extraordinary images from Nasa of being fundamentally incapable of understanding the scale and nature of the universe. Brilliant, beautiful stuff.

This is Ian Dunts Week, a subscriber-only newsletter from i. If youd like to get this direct to your inbox, every single week,you can sign up here.

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The rampant populism of the Tory leadership contest shows how dangerous this moment is - iNews

THE Government did its bit for populism this week. Figures from the two bigger parties in Government frequently decry the rise of populism, particularly the tenet thereof that infers there are easy solutions to intractable problems.

However, nobody in Fianna Fil or Fine Gael ever acknowledges that populism, as it is currently evolving, is a product of misrule by establishment parties. Another example of that misrule was in evidence this week.

Planning legislation has become highly complexand technical, over recent decades. Holes are repeatedly picked in laws, especially by judges ruling on challenges brought against planning decisions.

This prevailing culture should ensure that new laws are drafted and legislated for with the utmost care. After all, getting it wrong when shaping the law will inevitably lead to greater cost, delays, and quite often the requirement to come back to the Oireachtas to do it all again.

In 2018, then chief justice Frank Clarke touched on this, calling for clearer legislation in planning, particularly in relation to the environment.

There will continue to be projects which, even though they may successfully clear all hurdles at the end of the day, may suffer by being held up for too long.

Never is such sentiment more relevant than in the middle of a housing crisiswhere there is an urgent need to get homes built.

Despite that, Darragh OBrien, the housing minister, couldnt help himself in attempting to ram through planning legislation this week without proper, or even any, scrutiny.

Last Thursday evening, opposition politicians were given details of 48 pages of amendments to be added to a 20-page planning bill going through the Oireachtas.

Two-and-a-half hours have been set aside on Wednesday to debate these amendments along with amendments from the original bill. It will be impossible for proper scrutiny to be applied in the Dil in that kind of timeframe.

If all of the amendments were uncontroversial that might be acceptable, but some deal with access to the courts and how bodies such as An Bord Pleanla can adjust rulings effectively in the middle of a legal challenge.

These issues go to the heart of the EUs Aarhus Convention, which determined that the public has a right to be fully engaged in the planning process.

Moving the goalposts

Solicitor Fred Logue says the proposed amendments in relation to a planning authority being allowed to change its ruling mid-stream in a legal challenge is effectively moving the goalposts.

Under Aarhus, the system has to be fair, equitable, and not prohibitively expensive, he says. Its basically unfair if you spend money on a judicial review and then the goalposts are moved and youre left challenging a fundamentally different decision. And there is no procedure in how this is done.

A spokesperson for the department said that it had been working in conjunction with the Attorney General (AG) on the amendments since last year but it was not possible to finalise the schedule until now.

Sinn Fin housing spokesman Eoin Broin points out that there is no urgency with these amendments and therefore no valid reason to rush them through the Oireachtas.

There is nothing ever simple or technical about changes in planning and they need to be thought through, he says.

Im increasingly getting the impression that the AG is directly planning reform rather than the minister and Im concerned about mission creep beyond his legal advice.

Ultimately, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the amendments are being rushed through to avoid controversy, negative media coverage, and the requirement to actually explain what is at issue. The result is that the role of the Dil is being completely undermined.

Yesterday, following pressure from various quarters and coverage of the issue in the Irish Examiner, the most contentious measure concerning legal challenges was withdrawn. Questions remain as to why it was proposed in the first place.

Notwithstanding that rethink, dozens of other amendments remain, which will not get the kind of scrutiny that would ensure the resulting law is robust and fair.

The approach being adopted by Government is straight out of the populist playbook they claim to oppose.

Populism offers a direct relationship between the strong leader or party and the people. Democratic institutions can be bypassed, as attempted by right-wing populists such as Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, who undermined the roles of elections and parliament respectively.

The Governments actions this week amount to undermining the Dils function to scrutinise legislation and hold the Government to account in its lawmaking.

Not a one-off tactic

Unfortunately, this tactic is not a one-off. Last week, just two hours were allotted to debate over 100 amendments tabled in relation to the mica compensation scheme.

That scheme involves paying out at least 2.7bn of public money, yet the Government quite obviously calculated that proper scrutiny of the legislation including the finding of any fault would be sacrificed to avoid negative publicity that might attach to a debate.

Instead, it was rammed through as if the Oireachtas had no more function than to watch and envy the executive executing its will.

In mid-June there was more of this kind of thing when the housing minister again published an amendment at the last minute that made provision for political parties to run super-draws.

This was brought in under the cover of an electoral reform bill and, once more, a couple of hours were set aside to debate it and 100 other late amendments.

This is not down to sloppy scheduling. Social Democrats housing spokesman Cian OCallaghan pointed out this week that plenty of time had been given in the planning bill to amendments that were not controversial.

Ramming through the legislation only really applies when something awkward is involved.

Apart from anything else, conducting government business like this engenders cynicism among large sections of public. How can people trust the system if it is being abused in this manner? In whose interests is it being abused?

Cynicism begets the kind of populism now in vogue. If the establishment parties are holding the institutions of democracy in such contempt, how can they simultaneously accuse others of being intent on holding the institutions of democracy in contempt?

Meanwhile, there is the third stool to the governing coalition. The Green Party is in situ to pursue policies concerned with tackling climate change, an honourable and urgent pursuit.

However, the apparent failure to intervene when a Fianna Fil minister is rushing through legislation on planning is worrying. If this is a price for coalescing, perhaps they should check again what kind of bang theyre getting for their buck.

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Mick Clifford: Rushing through complex legislation is a cynical move used by populist governments - Irish Examiner