A corollary: people tend to be far too eager to jump on board with political figures who identify the problems without proposing workable solutions.
Like I said with Blair and Cameron though. It isn't just demagogues. The mainstream politicians identify problems (as their bubble see the problem) propose "workable" solutions then don't implement them once in. This current tactic of labelling populism as a bad thing when the reality is that mainstream parties are fluid in their policies. Ignoring Corbyn they change policy to win elections. They are all populists. That is just this year's term of abuse seeing as they've overused all the others to the point that people ignore them now. What will they call people and opponents once "populist" has been worn out?
I disagree slightly. I was aiming it more at firstly the comfort of "establishment" politics and secondly those "who promise you they will solve all your problems without any risk". In the general election, UKIP did badly because ultimately people wanted to use them as a protest vote on a single policy without the risk of actually having them make our political decisions for us. As for Labour, on paper, I bet many of us support some of the ideological views on social injustic being argued by Labour at the moment, but we won't vote for them because they're not centrist enough for us, and therefore we fail to recognise that if we want real change we have to take risk and give up some of the safety of the status quo. I appreciate that Brexit flies slightly in the face of what I've just said, but it was a rare emotive subject - certainly an exception to the rule. And the problem with it is, as I said earlier, the powers that be will ensure that nothing much changes anyway including the soundbites.
I disagree. Cameron's referendum pledge cost UKIP a lot of votes and they still got nearly 4 million. People don't vote Labour because of their past 2 decades. Not because they aren't "centrist" enough. People don't trust "centrist" or "progressive anymore" because those labels have been used by politicians just as they use liberal as a cover for their free for all in terms of capitalism and to pretend it is for the common good when most of that money is disappearing from the state purse. These centrist politicians don't care about liberal values, just what they can get away with by saying they are liberal. I wouldn't say I support much of the current Labour's values. I haven't read what they are but the current Labour lot seem intent on just pushing issues to score points rather than focus on changing anything. I have no doubt they have something in there I would agree with just as the Tories do. Even UKIP will have a morsel somewhere I can agree with. Struggling with the LibDems though. It think Labour would do a lot better on social injustice issues if they didn't try to inflate how big the problems are and instead of just saying "Tory cuts" actually tried to address the root causes. That being London is a mess for low earners and the whole country does not prioritise their budgets anymore because Labour has told them for 2 decades they are entitled to buy anything they want. They deserve it. Can;t afford the credit you're paying off for your house's 3rd telly and PS4? Backlog of credit? We'll add you to the poverty list it isn;t your fault at all. It's Tory cuts fault.
No, this is not the flavour of the month: it's a recurring theme in the history of western democracy. Populism itself isn't bad, no, and it is not necessarily divorced from practical solutions; appeals to emotion often are though, and the two can frequently be found hand in glove. The reason for that is simple: once you have won people's emotions, it is far less necessary to win over the rational sides of their brains.
"Populism is a political doctrine that stems from a viewpoint of struggle between the populace and a ruling faction." In other words, populism is about exploiting discontent, and is dependent on promoting a narrative of conflict and subversion. It's not just about giving the populace what they want, it's about telling the populace that this or that group - metropolitan elites, liberals, immigrants Jews etc - are stopping them from having what is rightfully theirs, and that the populist candidate will stand up to these alien groups in the interest of their own followers. That's how fascism grew in the 1930s.
It doesn't have to be. It just happens that those are by far the most salient issues via which the populace can be rallied. Emotions sell, and few sell more than anger and fear.
We haven't been told anything. What has been called populism in the UK and the US r.e. the "globalisation" carp which is just a market free for all for the big boys we already knew. We didn't need telling. Even you remainers know that the elite/corporation clique are scamming the country.
And who is peddling this narrative about elites scamming the country? A former currency trader scamming £85,000 a year in salary from the European Parliament he purports to despise, and a property dealer who lives in a gold tower in Manhattan.
And the latter's cabinet, thus far, includes: - A hedge funder. - A billionaire corporate buyout specialist. - A billionaire heiress to the Amway company. - The billionaire wife of the king of professional wrestling (!) - If current info is correct, the CEO of ExxonMobil. In the job that parallels that held by Boris. That's not normal, by the way. It will be the most monied executive branch ever assembled, by a large margin. Again, identifying problems versus having even a remote desire to address those problems. Trump spoke of the elites scamming the country, and then appointed several of the richest and most powerful corporate leaders in the world. And none of this should be even the least bit surprising, because he's Donald ****ing Trump, but people got caught up in the emotion he spoke to and disengaged any sort of rational thought. After talking about bringing back coal mining and steel production in the US, do you know what two of the first actions taken by the GOP post-election were? One, they stripped "buy American' provisions in a major bill that were designed, in large part, to ensure that American steel was used in infrastructure projects. Then, they stripped death/impairment benefits from coal miners and their widows whose health suffered from their occupation. Neither element has been signed into law yet, because Obama's still there, but there's been no opposition from Trump, and why would there be? Suckers looked at the very face of grotesque plutocracy and saw a man of the people because he got their blood boiling, and hated all the right out-groups.
Why is everything a conspiracy theory? I simply pointed out that "the 1%" (The richest 1%) includes those people. "The 1%" was coined by the "occupy" protesters, whom I hardly think even the most deranged paranoiac can address as them. The basic fact is that "the 1%" is utter nonsense. Vin
Just reading a story about Michael Gove and it struck me that his story this year is somewhat reminiscent of a Shakespearean tragedy. His wife assured his long time friend and ally David Cameron early last year that personal loyalty would trump all when it came to the referendum but Gove betrayed Cameron by switching sides. Gove and Boris team up to lead Leave to victory at which point Gove stabs Boris in the back. Add a few "forsooth"s and a couple of beheadings and you'd get a decent play.
The post on here are a great read prior to going out. What is real change? Did Russia change when the Societ Union and communism collapsed. In some ways yes, as people set up businesses, and the likes of Abramovich appeared on the scene from buying up previous state owned enterprises. Did the UK change when Thatcher appeared on the scene? In some ways it did with privatisation and people were allowed to buy their house from the council. And again with buying shares in what were state owned businesses. And what has happened since then? The ordinary person cashed in on those shares to make a bit of money, only for them to be bought up by the big boys on the scene. I suppose once in a while there is a seismic shift (Thatcher and possibly Brexit), then gradually things revert to the norm.
The twentieth century was actually characterised by seismic shifts, conflict between ideologies, tyranny, war, and famine. You could argue that upheaval is the historic norm. Those of us lucky enough to have been born in the democratic west after WWII may feel as though we experienced the final triumph of liberalism and hope over tyranny and evil, but we should be taking none of that for granted. Capitalism is undergoing one of it's periodic crises that seem to come along every century or so, and even in the free world, people are apparently willing to sacrifice freedom and follow demagogues offering apparently simple solutions based, as Schad said earlier, on those most intoxicating emotions, hate and fear.
He's also quite close with Putin, and guess which American company has been most adversely affected by the sanctions on Russia? That'd be Exxon, whose massive deal to exploit oil reserves in the Russian Arctic was put on hold when Russian annex Crimea.
