President Trump, Inc. E-Book

T. J. Coles

• Herausgeber: Clairview Books
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

With Trump in the White House, big business has direct power in government. Trump has stacked his cabinet with former employees of investment banks, big oil and international corporations. Now that big business has its representatives in the cabinet, it no longer needs to indulge in expensive lobbying. Under Trump, corporations control US policy. How and why did this happen and what does it mean for the bulk of the population? T. J. Coles presents the background to Trump's rise, tracing the history of economic neoliberalism. He shows what a 'liberal economy' means in practice: privatization of public resources, cutting 'red tape' for corporations and internationalizing volatile money markets. For ordinary working people, neoliberalism translates to ongoing falls in living standards, fewer protections for workers, spiralling housing costs and social cutbacks. As a consequence, many voters are turning their backs on mainstream politics, with some supporting far-right, populist parties, including the Trump faction of the Republican Party and UKIP in Britain – despite the fact that these parties support the very policies that make ordinary people poorer. President Trump, Inc. exposes the Trump hoax. Trump sold himself as a maverick, but in reality big business has been lobbying Congress for years to do what he campaigned for: tearing up the international TPP trade agreement, keeping out low-skilled immigrants whilst fast-tracking specific foreign workers, and helping repatriate corporations to the US. Trump's apparently personal agenda – to Make America Great Again – is actually big business's wish list. Coles concludes on a positive note, offering tangible hope. Real change, he notes, doesn't come from the top-down. Millions of people all over the world are working at the local level to win power back from centralized elites for their communities. The first step in this process of true democratization is to understand what's really happening, and Coles' essential analysis provides a clear picture of the present reality.

Leseprobe

T.J. COLES was awarded a PhD from Plymouth University (UK) in 2017 for work on the aesthetic experiences of blind and visually impaired people, with particular reference to the philosophy of neuroscience and cognitive psychology. A columnist with Axis of Logic, Coles is the author of Britain's Secret Wars and The Great Brexit Swindle (both 2016) and the editor of the forthcoming anthology Voices for Peace (2017). His articles have appeared in Newsweek, The New Statesman, teleSUR and Z Magazine, and in 2013 he was shortlisted for the Martha Gellhorn Prize for a series of articles about Libya.

Clairview Books Ltd.,

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Published in Great Britain in 2017 by Clairview Books

© T.J. Coles 2017

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. All rights reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrical, chemical, mechanical, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. Inquiries should be addressed to the Publishers

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Print book ISBN 978 1 905570 87 4

Ebook ISBN 978 1 905570 88 1

Cover by Morgan Creative (American dollar image © Dina design)

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PRESIDENT TRUMP, INC.

HOW BIG BUSINESS AND NEOLIBERALISM EMPOWER POPULISM AND THE FAR-RIGHT

‘Donald Trump's victory is an additional stone in the building of a new world.’

– Marine Le Pen, leader of the Front National (France)

Contents

Acronyms

Propaganda Translator

Preface

Introduction: Big money and bigotry

PART ONE: Background to the Crises

1. Neoliberalism: Our common enemy

2. Class divisions and union decline

3. America's far-right: Disappointment gets angry

4. Europe's far-right: Poverty gets angry

5. Alt-right now: Billionaire populism

PART TWO: The Trump Deception

6. President Trump: Soul of a rebel

7. Privatization as policy

8. Trade deals and tax reform

9. Foreign policy: ‘Carry a big stick’

Conclusion: Coup d’Trump

Notes

Acronyms

ACA

Affordable Care Act (US, a.k.a. Obamacare)

AENM

Alliance of European National Movements

AFP

Americans for Prosperity

AN

National Alliance (Italy, Alleanza Nazionale)

BLM

Black Lives Matter (US)

BNP

British National Party

BZÖ

Alliance for the Future of Austria (Bündnis Zukunft Österreich)

CFR

Council on Foreign Relations (US)

CIA

Central Intelligence Agency (US)

DF

Danish People's Party (Dansk Folkeparti)

DHS

Department of Homeland Security (US)

DNC

Democratic National Committee and Democratic National Convention (US)

DVU

German People's Union (Deutsche Volksunion)

EO

Executive Order

EPI

Economic Policy Institute

EU

European Union

FBI

Federal Bureau of Investigation (US)

FN

Front National (France and Belgium)

FPÖ

Austrian Freedom Party (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs)

FRP

Norwegian Progress Party (Fremskrittspartiet)

GATT

General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade

GDP

Gross Domestic Product

GNP

Gross National Product

HMO

Health Maintenance Organization

IMF

International Monetary Fund

Jobbik

Movement for a Better Hungary (Jobbik Magyarországért Mozgalom)

LGBT

Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender (also Transsexual)

LN

Northern League (Italy, Lega Nord)

LPF

List Pim Fortuyn (Netherlands, Lijst Pim Fortuyn)

LPR

League of Polish Families (Liga Polskich Rodzin)

MI6

Military Intelligence Section Six (UK)

MIÉP

Justice and Life in Hungary (Magyar Igazság és Élet Pártja)

MS-FT

Tricolour Flame (Italy, Movimento Sociale Fiamma

Tricolore)

MSI

Italian Social Movement (Movimento Sociale Italiano)

NAFTA

North American Free Trade Agreement

ND

National Democrats (Sweden, Nationaldemokraterna)

NF

National Front (UK)

NHS

National Health Service (UK)

NPD

National Democratic Party of Germany (Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands)

NPT

Non-Proliferation Treaty

OECD

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

PAC

Political Action Committee

PEPs

Populist Extremist Parties

PRM

Greater Romania Party (Partidul România Mare)

PS

True Finns (Perussuomalaiset)

PVV

Party for Freedom (Netherlands, Partij voor de Vrijheid)

S&L

Savings and Loan

SD

Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna)

SME

Small-to-medium-sized enterprise

SNS

Slovak National Party (a.k.a. Slovenian National Party, Slovenská Národná Strana or Slovenska Nacionalna Stranka)

SOE

State-owned enterprise

SRP

Socialist Reich Party Germany (Sozialistische Reichspartei Deutschlands)

STEM

Science Technology Engineering Math

Super-PAC

Super-Political Action Committee

SVP

Swiss People's Party (Schweizerische Volkspartei)

TPP

Trans-Pacific Partnership

TTIP

Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership

UKIP

United Kingdom Independence Party

UN

United Nations

VAT

Value-added tax

VB

Flemish Interest/formerly Flemish Bloc (Vlaams Belang)

WTO

World Trade Organization

Propaganda Translator

Politicians and businesspeople use words to make us think they mean one thing (up) when in fact they mean something else, often the exact opposite (down). When ordinary people say ‘free speech’, they usually mean the right of individuals to speak freely without fear of reprisal or censorship. When politicians and their alt-right media supporters say ‘free speech’, they usually mean the right of wealthy white men to denigrate minorities.

The far-right and alt-right movements are full of semantic inversions. When they say ‘nationalism’ they don’t mean nationalism in the sense of, say, protecting indigenous people's jobs and housing from economic migrants. They use the word ‘nationalism’ to mean the opposite: trading with and investing in foreign countries to profit corporations. Opposition to the EU is one example: former UKIP leader Nigel Farage opposes the European Union as a political entity but still wants to trade with it and with the rest of the world. When people in the alternative media say they are ‘libertarian’, they mean that they support the right of individuals and corporations to get rich at the expense of society.

To make clear what this book is about, here is our propaganda translator. It contains a word or a phrase and what people like Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and Marine Le Pen really mean when they use it.

Capitalism: A system in which a big government rescues and subsidizes otherwise failing corporations, often at the expense of workers and lower-middle class taxpayers. (Original meaning: A for-profit system of private enterprise free of state monopolies.)

Closed borders: Letting in and fast-tracking visas for high-skilled immigrants at the expense of low-skilled migrants and domestic high-skilled workers.

Corruption: Left, centrist and right-wing politicians who enact policies antithetical to the interests of the far-right/alt-right. The word usually invokes the failure of said parties to reduce taxes on the rich and instead adhere to the wishes of non-corporate constituents, like unions and voters.

Ending big government: Stopping tax money from going to the poor while keeping it flowing to the rich. (Original meaning: Stopping governments from interfering with individual freedoms.)

Free market: A highly subsidized economy in which protectionist barriers can be raised against superior foreign goods. Small-to-medium-sized businesses are allowed to fail and giant financial institutions and corporations are rescued by the state. (Original meaning: From the 19th century English system also known as laissez-faire.)

Level playing field: A global trade and investment system designed to favour US corporations. (Original meaning: A fair system in which each competitor has an equal chance of success.)

Liberal: Sense 1. A centrist politician (like Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton) who serves the interests of corporations, but not to the extent desired by right-wingers and far-righters. Sense 2. A member of the public who believes in taxing the rich and supporting the rights of vulnerable people (including migrants, people of colour, refugees and the poor). (Original meaning: From 18th century Enlightenment principles of fairness and tolerance.)

Libertarian: A person who advocates the freedom of individuals and corporations to make money at the expense of society. (Original meaning: From 18th century England and France, a person or group who or which advocates the rights of all men. With some exceptions, the rights of women was still anathema.)

Libertarianism: A political movement which supports cutting taxes for the wealthy.

Men's Rights: Opposition to gender equality.

Nationalism: Keeping out low-skilled migrants, supporting high-skilled migrants, letting foreign countries buy up domestic businesses (usually by offering them tax breaks) and negotiating trade and investment with foreign countries outside traditional apparatus and political unions.

Special interests: Usually unions, especially teachers’ unions like the National Education Association of the United States.

White identity politics: White supremacy.

Preface

Mr Trump goes to Washington

‘... nonpoliticians represent the wave of the future’.

– Donald J. Trump (with Dave Shiflett), The America We Deserve (2000), p. 15

This book is about two things:

Part I concerns the dominant economic policy of our time: neo-liberalism. The book broadly defines neoliberalism as a combination of: making money from money, as opposed to making money from physical production and labour (financialization); rewriting rules to allow corporations to profit from risky transactions (deregulation); cutting back on social spending in order to balance national budgets (small government, a.k.a. structural adjustment); and insuring corporations against liquidation through taxation (big government, a.k.a. too big to fail).1 It shows how neoliberalism empowers far-right politicians by making centrist parties less credible in that, by pursuing neoliberal policies, centrist parties fail to meet the needs of their voters.

The financial consequences of neoliberalism are: gross domestic product balloons; national debt balloons; profits for a tiny sector of the population balloon; a small number of individuals become mega-wealthy; wages for the middle classes stagnate; and wages for the poor decline. The root cause of the majority's misery is concealed by the corporate and even state-owned mainstream media. Phenomena like unemployment and high levels of welfare dependency are at best portrayed as the random workings of the world and at worst the fault of immigrants and scroungers.

The political consequences of neoliberalism are equally grim: centre-left and centre-right parties both pursue neoliberal policies and lose credibility and votes. A sizeable minority of voters made angry and hopeless by neoliberalism take to the extreme politics of people like Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and Marine Le Pen, who promised to take on the corrupt power elites by cracking down on easy targets.

Part II explodes the myths about Donald Trump, that he: 1) is a rebel; 2) is for the average working American; 3) is a protectionist; 4) is opposed to globalization; and 5) is acting of his own accord. The evidence presented here shows that although the majority of multibillionaires and corporations would have preferred a Hillary Clinton presidency (and indeed spent millions of dollars to get her elected), Trump is doing their bidding, not because Trump is a puppet, but because he shares their interests. Years before Trump came to office, big business (including the tech sector) lobbied Congress to bring factories, plants and jobs back to America (for reasons we explain later). Big business also lobbied to ‘reform’ immigration policy (meaning crack down on low-skilled immigrants).

The introduction defines neoliberalism. It explores what effect neoliberalism has had on mainstream politics in the US and Europe. It argues that neoliberalism is part of the overall trend of voter disengagement.

Chapters 1 & 2 trace the policy decisions in the US under the Democratic-controlled Congresses of Presidents Nixon and Reagan. The chapters demonstrate that privatization and deregulation are the major tenets of neoliberalism. The chapters also show that the same policy continued under the Democratic Clinton administration in the 1990s and how it led to low levels of union participation and political engagement. Rising unemployment and a weakened middle class were the main social consequences of this policy.

Chapters 3 & 4 are about the connection between neoliberalism and the rise of the far-right in Europe and the USA. In the US, it is actually the middle class (those earning $50-150K per annum) who are the biggest Trump and Tea Party supporters, not the poor. The so-called Alternative Right (the American term for the far-right) emerged as a fringe of the Tea Party and went on to hijack the Republican Party. In Europe, however, the far-right attracts mostly working class as opposed to middle class voters. We define the far-right in Chapter 4, as its emergence became more apparent after the global Finance Crisis of 2008. The Crisis was largely a result of neoliberal deregulation and financial speculation. Chapter 5 is about America's alt-right. Chapters 6 & 7 analyse Trump's cabinet and policies. Chapter 8 is about tax cuts and lobbying. Chapter 9 is about Trump's stand on foreign policy. It argues that we are being pushed closer to annihilation by America's reckless pursuit of nuclear-armed global hegemony, regardless of who is President.

The conclusion explores Trump's connections with the deep state, particularly the FBI. It compares Trump's behaviour toward the media with Obama's and demonstrates that although Trump is less superficially pleasant, he is merely following a trajectory. It also argues for a progressive politics and voter engagement at the local level.

Dodd-Frank: ‘Death by a Thousand Cuts’

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act is commonly known as Dodd-Frank after the representatives Barney Frank and Chris Dodd who introduced it. Retaining or repealing Dodd-Frank is a litmus test for how serious a President is about maintaining financial regulations and enhancing or ending the neoliberal project. Shockwaves from the global Financial Crisis are still being felt today. The Crisis resulted from the preceding decades of financial deregulation. Far from ‘draining the swamp’ as he promised to do on his campaign trail, Donald Trump is pursuing neoliberalism. His first step was weakening Dodd-Frank.2

In 2010, President Obama signed into law Dodd-Frank: the first step taken in 80 years to impose some control over the financial system and prevent another systemic crisis. Dodd-Frank amounted to the most stringent set of regulations on banks and financial institutions since the Great Depression of the 1930s. It went further than any preceding bill towards ending the institutionalized greed which caused the Financial Crisis of 2007-10.3

Obama's cabinet was a cabinet of bankers, so Dodd-Frank was far from perfect. The layers of regulation harmed small-to-medium-sized businesses, especially local banks. Media coverage of the Act inferred that it would hurt big business, which is hardly surprising given that the mass media are for-profit corporations which benefit from deregulation. The public had mixed feelings about Dodd-Frank, due in part to the limits it imposed on small-to-medium size businesses and the media's propaganda campaign against the Act.

An investigation into print media coverage of Dodd-Frank in the first couple of years of its enactment concludes that ‘[press] articles were more likely to say that the Dodd-Frank Act has or potentially may have a negative impact on the economic viability of U.S. banks or U.S.-based companies’. According to a Pew Research Center study undertaken in 2013, ‘49% of the public believed the government has not gone far enough in regulating financial institutions and the markets’. However, ‘[n]early as many (43%) believed the government had gone too far’.4

This is key to understanding the appeal of Trump among the minority of Americans who voted for him. As Arlie Russell Hochschild points out in her book on future Trump voters, many Americans, particularly small-to-medium-sized business owners, are now dependent on large financial institutions for several reasons: 1) large companies (which Dodd-Frank regulated) subcontract to smaller ones (and defer the costs of Dodd-Frank to the smaller businesses); 2) many pensions are now tied to the stock market, so it is imperative for the market to boom in order to keep Americans’ pensions valuable; and 3) many small-to-medium sized business owners have shares in larger companies. It is mainly this demographic of business-owning, pension-investing middle class Americans who voted for Trump.5

The data suggest that 79% of people who support the Republican Party's offshoot movement called the Tea Party agree that government regulation is excessive. This compares to 64% of Republicans and only 26% of Democrats. Part of Trump's appeal to the large minority who voted for him was his promise to dismantle regulation, supposedly to help the average working American. But Trump is merely advancing the neoliberal agenda: to give huge tax breaks to corporations and privatize social spending which will take a hit in the absence of federal tax revenues. Trump's reaction to Dodd-Frank was a litmus test for his commitment to neoliberalism.6

Immediately after its enactment, US corporate lobbies attacked Dodd-Frank. Since it was passed, financial institutions spent hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying Congress to repeal it. Rather than full repeal, the strategy was ‘death by a thousand cuts’, in the words of Marcus Stanley of Americans for Financial Reform. The first cut was a bill passed by a majority of Republicans in 2014.7

It is alleged by Forbes that the liquidity firm Citigroup drafted a large part of the bill passed in 2014 which repealed a significant part of Dodd-Frank. Virtually every major financial institution lobbied to get the anti-Dodd-Frank bill passed: the American Bankers Association, the American Council of Life Insurers, Citigroup, the Credit Union National Association, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, Wells Fargo and others. In 2015, the New York Times reported: ‘In the span of a month, the nation's biggest banks and investment firms have twice won passage of measures to weaken regulations intended to help lessen the risk of another financial crisis’.8

The ultra-right elements of the Republican Party, notably the Tea Party, actively supported the anti-Dodd-Frank lobby. But as we shall see, certain individuals (including Trump's then-advisor Steve Bannon) believed that the Republican Party and the Tea Party movement was not fully committed to the neoliberal project. Giving total control over to Wall Street, big energy and so on, required a new far-right splinter group, known as the alternative-right (or alt-right). Trump rode to the White House in this alt-right Trojan Horse.

Trump was elected in part on a promise to repeal Dodd-Frank, which he claimed was harming American workers and tangling otherwise functioning businesses in red tape. In February 2017, Trump signed a law (H.J. Res. 41) repealing Dodd-Frank measures to force energy companies to disclose their foreign financial transactions. USA Today alleges that the repeal followed lobbying efforts from big oil, including ExxonMobil led by Rex Tillerson, Trump's Secretary of State.9

In the neoliberal system, the wealth of the mega-rich is accrued at the expense of the middle-class and poor majority. Neoliberalism has alienated millions of voters, who often see politicians as little more than puppets of big business. Many voters have simply given up on politics. Others have mobilized in unhealthy and destructive ways. Instead of organizing and putting pressure on the centre-left to adopt more progressive policies, many have turned to the far-right.10

In Europe, neoliberalism brought us Britain's exit from the EU (Brexit) and empowered France's far-right party, the Front National (FN). Now that an Islamophobic, racist misogynist is leading the world's most powerful nation, ugly, repressed tendencies are coming to the surface in a sizeable minority of people. The main champion of Brexit was Nigel Farage, then-leader of the UK Independence Party. Both he and the FN's leader, Marine Le Pen, attended exclusive meetings with the new US President in Trump Tower. Both have expressed their support for Trump.11

The Trump cabinet, the architects of Brexit and Le Pen herself are all advocates of neoliberalism. Le Pen has spoken of the need for a strong state to support business and growth. Farage has a background in banking and is keen to promote so-called ‘free trade’ with the US. Trump advocates bilateral free trade on US-centric terms. As this book will demonstrate, far-right parties support and want to accelerate the very pro-business policies that harmed many of their voters.

Introduction

Big money and bigotry

‘Do not have illusions; the world is a brutal place full of vicious people.’

– Donald J. Trump and Bill Zanker, Think Big (2007), p. 176

For over 40 years, British and American politicians have adopted neoliberal economic policies which have made a few individuals very wealthy at the expense of the majority. Over the last 25 years (particularly with the adoption of the Maastricht Treaty of 1992), European governments gradually signed up to the project. Money is the god of neoliberalism. It makes profit the centre of all human activity and concern. If something is not profitable, like social security or healthcare, it must be either eliminated or restructured. Neoliberalism sees everything as a business model. It involves tying the real economy of manufacturing, design and spending to the fake economy of liquidity, currency (de)valuations and bond trading. It involves privatizing all public services while using tax money to buoy failing financial institutions.1

What is Neoliberalism?

The term ‘neoliberalism’ is context-dependent and open to interpretation. Scholars agree on one thing: that critics of the policy tend to call it ‘neoliberalism’, while advocates use terms like laissez-faire and free market capitalism. Professor Bob Jessop's definition of neoliberalism is included as an entry in the Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Globalization. Citing Thatcherism and Reaganomics, Jessop defines ‘neoliberal regime shifts’ away from state control and public ownership as ‘liberalization, deregulation, privatization, market proxies in the public sector, internationalization, and cuts in direct taxation’. This is the broad definition of neoliberalism that we use in this book. Let's look at some similar definitions used by established (and some establishment) institutions:2

Vice-President of the European Commission, Viviane Reding, describes neoliberalism as giving ‘power to the markets rather than to politicians’. Democratic principles, including public ownership, would be reduced and eliminated by ‘market discipline’. Regulation of ‘economic or financial policy at [the] European level could only have caused harmful market distortions’, according to the neo-liberal agenda. Concerning the European Union, Reding says: ‘The fact that the Member States would continue to pursue their own, differing national economic, budgetary, tax, and social policies was not a weakness’, according to neoliberals, ‘but one of the great achievements of Maastricht’ – a treaty led by Britain and signed by the Member States in 1992. Maastricht led to the single currency (the euro).3

Reding's point, that neoliberals find it easier to pursue their agenda by dismantling political unions like the EU and instead pursue so-called nationalist agendas, is key to understanding what is happening with the uneven rise of the so-called nationalist far-right. As this book documents, many supposed political nationalists (like Farage and Le Pen) are actually economic internationalists who believe in ‘free trade’.

The World Bank was established by the US and Britain after World War II. It was designed to lend poor countries (re)construction money. It is responsible for death and misery in the third world, as it loaned corrupt dictators billions of dollars. Professor Grzegorz W. Kolodko is an economic reformer in Poland. In a World Bank paper, he defines neoliberalism as ‘[l]ow inflation, positive interest rates, balanced budget, fast privatisation, currency exchange rate either fixed or flouting, [and] taxes (low, of course)’. He concludes that the overall purpose of neoliberalism is ‘[t]o improve the financial standing of narrow groups of elites at the expense of the majority of society’. To achieve this end, ‘neoliberalism uses in politics and policies ... expressive liberal ideas ... [such] as liberty and democracy, private ownership and entrepreneurship, competition and economic freedom’. This is the language that populists like Trump and his alt-right or libertarian-supporting internet media (like Alex Jones) employ to win votes. In reality, says Kolodko, when these neo-’libertarians’, including France's Front National leader Marine Le Pen, use words like ‘individualism’ and ‘liberty’, they are taking about corporate individuals and liberty for the rich.4

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a branch of the United Nations and, like the World Bank, was also established by the US and Britain after World War II. It acts as a credit enforcer for the World Bank. It is also responsible for massive levels of death and destruction in poor countries via so-called structural adjustment programmes. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz makes this case in his book Globalization and Its Discontents. (But he does so by exonerating his own institution, the World Bank.)

An article published by the IMF identifies ten characteristics of neoliberalism (also known as the Washington Consensus).* These originated in the USA in the 1970s and especially the 1980s, and were exported to the world, starting with Latin America. The characteristics are: 1) fiscal discipline (balancing budgets at the expense of social spending); 2) restructuring public spending away from health, education and social security; 3) cutting taxes for the rich; 4) liberalizing interest rates at the expense of utilities and housing; 5) liberalizing exchange rates, which cause fluctuation and speculation in international markets; 6) liberalizing trade by, for instance, making foreign countries privatize their national resources; 7) liberalizing foreign direct investment to allow foreign powers to take advantage of cheap labour; 8) privatizing domestic assets and services; 9) deregulating domestic financial institutions; and 10) protecting property rights (including intellectual property for technology and drugs) over human rights.5

The above IMF article talks about ‘rebranding’ neoliberalism, given its negative connotations. This is happening today (see Propaganda Translator), with politicians like Trump using protectionist language whilst arranging bilateral ‘free trade’ deals with foreign countries; closing the border to low-skilled migrants while championing those with high-skills; talking like a radical anti-corporatist while offering massive tax cuts to big business.

A paper published by the World Economic Forum defines neo-liberalism as ‘an economic worldview that wrongly assumed that the benefits of economic growth would trickle down to those at the bottom’. (In the real world, it is questionable whether neoliberal advocates really believed in the trickle-down effect.) Neoliberalism also means ‘government should embrace austerity and do little more than let markets work’. (Interestingly, the Harvard professor who wrote the article concludes: ‘Until voters learn what to ask for from their governments, they are bound to dislike what they end up getting’. Kolodko – the Polish reformer – argues that the media's role is to ensure that the public doesn’t even know what to ask for in the way of alternatives, hence the far-right's tendency to blame the vulnerable.)6

Finally, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development finds that governments tried to fix the negative consequences of neoliberalism by adopting more neoliberal policies. The author writes that the post-Washington Consensus came into being after the Financial Crisis of 2008. Rather than reversing the trends, the programme ‘expands on earlier neo-liberal prescriptions, but with greater emphasis on the “neo”, i.e. free market economics with a stronger policy environment and national equity rather than national wealth as the end goal of economic activity’. It did so by imposing crippling austerity, particularly in Europe.7

What is Populism?

Like ‘neoliberalism’ and ‘far-right’, populism is an elastic term covering a wide range of ideas and perceptions. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, describes populism and the process as follows:

Populists use half-truths and oversimplification – the two scalpels of the arch propagandist, and here the internet and social media are a perfect rail for them, by reducing thought into the smallest packages: sound-bites; tweets. Paint half a picture in the mind of an anxious individual, exposed as they may be to economic hardship and through the media to the horrors of terrorism. Prop this picture up by some half-truth here and there and allow the natural prejudice of people to fill in the rest. Add drama, emphasizing it's all the fault of a clear-cut group, so the speakers lobbing this verbal artillery, and their followers, can feel somehow blameless.8

Two scholars at the Harvard Kennedy School – Inglehart and Norris – write that economic insecurity and cultural backlash are the two common themes underlying populism. ‘There are many interpretations of [populism] and numerous attempts to identify the political parties and movements that fall into this category’. The three common features according to these authors are: anti-establishmentarianism, authoritarianism and nativism. However, as we shall see, some left-wing populists do not fit neatly into this category. Populists emphasize the needs of the ‘silent majority’ over ‘corrupt elites’. The authors imply that this emphasis is made in order to win votes, not actually help the ‘silent majority’ to improve their lot.9

There are two kinds of populism: extreme right and progressive left. The broad majority fears right-wing populism because it usually consists of wealthy elite groups hijacking the concerns of working people in order to elevate those marginal elites to power by less than democratic means. Such means include intimidation of political opponents, the immediate passing of laws which consolidate the populists’ power and the targeting of minority groups.