The information balance of power has changed, writes Martin Gurri in a new book, “The Revolt of the Public,” which dissects with originality and depth the impact of the Internet on the political culture. “A generation ago, the public could exist only as a passive audience,” he writes of the great age when the daily newspaper was the king of the mountain and television news was dispensed on a reassuring hierarchical model, from the top down.
Populist is an elite term. It seems to imply that certain opinions are popular when they shouldn’t be. Populists of a nationalistic strain have won elections, handily and repeatedly, in Hungary and Poland. In Italy, two very different populist parties, cats and dogs together, share in running the most popular government in Europe, with 68 percent approval ratings. (By comparison, Macron’s approval numbers have plummeted as low as 23 percent.) Elites ascribe these victories to demagoguery: populists win elections by misleading the public. The reverse of this proposition is more nearly correct. Populist parties and politicians are riding, sometimes uneasily, on the wild kinetic energies surging from a mutinous public.
The post is about France. The Yellow Vests sound like they leaped right out of the pages of The Revolt of the Public.
Probably a better to think of the populist is they are an odd mix of far left and far right that either don’t have a clear picture for progress and who the wrong elite
1) The big question is who are the ‘bad elite?’
2) In reality the left does have a working class but tends to more minority voters but also jobs that are service (urban) working class. Not only does Immigrants blaming feels like scapegoating, I suspect there be differences of service working class jobs and manufacturing/construction working class. So does the Las Vegas Hospitality Unions, with a high percentage of women and Hispanic-American qualify as working class populist? Also, the biggest thing I don’t see what the WWC expect the old manufacturing job model to come back.
3) I still wonder if capitalism is losing ‘animal instincts’ because modern capitalist societies can’t find enough cheap labor.
In terms of populist and Far right vs. Far Left, Trump won November 2016 when exit polls showed he was more ‘center’ than Hillary Clinton. So he did not just win because of Far Right populism but he won because a number of voters felt he could get more done for the ‘Centerist’ goals. (In reality HRC was going to accomplish almost nothing except a few left center Supreme Court judges and unfortunately would have likely been more hawkish than Trump. I always assumed she would be a one term President.)
Remarkable that the groups who run things in the West — over the last 30-50 years having renounced any responsibility to advance or even protect the interests of the largest single group of citizens in their countries (the white middle and working class) and more recently having singled out that group and its culture for castigation (particularly in the US) – are shocked that the ostracized group, rather than simply voting for the elite’s tax-cut-deregulation-and-“democracy”-crusade faction, no longer trusts anyone in the ruling class and makes (mostly feeble) attempts at rebellion. The elites treat these attempts at rebellion as an absurd, irrational phenomena that no one could have predicted. Baloney.
The rebellion often takes irrational form (not so surprising, given that the rebels are unsophisticated), and is for that reason failing (particularly in the US – sad to say), but the elites – through their unconcealed contempt and their own selfishness, irrationality and incompetence – have brought it on themselves. Even on those sporadic occasions when elite opinion is correct or at least defensible (e.g., about the inadvisability of pulling out of Syria), the hoi polloi will no longer listen to them. The elite have thoroughly discredited themselves with these people. What is astonishing is the surprise of the elites, who apparently are totally lacking in self-awareness.
Either we are information rich, the top article or we are information poor, the bottom article.
Do they? Why aren’t they just another big protest destined to fizzle out, like, say, Occupy Wall Street or The Tea Party? What was the key breakdown in establishment control over information dissemination? It seems that everyone was on the same page and aware of the same things which the mainstream or state media covered openly without hesitation, to include early mainstream media coverage of the fact of the protests themselves, which is something that other regimes would have tried to cover up, and which, had those attempts been made and then failed, would be more like a special Gurri-scenario. It was just that a large part of the population greatly disliked the new motor fuel tax increases which served a kind of straw which broke the camel’s back and triggered the release of a lot of pent-up frustration.
The French are somewhat fond of referring to themselves as a revolutionary country and are no strangers to nationwide general protests and strikes long before the emergence of the internet and social media. For instance, there were the famous, prolonged general strikes of 1933 and 1968, and major labor protests in 1995, 2006, and 2007. French elites and society seem to have learned to accept these kinds of things as a regular occurrence and fact of life not worth panicking too much about, just like the common and periodic transportation sector strikes that occasionally bring everything to a halt, kind of like budget shutdowns do to the federal government in the US. So, what was so importantly different about this one that is also the new common thread and pattern going on throughout the world?
Perhaps what was more interesting about the French protests was their general incoherence regarding demands aside from the insistence that the new gas tax be cancelled, as it was. The others were of the form of “lower taxes on me, and at the same time, increase spending on me.”
Well, there’s no way to repeal arithmetic, so this kind of thing is likely to get increasingly common as French budget conditions get increasingly desperate, since they can’t soak the rich in an environment of global competition and in which capital is mobile, at least, until they pass Piketty’s ‘no exit’ tax. But more likely, occasionally the guy at the top is just going to become the scapegoat and get the boot, only to be replaced by another establishment or crypto-establishment figure, as the ‘Social Minsky Cycle’ restarts anew.
Perhaps what was more interesting about the French protests was their general incoherence regarding demands aside from the insistence that the new gas tax be cancelled, as it was. The others were of the form of “lower taxes on me, and at the same time, increase spending on me.”
This is hardly limited to France, and it reflects something much more basic. As Razib Khan tweeted:
“Re: “yellow vest” : Just makes me wonder how are WE going to pay for everything that we take for granted as something due to us by right of working hard and playing by the rules? and by “WE” I mean everyone in the developed world.”
Exactly. And I suspect that it means these protest events just all burn out, since they have “nowhere to go” in terms of what is arithmetically possible, even after a few more rounds of soaking the rich. I’m guessing the US just went through a kind of “political bailout” and avoided a potential source of turmoil by the run up in house prices being itself a windfall bailout for the underfunded retirement savings for people who matter more politically. But that won’t help subsequent generations.
I want to agree with you but I have my doubts.
The wisest man I ever knew used to say, “I know how to make my kids hate me: promise them this (holds hand at eye level) and give them this (lowers hand to waist level).”
The “yellow jackets” opposed a new tax whose stated rationale was to combat global warming, so they are usually seen as “right-wing”. But I suspect most of them feel, “It is the job of government to guarantee to all its citizens a good life.” This is a socialist sentiment, whether you call it idealistic or romantic or utopian socialism. Most everyone in the developed world sorta kinda believes that.
No one wins elections by saying, “You don’t have a right to health care.” “You should not be able to stay in school as long as they want.” Etc. So pretty much no one says it. A good life is eye high.
I do not think people will react well when told, “Waist high is all that is arithmetically possible.”
Every year, China burns as much coal as the rest of the world combined, and every year since 2009, more cars have been sold there than in any other country.
So Macron chose the wrong hill to die on.
He should have picked his battles. Set his priorities. What’s more important? Reforms that bring some liberalism to the rigid French economy, or an entirely pointless tariff on the cost of fuel? A tariff that makes no difference to the world’s temperature? A tariff that is utterly ineffective against global warming and has no rationale to support it? In other words, a rain dance. A witch doctor’s incantation.