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These two tweets from President Trump articulate a desperate and full throated return to populist conspiracy fantasy.
In this thread I'm going to explain what that means....
These two tweets from President Trump articulate a desperate and full throated return to populist conspiracy fantasy.
In this thread I'm going to explain what that means....
...Populism splits everything into good and bad: ‘the people’ and ‘enemies of the people’. ‘The people’ is an idea, the opposite of the material diversity of flesh and blood human beings.
Politics is about representing people with different tastes, opinions, values and dreams...
Politics is about representing people with different tastes, opinions, values and dreams...
... people from different classes, genders and origins; with different interests, talents, and problems. Democracy as a whole, including Parliament, the rule of law, civil society organisations, international co-operation, democratic freedoms and cultures, is how we negotiate...
...our differences and find ways of living together.
Our democracy is not perfect, but it is a huge achievement nevertheless and we should build on it, not devalue it....
Our democracy is not perfect, but it is a huge achievement nevertheless and we should build on it, not devalue it....
... But ‘the people’, as conceived by populism, has one interest, one appetite and one resentful fury. Because ‘the people’ is really an abstract idea, it cannot articulate anything; it needs a leader to understand its eternal soul and to speak with its voice....
... Populism begins with the feeling that nothing that exists now is of any value and it is driven by sentimental nostalgia for a past which never really existed....
....Different populisms agree that the real enemy is the ‘liberal establishment’ which is portrayed as only cunning and selfish. It's accused of pretending that society is based on freedom and democracy but secretly running everything according to its own secret self-interest...
... News, according to the populists, is lies, concocted so that we will vote how ‘the establishment’ wants us to. Politics, for the populists, is a racket, in which a ‘political class’ only pretends to look out for the good of the country...
... Populism treats science and expertise as mortally corrupted by power. Even the principle of human equality, the populists think, is sneakily transformed by those with power into a way of keeping us unequal....
... Populism is utopian. Trump does not promise to make the US a little better but to make it 'Great Again'.
Populism has contempt for the rational policies that might improve things. Instead, it thunders that it will rip everything down rebuild a new world out of the ashes...
Populism has contempt for the rational policies that might improve things. Instead, it thunders that it will rip everything down rebuild a new world out of the ashes...
... It is easier to destroy than to create. Populism will never deliver what it promises. That is why the idea of the ‘enemy of the people’ is so important...
... Failure will be blamed on the cosmopolitans, the liberal elite, the people of nowhere, the people ‘without roots in the community’, the people with no culture, those who are only interested in money, foreigners, migrants and ‘the one per cent’....
...Antisemitism has evolved through many distinct species to become a ready-made emotional framework for imagining all of these enemies in one potent vision of evil.
Right populism is structurally similar to antisemitism and it is creating fertile conditions for its emergence...
Right populism is structurally similar to antisemitism and it is creating fertile conditions for its emergence...
...America can only be 'Betrayed' because Trump can never deliver the extravagant 'Great Again' that he offers.
It will lead to crisis, uneployment, violence and division’. Right populists will look for somebody to blame. They will find ‘enemies of the people’.
It will lead to crisis, uneployment, violence and division’. Right populists will look for somebody to blame. They will find ‘enemies of the people’.
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