Category Archives: Populism

Lets talk about housing. Specifically what's up with Rishi Sunaks new housing policy.

He pledges to preserve the green belt in aspic, banning councils from amending it, preventing development around the dozen or so cities the green belt currently covers.

He also says that any new housebuilding should be done on brownfield land.

Which may come as a surprise to his local council, as the very same Rishi Sunak applied for planning permission to build a new single storey sporting complex on a field near his grade II listed home only last year.

In Rishi Sunaks world only he is allowed to build on fields. No one else can.

But beyond the hypocrisy lets explore this idea in its own terms.

Because to most of us, preventing any green belt amendments might at face value seem like a nice thing.

Well let's turn to a case study in York, where controversy erupted earlier this year, when a developer proposed to construct up to 158 homes on land sandwiched between a housing estate, a duel carriageway and the railway lines. Why was there uproar? Well this scrap of land had been designated as part of the green belt back in the 1940s.

Tom Harwood has criticised the Tory leadership hopeful's housing policy. Dominic Lipinski

Fortunately the council in the end saw sense, the green belt amended, and the homes were approved. Yet under Rishi Sunaks policy, this peculiar cut off bit land by the road and the railway would stay forever undeveloped and unloved.

But surely that is just an anomaly, right? The rest of the green belt is in reality the rolling fields our minds go to when we think of England?

Not quite.

This is where the green belt actually is.

Frozen land around a dozen or so cities that are deemed to be important.

It does not include those areas of outstanding natural beauty in England that we know so well.

It does not cover the Chilterns, the Yorkshire Dales, the Lake District, the Peak District, the Cotswolds, the South Downs, Dartmoor, Thetford, or the New Forest.

Rishi needs a rethink, says Tom Harwood Image: GB News

None of those areas are greenbelt. Most green land is not green belt. And some green belt is not green land.

No, the most beautiful parts of our country, the parts that protecting perhaps matters most are entirely distinct from the green belt.

Yet I get the sneaking feeling that when we think of the green belt, our minds erroneously but understandably go to those Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

But what did I mean when I said that some green belt is not green land?

A project to build 40 social rented homes was rejected from this scrap of concrete because it has green belt status.

This junk yard is some of Londons green belt.

And so is this tip.

And even this car wash.

In fact, a former Bradford Councillor took to social media yesterday to dispel some green belt myths.

Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss are vying for the top job in Government. Jacob King

Simon Cooke was a councillor for 24 years, and took to Twitter to share the reality of what the green belt just in his ward really looks like.

It included the site of an old mill, several scrap yards, a car park, an empty chicken slaughterhouse, and some empty unused buildings. Unable to be redeveloped of course.

And remember, all of this is green belt, all in just one council ward.

Yes, some green belt simply isn't green at all. And we might all be better off with a rationalisation, a reclassification.

Classifying some of our genuinely precious areas of natural beauty as Green Belt, and freeing up some of the ugliest most concrete blighted, road or rail-side bits of what is erroneously called the green belt right now.

Here's a perhaps surprising fact: In 1979 the green belt covered 721,500 hectares of England

By 2020 that had more than doubled to 1.6 million hectares of England.

It is possible to enhance protections, to rationalise the system, but none of that can be done with unthinking pledges that the green belt can never ever be touched. Not even the concrete bits.

Sunak's desperate attempt at populism is wrong. It doesn't protect green land in the way he would like you to think it does. And it will make it even harder for younger people to get on the housing ladder.

And that in and of itself an existential question for the Conservative Party. Without enough homes, with young people stuck in renting traps, with nothing of their own to conserve. The Tory Party will find it harder and harder to win their votes.

Any leader serious about a home owning democracy, serious about winning elections, and frankly serious about Conservatism - would not trumpet big government clumsy planning policy that prevents sensible development.

Rishi needs a rethink.

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Rishi Sunak's desperate attempt at populism doesn't protect green land in the way he would like you to think it does, says Tom Harwood - GB News

Former president Donald Trump tosses hats into the crowd before addressing attendees during an event in on July 23, 2022, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack)

BY Agata Mirowska, Raymond B. Chiu, and Rick Hackett

Testimony to the House of Representatives Jan. 6 committee about the insurrection at the United States Capitol in 2021 has allowed us to delve deeper into the humanity of Donald Trumps supporters.

As the hearings reveal, the outgoing president and his supporters seemed to be on different wavelengths as he hesitated to stop the violence while his followers were hell-bent on doing his bidding.

Given his influence, it seems clear that Trump knows what makes his followers tick. The allure of Trumps populism isnt an isolated phenomenon, but something connected to the way people think about their leaders.

Trumps populism has now become bigger than Trump himself. The success of tyrants worldwide suggests that we should take them more seriously when theyre praised as smart, at least when it comes to manipulating our minds.

Although populist movements have been around a long time, there has been considerable interest in explaining why populism is different now why its paired with authoritarianism and unapologetically tinged with nationalism and xenophobia.

The emotions underlying the passions of disenfranchised masses are rooted today in an us-versus-them fear of national demise that increasing immigration, liberalization and globalization are damning signs that once-trusted institutions can no longer protect our collective well-being.

In many countries where authoritarianism has gathered steam Russia, Belarus, Hungary, Turkey and Poland to name a few this populism is also accompanied by a push by leaders to suppress press freedom or spread rampant misinformation aided by social media.

In a nod to the cleverness of such autocrats, Nobel laureate Maria Ressa describes the political use of such misinformation as diabolically brilliant.

Ressa, a journalist, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to safeguard freedom of expression.

Years before Trumps rise to power, we started to investigate these elements to understand how they drive peoples tolerance of tyranny. We began with a simple premise: that the appeal of tyrants is not an aberration, but a phenomenon tied to how our minds work.

Tyranny, however, is distinct from authoritarianism, which speaks to political beliefs or actions. The defining features of tyrannical leadership traits described as domineering, pushy, manipulative, loud, conceited and selfish are prototypical characteristics that catch followers attention in the absence of more substantive information about what the leader is really like.

In this 2016 photo, a couple kisses in front of graffiti depicting Russian President Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump kissing in Vilnius, Lithuania. (AP Photo/Mindaugas Kulbis)

As Trump rose to power, elements of our research were playing out in reality: fear of a threatening world, traditional morality the type commonly expressed in North America through conservative politics and religion and reliance on scarce information about the leader.

Based on surveys of 1,147 North Americans, our findings revealed that sensitivity to threats, as reflected in a belief that the world is dangerous, is linked with traditional or conservative morality. American social psychologist Jonathan Haidt calls this morality the binding moral foundations.

Those who focus on group protection have a stronger preference for tyranny as defined by the well-established theory of implicit leadership, which says that we dont always see leaders for who they really are, but according to mental prototypes we have in our heads.

Additionally, we discovered that the significant relationship between the binding foundations and tyrannical leadership is stronger for men than women. Its no wonder, then, that ardent supporters of Trump throughout his presidency included hypermasculine, anti-feminist, anti-left groups such as the Proud Boys.

Proud Boys members walk toward the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

U.S. author and filmmaker Jackson Katz attributes the overwhelming support of Trump by high-school educated, working-class white men to a deep-seated desire for respect and a return to patriarchy.

The masculine nature of leadership today, especially in times of crisis and uncertainty, has not necessarily changed over the centuries. When bad people show up to invade our fields, corrupt our children or pollute our streams, the gut reaction is to welcome the strong man who demonstrates his skills by successfully manipulating others for personal gain.

That means aggression, guile and greed are coveted if those qualities can be turned against outsiders.

Our research suggests that simply railing against tyrants isnt enough. There are three areas where more action is necessary.

First, the nasty traits of tyrannical leaders send vitally important information about leadership effectiveness to followers paradoxically, more information than if a leader were to act with kindness and compassion.

The medias revulsion to tyranny and obsession with reporting every shocking curse or tweet has only served to telegraph those traits far and wide, reinforcing the allegiance of followers.

Second, concerned citizens need to do less recounting of every nasty incident on behalf of tyrants and instead spend a lot more time explaining the nature of good leadership and how it compares with todays leaders.

Some business schools do a good job of teaching the meaning of sustainable, effective leadership, yet the typical young person gets little education on moral character and the strengths of trustworthy, virtuous leaders of the past.

Third, peoples fears whether they pertain to economic loss, foreign adversaries or cultural demise need to be taken seriously. The average person becomes overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of audacious attempts at social change, as evidenced by the discontent over German leader Angela Merkels welcome of Syrian refugees.

Protesters in eastern Germany demonstrate against Germanys welcome of immigrants and refugees in 2015. (AP Photo/Jens Meyer)

Such efforts dont always address the fundamental need for the conservative population to feel safe, because they fail to appreciate that people on both ends of the spectrum share a common desire for the collective good, although they may prioritize aspects of that good differently and approach those aspects via different means.

Elements of everyday human psychology are driving our shared global future. For our societies to survive, the dialogue must change rapidly to address this reality, or else the sole voices well be forced to hear will be those of fear-mongering, war-mongering tyrannical liars.

Agata Mirowska, Assistant Professor, Human Resources Management and Organizational Behavior, Neoma Business School; Raymond B. Chiu, Assistant Professor, Business and Organizational Behaviour, Redeemer University, and Rick Hackett, Canada Research Chair, Organizational Behaviour & Human Performance, McMaster University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Analysis: From Trump to Putin: Why are people attracted to tyrants? - Brighter World

Ottawa Playbook will be off on Monday for Ontarios Civic Holiday, but will be back in your inbox on Tuesday at 6 a.m.

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WELCOME TO OTTAWA PLAYBOOK. Im your host, Maura Forrest, with Zi-Ann Lum and Nick Taylor-Vaisey. Today, we take a final look at the popes pilgrimage of penance. National Defence is looking to science-fiction writers to help with a public image boost (yes, really). And is PIERRE POILIEVRE really a populist?

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Pope Francis. | Cole Burston/Getty Images

THE PONTIFF DEPARTS POPE FRANCIS will head back to the Vatican today, after a brief stop in Iqaluit to meet with residential school survivors, leaving a host of questions in his wake.

Chief among them: What now?

On Thursday during a mass at the Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupr basilica outside Quebec City, the pope delivered perhaps his strongest comments to date on the role of the Catholic Church in Canadas residential schools.

We too feel the burden of failure, he said. Why did all this happen? How could this happen in the community of those who follow Jesus?

The reactions to the popes apologies have been as varied as you might expect. I felt he was speaking from his heart, NORMA DUNNING, an Inuk scholar and author and the daughter of a residential school survivor, told the Edmonton Journals KEITH GEREIN. Unlike what I have read by others, I do not think he had to go into a painful litany of what the many harms were. He did not have to name them.

On the other hand: It's not enough just to apologize, activist SARAIN FOX told the CBCs ANTONI NERESTANT. "Indigenous people are looking for action and our elders have very little time left to see that action."

Fox took part in a protest ahead of the popes mass in Quebec, holding up a banner demanding the Catholic Church rescind the Doctrine of Discovery, which was used to justify European colonization of North America.

But as POLITICOs NICK TAYLOR-VAISEY reports this morning, the Pope didnt promise action. Francis didn't broach the topic of reparations, didn't commit to disclosing records that would help locate the final resting places of many Indigenous children, and didn't say a word about revoking the Doctrine of Discovery, he writes.

One development: On Wednesday, organizers of the papal visit said Canadas bishops are working with the Vatican in the hope of issuing a new statement from the church on the Doctrine of Discovery.

If this is a watershed moment in Canadas journey toward reconciliation, it certainly isnt the first. There was former prime minister STEPHEN HARPERs 2008 apology for residential schools. There was the landmark report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015, and the 2019 final report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. Then there was last years discovery of hundreds of potential unmarked graves at residential school sites.

And every time, the same question: What now?

I work on reconciliation every day. And I just call it the paradox of reconciliation, CYNTHIA WESLEY-ESQUIMAUX, the chair on Truth and Reconciliation at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, told POLITICO. We say all these things, but what are we doing? Whats the end goal? How will we know when we get there?

Here is what happened this week: The head of a church not known for contrition came to Canada and apologized for residential schools before Indigenous people, on land inhabited by Indigenous peoples for millennia. Nothing less, but nothing more.

What now?

IS PIERRE POILIEVRE A POPULIST? Conventional wisdom says yes. His railing against the elites and the gatekeepers, his rallying cry for freedom, his hostility toward the media its all there. Isnt it?

On Thursday: The CBCs AARON WHERRY claimed Poilievre has taken up the populist torch from former prime minister STEPHEN HARPER, who has said his government practiced populist conservatism.

But while Harper has argued for a populist approach to make conservative ideas relevant to working-class people, Wherry wrote, Poilievre has fully embraced the language of populism.

In practice, populism seems to have less to do with proposing practical solutions to real problems than it does with finding someone to blame or resent, Wherry wrote. It is anti-establishment in a way that can threaten traditional institutions.

Also on Thursday: Quebec MP and JEAN CHAREST supporter ALAIN RAYES published a call to arms in newspapers across the province that was basically one long subtweet of Poilievre and his populist approach.

Do we want to favor the establishment of American-style populism and guarantee power for JUSTIN TRUDEAU and his New DemocratLiberal coalition? Or do we prefer to give our party a real chance to form a majority government to serve the interests of Canadians? he wrote. Canadians will never trust a Conservative leader who fosters division and who courts the extremes.

But on the other hand: On the latest episode of Hub Dialogues with SEAN SPEER, a leading expert on populism says nah. Poilievres politics? I guess I would still see that as pretty much a standard conservatism, more of an establishment conservatism, says ERIC KAUFMANN, a Canadian professor of politics at Birkbeck, University of London.

(We wonder how Poilievre would react to being called establishment.)

Why isnt he the real deal? Kaufmann says real populism is fixated on cultural issues: immigration and social justice politics, for example. Poilievre, for all his angry rhetoric, has shied away largely from those issues except in a few places, Kaufmann told Speer. Hes largely about economics, which in my view is a relatively safe topic.

Safe. Ouch.

By the way: Poilievre and LESLYN LEWIS are officially out of the final leadership debate, the CBCs CATHERINE CULLEN reports. They will face C$50,000 fines for being no-shows.

Prime Minister JUSTIN TRUDEAU is in the National Capital Region for private meetings.

The 24th International AIDS Conference begins in Montreal.

8:15 a.m. (9:15 a.m. ADT) International Trade Minister MARY NG will highlight a development regarding the Canada Digital Adoption Program in Halifax, N.S.

10 a.m. Liberal MP YASIR NAQVI will make an announcement about the future of downtown Ottawa.

3:50 p.m. POPE FRANCIS will arrive in Iqaluit for a meeting with residential school survivors and a public event. He will depart Canada at 6:15 p.m.

NOW WHAT The text of the $700-billion spending deal brokered between Sen. JOE MANCHIN and Senate Majority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER is out and the reception from Canadian cabmins and politicians has been predictably cheery.

Amended language in the deal would extend tax credits to electric vehicles assembled in North America, not just in the United States.

Since day one weve worked tirelessly to position Canada as a global leader in the EV market, Industry Minister FRANOIS-PHILIPPE CHAMPAGNE said Thursday on Twitter. The proposed US Senate deal is a testament to our skilled workers and our strong EV ecosystem.

Industry reaction: POLITICOs ZI-ANN LUM spoke with BRIAN KINGSTON, president and CEO of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers' Association, who called the deal great news for Canada. But he also said theres more work ahead.

We need a serious plan on electric vehicle adoption: We don't have one, Kingston said. That's what we need to do now that we know what the Americans will be doing through the Senate bill.

The ask: A serious plan, from the auto industry perspective, would raise the retail price cap under the iZEV program so more EVs, including pickups, SUVs and vans, are eligible for federal incentives.

We are not keeping pace with the Americans, Kingston said, pointing out the U.S. consumer incentive is equivalent to C$10,000 while the one on offer in Canada is C$5,000.

Last years fall economic statement poured another C$73 million into the federal EV rebate program. The Liberals have budgeted nearly C$660 million for the program since 2019.

Together or bust: Kingston also took aim at the Liberals plans for a zero-emission vehicle sales mandate.

He believes the policy proposal, included in Environment Minister STEVEN GUILBEAULTs mandate letter, is out of step with the U.S. EV sales target a potential problem given the new U.S. spending bills revamped focus on North American-produced EVs.

That cannot happen, Kingston said of the proposed Canadian EV sales mandate. We benefit when we align our regulations with the U.S., when we work with the Americans to build out and strengthen our auto industry.

Are you CHRYSTIA FREELAND or a SENIOR GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL who knows what industry or consumer EV incentives are cooking for this years fall economic statement? Drop us breadcrumbs: [emailprotected]

OPEN AND CLOSED H/T to Global News journalist ASHLEIGH STEWART for pointing out that Canadas embassy in Kyiv, despite having been ceremonially opened by Prime Minister JUSTIN TRUDEAU in May, still appears to be rather closed.

The blinds are drawn, gates are padlocked & a sign out front says services are still suspended, she tweeted Thursday. A security guard told us no one is currently working inside.

In a statement, Global Affairs Canada told Stewart that Canadas ambassador to Ukraine, LARISA GALADZA, returned to Kyiv to resume in-person high-level diplomatic engagement. But the statement also says diplomatic personnel is at reduced capacity, and consular services are being provided from Poland and other European cities.

OUT WITH THE NEW, IN WITH THE OLD ELIZABETH MAY is set to run for the Green Party leadership, which she relinquished in 2019 after 13 years at the partys helm, the Toronto Stars ALEX BALLINGALL reports.

According to Ballingall, May plans to pitch herself as a co-leader of the party, alongside former human rights worker JONATHAN PEDNEAULT. That wouldnt be unprecedented Qubec Solidaire, a left-leaning provincial party, is led by two spokespeople, one male and one female.

Related: SaltWires STU NEATBY also reported this week that another likely Green Party candidate, P.E.I. climate advocate ANNA KEENAN, is planning to run on a co-leadership platform with Montreal-based CHAD WALCOTT.

Leadership hopefuls arent allowed to publicly announce their candidacy until Aug. 31.

The background: May is one of just two Green Party MPs in the House of Commons. The party was mired in internal conflict during the ill-fated tenure of Mays successor, ANNAMIE PAUL, and has struggled with its finances since Pauls resignation last year.

Todays picks come from Liberal MP NATHANIEL ERSKINE-SMITH.

BRAIN FOOD

Innovation in Real Places Strategies for Prosperity in an Unforgiving World, by DAN BREZNITZ

Home of the Floating Lily, by SILMY ABDULLAH

Power to the Public: The Promise of Public Interest Technology, by TARA DAWSON MCGUINNESS and HANA SCHANK

Riding the Third Rail: The Story of Ontario's Health Services Restructuring Commission, 1996-2000, by DUNCAN SINCLAIR, MARK ROCHON and PEGGY LEATT

GUILTY PLEASURE

No particular book in mind, but I'll keep reading anything and everything I can about the Jays.

Heres our summer 2022 reading list so far.

Send us your reading suggestions your brain food and your guilty pleasure! We'll share them in the Playbook newsletter.

Justice SAMUEL ALITO, who penned last months Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, took aim during a speech in Rome last week at foreign leaders who lamented his opinion including JUSTIN TRUDEAU. POLITICOs JOSH GERSTEIN has the story.

For CBC News, JONATHAN MONTPETIT reports that Quebecs upstart Conservative party, led by former shock jock RIC DUHAIME, has attracted a slew of candidates who have used their social media accounts during the pandemic to amplify medical misinformation, conspiracy theorists or to engage with far-right extremists.

For The Logic, DAVID REEVELY looks at how new proposed regulations for Big Tech led to a flood of activity, and a flush of cash, for lobbyists.

The CBC's CATHERINE TUNNEYreports this morning: Top N.S. Mountie wanted an officer dismissed for sexual misconduct but Commissioner Lucki disagreed.

After a brutal year dominated by economic angst, legislative setbacks and sinking approval ratings, President JOE BIDEN is back in the game, POLITICOs ADAM CANCRYN, JONATHAN LEMIRE and CHRISTOPHER CADELAGO report.

People who call 911 are facing hours-long delays for ambulances in some parts of Canada due to staff shortages and overcrowded hospitals, CARLY WEEKS and JAKE KIVANC write for the Globe and Mail.

CHANGE THE NARRATIVE The Department of National Defence is calling in a group of beltway bandits who can help the perpetually PR-challenged corner of government improve a public image somewhat lacking in positivity.

For a mere C$76,800, a "teaching team" of "world-class futurists, science fiction and entertainment creators, and military and business leaders" will "teach the how of forecasting and narrative communication, in order to better reach and influence target audiences."

The contractor's name: Useful Fiction.

What is that? "The use of research and narrative to build 'synthetic environments' as a tool for analysis, prediction, explanation, and communication Research is turned into insightful character-driven stories that can help individuals and organizations understand complex concepts, distill key themes, explore alternative points of view, reveal analytical blind spots, and/or project future issues and dilemmas."

The roster: Useful Fiction once trained United States Air Force mid-career leaders "on forecasting and narrative for more effective communications."

Their trainers included: "New York Times best-selling authors, a venture capitalist investor, a corporate futurist, the head of Australian military officer training, the former Commander of US Special Operations, the co-writers of Game of Thrones, the producer of Hunger Games and Crazy Rich Asians, and the team behind The Walking Dead and Good Lord Bird."

The company lists Giller Prize-winning author OMAR EL AKKAD on its list of contributors.

Client list: "Useful Fiction has provided such classes to organizations that range from the NATO military alliance to Syracuse Universitys Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs training program for US government executives."

For POLITICO Pro subscribers, catch up to our latest policy newsletter from ZI-ANN LUM and ANDY BLATCHFORD: What Manchins deal means for Canada.

In other news for subscribers:

Canada 'encouraged' by EV tax tweak in Manchin deal. 'Easter eggs' in climate bill delight oil and gas industry. Alaska Republican to delay DoD nominees over rare earth minerals. Ukrainians doing everything we can to make Russia grain deal work. Arabic social media remains an unchecked Wild West.

Birthdays: HBD to Minister for Women and Gender Equality and Youth MARCI IEN and former MP DAVID DE BURGH GRAHAM.

Saturday celebrations: Ottawa Mayor JIM WATSON, Quebec MNA LORRAINE RICHARD, Alberta MLA JOE CECI, former Conservative MP KELLIE LEITCH and former trade minister JIM PETERSON.

Sunday: Bloc MP and dean of the House LOUIS PLAMONDON, Conservative MP TOM KMIEC, Saskatchewan Premier SCOTT MOE and SHEILA MARTIN, wife of former PM PAUL MARTIN.

Monday: Senator WANDA THOMAS BERNARD.

Send birthdays to [emailprotected].

Spotted:MICHAEL GEIST was so struck by how similar CRTC Chair IAN SCOTT sounded to Rogers CEO TONY STAFFIERI during this weeks parliamentary committee hearings on the Rogers outage that he created a quiz with quotes from both men to see if people could tell the difference.

A day later, more than 600 people had taken the quiz and a grand total of zero people had managed to get all 12 quotes right. (Your Playbook host, who didnt watch the hearings, took the quiz and scored a modest nine out of 12 nothing to humble-brag about.)

GEORGE SOULE, double-boosted.

Media mentions: Postmedia chairman PAUL GODFREY is stepping down at the end of the year, to be replaced by board member JAMIE IRVING. Godfrey will serve as a special adviser following the end of his term.

Thursdays answer: The RCMP consulted the British MI5 security agency (and Soviet defector IGOR GOUZENKO) while attempting to plant microphones in the new Soviet embassy while it was under construction in 1956.

Props to BRAM ABRAMSON, ROBERT MCDOUGALL and ROBERT BOSTELAAR.

Fridays question: LOUIS PLAMONDON, the longest-serving current member of the House of Commons, turns 79 on Sunday. Plamondon has won his seat in a whopping 12 consecutive elections. What two federal parties has he represented?

Send your answers to [emailprotected]

Playbook wouldnt happen without Luiza Ch. Savage and editor Sue Allan.

Link:

The 'paradox' of reconciliation- POLITICO - POLITICO

This is all to say that in the United States, a successful third party isnt necessarily one that wins national office. Instead, a successful third party is one that integrates itself or its program into one of the two major parties, either by forcing key issues onto the agenda or revealing the existence of a potent new electorate.

Take the Free Soil Party.

During the presidential election of 1848, after the annexation of Texas, the Mexican-American War and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, a coalition of antislavery politicians from the Democratic, Liberty and Whig Parties formed the Free Soil Party to oppose the expansion of slavery into the new Western territories. At their national convention in Buffalo, the Free Soilers summed up their platform with the slogan Free soil, free speech, free labor, free men!

The Free Soil Party, notes the historian Frederick J. Blue in The Free Soilers: Third Party Politics, 1848-1854, endorsed the Wilmot Proviso by declaring that Congress had no power to extend slavery and must in fact prohibit its extension, thus returning to the principle of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. It is the duty of the federal government, declared its platform, to relieve itself from all responsibility for the existence of slavery wherever that government possesses constitutional power to legislate on that subject and is thus responsible for its existence.

This was controversial, to put it mildly. The entire two-party system (the first being the roughly 30-year competition between the Federalists and the Jeffersonian Republicans) had been built to sidestep the conflict over the expansion of slavery. The Free Soil Party which in an ironic twist nominated Martin Van Buren, the architect of that system, for president in the 1848 election fought to put that conflict at the center of American politics.

It succeeded. In many respects, the emergence of the Free Soil Party marks the beginning of mass antislavery politics in the United States. It elected several members to Congress, helped fracture the Whig Party along sectional lines and pushed antislavery Free Democrats to abandon their party. The Free Soilers never elected a president, but in just a few short years they transformed American party politics. And when the Whig Party finally collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions, after General Winfield Scotts defeat in the 1852 presidential election, the Free Soil Party would become, in 1854, the nucleus of the new Republican Party, which brought an even larger coalition of former Whigs and ex-Democrats together with Free Soil radicals under the umbrella of a sectional, antislavery party.

There are a few other examples of third-party success. The Populist Party failed to win high office after endorsing the Democratic nominee, William Jennings Bryan, for president in 1896 but went on to shape the next two decades of American political life. In the wake of the defeat of the Peoples Party, a wave of reform soon swept the country, the historian Charles Postel writes in The Populist Vision: Populism provided an impetus for this modernizing process, with many of their demands co-opted and refashioned by progressive Democrats and Republicans.

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Opinion | Why Andrew Yangs New Third Party Is Bound to Fail - The New York Times

Opinion: There are still stark and important choices to make in the Aug. 2 primary, even if key issues have been drowned out by nastiness and disinformation.

Editorial board| Arizona Republic

Arizona is facing a host of critical questions about education, our water supply, our continued well-being as a state.

But this election hasnt focused much on answers.

Thatsdisheartening. If the issues that voters say they care most about and that matter most to our statesfuture cant rise above thenastiness and disinformation that has flowed from candidates, why even vote?

Because there are still stark and important choices to be made in the Aug. 2 primaryelection. Voters will nominatethe Republican and Democratic contenders whowill face offin the November general election.

Most posts are up for grabs this year. That includes governor, the 90-member Legislature, secretary of state, education chief, attorney general and one U.S. Senate seat.

Here are fourquestionsyou can answer about our states direction as you vote.

The Arizona primary for governor is a bellwether for the future of politics in Arizona and the United States.

It will help answer one of the most pressing questions before the country:

Will the Republican Party continue down the trail of disruptive national populism blazed by Donald Trump, or will it return to its more sober traditions of Goldwater, Reagan and McCain?

Key battleground: What Trump, Pence visits mean for GOP's future

The two candidates still standing and competitive are Kari Lake and Karrin Taylor Robson.

Lake is the female embodiment of Donald Trump, who took the bit of Stop the Steal and never let go. She is pugnacious and iron-eyed like Trump and has sowed doubt about the election results to come should she lose, just like Trump.

She has Trumps endorsement and his appetite for border politics, and she plays politics like a game of Mortal Kombat.

Karrin Taylor Robson is a harder read.

She comes from a family of Arizona Republicans.Hers is an old-school Republicanism. Less bare knuckled and more buttoned down. Less impulsive and more competent.

The fighting spirit of Kari Lake is attractive to the impassioned base. It wants to blow up the old politics.

The calm demeanor of Karrin Taylor Robson would steady the party ship. But that may be unsatisfying in revolutionary times.

And there stands the key question:

Are Republicans still in a fighters crouch, or do they crave the more stable politics of an earlier time?

Arizona hasnt had a Democratic governor since Janet Napolitano resigned in 2009 to work for the Obama administration. But given all the turmoil in the GOP, could this be the year that changesthat?

Democrats will choosebetweenSecretary of State Katie Hobbs or Marco Lpez, a former mayor andObama administration official.

Hobbs has earned national attention defending the 2020 election, but also for her role in a lawsuitby a former Senate staffer. Two juriesfound the employee was racially discriminated against on the job.

Thats going to be a powerful weapon against Hobbs should she win the Democratic nomination. Shes been a no-show on many campaign gatherings and refused to debate Lpez, a huge disserviceto voters who deserve to see candidates face off.

Lpez is seeking to become the first Latino elected governor in half a century, though he has faced an uphill battle to gain recognition, particularly after he was linked to an international bribery investigation.

Lpez maintains his innocence.

The choice is simple in the state House and Senate:

Will voters retain conservatives like Sen. Tyler Pace, Rep. Joanne Osborne and House Speaker Rusty Bowers, who are running for Senatelawmakers who werent afraid to workwith others andvotetheir conscience?

Or will they choose a slate ofAmerica First candidates thatwant to boot them, who along with a newly formed Arizona Freedom Caucus have promised to vote unquestionably as a bloc, no matter the issue?

If the latter, voters can bet that this bloc will pressure and intimidate others to steamroll itsagenda one that could plunge the state even deeperinto the ultrapopulist playbook.

And in that case, it wont matter who wins the governorship, or where others say they stand on the issues. Lawmaking will become the America First way, or the highway.

Kari Lake and others are already crying voter fraud without offering a shred of evidence.

Dont believe them. Theyre just setting themselves up for a fight should they lose on Tuesday.

But its no less dangerous, because theirfalse claims further erodeconfidence in the election process.

Theyve tried everything to discredit voting. A multimillion-dollar bogus election audit, lawsuits, selecting fake electors to overturn 2020 election results. All of that failed because theres no proof of widespread fraud.

Arizonans must fight back with their vote.

Thats how our representative democracy works. People vote freely,without any threat of intimidation. Whoever gets the most votes in a particular race wins.

Thats why it is important to know that voting is safe and that nobody is stealing or messing with your ballot.

More than half amillion voters in Maricopa County have already cast their ballot. Those with early ballots can still do so before Tuesday.

Its too late to mail them. But you can still vote in person or drop off your early ballot at any of the voting locations listed at Locations.Maricopa.Vote.

Polling locationswill beopen from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesday.

This is an opinion of The Arizona Republic's editorial board.

Read the original:

4 reasons to vote in Arizona's Aug. 2 primary election - The Arizona Republic

Most analyses of populism emphasise the divide that populist parties establish between the people and a corrupt other. Drawing on a new study, Jos Javier Olivas Osuna argues that this construction of boundaries and borders between people is far less binary than is commonly recognised. His research suggests that populist parties frequently blur boundaries depending on the context, allowing them to create a meta-us that acts as a common front against perceived threats.

Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic, and Russias invasion of Ukraine which has triggered the biggest refugee crisis in Europe since WWII have brought borders back to the centre of policy debates. Borders are indissolubly linked to notions of sovereignty and citizenship. But borders are not static, they evolve, overlap and are part of domestic and international power struggles.

By making cultural, linguistic, or ethnic differences more explicit, populist leaders contribute to those individual boundaries turning into something closer to a political border. These bordering processes help categorise people and create new, or strengthen existing, distinct collective political identities.

Borders are an essential part of the logic of cultural differentialism (or differential nativism) underpinning the othering and exclusion of migrants, refugees and ethnocultural minorities. Individuals may selectively choose evidence that exacerbates inter-group differences to portray the out-group as inferior.

Figure 1: Equivalential chains in populism

Populist leaders often demonise the underserving other. The elites, the caste, the colonisers and the immigrants who do not really belong to the populists ideal heartland and therefore should be removed from the demos. They argue that the true or authentic people must fight to achieve plenitude and have their country back. As Chantal Mouffe has argued far from having disappeared, frontiers between us and them are constantly drawn, but nowadays they are drawn in moral categories.

Populists compartmentalise society by creating or reinforcing internal frontiers and defining antagonistic equivalential chains which bring together people with different, but comparable, fears, concerns, resentments, and grievances. Borders are an intrinsic component of the populist logic of articulation and interpretative frames that shape how problems are identified and solved. In their attempt to re-enact their ideal heartland and recover a purportedly lost popular sovereignty, populist parties advocate (re)establishing political borders between states and reinforcing internal legal, economic, or cultural frontiers.

Borders and populism in radical right manifestos

Bordering policies highlighted by the borders literature are customarily justified via populist discursive elements, i.e., antagonism, morality, idealised construction of society, popular sovereignty and personalistic leadership. Populist tropes and rhetoric become common tools for those who seek to create new (or modify and strengthen existing) borders. In my research I explore the complex interaction between populism and borders through a content analysis of electoral manifestos ofVox,Rassemblement National(National Rally, RN), the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and the Brexit Party.

Figure 2: Density of populism and borders references coded per manifesto

As Figure 2 above shows, antagonism is the most salient populist attribute in the Brexit Party manifesto analysed. The populist idealisation of society is the most prominent attribute found in the RN and Vox documents, whereas morality references are the most frequent in the UKIP manifesto.

In the bordering discourse of the RN, references to exclusionary/discriminatory policies and to economic protectionism are very salient. The Brexit Party document emphasises the idea of protecting and recovering Britains sovereignty and the need to prioritise national interests over those of the EU.

Exclusionary policies and protection of British sovereignty are the most common references in the UKIP manifesto. Finally, whereas the Vox EU elections manifesto gives more salience to securitisation, protecting sovereignty and the critique of supranational institutions, the Vox Spanish elections manifesto emphasises identity and culture protection, as well as discriminatory policies.

It is worth noting that borders and populism discursive references appear intertwined. This means that segments of text coded for different categories often overlap for instance an antagonistic reference can be used with moral connotations and expressed to justify a deportation or the need for securitisation. A myriad of intersections between populist and borders were found, as shown in Figure 3 below.

Figure 3: Map of code intersections

Nationality and religion are used to define the ideal society in these othering discourses. For instance, Vox proposes the deportation of illegal immigrants and of migrants who are lawfully in the territory but have committed serious crimes or repeated minor offences, while the RN requests barriers to the naturalisation of foreigners.

These parties articulate a model of society that is founded on traditional, usually Christian, values, which they claim are threatened by out-groups. This argument is often made with reference to Islam and Islamism, which these manifestos associate with radicalism, violence, and a lack of respect for certain democratic rights.

For instance, Vox proposes promoting European values, uniquely embodied in Christian civilisation, the exclusion of Islamic education from public schools and following Hungarys footsteps in creating a government agency for the protection of endangered Christian minorities. UKIP targets a repeal of the 2010 Equality Act which protects Black and Asian minorities. Moreover, UKIP declares that they will promote a unifying British culture and Christian schools in the UK. Meanwhile, the RN declares that they will defend the national identity, values and traditions of the French civilisation.

These parties also antagonise supranational organisations, and in particular the EU. Vox refers to the Europe that asphyxiates political freedom and cultural wealth of its member states, while UKIP claims they will abolish all of the EU-inspired legislation that binds us to EU legal institutions. The Brexit Party promises no further entanglement with the EUs controlling political institutions, and the RN proposes a referendum on EU membership to regain our freedom and control over our destiny by restoring sovereignty to the French people.

Morality is also used to justify exclusion and prejudices against the other. For example, UKIP warns against the systematic and industrialised sexual abuse of under-age and vulnerable young girls by majority-Pakistani grooming and rape gangs, and Vox insinuates that there are NGOs that collaborate with illegal immigration mafias. The RN claims defenders of globalisation are abolishing economic and physical borders to increase immigration and reduce cohesion among the French people, while the Brexit Party accuses the political establishment of conspiring to frustrate democracy over Brexit.

A populist international?

This exploratory analysis resonates with the findings of previous studies highlighting the similarities in othering discourses across populist radical right parties. The similarities found in the bordering policy proposals of these parties are relevant and could be framed within a wider process of discursive alignment between radical right populist parties in Europe.

Although Britain, France and Spain have historically been rivals and still maintain some ongoing border disputes e.g. over Gibraltar, Calais, and fishery rights their radical right parties do not give a high priority in their othering discourses to the citizens of each other. They construct supranational elites, Muslims and non-western European migrants and refugees as the main out-groups. These parties recognise each other and the people they represent as subject to an equivalent sort of exploitation and external threats.

Indeed, populist parties may adopt a flexible strategy and can emphasise or underplay state and supra-state borders creating a sort of hierarchical othering and a meta-us. The joint declaration signed by Le Pen (RN), Abascal (Vox), Orbn (Fidesz), Kaczyski (PiS), Salvini (Lega), Meloni (FdI), and other European right-wing leaders in July 2021, where they agreed to defend together true European values and their Judeo-Christian heritage, seems to confirm this growing notion of a meta-us among radical right populist parties.

The Warsaw Summit, hosted by Mateusz Morawiecki (PiS) in December 2021 and the Madrid Summit, organised by Vox in January 2022, reunited many far-right leaders who pledged to defend Europe against external and internal threats, preserve states sovereignty and Christian values, and prevent demographic suicide. Despite their negative views on the EUs institutions, these parties consider Europe as a civilisational space with physical and symbolic boundaries that encapsulate a distinct identity they embrace in addition to their national one.

Ambiguity about certain borders serves as a unifying discourse that establishes an additional us that encompasses allied right-wing movements across state borders. Putin has employed a similar populist discursive strategy, portraying Ukraine as both an antagonistic other and as part of the self. The selective blurring of borders and overstretched definition of the Russian nation served him as justification for the intervention in Crimea and invasion of Ukraine.

In sum, populist leaders not only build or enhance borders but can also blur existing ones to strategically create new narratives of equivalence and layers of identity and otherness. The construction of a flexible meta-us helps them normalise (re)bordering exclusionary policies and justify their radical policies.

For more information, see the authors accompanying paper in the Journal of Borderland Studies

Note: This article gives the views of theauthor, not the position of EUROPP European Politics and Policy or the London School of Economics. Featured image credit: Vox Espaa (CC0 1.0)

More here:

Borders, exclusion, and the populist radical right 'meta-us' - London School of Economics

Here is the latest edition of the Political Line newsletter curated by Varghese K. George

Here is the latest edition of the Political Line newsletter curated by Varghese K. George

(The Political Line newsletter is Indias political landscape explained every week by Varghese K. George, senior editor at The Hindu. You can subscribehereto get the newsletter in your inbox every Friday.)

Prime Minister Narendra Modi made disapproving remarks on freebie culture and shortcuts that politicians use to win votes, twice within a week, in Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh.

He himself can be accused of using shortcuts to win votes, but the Prime Minister has raised a valid question. There is a need fordifferentiation between cynical populism and empowering welfarism, and Mr. Modi himself must lead a debate on it, as our editorial points out.

Can we actually make a distinction between good welfare and bad welfare? Two experts discuss the question here, and they agree that it is contextual.

I had argued earlier that politicians have come to a conclusion that providing jobs has become difficult if not impossible due to the rapid changes in our production models. In democracies, they negotiate with the voters on a minimum welfare package in exchange of support.

Rituals of governance

In a bulletin ahead of the monsoon session, the parliament secretariat reminded members that they should not use the premises for demonstration, dharna, strike, fast or for the purpose of performing any religious ceremony.

This was a routine reminder that goes out before every session, but the question of religious ceremony is curious as only a few days earlier, a religious ritual accompanied the unveiling of the national emblem atop the new Parliament building that is under construction.

In December 2020, Mr. Modi had presided over the groundbreaking ceremony for the construction of the new building, complete with Hindu rituals.

Opposition parties questioned the propriety of the event and the PMs role in it, on at least three counts. One, Parliament is the legislature and the Prime Minister is head of the government and part of the executive. The Speaker of the Lok Sabha and Chairman of the Rajya Sabha should have been in the lead roles for the event. Two, all political parties should have been invited. Three, a religious ritual undermined the secular nature of the Indian state.

While the first two points are evident, the secularism point is a bit complicated. In Tamil Nadu, where the storied atheism of Dravidian politics is supposedly a determinant of government action, nearly all ground-breaking ceremonies for construction of new government buildings follow Hindu rituals. Even after the DMK came to power, some Ministers and the Chief Ministers son, Udhayanidhi Stalin, a legislator, have participated in ceremonies conducted by Hindu priests at government functions. This is despite government orders and even a HC directive to the contrary.

An MP of the ruling party stopped Hindu rituals at a government event recently, and the BJP has questioned his conduct.

Kejriwal for federalism!

Thumbs down: L-G Vinai Kumar Saxena (right) has advised Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal not to attend the event. file Photo PTI| Photo Credit: -

Arvind Kejriwals emergence as a politician was founded on a campaign for power to the people. Decentralisation in his plans meant that mohalla sabhas, or local councils, would decide everything about governance. That was before he came to power.As Chief Minister of Delhi since 2015, he has been a different person, following the playbook other CMs practise total centralisation of power, brooking no dissent, never taking questions from anyone and certainly not from journalists. He supported the disbanding of the State of Jammu and Kashmir by the Centre in 2019. But whenever it is convenient for him, Mr. Kejriwal reminds the Centre of federalism.

The Centres refusal of permission for him to travel to Singapore, for example, turned out to be an occasion for Mr. Kejriwal and his party to remember the norms of federalism.

The Delhi LG thinks that the conference that Mr. Kejriwal was planning to attend in Singapore was for mayors, and the themes of the conference were not for chief ministers. It is clear that the BJP wanted to deny Mr. Kejriwal an opportunity to grandstand abroad. Bad faith all the way.

Hindi in the south, English in the north

P.T. Usha.

The nomination of athlete P.T. Usha to the Rajya Sabha is part of the BJPs continuing efforts to expand its foothold in Kerala. Mr. Modi has in the past inducted Malayalam actor Suresh Gopi into the Upper House. Though the BJP has not made any immediate electoral gains in Kerala, its approval rating among the Malayalis is certainly on the rise. Ms. Usha took the oath in Hindi, and this must have warmed the cockles of many Hindutva hearts.

Two sisters from Arunachal Pradesh singing a Tamil patriotic song written by the great Tamil poet and freedom fighter Subramania Bharati, which was retweeted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has caused some social media excitement. I am delighted and proud to see this. Kudos to these shining stars of our Yuva Shakti from Arunachal Pradesh for furthering the spirit of Ek Bharat, Shreshtha Bharat by singing in Tamil, the PM posted in English and Tamil. You can watch the outstanding singing also here:

Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel tries to blend his regional identity politics with English aspiration. At his Bhent Mulaqat (Meet or Greet) programme, he asks school students a few questions in Chhattisgarhi language and the latter reply in English. The children who feature in these interactions are the students of Swami Atmanand Government English Medium Schools (SAGES) that the government pitches as a major highlight of a pro-people image it is attempting to build.

Meanwhile, in Rajasthan, the gradual conversion of the existing Hindi medium government schools into English medium has spelt trouble for students. Protests have erupted across the State over the admission process which involves forcible shifting of students.

I just finished Violent Fraternity: Indian Political Thought in the Global Age by Shruti Kapila. If you are interested in history or political philosophy, you will find this book outstandingly original. This book resets the historiography of the Indian national movement. For one, it questions the notion that the principle of non-violence guided and shaped Indias national movement. You may read the review here, and listen to an interview with the author. An abridged version of the interview may be read here.

Read this article:

Political Line | The debates around populism and welfare politics, secularism and religion, Centre and States relations and more - The Hindu

Last week, Boris Johnson addressed parliament as prime minister for the last time. He leaves Downing Street under a cloud of disgrace, fined by the police for breaking the law, and up before a privileges committee inquiry into whether he misled the Commons that could result in him facing his constituents in a recall petition. His parliamentary swan song showed the same disdain for high office he has held throughout his premiership.

Johnsons tenure as prime minister may be all but over, but the first week of the head-to-head stage of the race to succeed him suggests that his spectre will haunt British politics for some time to come. MPs on Wednesday selected former chancellor Rishi Sunak and foreign secretary Liz Truss as the two candidates who will be put to Conservative members to select as prime minister. Johnsonian populism looks set to dominate the contest. The debate about tax cuts at a time when public services, particularly the NHS, are being increasingly run threadbare has taken centre stage, with Truss promising to reduce taxes to a level that even her own economic adviser admits could spike interest rates to 7% and Sunak promising to be as radical as Thatcher on economic reform, without saying anything about what that means. Truss has sought to blame the French passport control for travel chaos at Dover and Folkestone last week conveniently ignoring the impact of Brexit and the fact that the British government reportedly refused to fund an expansion of border infrastructure at Dover to help the port cope. Despite the climate crisis, Sunak has pledged to make it more difficult to build onshore wind farms, as a sop to the Conservative activists with whom they are unpopular. Truss has promised that all remaining EU-derived regulation would be allowed to expire by 2023 far sooner even than on Johnsons timetable which, given the limitations of the parliamentary timetable, would inevitably mean a whole raft of employment and consumer rights disappearing overnight, with no democratic legitimacy for this.

Truss and Sunak are products of Johnsons premiership, elevated by him to the great offices of state as a reward for their perceived loyalty and willingness to swing behind his agenda. Between them, they illustrate the extent to which the toxicity and lack of integrity Johnson has brought to British politics since chairing the Vote Leave campaign will outlive him in the Conservative party. Populism reaping short-term electoral rewards by pretending there are simple answers to complex national issues and scapegoating others for these problems is a heady drug. Once a politician has lied to the public that leaving the EU will free up hundreds of millions of pounds a week for the NHS, or that the UK had no veto to prevent Turkey joining the EU, or that the Northern Ireland protocol does not involve a border in the Irish Sea, telling another convenient untruth becomes ever easier. This is where we are today, with one of the two main contenders to be prime minister obstinately insisting against the economic consensus that her tax cuts will cut inflation, increase growth and swell the coffers of the exchequer. Populism has a limited shelf life. There is only so long politicians can pretend things that happen on their own watch is somebody elses fault, and that if only voters direct their anger somewhere else and give them a bit longer, things will turn around. The Conservative party will before long suffer the electoral consequences of privileging the niche ideological interests of its Eurosceptic right flank above the national interest. But that moment has not yet arrived: the candidates are directing their pitch to be prime minister to the 160,000 or so Conservative members who get an exclusive say in picking our next prime minister. And so, while Britain faces profound questions about how to repair the damage 12 years of spending cuts have done to public services, our role in averting the worst impacts of global heating, the post-Brexit role of the UK in a changing world, and our productivity and housing crises, our governing party remains mired in a contest in which the two candidates for prime minister compete to signal just how Eurosceptic they are a full seven years after the EU referendum, and over who can more authentically channel a prime minister from the 1980s.

It is a reminder that Johnsons resignation was a necessary but insufficient step in the process of rebuilding trust in our political institutions and restoring integrity to public life. The Conservative partys problems run far deeper than Johnson the man. It has been infected by his character, purged of anyone who dared call out his attempts to ignore parliament, stripped of any capacity to renew itself in government or to even begin to articulate a coherent vision for the country that goes beyond tax cuts or blaming the EU for Britains ills.

There will eventually be an electoral price to pay for this. But at the moment, the country is locked into being governed by its fourth Conservative prime minister in just 12 years, with no democratic mandate for their agenda beyond a constitutionally meaningless seal of approval from Conservative party members. If Truss or Sunak really marked the shift from Johnson they claim to be, they would hold a general election to secure a mandate soon after they become prime minister. The fact that this is unlikely reflects the extent to which they are creatures of Johnson, both of whom have embraced and benefited from his unscrupulous approach to governing Britain.

Go here to read the rest:

The Observer view on how Boris Johnsons spectre haunts the Tory leadership race - The Guardian

In her testimony to Congress about the Jan. 6 riot, Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Donald J. Trumps then-chief of staff Mark Meadows, reported that President Trump knew the crowd gathered outside the White House Ellipse was armed with guns, knives, spears, flagpoles and body armor. Even as rioters later at the Capitol called for Mike Pences hanging, according to Ms. Hutchinson, Mr. Meadows said the president doesnt want to do anything and he thinks Mike deserves it. Ms. Hutchinson reported that Mr. Trump refused to calm the protesters, though he was repeatedly urged to do so by staff including White House counsel Pat Cipollone. Ms. Hutchinson said she overheard the president say something to the effect of, You know, I dont fing care that they have weapons. Theyre not here to hurt me. They can march to the Capitol from here.

In this testimony and others throughout the Jan. 6 congressional hearings, the anger and violence of the day were portrayed as an aberrant breach of the political traditions of the United States. And the actions of Mr. Trump and his associates to overturn the 2020 election surely were. But the actions of the crowd were not a breach. They were the outcome of our political culture, ironically and tragically the underside of that cultures success.

Donald Trump lost the 2020 election by seven million votes and 74 seats in the Electoral College. His claims of winning were refuted in over 70 lawsuits, twice by the Supreme Court, and by his own attorney general, William Barr. To understand why a third of U.S. voters nonetheless believe the big lie (some enough to commit violence) and whyin the big picture30 to 40 percent of Americans see Trumpist populism as a remedy to their problems, we need a long-view exploration of how they got there.

What in the countrys political history and present socioeconomic circumstances makes right-wing populism seem like the best path? The question is especially poignant as, after four years in office, Mr. Trump managed no major health care, job training, education, immigration or infrastructure program, all of which are popular with voters. As for his 2017 tax cut, a columnist in the business journal Forbes wrote, The biggest winners were corporations and the households that get income from corporate profitsnot the middle and working classes but the wealthiest Americans.

So why does Trumpist populism spark support? First, we can understand populism overall as a way of responding to way-of-life, economic and status-loss duresses that finds a solution to these problems in us-versus-them thinking. Identifying us and them draws from historical and cultural notions of society (whos in, whos not) and government (its proper size and role). Traditional notions of us and them have not only the ring of familiarity but of authority. They feel both natural and ethically right.

We can trace each part of this populist progression, from duress through history and culture to the us-them shift over the last half century.

American Duresses

The economic duresses that many Americans face include un- and under-employment, especially in old industry regions, prodded somewhat by globalized trade and substantially by automation and other productivity gains, the latter accounting for 88 percent of U.S. job loss. This loss disproportionately burdens those without college degrees. Notably, areas with higher numbers of jobs threatened by automation tended to give strong support to Mr. Trump in 2016.

Way-of-life shifts include changes in gender roles, technology, demographics and the sense that life is harder, less familiar and less fair than a generation ago. In 2018, before the Covid-19 pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a decline in American life expectancy for two of the previous three years, prodded by deaths of despair and social isolation.

Status loss entails the fear of losing ones respectable place in society and falling below those one is currently above. The issue, researchers Stephen Reicher and Yasemin Ulusahin write, is not status itself but status loss that provokes efforts to restore the rightful order of things, often through non-mainstream politics precisely because mainstream strategies have been ineffective. Those most attracted to the political right between 2010 and 2016 were high-school-only whites with middle-class incomes concerned that opportunities were shrinking and their respectable place in America was under threat.

Because white evangelical Protestants comprise a significant share of Mr. Trumps supportaccording to many polling sources, 84 percent voted for him in 2020, compared with 50 percent of Catholicsit is worth looking at duress as experienced by this group. White evangelicals face the three sorts of duress described above plus membership loss and a growing sense of cultural and political marginalization in an increasingly secular, multicultural and socially liberal country. They have decreased as a share of the population, from 23 percent in 2006 to about 15 percent in 2020, while Catholics remain steady at about 20 percent. More than two million left the Southern Baptist Convention, Americas largest denomination, between 2006 and 2020. As Robert Jones, founder and president of the Public Religion Research Institute, notes, with this status loss, a real visceral sense of loss of cultural dominance has set in.

The present sense of marginalization comes on top of decreasing cultural dominance since the late 19th century, spurred by industrialization, urbanization, changing social norms and non-Protestant immigration. Part of the evangelical response was the embrace of apocalyptic doctrines that reflected anxieties about the future even as they isolated evangelicals and reinforced the sense of being sidelined. In the 20th century, these anxieties were sparked by the 1925 Supreme Court decision in the Scopes case that allowed theteaching of evolution in public schools, as well as the 1962 decision in Engel v. Vitale that prohibited school-organized prayer. The 1960s youth counterculture, the civil rights and Great Society anti-poverty programs, the worry that Democrats were soft on Communism, and the feminist and gay rights movements furthered the white evangelical sense of loss of cultural dominance.

For many conservatives, religious and not, the Republican New Right of the 1970s and 80s promised relief: small-government economics, social conservativism (including opposition to abortion), resistance to outsider disruptions of local norms and law, and anti-Communist foreign policy to defeat the biggest of big (atheistic) governments. Moving from conservatism to the political right, these voters supported Ronald Reagan and both Bushes to serve as president. Catholics remain more evenly divided between the parties, in part because they are more divided on small-government-ism and immigration.

But the shift to the right in American politics failed to relieve the duresses of the day, and way-of-life, economic and status-loss duresses persisted, yielding both representational deficiency, where citizens feel unheard in Washington and so are more open to political extremism, and efficacy deficiency, where people move to the extremes to at least do something to be effective on their own behalf. The duresses since the 1970s were aggravated by President Obamas enlargement of the governments role in health care, in regulating business and in environmental protectionmoves against small-government-ismand by the 2015 legalization and public acceptance of same-sex marriage.

All told, the accumulation created the ground for us-them thinking. While addressing the complex sources of economic and way-of-life duress may seem daunting and futile, the rights efforts against a traditional them may be simpler and may thus provide quick feelings of effectiveness.

Us-Them Thinking and Its Historical Roots

With duress or fear of duress, the usual focus on oneself, family and community flips outward to constraining a them ostensibly responsible for the duress. It is a common defense mechanism. Vamik Volkan, who studies the psychology of extremism, writes, The more stressful the situation, the more neighbor groups become preoccupied with each other.

But which other? The identification of the other emerges from history and culture. In America, the traditional othersgovernment and outsiders (minorities and new immigrants)were set in place in the earliest colonies. Covenantal political theory, brought by the Puritans and others not conforming to Europes government-established churches, saw society as a covenant among sovereign people. Any ruler out for himself could be deposed for covenant violation. Covenantalists were wary of governments, authorities and outsiders who might disturb their way of life. The 1620 Mayflower Compact sought not only to establish covenantal government in Massachusetts Bay but also to constrain non-Puritan outsiders. Aristotelian republicanism, a second building block of American political culture, also emphasized the community, the polis, and citizen participation in running it. It too was wary of tyrants. Liberalism, our third component, emphasized individual freedom and was equally wary of government meddling and control.

Anti-authoritarian wariness of government was especially persuasive in America as many immigrants had fled oppressive political systems. The harsh frontier, too, advised self-reliance, trust in ones local community. and caution about interloper authorities and outsiders.

On one hand, suspicion of government birthed a democratic critique of authority and the robust, localist, civil society Alexis de Tocqueville admired. What political power, he wrote, could ever carry on the vast multitude of lesser undertakings which the American citizens perform every day, with the assistance of the principle of association?... No sooner does a government attempt to go beyond its political sphere and to enter upon this new track than it exercises, even unintentionally, an insupportable tyranny.

But under duress and us-them shift, the heritage of community and local pride may turn to a self-protective, my-community-in-struggle mindset against outsiders. Wariness of oppressive government and elites may turn to suspicion of government and elites per se, whose activities and programs should be limitedexcept to constrain outsiders. In short, the very anti-authoritarianism and community building that contributed much to American vibrancy may create self-protective and aggressive us-them worldviews.

This us-them shift is about as American as you can get. The Shays and Whiskey rebellions, armed revolts against state and federal government, erupted with the very birth of the country, in 1786 and 1791. The anti-immigrant Naturalization Act of 1790 and the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798, which also included anti-immigration provisions, were also part of our founding.

Not only was the Civil War fought against Washingtons interference in local governance and in support of slavery, but the Souths response to defeat was also a mix of anti-government suspicion and resistance to outsiders. After Reconstruction, the Confederacy was imagined into a lost cause of Christianized white supremacy and noble resistance to federal interlopers. Discriminatory immigration laws were enacted in 1873, 1882 and 1924 and enjoyed national, bipartisan support. Discrimination and voting restrictions targeted not only African Americans but also immigrants from Asia, Mexico, and southern and eastern Europe, both Catholic and Jewish.

Us-Them Politics Today

Though the federal government grew along with the nation, wariness of Washington and outsiders retains a vaunted place in American identity and practice. One example, much in the news with the summer 2022 mass shootings in Buffalo, N.Y., and Uvalde, Tex., is the gun rights movement. Though Americans use guns for a range of reasons (self-protection, sport), the political mobilization is spurred by fear that the government will turn tyrannical. An assault-weapon ban, David French explained in the National Review in 2018, ...would gut the concept of an armed citizenry as a final, emergency bulwark against tyranny. In a 2017 poll, three-quarters of American gun owners associated gun ownership with freedom. Ninety-one percent of Republican and Republican-leaning gun owners reported that gun ownership is essential to their freedom.

Government-wariness combines with outsider-wariness in opposition to federal social services, even among beneficiaries of those services. In 2017, those who would have lost $5,000 in government health insurance subsidies had President Trump succeeded in overturning Obamacare still said they would vote for Mr. Trump for re-election, by 59 percent to 36 percent. Though increasing numbers of Americans benefit from government programs, resistance to them has grown on the view that other people, perceived as undeserving, lazy minorities and immigrants, are being given our tax dollars by the corrupt federal government. Where these views are embraced, whites, including those who benefit from government assistance, vote to restrict it.

Seventy-two percent of Republicans believed immigrants use more than their fair share of social services, according to a 2012 poll released by the Pew Research Center, 63 percent believed that immigrants increase crime, and 57 percent felt that whites face a lot of discrimination. These anxieties may persevere even when economic and law-enforcement records do not support them. Immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-borns, and of the 40 million people who were below the poverty line in 2019 (and thus would have qualified for the largest share of government assistance under President Bidens American Rescue Plan), 17.3 million identified as non-Hispanic white, less than half that number were Black (8.2 million), and 10.1 million were Hispanics of any race.

Immigrants are also disproportionately entrepreneurial job creators, contributing robustly to the tax pool: $30 billion in the second generation and $223 billion for the succeeding one. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine concludes that immigrants childrenthe second generationare among the strongest economic and fiscal contributors in the population.

Hunting Where the Ducks Are

When Donald Trump first ran for president, Americas us-them frameworks were not new. But they were animated by Mr. Trump and others who tapped into and reinforced suspicion of Americas traditional thems. That was Mr. Trumps appeal: He would fight the deep state, the D.C. swamp of government insiders and their elite media fake news, Mexican rapists and drug dealers, and foreigners who cheat Americans in trade. As the Jan. 6 riot demonstrates, people are willing to fight hard for the guy they believe is fighting for them.

Us-them thinking, with its simple explanations and clear path of actionget the thems!is appealing. But it is also concerning. Solutions to economic and way-of-life problems that emerge from us-them thinking are based on the distortions that duress itself prodsfrom a sense of community to exclusionary communities, and from wariness of oppression to wariness of government. Good solutions do not come from distortions. So the original duresses remain, to the continued harm of the distressed communities and to prod further rounds of us-them anger. Who benefits? Those who animate us-them anxieties for political and economic gain. Theres a name for that. Its called hunting where the ducks are.

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The Jan. 6 riot shocked Americans. Maybe it shouldn't have. - America Magazine

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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