Faces of American Populism:
On the Left, Bernie Sanders      Wikimedia Commons / Gage Skidmore
On the Right, Donald Trump      Wikimedia Commons / Gage Skidmore

Western elites  still can not understand what to do about the populist revolts threatening to take away their power. That is just as true today in Europe as it is here in the United States. The quandary in which most of the Western elites find themselves is their control is based upon using the coercive power of government to solve problems. Yet, the use of that kind of power inevitably harms their peoples. More than that, the elites that have ruled over most of the West for most of the time over the past century have deeply believed in the effectiveness of the state in attacking economic and social problems. They still do. They do not understand the harm they do.

The Phenomenon of Populism and the Populist Revolts

Consider  the following definitions of populism. From the New Oxford American Dictionary, we have that populism is “support for the concerns of the ordinary people.”

From Wikipedia we find,

Populism is a political philosophy supporting the rights and power of the people in their struggle against a privileged elite.

In the same Wikipedia article we see the following comment.

Critics of populism have described it as a political approach that seeks to disrupt the existing social order by solidifying and mobilizing the animosity of the “commoner” or “the people” against “privileged elites” and the “establishment”.

This last picture of populism, I am sure, is the way most Western elites view it. The only time populism raises its ancient and hoary head is when economic and/or social problems begin to seriously erode the glue holding society together. When that happens, common people look around to find the sources of their miseries. Typically, they will think the system has been rigged by those who rule them for the benefit of those elites. Many times the common people will be correct in such situations. They are very much correct in such a judgement now.

Western Problems Inspiring Populist Rebellion

Let us first look  at what the major Western problems are that are generating the populist political revolts. Then we will consider how the Western elites have been creating those problems.

Although there are certainly any number of social problems throughout the West, there are just two creating the populist unrest. In both the United States and Europe, those problems are economic difficulties and insecurity caused by immigration.

In Europe, the EU countries are being swamped by refugees from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), fleeing from Islamic jihadism and civil war. From 2015 through November 2017, a total of 1,548,380 MENA immigrants arrived in the EU, mostly in Greece, Italy, and Germany. These have added to previous immigrants from MENA. In the past European governments encouraged them to come for the cheap labor. However they came to be in Europe, once granted asylum MENA immigrants can roam freely throughout most of Europe due to the European Schengen Agreement mandating open borders.

The MENA immigration is driving extreme popular discontent, particularly in France, Italy, Germany, and Great Britain. This discontent was probably the largest single reason motivating the British to leave the EU. Not only does the immigrant population hide and sustain Islamic jihadist agents, but it also creates large economic strains on local schools, hospitals, welfare, and police. With many European countries having high levels of unemployment, the competition of the immigrants for low-level jobs is especially unwelcome. In Great Britain alone, the immigrant invasion has caused the nation’s population to grow from 57 million in 1990 to 65 million in 2015. This is despite the fact Britain’s native birth rate is below replacement levels. In addition to security and economic fears, the British and other Europeans have a right to fear cultural annihilation by the immigrant flood. David Frum on the Atlantic website stated the situation exactly right in 2016:

Is it possible that leaders and elites had it all wrong? If they’re to save the open global economy, maybe they need to protect their populations better against globalization’s most unwelcome consequences—of which mass migration is the very least welcome of them all?

The American immigrant problem is precisely the same. The big difference is our illegal immigrants come mostly from Mexico and Central America. Nevertheless, the U.S. in 2016 had nearly 1.2 million MENA immigrants, which was around 3 percent of the country’s 44 million immigrants. Just as the immigrant problem helped drive the British out of the EU, the American populist fears of illegal immigration helped elect Donald Trump on his promises for a “really HUGE” Mexican border wall.

Yet, there are many more problems fomenting populist revolts. For decades now, long-term economic growth for almost all western nations has been stagnating. If trends continue, it is only a matter of time before secular growth rates become negative. Wide spread economic misery would be the result. This claim can be demonstrated with 10-year moving averages of national GDP growth rates, which average over the business cycle. I have plotted these 10-year moving averages for the major European countries in the three plots below. I have divided these countries by region in the three plots primarily to keep any single plot from being too busy. For comparison purposes I have plotted the U.S. moving average in all three plots as a black line with points.

Note in the plot above the long-term growth rate of the Republic of Ireland is the only Western growth rate that has remained decent over time.

Note how the decay of western growth rates is — with the exception of Ireland — universal, and how the United States is among the worst performers.

France exemplifies the social misery created by such economic stagnation, as shown by the CBN News video from 2015 below.

Can there be any question about the causes of populist revolt throughout the West?

How Dirigiste Elites Create Populist Uprisings

Why is it  the western dirigiste elites can not fundamentally understand the populist revolts? It is precisely because they are so wedded to their dirigisme. Dirigisme is any economic system in which the state exercises a strong directive influence over the allocation and investment of scarce economic resources. Because social and economic problems are so intertwined, this also means the state is usually considered the main tool to attack social problems as well. This definition is broad enough to include all socialist forms of government (e..g communism and fascism), as well as most of the so-called “mixed-economies” of the West. In the United States we call the resident dirigistes “progressives.”

The western elites have a hard time finding a way to handle populist revolts because they have a hard time even thinking — let alone believing — they are the ones creating the masses’ alienation. Instead, they make up fables that our problems are generated by free-markets and corporations. A typical dirigiste explanation for economic problems is the Keynesian doctrine of secular stagnation, which looks to free-market failures as the causes of economic stagnation. Yet, we have a plethora of explanations for a lack of growth in the straitjackets of government regulations and high taxes.

It is the elites who have created the almost universal western economic malaise. It is they who have perpetrated the fraud of multiculturalism. Unfortunately for all of us, believers in dirigisme not only tell all of us a big lie, but they tell that same lie to themselves all the time. This falsehood is that they can use the coercive power of government to solve social and economic problems without creating even worse problems as byproducts of their “solutions.” The problem with this deception is systems of interacting human beings are chaotic systems, and chaotic in the mathematical sense. What this means is the response of a system like the economy to government manipulation is usually unpredictable. The system’s reaction in fact is often very unpleasant for society. For example, the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve ( a U.S. federal government agency) in the early 1930s caused the Great Depression. The housing policies of the Clinton administration gave rise to the Great Recession of 2008-2009. Since they blamed greedy bankers and real estate investors for the Great Recession, the progressive reaction was to clamp down severe supervisory regulations on financial markets with the Dodd-Frank Act. The result of that was the virtual destruction of small community banks, among other ills. It also gave birth to a run-away rogue agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Western electorates continue to reject what the elites are trying to sell them. The latest rejection of the European establishment was the 2018 Italian general election on 4 March 2018. Although no party won an outright majority, the populist and Eurosceptic Five Star Movement was the biggest single party winner with a third of the vote. Nevertheless, a Right wing coalition called the League won 37% of the vote, and it does appear as if a coalition between the League and the Five Star Movement could form a coalition government. If such a coalition were arranged, it is quite possible Italy might withdraw from the European Union. Former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s center-Left coalition did poorly, garnering only 22.8% of the vote. According to the BBC, MENA immigration and the poorly performing economy were the two key issues of the election.

Writing about this and other recent European elections, Andrew Michta comments in the American Interest,

Yet again, a European electorate has handed down a vote of no-confidence in traditional parties, and yet again media headlines speak of elite shock. . . . In country after country, voters are continuing to flock to anti-establishment parties, to reject traditional brands, and to demand an end to business as usual. As elsewhere in Europe, the core political drivers in Italy are immigration fatigue and seething public anger over ineffective border policies that have strained the government’s ability to absorb newcomers while maintaining societal and cultural cohesion. In addition to immigration there are also enduring concerns about high unemployment and the anxiety amongst the anti-establishment that the Eurozone as currently structured may ultimately give Italy a starring role in Act Two of the “Greek economic tragedy.”

Dirigisme appears to have reached the limits of its possibilities. We need to find a new paradigm for ruling, one that takes into account the chaotic nature of human society.

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