Category Archives: Populism

LONDON (Reuters) - Robinhoods army of small retail investors may have failed to storm the silver market, but the online brokers devotees certainly gave it an almighty shake.

Freshly smelted silver bars at the KGHM Copper and Precious Metals smelter and processing plant in Glogow, Poland, May 10, 2013. REUTERS/Peter Andrews/File Photo

The spot silver price surged by 20% between last Thursday and Monday this week, briefly hitting an eight-year high of $30.03 an ounce.

An increase in the margin required to trade silver on the CME exchange has curbed animal spirits and the metal has fallen back to $27.12, though a collective stampede for physical metal continues to deplete retail supplies of bars and coins.

The crowd has found that squeezing a commodity market such as silver is a very different proposition from cornering a short-seller in an individual stock such as GameStop. Particularly when the targeted big short doesnt exist.

Theyll probably be back again, though, in silver or the next big thing.

Crowd surges organised through social media regularly rock Chinese commodity markets and the strategy is starting to catch on in the West, even if this particular silver squeeze seems to be fizzling out.

The rallying call for an attack on the silver market came on Thursday in the form of a post on the r/wallstreetbets Reddit message board, the same one used to spark frenzied buying of GameStop and other shares shorted by hedge funds.

The post urged investors to buy physical silver via exchange-traded fund (ETF) iShares Silver Trust SLV, the shares of which represent ounces of silver sitting in vaults.

Retail investors heeded the call and snapped up 37 million ounces worth of shares in the next 24 hours, with others rushing to their local bullion dealers.

But who is the biggest short?

Not the hedge funds that were targeted by Reddit traders in the stock market. The fund community has been net long of the CME silver contract since the middle of 2019.

Ironically, the silver squeeze may have benefited the very funds that have come in for vilification for shorting stocks.

That counterintuitive outcome seems to have sapped morale among the core Reddit crowd, with many questioning whom they are supposed to be squeezing.

Chasing the big silver short has sucked the Robinhood stocks army into a whole different world of precious metals conspiracy theory and radical populism.

This is a world populated by those who believe that Wall Street is in cahoots with the U.S. government to keep the price of gold and silver artificially suppressed to protect the existing economic order.

Big banks have made big fortunes by manipulating the silver market for decades, said the #SilverSqueeze Manifesto.

This is a movement to help level the playing field between everyday people and the billionaires who control the big financial institutions that control the money, and thus control us, it said, adding that the silver market is the Achilles heel of the old system, and its time has come.

This belief that the likes of JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs are using futures short positions to suppress the price of physical metal has been around a long time.

It is based on a binary world view that paper transactions contradict physical reality.

Commodity markets operate more holistically than that, however, with transactions in the futures market often deriving from the need to hedge holdings of the physical commodity.

The Reddit crowd may have bought up 37 million ounces of silver in one day last week, but at the end of December there were another 33,608 tonnes of the stuff sitting in London vaults, according to the London Bullion Market Association.

Thats more than a billion ounces valued at $28.6 billion. That stockpile is continuously being borrowed, lent, bought and sold as banks interact with the industrial supply chain and the investment sector. Given its value, all of it will be hedged.

The biggest short on the CME silver contract is not the hedge fund community but the 52,750 contracts held in the producer/merchant/processor/user category.

The big paper short, in other words, is a big physical long. Squeeze it too hard and industrial quantities of silver may be coming your way.

While the Robinhood armys energies seem spent for now, the ability of the crowd to move prices, even in markets as globally deep as silver, has been amply demonstrated. And some early movers on the silver squeeze will have made large profits.

Chinese retail investors have been using the same mass effect for many years, coordinating surges in WeChat rooms.

The crowd moves from one hot market to the next, using its strength in numbers to generate a giant momentum machine. The target is often less important than the potential to catch a moving trend.

The Zhengzhou ferro-silicon contract was squeezed in 2019 simply because retail traders had been pushed out of the bigger steel market by exchange margin increases.

Shanghai copper has been crowd-shorted a couple of times in the past few years, in one instance in a collective battle of strength against a major fund long position.

Social media facilitates the same bewildering mix of mutual exhortation, snippets of genuine information and lots of wild rumour-mongering, as is evident in the #SilverSqueeze meme.

The phenomenon is spreading. In South Korea theyre called ants. In Thailand theyre called moths. Theres a lot of people in this world of low interest rates looking to make a fast buck in the markets.

Chinese regulators have been battling the problem for years. The first line of defence is to increase trading fees, the second is to issue increasingly strident government warnings and the third is to intervene directly, either by suspending some types of trade or mobilising a team of state-owned banks to crush the crowd.

CMEs margin hike and U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellens pending meeting with regulators to discuss recent market volatility conform to the standard Chinese operating procedure of how to deal with speculative excess.

Western regulators will need to catch up fast with their Chinese counterparts because the retail army is likely to resurface with new tactics.

Reddits Wall Street Bets community (...) has set a shining example that other movements can follow, according to #SqueezeSilver Manifestos anonymous author.

A dedicated army of everyday people can leverage their collective skills and resources (...) to alter deeply entrenched power dynamics and level the playing field.

Small investors from Shanghai to Seattle may well agree.

The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters.

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Column: Populist crowd fails to breach the silver fortress for now - Reuters

(Repeats without change. The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters)

* Fund positioning on CME silver contract: tmsnrt.rs/2LiXUNw

LONDON, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Robinhoods army of small retail investors may have failed to storm the silver market, but the online brokers devotees certainly gave it an almighty shake.

The spot silver price surged by 20% between last Thursday and Monday this week, briefly hitting an eight-year high of $30.03 an ounce.

An increase in the margin required to trade silver on the CME exchange has curbed animal spirits and the metal has fallen back to $27.12, though a collective stampede for physical metal continues to deplete retail supplies of bars and coins.

The crowd has found that squeezing a commodity market such as silver is a very different proposition from cornering a short-seller in an individual stock such as GameStop. Particularly when the targeted big short doesnt exist.

Theyll probably be back again, though, in silver or the next big thing.

Crowd surges organised through social media regularly rock Chinese commodity markets and the strategy is starting to catch on in the West, even if this particular silver squeeze seems to be fizzling out.

The rallying call for an attack on the silver market came on Thursday in the form of a post on the r/wallstreetbets Reddit message board, the same one used to spark frenzied buying of GameStop and other shares shorted by hedge funds.

The post urged investors to buy physical silver via exchange-traded fund (ETF) iShares Silver Trust SLV, the shares of which represent ounces of silver sitting in vaults.

Retail investors heeded the call and snapped up 37 million ounces worth of shares in the next 24 hours, with others rushing to their local bullion dealers.

But who is the biggest short?

Not the hedge funds that were targeted by Reddit traders in the stock market. The fund community has been net long of the CME silver contract since the middle of 2019.

Ironically, the silver squeeze may have benefited the very funds that have come in for vilification for shorting stocks.

That counterintuitive outcome seems to have sapped morale among the core Reddit crowd, with many questioning whom they are supposed to be squeezing.

Chasing the big silver short has sucked the Robinhood stocks army into a whole different world of precious metals conspiracy theory and radical populism.

This is a world populated by those who believe that Wall Street is in cahoots with the U.S. government to keep the price of gold and silver artificially suppressed to protect the existing economic order.

Big banks have made big fortunes by manipulating the silver market for decades, said the #SilverSqueeze Manifesto.

This is a movement to help level the playing field between everyday people and the billionaires who control the big financial institutions that control the money, and thus control us, it said, adding that the silver market is the Achilles heel of the old system, and its time has come.

This belief that the likes of JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs are using futures short positions to suppress the price of physical metal has been around a long time.

It is based on a binary world view that paper transactions contradict physical reality.

Commodity markets operate more holistically than that, however, with transactions in the futures market often deriving from the need to hedge holdings of the physical commodity.

The Reddit crowd may have bought up 37 million ounces of silver in one day last week, but at the end of December there were another 33,608 tonnes of the stuff sitting in London vaults, according to the London Bullion Market Association.

Thats more than a billion ounces valued at $28.6 billion. That stockpile is continuously being borrowed, lent, bought and sold as banks interact with the industrial supply chain and the investment sector. Given its value, all of it will be hedged.

The biggest short on the CME silver contract is not the hedge fund community but the 52,750 contracts held in the producer/merchant/processor/user category.

The big paper short, in other words, is a big physical long. Squeeze it too hard and industrial quantities of silver may be coming your way.

While the Robinhood armys energies seem spent for now, the ability of the crowd to move prices, even in markets as globally deep as silver, has been amply demonstrated. And some early movers on the silver squeeze will have made large profits.

Chinese retail investors have been using the same mass effect for many years, coordinating surges in WeChat rooms.

The crowd moves from one hot market to the next, using its strength in numbers to generate a giant momentum machine. The target is often less important than the potential to catch a moving trend.

The Zhengzhou ferro-silicon contract was squeezed in 2019 simply because retail traders had been pushed out of the bigger steel market by exchange margin increases.

Shanghai copper has been crowd-shorted a couple of times in the past few years, in one instance in a collective battle of strength against a major fund long position.

Social media facilitates the same bewildering mix of mutual exhortation, snippets of genuine information and lots of wild rumour-mongering, as is evident in the #SilverSqueeze meme.

The phenomenon is spreading. In South Korea theyre called ants. In Thailand theyre called moths. Theres a lot of people in this world of low interest rates looking to make a fast buck in the markets.

Chinese regulators have been battling the problem for years. The first line of defence is to increase trading fees, the second is to issue increasingly strident government warnings and the third is to intervene directly, either by suspending some types of trade or mobilising a team of state-owned banks to crush the crowd.

CMEs margin hike and U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellens pending meeting with regulators to discuss recent market volatility conform to the standard Chinese operating procedure of how to deal with speculative excess.

Western regulators will need to catch up fast with their Chinese counterparts because the retail army is likely to resurface with new tactics.

Reddits Wall Street Bets community (...) has set a shining example that other movements can follow, according to #SqueezeSilver Manifestos anonymous author.

A dedicated army of everyday people can leverage their collective skills and resources (...) to alter deeply entrenched power dynamics and level the playing field.

Small investors from Shanghai to Seattle may well agree.

Visit link:

RPT-COLUMN-Populist crowd fails to breach the silver fortress for now: Andy Home - Reuters

Europe's populists have seen their polling numbers dip since the coronavirus emerged on the continent, but as the economic impact of lockdowns and restrictions starts to be felt in earnest, widening income disparity, they could see a revival, some analysts forecast.

Others argue that won't happen, if incumbent governments and establishment parties can restore public faith in their competence, cushion lower-income and rural populations from economic misery, and get their countries back on track working again soon.

The populist challenge is dimming, they say, pointing to former U.S. President Donald Trump's November election loss on the other side of the Atlantic. "One reason is their trademark scorn for expertise, which enthuses a minority of voters but unsettles many more who are worried about their health and livelihoods," according to Tony Barber, Europe editor of the Financial Times.

While acknowledging that the populists have not had a "good" pandemic, Matthew Goodwin, a political scientist and visiting fellow at Britain's Chatham House research group, believes political turbulence generally lies downstream of crises and the Great Lockdown will have seismic effects that are hard to foresee.

"Emerging evidence shows it looks fairly certain the Great Lockdown will actually exacerbate divides in our society that began to sharpen a few decades ago, and were then worsened by the Great Recession," he said.

The European Union isn't helping to head off a possible revival in political populism on the continent, which recruits partly on the basis of euro-skepticism. Logistical missteps and hidebound bureaucracy have marred the EU's vaccine rollout, prompting rising public frustration with the pace of inoculations and adding to anxiety about a grim northern hemisphere winter ahead. Some commentators see this as a gift for populists with the low-paid, the unskilled and those in insecure jobs hit the hardest by prolonged lockdowns.

The EU's struggle to secure enough early doses to make headway in the inoculation of the bloc's 446 million people has put the bloc front and center of widespread anger. Last month, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was framing prematurely the bloc's vaccine procurement strategy as a "European success story."

The 62-year-old German, French President Emmanuel Macron's pick for the top job at the EC, had maintained that Brussels should take the lead in negotiating and procuring vaccine supplies for all 27 member states. She had the support of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who called a halt to negotiations already under way between vaccine developer AstraZeneca, a British-Swedish firm, and Germany's health minister, along with his counterparts in France, Italy and the Netherlands.

Von der Leyen, supported by Merkel, argued a collective approach would work better as it would avoid vaccine nationalism and competition among member states. Negotiating as a bloc would provide more leverage to haggle over pricing with the pharmaceutical giants.

But an overriding motivation was to show how well the EU could do. That would overshadow the bloc's lack of solidarity at the start of the pandemic, when calls for help from Italy, the first country to suffer the full force of the virus, were rebuffed, and member states competed for supplies of personal protective equipment and shut borders without consulting each other.

Some of the problems in the rollout have been country-specific but there are mounting doubts about the EU's collective approach to procurement and distribution. Go-it-alone Britain has vaccinated more than 13% of its adults so far while the EU average is barely nudging 2%, with the gap growing.

British regulatory authorities were quicker to approve vaccines and signed contracts with manufacturers three months before the EU. As a result, Britain has not been impacted as much as the EU by production delays and difficulties. On January 22, the EU reacted with fury when AstraZeneca disclosed it would have to reduce by around two-thirds doses expected over the next two months because of production difficulties.

"There are no signs that the vaccination rate in the EU is accelerating, unlike in the U.K. and U.S., where daily vaccination rates have increased substantially in the past few weeks," according to Guntram Wolff, director of Bruegel, a Brussels-based research group. "Part of the explanation is that the EU ordered too few vaccines too late. It was slow to order the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine, even when it became the front-runner and its efficacy had been documented."

The Bruegel director has also faulted the EU for not thinking ahead and crafting a strategy to increase vaccine production by mobilizing other manufacturers to help to do so. He cautioned it is "impossible to say how things would have gone if there had not been joint EU action."

Nonetheless, the EU's logistical missteps are drawing fire.

Markus Soeder, the premier of the German state of Bavaria, and a contender to succeed Merkel when she quits in September, said the "operational responsibility" for the "more than unsatisfactory" situation rests with Brussels. "The decision was made in what I think is a typical, normal, bureaucratic EU procedure," he added.

Von der Leyen was the subject of a scathing article Sunday by Germany's leading magazine Der Spiegel, which said the vaccine rollout "might ultimately turn out to be the greatest disaster of her political career."

With lockdown frustration building the Netherlands experienced three days of riots last week after the government introduced a nighttime curfew and with anger building over the snail-like pace of inoculation, populists see a political opening. Some had aligned themselves with anti-vaccine skeptics but are moving away from that position and focusing now on the issue of EU competence.

France's Marine Le Pen, the euro-skeptic far-right leader, has seen her popularity surge. A poll last week showed her trailing Macron by just 52% to 48%. Macron faces a tough reelection bid next year.

Originally posted here:

Europe's Populists Ready to Seize on COVID Vaccination Bungle - Voice of America

After losing a national election, its natural that a political party goes through a period of soul-searching and internal turmoil.

The Republican Party, though, has taken it to another level.

President Donald Trump brought most of the GOP along for the ride during his outlandish, conspiracy-fueled attempt to overturn the election, ending in the Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol.

His loyalists have since been scouring the landscape searching for Republicans to censure or primary for insufficient loyalty to Trump during this interlude or his resulting second impeachment.

The most famous Republican House freshman mused not too long ago about a space laser associated with the Rothschilds starting the 2018 California wildfires, forcing an embarrassing debate about whether to sanction her.

And Trump has maintained his hold on the party seemingly effortlessly. Hes been deplatformed by social-media companies and hasnt done TV interviews, and still, youd think he were running a highly polished 24/7 political operation, rather than relaxing at Mar-a-Lago.

This dismaying chapter has predictably led to declarations that the party is doomed and calls to split it up.

A former chair of the Washington state GOP wrote in an op-ed in TheSeattle Timesurging, as the headline put it,Lets form a new Republican Party.He argued that dissident Republicans could and should band together and partner with the substantial Never Trump community of Republicans who have already left to form a new political enterprise.

This prompted a Chris Cillizza item at CNN headlined Should Republicans disband the GOP?

Theres been a spate of articles by erstwhile Republicans announcing they are done. The former Republican Rep. Mickey Edwards wrote one after Jan. 6 saying he was quitting the party because it has become the opposite of what it was.

Jonathan Last wrote a piece in TheNew RepublictitledThe Republican Party is dead. Its the Trump cult now.Washington Postcolumnist Kathleen Parker declared, The party isnt doomed; its dead.

This seems a mite premature about a party that represents roughly half the country and is on the cusp of a majority in the House, tied 50-50 in the Senate and in control of the governorships in 27 states and both the governorship and state legislature in 22 of those.

If we are going to consider this geographically diverse collection of officeholders whose careers in many instances predate Trump and will outlast him a mere personality cult, the word cult has lost its meaning.

The fortunes of our political parties ebb and flow and their iterations change over time, but they are robust, deeply embedded institutions of our public life that endure even after electoral disasters and self-sabotaging wrong turns.

As Dan McLaughlin, my colleague at National Review, points out, the Republican Party has since its inception been a fusion of a classical liberal wing with a more populist, elemental conservatism.

As McLaughlin writes, The partys ideals were universal, but its culture was Midwestern and Protestant. Early Republicans wanted an even-handed government, but one that reflected their values. Those values American nationalism, Christian moralism, economic self-reliance, law and order run throughout the partys history.

Whats different about Trump is that he represents the ascendance of the populist wing after it had long been in a subordinate position in the party.

Populism was part of the appeal of Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, John McCain and even the patrician George H.W. Bush in his winning 1988 campaign, but it was easy to miss. Trumps populism was unmistakable, even as he retained key policy priorities of the traditional GOP, from tax cuts and judges, to religious liberty and abortion.

That said, the party does need to get beyond Trump, who has remained potent despite being a three-time loser now in the 2018 midterms, in his 2020 reelection campaign, and in the Georgia runoff elections. In electoral terms, all the winning stopped circa November 2016.

At this juncture, though, it does feel as though the advent of the post-Trump GOP is coming approximately never.

But American politics moves quickly. Richard Nixon won a landslide in 1972 and resigned in 1974, leaving the GOP in utter disarray and yet Reagan won a landslide in 1980. The Tea Party didnt exist when Barack Obama won an overwhelming victory in 2008, sprang to life almost immediately in 2009, and by 2016 had disappeared, subsumed into the Trump phenomenon.

There will inevitably be an overwhelming controversy in the Biden administration or a crisis that moves us beyond the politics of the Trump presidency and the immediate aftermath.

New issues will emerge, and so will new movements and players on the right. There are plenty of talented, ambitious Republican politicians who think they are better suited to win a presidential election in 2024 and to be president than Donald Trump 2.0. The incentives are for them to continue to keep their heads down and to slipstream behind Trump for now, but that wont always be true.

The temptation to splinter from the GOP might be alluring to elements of both the populists and the Republican traditionalists, but this a dead end. Its more realistic that the populists, with the passion and the numbers, could make a go of a new party, but theyd only be ensuring their own defeat and that of the GOP.

The Republican Party is the only plausible electoral vehicle for any sort of right-of-center politics in America. It is worth fighting over, and it will be. That struggle is sure to be toxic and unpredictable, except for the fact that at the end of the day the Grand Old Party will still be standing.

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No, conservatives shouldn't quit the Republican Party - New York Post

Donald Trumps departure from office on Wednesday, after his historic second impeachment, will be welcomed by many who decry the rise of global populism. Yet Trump is a symptom, not a cause, of populism whose rise may continue into the 2020s fuelled by the aftermath of the coronavirus crisis.

As of 2020, some 2 billion of the worlds population was governed by populist leaders, including the more than 300 million US populace, according to academic research from the Global Populism Database a comprehensive tracker of populist discourse. That data, from an international network of academics, analysed speeches through textual analysis of key leaders in 40 countries during the last two decades.

What the research found is that leaders from across different continents won power through common campaign tactics, including attacking multinational organisations, so-called fake media, and immigrants. And this electoral success is itself a microcosm of a wider upending of the tectonic plates of the global political landscape.

The research found that, some 20 years ago, only a handful of states with populations over 20 million including Italy, Argentina and Venezuela had leaders classified as populists through their speeches. This was an era that saw the controversial billionaire businessman Silvio Berlusconi as a right-of-centre maverick prime minister in Rome, presaging the rise of Trump; and Hugo Chvez as Venezuelan president.

This-then relatively small populist club expanded significantly during the aftermath of the 2007-08 international financial crisis. But it was not until the last half a dozen years that there has been the biggest rise in populism.

To be sure, there are still some limits on the rise of populism with a significant number of countries including Canada, France and Germany never having a governmental leader in the post-war era that has used populist rhetoric. However, even in these states, the share of the vote going to populist political parties has tripled since 1998.

The research highlights that this latest wave of populism is just one of several over the last several hundred years. Populism has been a recurrent phenomenon in the United States, for instance. Andrew Jackson, who served as US president from 1829 to 1837, won the moniker King Mob and some have drawn comparisons between him and Trump.

However, this latest wave of populism has cast a bigger footprint than perhaps ever before. The Global Populism Database indicates some 2 billion people are therefore today governed by a somewhat/ moderately populist, populist or very populist leader, an increase from 120 million at the turn of the millennium, with the research calling out leaders like Indias Narendra Modi as belonging in the populist camp.

Another key finding is how shades of populism differ across the world. In South America, populism leans towards socialism, albeit with Jair Bolsonaro as a key outlier, whereas current populists in Europe tend to be right of centre.

Looking to the future, one key question is whether this populist phenomenon will tail off in coming years. While that is possible, there is a plausible case that populism will grow. It should be remembered here that, while Trump lost in November, he won more votes than in 2016, and would most likely have been re-elected had the pandemic not struck.

Populism will likely remain at historically high levels for the foreseeable future for two reasons.

First, the coronavirus crisis has triggered a deeper, wider global recession than after the financial crisis of just over a decade ago. While the world is still in the midst of the corona crisis, it is already clear it will be the deepest recession since the World War II, with the largest fraction of economies experiencing declines in per capita output since at least 1870 according to the World Bank.

Yet, it is not just the absolute decline in economic output, but also rising economic inequality that is key. While some affluent cohorts have seen their wealth increase since the pandemic began, including through a booming stock market in many countries, poorer people have often seen their incomes stagnate or worse.

There is also an inter-generational impact too with young people disproportionately likely to lose their jobs. This puts countries at risk of long-term damage to earnings potential and job prospects, fuelling political discontent.

Second, there are some factors completely unrelated to the current economic slump that may also drive greater populism. This includes the disruptive and mobilising role of social media.

There remains debate about how instrumental social media has been in fomenting political populism in recent years. However, whether one sees this new technology as an essential component that translated discontent into concrete support for populism, or accentuated what was already inevitable, indisputably it has played an enabling role that may only grow.

Taken together, Trumps toppling is a setback for global populism, but it cannot be assumed that this political phenomenon has now peaked. The coronavirus crisis has increased the prospect of further political and economic instability in the 2020s which social media may help mobilise.

Views expressed above are the author's own.

END OF ARTICLE

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Is the populist tide ebbing? Despite Donald Trumps impending departure, growing global populism is still po - The Times of India Blog

Donald Trumps incitement of a mob attack on the US Capitol was a watershed moment for free speech and the internet. Bans against both the US president and his prominent supporters have spread across social media as well as email and e-commerce services. Parler, a social network popular with neo-Nazis, was ditched from mobile phone app stores and then forced offline entirely. These events suggest that the most momentous year of modern democracy was not 1989 when the Berlin wall fell but 1991, when web servers first became publicly available.

There are two related issues at stake here: the chilling power afforded to huge US corporations to limit free speech; and the vast sums they make from algorithmically privileging and amplifying deliberate disinformation. The doctrines, regulations and laws that govern the web were constructed to foster growth in an immature sector. But the industry has grown into a monster one which threatens democracy by commercialising the swift spread of controversy and lies for political advantage.

What is required is a complete rethink of the ideological biases that have created conditions for tech giants to have such authority and which has laid their users open to manipulation for profit. Social media companies currently do not have legal liability for the consequences of the activities that their platforms enable. Big tech can no longer go unpunished. Companies have had to make judgments about what their customers can expect to see when they visit their sites. It is only right that they are held accountable for the terms and conditions that embed consumer safeguards. It would be a good start if measures within the UK online harms bill, that go some way to protecting users from being exposed to violent extremism and hate, were to be enacted.

In a society people also desire, and need, the ability to express themselves to become fully functioning individuals. Freedom of expression is important in a democracy, where voters need to weigh up competing arguments and appreciate for themselves different ideas. John Milton optimistically wrote in Areopagitica: Let Truth and Falsehood grapple; whoever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter? But 17th-century England did not know 21st-century Silicon Valley. Today, speech takes place online much more so than in public streets. Politics is so polarised that Mr Trump and his Republican allies claimed without any factual basis that electoral fraud was rampant.

Facebook and Twitter can limit, control and censor speech as much as or more than the government. Until now, such firms exempted politicians from their own hate speech policies, arguing that what they said was worthy of public debate. This rests in part on the US supreme court. Legal academic Miguel Schor argued that the bench stood Orwell on his head in 2012 by concluding false statements of fact enjoyed the same protection as core political speech. He said judges feared creating an Orwellian ministry of truth, but said they miscalculated because the US does have an official ministry of truth in the form of the presidents bully pulpit which Trump used to normalise lying.

Silicon Valley bosses did not silence Mr Trump in a fit of conscience, but because they think they can stave off anti-trust actions by a Democrat-controlled Congress. Elizabeth Warren threatened to break up big tech and blasted Facebook for spreading Trumps lies and disinformation. Her plan to turn social media into platform utilities offers a way to advantage social values such as truth telling over the bottom line.

Impunity for corporations, technology and politicians has grown so much that it is incompatible with a functioning democracy. Populists the world over have distorted speech to maintain power by dividing the electorate into separate camps, each convinced that the other is the victim of their opponents ideology. To achieve this, demagogues did not need an authoritarian state. As Mr Trump has demonstrated, an unregulated marketplace of ideas, where companies thrive by debasing politics, was enough.

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The Guardian view of Trump's populism: weaponised and silenced by social media - The Guardian

One must concede that the institutional strengths of the American democratic system have for now got the better of an attempted right-wing coup. Or, if you like, Coup Klux Klan as theTimes ofIndia put the matter imaginatively.

Those institutional strengths, in passing, may not include how Americas law-enforcement personnel often treat black American citizens much like how our own police treat some of our marginalised communities. Although it also remains a fact that a George Floyd occurrence could cause a veritable revolution to happen that India, by and large, is still a stranger to.

Yet, banana republics of the world may be for now excused if they say physician, heal thyself.

Historians fielded by media channels like CNN have of course pointed out how the insurrection of January 6 issues from a long history of racial divide, ever since male black Americans were accorded the right to vote in 1873. Just to recall, eleven Southern states had refused to accept Abraham Lincoln as president and seceded from the Union, leading to the civil war.

Indeed, in 1878, the elections in North Carolina were actually overturned by force by the Klan and other white supremacists, and the whole Reconstruction era was characterised by dour supremacist strategists to deny franchise to black Americans through diverse ploys (including abominable episodes of lynchings), of voter suppression.

In that context, Vladimir Putin may be excused for having remarked on a flawed American electoral system, and sundry commentators too for having pointed fingers at how the American state has often supported insurrections of the January 6 kind, recent examples being Venezuela and Bolivia. Not to forget the infamous support given to the mafia-style right-wing revolt led in 1991 by a thug-like Boris Yeltsin in Russia.

Protesters wave American and Confederate flags before they stormed the US Capitol Building in Washington, US January 6, 2021. Photo: Reuters/Shannon Stapleton/File Photo

Trumpism retains a vast constituency

It should not be forgotten that some 75 million Americans voted for Donald Trump. He may in the bitter and violent end have been duly ousted, but Trumpism continues to retain a vast constituency.

Even as Trumpism (if you like, a new contemporary term for what Europe experienced a century ago) afflicts at least half a dozen modern states worldwide today.

So, how do we understand Trumpism of our time?

First, in economic terms, I am with those analysts who see the rise of Trumpism as, foremost, an underling push-back worldwide against the economic thesis of globalisation.

If the globalising slogan of 1848 workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains had sought to reorient the productive forces and material yield of the world to meet the just requirements and deserts of the labouring who were the producers of wealth, the second call to globalisation that was unleashed with the Washington Consensus of 1990 could have been interpreted to read exploiters of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your profits.

The unprecedented flow of moneys across national boundaries (hot money) that followed that consensus among the endowed (monopolised by the G-7 coterie) had the direct consequence of relegating the real economies of the world to subsidiary status. The fall-out the reform came to be an unconscionable centralisation of wealth in fewer and fewer hands, chiefly through the quick money turn-overs in stock markets, to the exclusion of such long-term investments as lift the living standards of the vast masses. (Not that Trumpist populism was to carry any bonanzas for those on whose behalf the existing economic elite were to be challenged.)

Also Read: The Trump Coup DEtat and Insurrection Was Long in the Making, And Will Continue

The new global economic elite came to ground its clout in a corresponding cultural supremacy that was perceived to cause a top-down schism between a new global Ivy League and a new colonised hoi polloi. This new clout of international finance capital began to be read back into a new politics of identities on either side of the phenomenon.

This was clearly not a phenomenon that a global working class, shattered by a rampant digital technology, could combat anymore with success through classic forms of resistance.

Failing any global mobilisation from the Left, a familiar old and parochial nationalism of the deprived underdog stepped in from the Right to combat the global reform that was seen to cannibalise the conservative Right itself.

Those who understood this also understood that the dominant systemic arrangements of the world, including among states that were designated democracies, had come to be closed archives of power that catered almost exclusively to the marauding needs of global capital.

Trumpism thus came to be a sort of revolt from below, but one that could no longer be organised on accepted principles of constitutionalism.

Donald Trump. Photo: Reuters/Rick Wilking

The task required a new paradigm of leadership and a new paradigm of mass organisation.

The new leader of this epistemic shift had to designate for himself a justification and a status that drew upon sources of legitimation that would conflict with what democratic rule books prescribed.

That, in turn, required a reorientation of identities, both on behalf of those who came to lead the push-back and those who were to be made to follow the lead.

A new paradigm

Elections now were to be won by first creating an extra-constitutional paradigm of selective citizen entitlement grounded in an appeal to the victimhood of identities, be it of race, religion, region, or linguistic orientation.

Appeal came to be made to new cultural majorities to the effect that elite minorities had them in thrall, and that endowed enemies were everywhere who dictated the rights and wrongs of citizenship and of values that must inform legitimate power-structures.

In America, for example, Evangelist white Christians, suburban white housewives, non-collegiate white males who belonged to a depressed blue working class came to be organised in a new political contract as populations who had been ripped off by a politics of multi-racialism that appeased the black American and the immigrant outsider.

This new indigenism, of course, shut its ears to such historical facts as, for example, that only the native American Indians could justly claim the status of originary inhabitants of the land, and that American capitalism was largely a yield first of black slave labour before any other forces of production could come into play.

Not surprisingly, the new leader in Washington understood that he had to recast himself as Washingtons enemy. And, in order to overcome the systemic verities of Washington, he had to recast himself as a new Loius XIV and declare, in effect, Lest cest moi (I am the state).

The construction of a new cultist leadership enjoined that the state be subsumed into the person of the leader.

And the new cultist leader had a new political agenda to forge and propagate:

The truth of all things was now to be seen as identical with the pronouncements of the leader; entrenched channels of information, most of all the liberal media, was to be reconstructed as purveyor of fake news; liberal elites were to be rubbished as enemies of the extra-parliamentary majority which actually constituted the nation; those who manned the institutions of the pseudo and complicit democratic state were to understand that their legitimation could come only from their loyalty to the cult-leader; new loyalists were to be put in places of authority; a code of dog-whistles was to be assiduously framed one to which the new majority would respond on the instant, requiring neither deliberation nor justification, nor systemic sanction; bands of vigilantes (who could call themselves Proud Boys) were to be cultivated who could be trusted to use voluntary muscle as and when required to quell the voices of opposition; sections of the population were to be declared interlopers without locus in the republic. Laws and pardons were to apply selectively to different segments of the populace, some to be hounded eternally, others never to be touched (ring a bell?).

Also Read: Inside Donald Trump and Barrs Last-Minute Killing Spree

Trumps refusal to accept the results of the American Presidential election of 2020 was thus propagated not as a repudiation of the democratic process but of an elite conspiracy to rob the real people of their ownership of the nation. The slogan that Trump gave as the culminating dog-whistle let us take back our country was thus not to be seen as a seditious calling, but an invocation to a return to a lost authenticity of possession, one notified by the Confederate flags that were in evidence at the site of the violent insurrection on Capitol Hill. That an Indian tricolor was also carried by some insurrectionists, of course, carries food for thought for Indian citizens who may be as anxious about the new turn of events here as there. One is left to imagine that such a display may, after all, have issued from the slogan Ab ki baar Trump sarkar.

A screengrab from the viral video. Photo: Twitter@aletweetsnews

The siege of that symbol of the American republic was thus the final putsch by a violent rogue right-wing against a pusillanimous progenitor constitutional right-wing,as much as against a democratic elite which was perceived to have usurped America from those who had the first right to it a sort of a renewed burning of the Reichstag.

One need not here belabour the quite obvious parallels of this package and agenda in other states of the world today, but no close watcher may have any difficulty in deciphering the contents and the modus operandi.

Post the assault on the Capitol, Narendra Modi has cryptically remarked that unlawful protests cannot subvert democracy, but one does not quite know whether, for example, the assault on the Babri mosque in 1992 would in his view qualify as an unlawful protest, or what his view might be of the uninhibited vigilante assaults that have interminably accompanied his tenure in the highest office, that as in the case of the Capitol event took the life of a law-enforcement officer in the state of Uttar Pradesh.

What seems certain is that lawful farmers protests of the kind now in evidence may be all too necessary to shore up a democratic order whose moral and procedural verities have come to be massively degraded.

As stated at the outset, the mechanics of the constitutional right-wing stood fast in the end. Trumps more institutional and legal attempts at overturning the peoples verdict were rebuffed in court after court by judges, some of whom he had appointed in the belief that they would stand him in good stead in his hour of need. Nor did Americas reputed media outlets, barring of course their own godi media (captive media) like the Fox News channel outlets, succumb, or electoral officials, including officials of his own Republican Party give in to his shamelessly proferred instructions to falsify the count. Also to note, that despite consequences to their own electoral prospects in the coming years, unflinchingly critical, even damning voices have come to be raised by scions of Trumps own party against his incitement to violence and insurrection.

It is sadly not at all certain that in the other parts of the world where Trumpism reigns, such a concerted push-back from the systemic branches of the state may be forthcoming, were matters to come to a parallel pass.

Also Read: The Past, Present and Future of Indias Capitol Hill Moment

Trumps exit from office nonetheless gives little hope that this will spell the end of Trumpism. Our analysis suggests that its ideological roots and resentments are far too deep, and no business-as-usual politics from the centre-right, however more decently democratic, may be sufficient guarantee against its return. This is true as much of Trumpism in other countries as of Trumpism in the now not-so United States of America.

If the distorted assumptions of what used to be the tenets of liberal democracy are to be salvaged from their innate vulnerability to right-wing lurches first of a constitutional/democratic sort, and then of the Trumpian variety, the answer can come only from an open-eyed critique of those fancy assumptions from a reasoned politics of the centre-left, and mass movements whose genius, as of the current farmers movement in India, sentiently rejects the enticements, and fake proclamations of right-wing false prophets.

But so great now is the usurpation of the tools and assets of the so-called democratic world in the hands of the right-wing that battling it from the Left is far more arduous a task than a David-Goliath paradigm.

The push-back against Trumpism everywhere must come from a new, all-encompassing covenant of civic citizenship which can successfully expose the false constructions of a presumed real nationalism and, through relentless analysis, propagation, and mass mobilisation show it up for what it is a new fascism of our time.

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Trump Is Gone but Trumpism Is Rampant: The Globalisation of Populism - The Wire

What can we make of Clive Palmer?

This week, he announced his United Australia Party (UAP) would not contest the upcoming West Australian state election on March 13.

After a dismal showing in the October 2019 Queensland poll, where does this leave his political prospects?

Given Palmers love of publicity stunts and populist policies, one might be tempted to see him as a miniature, Antipodean Donald Trump but that would be misleading.

Trump was able to garner massive support in segments of the American population, whereas Palmers UAP only managed 3.43% of first preference votes in the lower house at the 2019 federal election.

American-style populism does not resonate with large numbers of Australians. Australian political traditions are quite different to those of America especially in terms of welfare and health provision. Those who seek to take the populist route find it a hard road.

In the 2019 election One Nation and United Australia combined only managed to win 7.76% of the Senate vote.

Given the small base on which the likes of Palmer and One Nations Pauline Hanson have to work, one wonders what they now hope to achieve.

The current situation with COVID-19 might provide a clue as to why they have failed to spark a populist surge in Australia.

Palmers major contribution to the COVID world was his unsuccessful High Court challenge to force Western Australia to open its borders.

The last 12 months has demonstrated the significance of quarantine culture in Australia, a term first coined by cultural historian John Williams in the 1990s.

The natural instinct of Australians is to close borders against outside threats, be they national or state. The only partial exception to this rule at the moment is New South Wales the one part of Australia that had a vigorous free trade (or internationalist) political culture in the 19th century.

Read more: WA border challenge: why states, not courts, need to make the hard calls during health emergencies

In late 19th century and early 20th century Australia, writers such as WG Spence and magazines like The Bulletin talked about a desire to protect Australia against a harsh outside world and, if possible, limit the operation of international finance. The ideal was an Australia not dependent on the rest of the world.

In this regard, it is also worth recalling that one of the arguments often given for restricting Chinese immigration at the time was they were seen as carrying diseases into Australia.

Read more: What Clive Palmer must now ask himself: would China's 'bastards' buy a mine from him?

This was a form of populism but one quite different to the American version. It sought to protect Australia and Australians from the outside world, not to assert their right to liberty.

The COVID pandemic seems to have reignited this desire to protect Australians from an outside threat. The most remarkable aspect of this development has been the way in which this desire for protection has devolved to the state level.

Moves to close borders and institute quite draconian measures to halt the spread of the virus have been generally popular. Australians, it would seem, are more interested in being protected than they are in asserting their rights to do as they please.

This makes life quite difficult for someone such as Palmer, who has pushed for freedoms and border openings.

No wonder he has decided not to contest the WA state election. He is not in tune with the popular mood, which has strongly backed Labor Premier Mark McGowans hard border approach. It is not the time for libertarian populism.

It is difficult to know how long this protectionist attitude will last. One suspects the current situation with China has also fed into it. The mood is one of a threatening world.

From here, two comments are worth making.

The first is political. Prime Minister Scott Morrison will need to cultivate this threatening mood if he is to succeed at the next federal election, which could be held as early as August. He will need to convince Australians he is the leader who will protect them most effectively. This means going slowly, slowly on things such as opening the international border.

The second is economic. Even in the 1890s, the Australian economy depended on international trade through the sale of wool. The idea Australia could operate independently of other countries was a fantasy.

The same is true today. The borders will need to re-open and students and tourists let in.

Morrison will have to perform a juggling act. He must appear to be providing protection even as he appreciates protection can only go so far.

In the meantime, the prospects look grim for populists such as Palmer and Hanson.

The prime minister and his coalition have the opportunity to steal many of their supporters. The pandemic shows that to be successful in Australian politics, leaders needs to pose as the protector of the people, not promise more freedom and more openness.

I suspect Morrison understands this very well.

Read more: 2021 is the year Australia's international student crisis really bites

Original post:

Is it curtains for Clive? What COVID means for populism in Australia - The Conversation AU

Alongside the COVID-19 virus, which has infected over 23 million in the United States and, regrettably, killed almost 400,000, there is another virus that is now infecting at least twice as many than COVID-19 in America. That virus is properly termed populism, defined as resentment among ordinary people that democratic institutions (legislature, executive, judiciary, the media, big business, academia, etc) and their leaders only serve the elite few and disregard the masses of the people.

The populist virus is no more American than COVID-19 was Chinese. Obviously, the virus infects and is spread by populist leaders like Donald Trump. But we should remember that the three most populous democracies in the world of 2020-2021, other than the United States, are led by populists, namely, Narendra Modi of India, Joko Wikodi of Indonesia, and Jair Bolsonare of Brazil. Regrettably, to one extent or another, leaders in other democratic states demonstrate tendencies in the populist direction.

The most dangerous, and often fatal, variant of the virus is insurrectionary activity against democratic institutions and constitutional rule such as played out before the very eyes of 100s of millions of people in Washington on January 6. Similar activity is being planned in the 50 mainland states in America. In the United States, this virus and its insurrectionary variant is obviously reflected in and fuelled by white supremacists angry at the browning of America and supported by white racists distressed by the apparent erosion of white privilege. However, not only white racists are vulnerable to this virus in the United States or elsewhere. Clearly, this is not the driving force in India, Indonesia, and Brazil. Nor does this virus infect only uneducated or white malcontents.

President Trump, for example, in the 2020 elections, increased his voter support over 2016 among black males and other minority groups. Indeed, the January 6 insurrection against the United States constitution, the Congress, and the election rulings of the Supreme Court, as well as other authorities was and is supported by a most diverse group. Among them, war veterans who have given patriotic service to the United States such as Ashli Babbit, who served for 14 years in the US Air Force and who her husband described as very opinionated but caring, sweet, thoughtful. She was shot and killed by a police officer while breaking into the Senate offices. As well, the insurrection was fomented and supported by blacks like the social media personality Alli Alexander. Most interestingly, it was provided with leadership by outstanding Princeton and Harvard graduates like Ted Cruz. Senator Cruz, along with seven other Republican senators and 139 Republican Congressional representatives, voted on the night of January 6 to overturn the election results even after having to flee for their lives and being escorted back to the chamber by heavily armed security personnel following the attack on the Congress by the insurrectionary mob.

The truth is that democracy is in crisis, not only in the United States, but in counties around the world. A 2020 Cambridge University study found the highest level of democratic dissatisfaction and the lowest expression of satisfaction with democracy since 1995 in countries worldwide. The average satisfaction level was 42.5 per cent. In the Western Hemisphere, Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) of 2017 found similarly low levels of satisfaction with democracy. Among 18 countries, Jamaica was among the lowest, at 32.2 per cent. Only the people of Colombia, Panama, and Peru recorded lower levels of satisfaction.

The crisis reflects itself in declining percentages of electorates who turn out to vote in all regions of the world. Jamaicas turnout of 37.8 per cent in 2020 was the lowest in the region with the exception of Haiti. Low electoral support in elections for governments and oppositions is one manifestation of distrust in a wide range of democratic institutions (political parties, police, elections). Most worrisome, the other side of that coin, is growing numbers who have the crazy idea that only military authoritarian and undemocratic solutions can deal with crime and corruption. This sentiment, according to the 2017 LAPOP study, is now held by a majority of the Jamaican people.

Why is there this growing dissatisfaction and turn to authoritarianism among people across the world? The highly respected Edelman Trust Barometer of 2020, examining the major market economies, including the United States, puts it, and I agree, this way: Distrust is being driven by a growing sense of inequity and unfairness in the system. The perception is that institutions increasingly serve the interest of the few over everyone. Government, more than any institution, is seen as least fair, 57 per cent of the general population say government serves the interests of only the few ... .

This is an increase over the Global Corruption Barometer findings. At that time, surveys of 114,000 people in 107 countries in 2014 found that 54 per cent believed that government is run by a few big interests looking out for themselves. Only in the Scandinavian countries did a majority feel otherwise. This perception is borne out by the reality revealed in the 2020 Commitment to Reduce Inequality study of taxation policy, social protection, and labour rights in over 150 countries. This study disclosed that these policies fuelled inequity revealed dramatically in the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As with the pandemic, there are protocols that can mitigate the conditions that give rise to the populist virus.

First, regular sanitisation. This requires systemic review and reform of the rules and behaviour of all democratic institutions to discern and rectify outcomes that produce inequity and unfairness. This regular cleansing must apply to governmental bodies and (Parliament, Cabinet, judiciary) and functionaries as well as to economic and social policy, the application of codes of conduct, media coverage, and unethical business behaviour.

Second, public-awareness building and assertiveness must be strengthened to detect, expose, and resist words and deeds, particularly of political leaders, hostile to constitutional democratic principles of transparency and accountability.

Third, donation distancing. Big contributors who fund political parties and leaders must be especially alert to the early signs of authoritarianism even as they might well be short-run beneficiaries of corruption and cronyism from politicians and high public officials. In the long run, a major contributor to the populist virus and its insurrectionary variant in the US was continued support before the 11th-hour withdrawal of financial support from Trumpists by big manufacturers and financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs, Citi Group, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Chase & Co.

Fourth, those on the front line of resistance to authoritarianism are the judges, independent institutions such as parliamentary commissions (Integrity Commission, Electoral Commission, public defenders, Auditor Generals Department, etc), permanent secretaries, law-enforcement officials, media owners and managers. They have to be constantly nourished on an integrity diet composed primarily of regular training and sensitisation in the components of ethical conduct. Front-line officials resisting wrong and doing the right thing are among the first line of defence against the populist virus.

- Professor Trevor Munroe CD, DPhil (Oxford), is principal director, National Integrity Action. Send feedback to info.niajamaica.org or columns@gleanerjm.com.

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Trevor Munroe | Developing a vaccine against the populist virus and its insurrectionary variant - Jamaica Gleaner

Turning the crowd into "the people"

Populism is a complex and contested political concept. It is nevertheless identifiable by certain characteristics. First, of course, it often involves some form of demagoguery, a rhetorical device that Donald Trump masters perfectly, as rhetoric professor Jennifer Mercieca has shown. "You're stronger, you're smarter. You've got more going than anybody," he told his audience on January 6. He also praised the crowd's pride and supposed patriotism, calling out "a deep and enduring love for America in our hearts [...] an overwhelming pride in this great country." But flattery in itself does not define populism.

As political scientist Jan-Werner Mller has demonstrated, what characterizes populism is above all a very restrictive and exclusive definition of "the people." In his inaugural speech, President Trump contrasted the "forgotten people" with a corrupt elite. When he addressed his supporters on January 6, he said: "You are the real people" which he defined as "the people that built this nation", and contrary to "the people that tore down our nation". Trump's "American people" are also the people who "do not believe the corrupt fake news anymore".

As used by Trump, "the people" is both a rhetorical construction and an embodied metaphor found in phrasing like "the incredible patriots here today" and "the magnitude of the crowd" stretching "all the way to the monument in Washington." For the President, size is a sign of moral virtue: "As this enormous crowd shows," he says, "we have truth and justice on our side."

As many observers have noted, Trump is obsessed with crowd size. One of the very first lies from his spokesperson regarded the size of the 2016 inauguration crowd, how it was bigger than Obama's in 2009, despite clear evidence to the contrary. This was the first of thousands of "alternative facts" that came to define Trump's presidency.

Another characteristic of Trump's "people" is their victim status. They are the victims of a corrupt system and the "fake news media". He also makes a link between "the country that has had enough" and a we who will "not take it any longer" because "that's what this is all about." Trump's people identify with him through this victimisation. Hence the use of the subject pronoun we. "It's incredible what we have to go through" he laments, building a cognitive bias that favors adherence to his numerous falsehoods.

Victimisation is an essential element of the populist discourse. It emphasises the innocence and the purity of the people (and their leader). It makes any future action, even illegal, morally justifiable. "When you catch someone in the act of fraud," said the President, "you're allowed to follow very different rules." In other words, it gives a blank check for illegal actions that will happen next.

This rhetoric of victimisation is also illustrated by the construction of the figure of an enemy who is no longer a foreign outsider but fellow Americans, as I have analysed thoroughly elsewhere.

In Trump's "Save America" speech, this enemy is primarily the news media. They "suppress speech," and even "thought". They are the "enemy of the people" and "the biggest problem we have in this country". The expression "enemy of the people" is not new: it has its origins in the Roman Republic and was used during the French Revolution. But there is a certain irony in Trump using a term made particularly popular by the Soviet Union while comparing the suppression by the media to "what happens in a communist country."

This view of the "enemy press" echoes that of Richard Nixon, as outlined in a recent article by RonNell Andersen Jones and Lisa Grow Sun. But Trump is much more vehement in his public attacks. And the enemies he mentioned are not limited to the press: he also attacked the "big tech" who "rigged the election," the Democrats and the "radical left" that will "destroy our country," the Republicans such as Mitch McConnell, Bill Barr, and Liz Cheney who refused to back his false claims, or the Supreme Court that "hurts our country".

The populist discourse also requires the construction of a permanent crisis. The enumeration of numerous enemies leads to an implacable logic: "Our country has been under siege". This type of war lexicon is all the more effective that the emotional charge is reinforced with the evocation of children:

"They also want to indoctrinate your children at school by teaching them things that aren't so. They want to indoctrinate your children. It's all part of the comprehensive assault on our democracy."

This threat of "indoctrination of children'' validates the policy in favor of private schools put in place by the Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. It may also echo QAnon's conspiracy theories that portray Donald Trump as the hero of a struggle against the "deep state" and a supposed cabal of Democratic politicians and celebrities baselessly accused of abusing children. But, more generally, what is at stake is the very existence of the nation: "If you don't fight like hell," the President warned, "you won't have a country anymore". So now, said the President, "the American people [are] finally standing up and saying, "No".

By standing up and fighting, Trump's "people" can become heroic. It is common for US Presidents to rely on the trope of the hero, a figure whose strength is always kept in check by virtue. Donald Trump presents a very different narrative where heroism is exclusively defined by unchecked strength, to the point that strength is a virtue in and of itself, as I developed previously in my research. "You have to show strength, and you have to be strong," he repeated, and members of Congress who promised to oppose the certification of votes became "warriors".

The claim that "We will not be intimidated into accepting the hoaxes and the lies" is also a way to refuse to be weak. After repeating the term "weak Republicans" several times, Trump clearly showed he enjoyed this expression, insisting he was going to use the term from then on.

This binary view of strength vs weakness echoes a very conservative and gendered narrative that appeals to Donald Trump's base, especially evangelicals: Trump's hypermasculinity is contrasted to the Democrats' enlightened masculinity, portrayed as weak and feminine. An extreme incarnation of this hypermasculinity can be found in the neo-fascist organisation Proud Boys present among his supporters.

At the end of his speech, when Trump encouraged his supporters to take action by going to Capitol Hill, he asked the crowd to "give our Republicans - the weak ones, because the strong ones don't need any of our help [...] - the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country".

As the speech reached its crescendo, Trump emphasised his supporters' strong emotional bond with him, and his with them. "We're going to walk down, and I'll be there with you", he promised, as if they would be protected by a Christ-like presence that did not even have to materialise - and it didn't. Instead, as what was now a mob moved toward the Capitol, Trump was driven back to the White House, where he watched the assault unfold on live television.

The tragic events of January 6 and their aftermath are now well known. Five people died, including police officer Brian Sicknick, who was beaten to death by the pro-Trump mob. Despite the violent attack, Congress was able to reconvene and formally recognize the victory of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris. But the risk was grave and the wounds deep.

All of this was made possible by Donald Trump's ability and willingness to heighten and take advantage of his supporters' sense of exclusion (economic, social or otherwise), fear of cultural and identity dispossession, and distrust toward US institutions. Trump's populist narrative and coded language gave them a feeling of empowerment and encouraged them to imagine that a violent attack on Congress would be a patriotic, heroic act.

This is partly why, despite what happened on Capitol Hill, his approval rating remains at 40 percent. If his popularity among his voters may have slightly declined, it is still close to 80 percent, and about one in five Republicans (22 percent according to Reuters-Ipsos, or nearly 15 million Americans) claims to support the rioters' actions. Most importantly, a large majority of them continue to believe what the President has been saying for months: that the election was "rigged", and that Joe Biden is therefore illegitimately President-elect.

With the beginning of another impeachment procedure against Donald Trump and the threat of further attacks by his supporters on American institutions and elected officials in Washington and across the nation, and a pandemic, the next few days, weeks, and even months could prove crucial for American democracy.

Jrme Viala-Gaudefroy is an assistant lecturer at CY Cergy Paris Universit.

The Conversation

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Opinion: How Donald Trump's populist narrative led directly to the assault on the US Capitol - Newshub