Some Reflections On The Current Populist Situation

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Some Reflections On The Current Populist Situation

[Humphrey’s] gambit in “Man Overboard” to get rid of the Employment Secretary in order to foil his plan to move half of the armed forces Oop North backfires spectacularly in the very last minute of the episode when Hacker decides that now that the Employment Secretary is gone, he can implement the plan anyway and take the credit for it himself. It’s only then that Humphrey realises that he spent so much time engineering the Employment Secretary’s downfall that he never bothered to discredit the actual plan, leaving him with no counter argument— and as Hacker unwittingly points out, he’s actually strengthened several of the arguments for it without realizing.

–TV Tropes, Yes Minister.

You may have noticed that I have not written much about politics recently.

It is true that I have not had much time to do it. My life is going through one of its more complicated periods, leaving less time to write for fun or even keep up with the news, and it is unlikely that will change any time soon. But is also true that I have grown deeply frustrated with modern politics. In London and Edinburgh, Washington and Berlin and Dublin and Amsterdam, it has grown increasingly clear that modern politicians and the media have learnt nothing from the last two decades, nor are they willing or able to take steps to address the source of our current woes. In response, populism is on the rise, fuelled by desperation and a complete lack of trust in institutions, increasingly unwilling to compromise and increasingly driven by the frustration of a bullied teenager who has been taunted so much he can no longer think, but merely wishes to hurt his tormentors as much as possible even at great cost to himself.

This would be bad in any case, but it is particularly bad now when the shortcomings of liberalisation, globalisation, and progressivism have become increasingly apparent. The world has become a far more dangerous place in the last decade, and our governments – far from taking reasonable measures to address very clear dangers – have preferred to concentrate on virtue signalling. In doing so, they have undermined public trust to the point that far too many people refuse to believe a word they say, and instead of realising they need to display a willingness to fix this issue they remain in deep denial, preferring to smear or silence the person who points out that the emperor has no clothes than acknowledging the undeniable truth. They have become so divorced from the needs of ordinary people that they are unable to understand how they appear to their subjects, displaying all the maddening arrogance of rich kids who have never been held accountable for anything in their entire lives.

I’m going to go on a small tangent here, but bear with me a little.

What do Donald Trump and Andrew Tate have in common?

I first heard about Andrew Tate in the context of him being deplatformed, and when I read up on the matter I was not impressed with either Tate or his enemies. I thought, and still do, that deplatforming Tate was a mistake for two separate reasons.

First, deplatforming Tate would (and did) give his words a credence they do not deserve, while simultaneously undermining his critics by demonstrating their inability to debate Tate openly.

Second, left to his own devices, a man like Andrew Tate will inevitably find a way to make an utter fool of himself. By providing absolute proof that ‘they’ were out to get Tate by any means necessary, they gave Tate an ironclad excuse for his own mistakes and retain supporters even after he did embarrass himself in public.

The secret of Tate’s success is two-fold. First, young men are having an increasingly hard time of it. The lives of their fathers and/or grandfathers are increasingly out of their reach: it is harder to find a permanent job, or enough income to afford a wife and children, while they are systematically being deprived of safe spaces and natural outlets for their energy, lectured on their flaws, and whenever they try to argue that this isn’t right they are shamed or silenced, creating resentment that a man like Tate can exploit. And he did.

Second, even worse, there is no one else. Decent male role models are increasingly lacking. Politicians rarely talk openly about male issues; male teachers are quite rare in primary schools; male characters are bashed and/or degraded (Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, for example; see also the contrast between Book!Ron Weasley and his movie counterpart) … the establishment, with the best of intentions, created a vacuum and into this vacuum demons poured. I suspect that most of Tate’s followers would never have followed him in the first place, if they’d had a better alternative. But they saw none. As Scott Alexander put it:

“But when you deny [that there is a problem] and abuse anyone who brings it up, you cede this issue to people who sometimes do think [racist/sexist/etc BS]. And then you have no right to be surprised when all the most frequently offered answers are super toxic.”

(Go read the whole article. It’s food for thought even if you don’t agree with it.)

Why did Donald Trump become Candidate Trump, and then President Trump, and now de facto Candidate Trump again and quite possibly the next President of the United States of America?

The secret of Trump’s success is very similar to Tate’s. First, the GOP betrayed its voters, leaving them angry and resentful and very willing to listen to a candidate like Donald Trump, who actually listened to them, instead of berating them. Second, the Democrats betrayed their voters, leaving them angry and resentful and willing to stay home in 2016 or even vote for Trump out of spite. Third, instead of learning the right lessons from defeat, both parties acting like spoilt children who had been told ‘no’ for the first time in their lives. The GOP elite edged away from Donald Trump as much as possible, while the Democrats did everything they could to sabotage his presidency, by fair means or foul.

This worked in Trump’s favour. First, it provided him with an ironclad excuse for failure, one that would be rooted in truth. Second, it undermined the legitimacy of his enemies, make it harder for them to convince Trump’s supporters that they were making a dreadful mistake. Third, having proven they were prepared to throw all restraint aside to defeat Trump, it became easy for Trump and his supporters to claim that the election of 2020 had been stolen, and all the post-election charges levelled at Trump were nothing more than political malice.

But, again like Tate, President Trump would have remained a Simpsons joke if there had been any reasonable alternative.

Trump’s supporters are not, by and large, horrible people. But they are desperate. They have seen their communities hollowed out and destroyed, watched helplessly as the jobs go away and hopelessness spreads like a plague, they have watched government become more and more inefficient (in a manner they consider to be indistinguishable from malice), they have watched the rich grow richer and then offer advice that is at best incredibly condescending and at worst actively counter-productive. They see government as being dominated by distant bureaucrats more interested in their own power bases than in helping people; they increasingly hear government advice which is foolish and openly rooted in ignorance, leading them to dismiss such advice as much as possible. They see the rise in double standards, which has led to bitter cynicism as well as distrust; they watch the rich-kid arrogance dominate discourse and shake their heads in dismay. They feel powerless, which leads to nasty moments when they try to seize a little power. They are angry, and they have good reason to be.

And when they try to raise these issues, they are smeared.

The average Trump supporter does not just think the media lies to him; he thinks the media lies about him. And to a very great extent, he’s right. And he’s not the only one who thinks this way …

This has an obvious effect. Once you are convinced the media (or someone) lies about you, it’s a very short jump to concluding the media is lying about someone else. If you voted for Trump over Hillary because you thought Trump would bring back the jobs, and you get called a misogynist because you voted against the female candidate, there is no reason why you should accept the charge that someone else is a misogynist and several good reasons why you shouldn’t. Charges of bigotry, however defined, been thrown around so carelessly they no longer have any power and, worse, they provide cover for real bigots.

The key to defeating Donald Trump is not to take him down by measures that look unfair, illegal, blatantly anti-democratic or anything else along those lines, certainly in the eyes of his supporters. Trump himself, as I have said before, is not the cause of America’s problems, any more than Geert Wilders is the cause of the Netherlands’ problems or the AfD is the cause of Germany’s problems. They are symptoms, symptoms of a far deeper problem running through Western society. This problem is a lack of faith in government, and it’s caused by governments proving they don’t deserve such faith. This problem will not go away if Trump et al does.

The key is to address legitimate concerns raised by voters, and quickly. Politicians, to paraphrase Sir Terry, have sold the sizzle for so long that they have forgotten they have eventually to produce the sausage. It will be very easy to separate Trump from his supporters by addressing their legitimate concerns, and working hard to reform government to ensure it meets the needs of people. But this will require the politicians to actually listen to those concerns, and stop listening to special interests who have agendas of their own or activists who are unwilling to accept that disagreement can possibly be legitimate. It will require the politicians to acknowledge their own role in creating this crisis of democracy, and take steps to make reforms before reforms are made for them.

But I am not hopeful. I wish I was, but I’m not.