Maria Hsia Chang and A. James Gregor

Political Populism in
the Twenty-First
Century
Copyright © 2021. Cambridge Scholars Publisher. All rights reserved.
Chang, Maria Hsia, and A. James Gregor. Political Populism in the Twenty-First Century : We the People, Cambridge
Political Populism in
the Twenty-First
Century:
We the People
By
Maria Hsia Chang and A. James Gregor

Political Populism in the Twenty-First Century: We the People
By Maria Hsia Chang and A. James Gregor
This book first published 2021
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Copyright © 2021 by Maria Hsia Chang and A. James Gregor
All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior permission of the copyright owner.
ISBN (10): 1-5275-6472-X

ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-6472-5
This book is dedicated to
Patricia Gayle Chaffin
Loving sister, faithful friend, and my shelter from the storm

CONTENTS
Preface....................................................................................................... ix
Chapter One ................................................................................................ 1

Introduction
A. James Gregor and Maria Hsia Chang
Chapter Two ............................................................................................. 21

Populism of the Russian Federation
A. James Gregor
Chapter Three ........................................................................................... 41

Populism in Central Europe: Poland and Hungary
A. James Gregor
Chapter Four ............................................................................................. 59

Populism in the United Kingdom: Brexit
Maria Hsia Chang
Chapter Five ............................................................................................. 81

Populism in Italy and France

Maria Hsia Chang
Chapter Six ............................................................................................. 105

The Populism of Donald Trump
Maria Hsia Chang
Chapter Seven......................................................................................... 129

Revolt Against the Elites
Maria Hsia Chang
Index ....................................................................................................... 155
PREFACE
A. James Gregor—generous mentor, brilliant professor and the prolific

author of some 45 books and monographs—first undertook this project in
Spring 2019.
When he passed away on August 30, 2019, he had written three chapters of
Political Populism in the Twenty-First Century: We the People. To honor
my late husband’s commitment to Cambridge Scholars Publishing (CSP), I
assumed the responsibility of completing his project.
To that end, I revised and added to one of his chapters, and contributed four
additional chapters. It should be noted that Professor Gregor had apprised
me of the project from its beginning, and that we were in agreement on the
subject of populism and its various manifestations. That being said, the
responsibility for this book’s contents is mine alone.
The fulfillment of this project had been challenging, undertaken amidst

grieving, a global virus pandemic, as well as unceasing political turmoil,
racial protests and riots at home. My work was made bearable by the
unconditional love and quiet companionship from my brood, and the
kindness, patience and support I received from Dr. Robert Rauchhaus;

Professor Anthony Joes; CSP Commissioning Editor Adam Rummens;
Jerry Burr; Freydun Gharmanlu; Merrilee Harter Mitchell who, as the
coordinator of the Widows/Widowers Grief Recovery of the East Bay,
understood better than most that my task was etched with grief; and Judge
Patricia Chaffin who took countless weeping phone calls at all hours, to
whom this book is dedicated.
Maria Hsia Chang

December 2020
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
A. JAMES GREGOR AND MARIA HSIA CHANG
The twentieth century was a time of unmitigated distress, involving two

world wars that forever scarred collective sensibilities. It was the bloodiest
century in human history, exacting a toll in the hundreds of millions. Many
of the lives lost were in armed conflict, but as many, if not more, at the
hands of their own government.
R. J. Rummel called those deaths “democide” or “death by government”—

the intentional killing of an unarmed or disarmed persons by government
agents acting in authoritative capacity and pursuant to government policy or
high command. To this day we do not have a certain tally of all democides,
but we can be certain that the numbers are staggering. Rummel estimated
that in total, during the first 88 years of the twentieth century, 170-360
million men, women, and children were “shot, beaten, tortured, knifed,
burned, starved, frozen, crushed, or worked to death; buried alive, drowned,
hung, bombed, or killed in any other of the myriad ways government have
inflicted deaths on unarmed, helpless citizens.”1
Most of us have no conception of the character and scope of the destruction

that swept away so many. Time has rendered those horrors inconceivable,
if not forgotten entirely. And yet, we know what transpired. In his Foreword
to Rummel’s Death by Government, Irving Louis Horowitz pointed to what
he called “one crucial aspect” that stands out above all democides—"The
need to revise our sense of the depth of the horrors committed by communist
regimes on ordinary humanity.” As Horowitz put it:2
The numbers are so grotesque at this level that we must actually revise our
sense and sensibilities about the comparative study of totalitarianisms to
appreciate that of the two supreme systemic horrors of the century, the
communist regimes hold a measurable edge over the fascist regimes in their
life-taking propensities. For, buried in the datum on totalitarian death mills
2 Chapter One
as a whole is the terrible sense that communism is not “Left” and fascism is
not “Right”—both are horrors—and the former, by virtue of its capacity for
destroying more of its nationals, holds an unenviable “lead” over the latter
in life taking.
At the turn of the twentieth century, the first intimations of what was to
come made their appearance when a young Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924)
dreamed of a universal revolution that would transform the world. It would
be a revolution inspired by the theoretical conceptions of Karl Marx (1818-
1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895), which would sweep away all
oppression, to render human life a fulfillment.
But Lenin’s pursuit of revolution proved difficult. The principal difficulty

arose from the fact that Russia, the site chosen for his revolution, was
economically underdeveloped, and its population agrarian and largely
unlettered. Marxism had anticipated that its revolution would take place in
an advanced industrial setting in which the “vast majority” of the population
would be proletariat—factory workers engaged in commodity production,
who spontaneously would rise up in revolt to throw off the yolk of
exploitative capitalism. After the revolution, the workers would assume
leadership responsibilities in a communist system that would provide
abundantly for all, and where government as humanity had known it would
melt away, replaced by a genuine self-government.
In other words, Lenin undertook revolution in circumstances that failed to

meet the minimum requirements demanded by theoretical Marxism. He
acknowledged that the anticipated revolution required that he “creatively

modify” the formulae that Marx and Engels had left as directives. By 1902,
Lenin maintained that the proletariat—Marx’s prescribed agents of
revolution—could not make revolution without the significant intervention
of a vanguard of déclasséd bourgeois intellectuals who would infuse a
“Marxist consciousness” into the proletariat “from without.”
At the time there were other, more orthodox Marxists who anticipated that
Lenin’s modification of doctrine might lead to the creation of a “vanguard”
political party that conceived itself the repository of revolutionary truth—a
circumstance that could well foster a demand, on the part of its leadership,
for strict obedience and unqualified conformity to its dictates. As it turned
out, Lenin’s Bolsheviks demanded from Russians much more than that.
Knowingly or unknowingly, Lenin had set the stage for a series of wholly
man-made tragedies that would sear the twentieth century.
Introduction 3
During the same period of time, in Southern Europe, another Marxist radical
was planning revolution. Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) had declared his
Marxist commitment at first maturity. In the course of the next decade, he
proceeded to rise through the ranks of the Socialist Party to become an
acknowledged revolutionary intellectual and leader of its most radical
faction, as well as the editor of the party’s journal, Avanti! But, like Lenin,
Mussolini was a revolutionary Marxist with a difference. Attracted to
radicals who gave expression to the syndicalist beliefs of Georges Sorel
(1847-1922), he became interested in group psychology and the intricacies
of mass mobilization. All of which gave special substance to a doctrine that
would cost Italy, and Europe, untold suffering in the evolving century.
In the North, in the first years of the century, another Marxist intellectual,
admired by Lenin, had made a discovery. After poring over its original texts
for more than a decade, Ludwig Woltmann (1871-1907) discovered racism
at the very core of Marxism, Marx having identified race as one of the
material factors shaping human history. Woltmann went on to draw out the
implications of Marx’s contention. If socialism was to succeed, he argued,
it would have to take race into critical account by advancing itself as a
“racial” or “national” socialism. The dialectic of history might well be
material, but it was a materialism that incorporated biology. Woltmann’s
work contributed to the growing volume of contemporary literature devoted
to “race science” and probably influenced the revolutionary reflections of a
young Austrian radical, Adolph Hitler (1889-1945), who, as a National
Socialist, was to bring ruin to Europe and a large part of Africa.
While all of this was transpiring in Europe, it had resonance in Asia. Even
before the turn of the new century, Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925) had mobilized
a growing anti-imperial disaffection in China into a truly revolutionary
movement. His followers sought the overthrow of the Qing dynastic rulers
in order to institute a program of national economic development. By the
second decade of the new century, however, a collection of self-characterized
Marxists began to organize in China. With the support of Lenin’s Third
International, they founded the Chinese Communist Party in 1920. Among
the founders was Mao Zedong (1893-1976) who, contrary to all classical
Marxist directives but rationalized by Lenin’s “creative developments,”
undertook to mobilize peasants for a Marxist revolution in agrarian China.
In effect, around the time of the end of the First World War (1914-1918), a
collection of derivative Marxist movements had undertaken revolutionary
initiatives in both Europe and Asia which would dominate the history of the
4 Chapter One
ensuing century. Academicians and political commentators early settled on

classificatory distinctions to be applied to those movements. There were
“left-wing” and “right-wing” revolutionary movements, distinguished by
uncertain criteria, arbitrarily assigned.
Revolutionary Movements of the Left and Right3

By 1928, following soon after the death of Lenin, his successor, Josef Stalin,
settled on a developmental program for Bolshevik Russia which was
predicated on the non-Marxist notion of “socialism in one country.”
Abandoning Marx’s notion that the liberating revolution would have to be
universal, Stalin resolved that the Marxist revolution would bring socialism
only to the territories the Bolsheviks controlled.
For the Soviet Union, Stalin proposed a program of intense industrial

development to provide the missing material foundation for socialism. It
was a developmental program that was distinctive in many ways, the most
distinctive feature of which was the absence of a functional market.
Industrial and general economic development would proceed without
market signals in a command economy. Capital would be extracted from the
general economy and disbursed by the central political bureaucracy; subsequent
productivity would be governed by directives from the administrative
center. Bureaucrats would determine the measure of goods for end-users in
both quantities and delivery. The intersectoral transfer of resources and
labor would be provided in what were held to be suitable measure. Because
theoretical Marxism had opposed commodity production as exploitative of
labor, Western intellectuals solemnly maintained that such a system was

socialist and Marxist, irrespective of the fact that Stalin’s entire project was
undertaken in an environment devoid of the most elementary preconditions
prescribed by Marxist theory. Whatever the case, Stalinism was to provide
a model for other national developmental dictatorships throughout the
remainder of the twentieth century.
There were notable Western scholars who recommended and found

benignity in Stalinism. Beatrice and Sidney Webb, George Bernard Shaw,
Harold Laski, Walter Duranty, and Romain Rolland, for example, all found
in Stalin’s plans potential accomplishment that would result in human
liberation. In fact, by the time of the coming of the Second World War
(1930-1945) and for some considerable time thereafter, it was held that one
of the defining properties of left-wing dictatorship was its benignity, and
that the violence and death that marred the history of the twentieth century
Introduction 5
was a consequence of right-wing political efforts. According to the

apologists, the distinction between left- and right-wing authoritarian
systems was that the former remained decent and humane, while the latter
fostered mayhem and brutality.
In retrospect, it is surprising how long such sentiments prevailed. Only with

the increasing availability of irrefutable evidence and confirmation by the
leaders of the Soviet Union itself, did the fiction of Stalin’s humanity
dissipate.
Some of the realization grew out of the recognition that one of the features
of left-wing, mass-mobilizing, developmental revolutions was its readiness
to literally destroy everything and everyone that had been the “establishment.”
A clear distinction that identified “left-wing,” mass-mobilizing, revolutionary,

national developmental systems was their disposition to utterly destroy what
had previously been the “establishment.” In the course of their revolution,
Lenin’s Bolsheviks extirpated Russia’s aristocracy and, in time, destroyed
or scattered the imperial military. After the revolution in the new Soviet
Union, the ruling Communist Party identified the kulaks—peasants deemed
advantaged by the possession of a few more acres than their neighbors, or
who owned cattle or agricultural mechanical devices—as “class enemies,”
the proper objects of suppression. Under Stalin, the kulaks had their
property confiscated. Some were forced to flee to the urban areas; others
were imprisoned or summarily executed.
By 1927, Stalin had hammered out an inflexible doctrine that was imposed
on all his subjects. It allowed neither deviation nor resistance, and involved
measures designed to preclude any such possibilities. Millions of persons
were disappeared, including resistant intellectuals, recalcitrant members of
the forced agricultural collectives, untold numbers of the proletariat, as well
as thousands of non-Bolshevik socialists labeled “enemies of the
revolution.” We have no certain statistics on the number of democides that
resulted from Stalin’s Great Terror, but they have been assessed in the tens
of millions.
When any of this was revealed at the time, the lay public was told that it
was undertaken in the service of “the working class.” It was somehow
described as intrinsically liberating and, as such, an embodiment of
ennobling “Enlightenment values.” A quarter of a century later, with much
6 Chapter One
the same conviction, Mao Zedong was held to be vested with that same
responsibility.
The other variants of revolutionary mass-mobilizing movements of the

period, both developmental and non-developmental alike to which allusion
has been made, were held to be “right-wing.” Fascists were believed to be
in league with the oppressors of society, having risen to power with the
seeming approval of the nation’s establishment. On the Italian peninsula,
King Victor Emmanuel had invited Mussolini to form a government, and
surrendered a representative democracy to an enduring, single-party
authoritarianism that would embroil the nation in a catastrophic war that
cost the lives of more than five hundred thousand of its young men, together
with thousands upon thousands of civilian casualties.
While the advocates of Fascism had spoken of its intention to uplift masses
and engender a new civilization, intellectuals in the West simply dismissed
those claims as “right-wing” apologetics for a destructive political
dictatorship. At the same time, there was little, if any, discussion concerning
the character of the “right wing” regime of Adolf Hitler’s National
Socialism. Hitler unleashed devastation on Europe of such an order as to
consume millions, most completely innocent of any offense. Jews and
gypsies, Slavs and the “unfit,” were universally consigned to death camps
where they perished.
Since the Second World War, only the revolutionary right is held to be evil.
Though born in a time of a dearth of information, the distinctions have
remained constant, irrespective of all contrary evidence—only the right is

the source of political violence and venom. The term, “Fascism,” has become
a staple of ordinary political discourse, employed without qualification as a
term whose reference is brutality and hatred. To this day any reference to
the “right-wing” conjures up images of death camps and genocide,
unmitigated oppression, violence and hatred. But the term’s commonplace
and indiscriminate usage obscures the shared properties that render the left-
and right-wing movements and regimes of the twentieth century variants of
the same political genus.
Revolutionary Mass Movements of the Twentieth Century

The revolutionary mass movements of the left and right that dominated the
history of the twentieth century shared significant and well confirmed
properties. With the notable exception of Hitler’s National Socialism, all of
Introduction 7
them were primarily developmental in intent, driven by an imperative to

create a fully articulated industrial economy out of one that was essentially
agrarian.
Although originally animated by Marxist doctrine that anticipated a

revolution in a mature industrial economy, the primitive economic
conditions of Russia very quickly converted Lenin to a developmental
alternative—the New Economic Policy (NEP). Begun in 1921, the NEP
arranged for a system that sought steadily increasing productivity through
the agency of a state-controlled but largely market-governed economy—of
private property ownership, generous concessions to foreign investors, a
regimented labor force, and compulsory doctrinal obedience required of the
general population. Though state-owned, factories were governed by more-
or-less traditional market signals. What was remarkable with all that was
not only the NEP’s singularly non-Marxist essence, but its similarity with
the system constructed by the Italian Fascists. Except for the differences
produced by historic circumstances, the two systems shared features that
identified them as variant members of developmental enterprise.
But the Soviet Union did not continue with Lenin’s New Economic Policy
for long. In the power struggle that followed Lenin’s death in January 1924,
Stalin at times supported the NEP, and at other times opposed it. By 1928,
Lenin’s quasi-capitalist economy was replaced by Stalin’s command
economy, in which private property and market signals were eliminated.
Whatever the modifications, however, Stalin’s command economy
remained one governed by a developmental imperative. It was an essentially
non-Marxist program, designed to preclude the possibility of resistance to

Bolshevik control. All property was “collectivized,” that is, state-owned, so
as not to serve as platforms of resistance to Party rule.
As a necessary consequence of Stalin’s changes, a market could no longer

function. Rather than market signals, production was to respond to
bureaucratic directives from the center. The imperative remained production,
with a system that was remarkably non-Marxist. There was nothing
remotely like workers’ control of production: Rather than representative
bodies of workers, the Soviets served as control agencies of the state. There
was no redistribution to assure that each would receive according to need.
There was not even the pretense of economic equality, nor any semblance
of democracy. It was a centrally controlled developmental system,
dominated by a charismatic leader who would rule for life, invested with
power over life or death.
8 Chapter One
This was the form of developmental dictatorship variations of which would

emerge in Asia with Mao Zedong and Pol Pot, in Eastern Europe under
Soviet occupation, and in the Caribbean with Fidel Castro. It was a system
that bore unmistakable similarities with that fashioned by Fascism, the
principal difference arising from the continued role of the commodity
market permitted in Italy.
Whatever the differences, all these developmental systems, of the left and
right, were state- and party-dominant. They were doctrinally fueled,
inflexibly authoritarian, and sustained by armed militias. They all sought
totalitarian control of opinion, the systematic inculcation of doctrine, and
the general uniformity of political behavior.
All of this grew out of the real or fancied requirements of rapid

industrialization and economic development. In capital-poor environments,
such systems sought to generate capital and transfer it to the requirements
of development. That necessitated strict control of consumption, which
offset any rise in the standard of living in the course of economic expansion.
Iron control of the population foreclosed any possibility of collective
resistance.
National Socialism, although itself not a developmental system, mimicked

the political forms such systems had assumed. Like other “right-wing”
members of the class, National Socialism was a single-party, charismatically-
led political system, with a largely market-governed economy. Among none
of the major right-wing variants of the developmental dictatorships did
either the capitalists or the wealthy dominate. At best, they were junior
partners in a party-dominant arrangement, subordinate to the inflexible rule
of the “Leader.”
In fact, developmental dictatorships, left or right, varied among themselves

in the character of their control, as well as their particular accomplishments
and deficits. The Soviet Union, for example, at great cost in material and
lives, succeeded in establishing sophisticated heavy industries that produced
the military wherewithal to resist Nazi Germany’s invasion until the
Western industrial nations could come to its defense. Mao’s China, on the
other hand, not only failed at its “great leaps” in economic development, but
exacted a cost of at least thirty million lives and the suffering of untold
millions more. Similarly, Pol Pot’s Democratic Kampuchea failed in every
economic measure, and took the lives of as much as one third of the
population.
Introduction 9
In the Caribbean, Fidel Castro’s attempt at economic development with

authoritarian controls never materialized. After more than half a hundred
years of one-party rule, Cuba’s work force remains predominantly
agricultural and service oriented, with only 23 percent involved in industry.
While the revolutionary government of Fidel Castro executed hundreds
upon taking power in Havana, and has since incarcerated thousands, the
system has chosen to exile, rather than execute, its dissidents. More than 10
percent of its total population has either voluntarily or been compelled to
flee the island nation. While it has significantly improved education and
medical care for a population sharing greater economic equality than in the
past, Cuba remains a largely agricultural single-commodity (sugar)
economy, with antique cars and hand-crafted tools.
In contrast, Fascist Italy undertook fairly comprehensive economic and

industrial development and, for more than a decade, was one of the most
successful systems in Europe, with one of the most advanced welfare
systems. Its means of controlling its population involved the “internal exile”
of dissidents from the metropolitan areas to rural regions. Political
executions were rare, and it was only with the coming of the Second World
War that Italy became involved in the discrimination against, and detention
of, Jews. Only with the German occupation did Fascists become complicit
in the murder of Jews. German troops collected Jews from Italian detention
camps and executed perhaps seven thousand.
With the end of the Second World War and the survival of developmental
dictatorships of the left, a number of authoritarian and developmental
systems arose in Africa and the Middle East which identified themselves as
“socialist.” Allowing private property and with an economy governed by
market signals, only the use of uncertain Marxist jargon led some to speak
of them as “leftist.”
The death of Stalin in 1953 caused immediate political decompression in

both Russia and its satellites. There was serious political unrest in the Soviet
dominated German Democratic Republic, as well as other similarly
circumstanced dependencies. When, a few years later, Nikita Khrushchev
revealed the full extent of Stalin’s enormities, the unrest spread throughout
central Europe.
Within the compass of these developments, the political, economic, and

military competition between left-wing revolutionary powers and liberal
democracies became increasingly demanding. For most of the time of the
10 Chapter One
Cold War (1947-1991), Western economists were convinced that the Soviet
bloc had the resources to survive the contest. During this period, both the
Soviet Union and China developed nuclear capabilities and the vehicles for
their delivery. At enormous expense for all concerned, there was nuclear
missile competition between the West and the revolutionary Eurasian
systems.
In the course of all this, tensions began to develop between the Soviet Union
and Mao Zedong’s People’s Republic of China. It became increasingly
obvious that post-Stalinist Russia was seeking some kind of accommodation
with the West. At the same time, Moscow sought to improve the overall
productivity of the Soviet Union. It was experimenting with economic
strategies that simulated the existence of a market. In the effort to improve
the general availability and quality of consumer goods, some sectors of the
economy were allowed to employ something like the traditional market;
others were made subject to experiments with computers, attempting to
simulate market signals.
The Chinese Communist Party observed all that with a jaundiced eye. It
concluded that Moscow had embarked on systemic revision, giving the
appearance of a reversion to capitalism. Mao began to speak of a
revisionism in the Soviet Union which not only threatened the security of
China, but the integrity of international revolution itself. Still smarting from
the failures attendant on the Great Leap Forward and the efforts by his
subordinates to limit his power, Mao mobilized the youth of China to a
reaffirmation of his revolution. He closed all the institutions of learning and
ordered the youth to undertake a “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” in

order to destroy the revisionists and “capitalist roaders” who had made their
appearance in China, as well as all elements and traces of traditional
China—the “four olds” of ideas, culture, habits, and customs. So inspired,
millions of Red Guards fanned out over China, destroying temples, libraries,
and antiquities, and despoiling the graves of long-dead emperors and
historic notables.
All of this was accompanied by continuous anti-Soviet rhetoric. Tensions

rose to the point that Sino-Soviet armed conflict became an evident
possibility when Chinese and Soviet troops massed along the northern
border that separated the two systems and exchanged fire. Although the
troops eventually stood down, Mao decided that prudence required an
alternative international strategy by making overtures to Washington, which
Introduction 11
led to a change in U.S. China policy by the administration of Richard Nixon,

resulting in the latter’s historic visit to China in 1972.
By that time, the Chinese military had brought an end to the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution. After Mao’s death in 1976, the twice-
purged Deng Xiaoping took control of the party, repudiated Mao’s
radicalism and, insisting that socialism is not poverty, began a reform to
industrialize the Chinese economy.
The communes of Mao’s failed Great Leap Forward were dismantled. Farm
families were allowed to undertake small manufactories to fabricate
agricultural utensils and household goods. Commodity markets reappeared
and, as manufacturing increased, foreign sales and investments were
allowed in “special economic zones” along the coast which very quickly
expanded to other parts of China. Rights akin to private property rights were
introduced.
By the turn of the decade, in 1981, China was operating a dual economy of
a state-owned sector that remained under the state’s bureaucratic control,
and a vital and growing sector that responded to individual initiative, the
profit motive, and market signals. Foreigners were allowed to invest in
China, to introduce modern marketing skills and corresponding technology.
As a consequence, China’s economy began growing at double-digit rates.
Possessed of a hardworking and competent population, as well as abundant
natural resources, China very rapidly constructed a suitable infrastructure
by implementing the most modern developmental strategies from its
industrialized neighbors—Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and South

Korea.
In 1981, the party undertook a reexamination of the Maoist era at the historic
Sixth Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee Meeting of the Chinese
Communist Party, and issued its summation, Resolution on Certain
Questions of our Party since the Founding of the People’s Republic of
China. According to the Resolution, the almost quarter century of Mao’s
rule had seriously impaired the nation’s development with excessive
“leftism.” Henceforth, China would undertake development under the
Communist Party’s “Four Cardinal Principles.” Whatever the economic
reform, the political system was to remain the monopolistic purview of the
Communist Party, with nationalism providing collective impetus.
12 Chapter One
Throughout approximately the same period, the Soviet Union suffered

persistent economic and political pressures that resulted in sclerosis and
dysfunction. In the 1970s and 1980s, governed by old and uninspiring Party
leaders, the Soviet Union’s economy slowly ground down to levels that left
the country with diminishing quantities of essential consumer commodities
of correspondingly diminishing quality.
During those years, Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-) moved upward through the
ranks of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) to achieve, by
1985, commanding station as General Secretary of the Party. Unlike many
Western specialists, Gorbachev was well aware of the deficiencies of the
Socialist command economy. To revive the sclerotic economy, he turned to
perestroika—a “restructuring” or “reform” of the Soviet Union’s productive
system.
In retrospect, it is not certain if Gorbachev had a specific plan for economic

reform. The restructuring he proposed was insistent, but without sure
content. On occasion he spoke of a decentralization of the system, with
regional producers assuming more responsibility in terms of capital
formation, product selection, price, and distribution. There were even rare
instances when he spoke of introducing market governance of production
into the system.
Along with economic perestroika, Gorbachev proposed an “opening”

(glasnost) of Soviet society, in which citizens would feel free to voice their
opinions without fear of reprisal. In the climate of increasing political
freedom, it was agreed that much of the political rationale produced to

justify the extant system had been a fiction. A Congress of People’s
Deputies was proposed, which would be popularly elected, endowed with
powers that hitherto had been reserved exclusively for the CPSU.
Within the increasing political turbulence, punctuated by the 1986 nuclear

disaster at Chernobyl, some of the Soviet Union’s constituent republics
began to speak of independence. The Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania,
and Estonia complained that their absorption into the Soviet Union as a
consequence of an agreement between Moscow and Berlin immediately
prior to the Second World War, was fundamentally illegal and constituted
an act of unwarranted international aggression. Soon, other republics made
similar claims. Armenians sought an ethnically united republic; Ukraine
made a demand for increased political independence and the right to fly its
own, rather than the Soviet, flag. Moldova, Georgia, Kazakhstan and
Introduction 13
Uzbekistan similarly advanced claims of national privilege and sovereign

rights.
Gorbachev made efforts to accommodate them all, leading to more and

more sweeping claims. In some instances, force was used to attempt to
extort compliance, but it employment was never truly successful. Hundreds
of thousands of protestors continued to resist Moscow. By the end of 1990,
the Soviet Union had largely disaggregated, the Warsaw Pact nations had
obtained their independence, as had most of the constituent republics of the
Soviet Union.
The CPSU broke into factions, their leaders making themselves heard in the
elective Congress of People’s Deputies. Boris Yeltsin (1931-2007) was one
of the most vocal and popular among them. A member of the CPSU from
1961, he was initially an ally of Gorbachev but, by 1990, had become
resolute in his opposition. In 1987, Yeltsin resigned as candidate member
of the CPSU’s Politburo. Still a leader in the CPSU’s regional party in
Moscow, he continued to advocate increased political liberalization and
began to speak of a market-governed economy.
In 1991, Yeltsin was popularly elected to the newly created post of President
of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic. When the politically
exhausted Gorbachev resigned in December of that same year, effectively
dissolving both the CPSU and the Soviet Union itself, Yeltsin became the
first president of what became known as the Russian Federation.
Almost the first thing the new president undertook to accomplish was to
restore private property and open the nation’s productive system to market
forces. In the whirlwind of confusion that ensued, state-owned property was
selectively distributed and acquired by individuals and groups of
individuals, establishing them as system “oligarchs.”
By that time, what had been the economy of the Soviet Union had contracted
to about half its past productivity—in size and output, its economy
compared with that of Italy or California. The numbers enlisted in the
military had declined in equal measure; the air force declined in similar
measure, for lack of maintenance and spare parts; the naval forces rusted in
port. With all that, Yeltsin’s popularity plummeted. In October 1998,
military forces attempted a coup to stop what they anticipated would be a
total disintegration of Russia. Although the coup attempt was thwarted,
14 Chapter One
Yeltsin was politically spent. In December 1999, he resigned, designating

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (1952-) as his successor.
The Close of an Era in Europe

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the era of developmental
dictatorships in Europe came to a close. By that time virtually every nation
on the Continent had attained substantial, if not full, industrial maturity.
Though devastated by the Second World War, with their cities reduced to
rubble, the major countries of Europe revivified themselves to productive
vitality. In such circumstances, and unlike the conditions that prevailed at
the end of the First World War, there was no impetus to impose totalitarian
controls on entire populations in the effort to achieve economic
development.
Those countries that had fallen outside the Soviet orbit at the conclusion of
the Second World War simply returned to the forms of representative
democracy that had prevailed before the conflict. Germany and Italy
behaved very much as though nothing of consequence had intervened. The
post-war political systems they assumed looked and functioned very much
as those before the advent of National Socialism and Fascism, but with a
recognition of what had happened during their respective interregnums of
revolutionary dictatorships.
With the disappearance of the Soviet Union, all the states that had been in
its trammels were expected, upon release, to revert to representative
democratic forms, even in cases where they had never before been
representative democracies. So confident were some in the West of a
universal prevalence of liberal democracies that they anticipated a world
without ideologies. Francis Fukuyama, in a much-publicized and -touted
1989 National Interest essay, “The End of History,” which was expanded
into the 1992 The End of History and the Last Man, celebrated the
“unabashed victory of economic and political liberalism” and pronounced
that: 4
What we may be witnessing, is not just the end of the Cold War, or the
passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as
such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the
universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human
government.
Introduction 15
And yet, towards the end of the century, political movements identified as
populist began to take shape within the representative democracies of the
West. Fukuyama had defined “ideology” as “not restricted to the secular
and explicit political doctrines we usually associate with the term, but can
include religion, culture, and the complex of moral values underlying any
society as well.”5 By that definition, the ideas and concerns of populist
movements certainly qualify as ideologies.
Defining Populism
By the first years of the twenty-first century, it is said that populism “has
spread like wildfire throughout the world.”6 For a phenomenon so recent,
there are already hundreds of volumes and articles devoted to the subject,
and some of the best scholars involved in the enterprise.7 The belief is that
we are witnessing unusual political developments that require special
conceptual definition.
But like so many words in politics, the word “populism” has little consensus
in meaning. As political scientists Cas Mudde and Cristobal Rovira
Kaltwasser observed:8
Populism is one of the main political buzzwords of the 21st century. The term
is used to describe left-wing presidents in Latin America, right-wing
challenger parties in Europe, and both left-wing and right-wing presidential
candidates in the United States. But while the term has great appeal to many
journalists and readers alike, its broad usage also creates confusion and
frustration.
Adding to the conceptual problem is the intrusion of normative judgment into

discussions of populism. As Peter C. Baker of The Guardian put it,
“Tellingly, most writing about populism presumes an audience
unsympathetic to populism,” which is portrayed as “like something from a
horror film”—“an alien bacteria” that is poisoning political life and
infecting new ranks of easily-manipulated, gullible voters.9
An effort to define populism might begin with the word’s Latin root—
populus or people. Accordingly, the word “people” is prominent in
dictionaries’ lexical definitions of populism. As an example, The Oxford
Dictionary defines populism as “The quality of appealing to or being aimed
at ordinary people.”10
16 Chapter One
The “populism” label has its roots in the People’s Party, a political party
formed in the early 1890s by aggrieved farmers in southern and western
United States who felt neglected by politicians and bankers.
The farmers first formed the Farmers’ Alliance to advance their complaints.
They held that the major financial institutions in the northeast, with their
insistence on maintaining a gold standard for currency, made it difficult to
obtain and repay credit. The farmers objected to the railroads charging
arbitrary rates for the transport of goods—rates that would vary without
warning, which made earning a livelihood precarious. They accused
politicians of ignoring their complaints and favoring heavily populated
urban areas. They chafed at the political arrangement wherein senators, two
of whom ostensibly represented each state, were appointed instead of
elected by the people—a situation that the farmers believed led to the
senators having little incentive to serve their rural constituencies.
To rectify the wrongs, the farmers called for a progressive income tax,
government ownership of railroad and telegraph systems, direct election of
senators, and a host of other measures to make government more responsive
to their needs. But the ensconced political and financial elites refused to
consider the farmers’ demands.
All of this came together in the early 1890s when the Farmers’ Alliance
formed a political party that could directly address their concerns in
Washington, D.C. The farmers called their nascent party the People’s Party,
which colloquially became known as the Populists.
A distinguishing attribute of the People’s Party was its nonrevolutionary

character. Unlike the revolutionary movements that marked the twentieth
century, the American populists sought neither to radically transform polity
and society, nor did they employ violence to achieve their ends. Instead,
they were committed to work within the democratic system through
legislative intervention, the courts, and the ballot.
Throughout the twentieth century, every revolutionary had claimed to speak

for “the people” against their oppressors. Fascists, National Socialists, and
Marxists of all and sundry sorts all claimed to defend the “true” people
against their tormentors. But the most immediate attribute that distinguished
the revolutionaries from populists was the former’s readiness to invoke
violence to accomplish their purpose, whereas populists typically eschew
Introduction 17
violence, seeking instead to redress specific grievances via the

institutionalized due processes of electoral democracies.
Twentieth century revolutionaries also differed from populists by the fact

that they sought to accomplish projects, as distinct from policies. The
former were grand, transformative undertakings that engaged immense
human and material resources over decades in time. Fascist and Marxist
developmental nationalists committed their entire populations to economic
modernization and industrialization, while National Socialists anticipated
the conquest of vast territories, the displacement of entire populations, and
the refurbishment of at least a continent.
In contrast, the American agrarian populists and the populists of the twenty-
first century were in no way as enterprising. To rectify perceived wrongs,
populists think in terms of election cycles in pursuit of policies that are
limited in time and scope. While there may be instances in which populist
policies border on the projects of revolution, they are not so abundant that
they create irremediable conceptual confusion.
To realize their transformative ambitions, revolutionaries required and

mobilized durable constituencies, whereas populists have little choice other
than to try to win the support of fickle voters. Revolutionaries constructed
organizations supported by complex ideologies that provided the rationale
for their utopian projects. National Socialists made weighty tomes on social
Darwinism and race science available to Party members and youth groups
to convince them of the necessity for the revolutionary projects. Fascists
produced disquisitions on the theory of the state and the complexities of

economic and industrial development in the effort to inspire convinced
conformity. Similarly, revolutionary Marxists disseminated doctrinal
literature to inculcate belief and commitment in both Party members and the
masses.
Their commitment to time- and material-demanding projects, in turn,

required complex and permanent brick-and-mortar party structures to
house, train and sustain a substantial membership, supported with durable
funding. Populist organizations, on the other hand, given their transient
membership and the currency of their policies, do not require the same
investment in a fixed infrastructure or corps of trained cadre. And although
both revolutionary and populist movements typically are led by charismatic
leaders, populist leaders tend to eschew independently established political
18 Chapter One
organizations, preferring temporary and less expensive combinations for

episodic employment.
These distinctions between revolutionary and populist movements provide

a criterial definition of populism, but they miss an essential attribute of
populism. There is a simpler way to define populism, which is to define the
concept by its opposite—elitism.
The Oxford Dictionary defines “elitism” as “The belief that a society or

system should be led by an elite” and “The superior attitude or behaviour
associated with an elite.” “Elite” is defined as “A group or class of people
seen as having the most power and influence in a society, especially on
account of their wealth or privilege.”11
Mudde and Kaltwasser pointed out that despite the lack of scholarly
agreement on the defining attributes of populism, there is a general
agreement that all forms of populism include some kind of appeal to “the
people” and a denunciation of “the elite.” In other words, populism views
society as separated into two antagonistic camps—"the pure people” versus
“the corrupt elite.”12
Indeed, the Oxford Dictionary identifies elitism as central to the definition

of populism. Accordingly, populism refers to “A political approach that
strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are
disregarded by established elite groups,” while populist refers to “A person,
especially a politician, who strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel
that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups.”13
Populism is conventionally subdivided into two broad categories: those of

the left and those of the right. Left-wing populism conceives “the people”
and their oppressors in terms of economic classes—there are oppressed and
oppressing classes. Right-wing populism tends to speak of “the people” as
the nation, and their elite oppressors as foreign aliens or domestic anti-
nationalist globalists. Nationalism—an ideology of self-determination that
demands recognition and autonomy as a separate people14—is a recurrent,
expressed sentiment among many populists, which helps to explain the
visceral disdain with which populism is held by the advocates of class
politics and by globalists. The present volume focuses on political populism
of the right—in Russia, Central Europe (Poland and Hungary), Western
Europe (United Kingdom, Italy and France), and the United States.
Introduction 19
In summary, populism is defined in this volume as a political movement of

an aggrieved population, which is anti-elitist and anti-globalist, non-violent
and non-revolutionary, committed to electoral democracy, and seeks to
effect change through elections, legislations and the courts. Membership in
populist movements is changeable and transient, which makes the
movement’s duration and impact fleeting instead of enduring.
As a concept, the notion of populism will remain open-textured and loosely

framed. Political science is not geometry. Students of the social sciences
must tolerate a measure of vagueness and ambiguity in what is largely an
ordinary-language discipline. The compensation is that whatever the
shortcomings of populism as a concept, it does allow us to store and retrieve
information, predict some outcomes, and act with a measure of rationality
in complex and demanding situations.
Notes
1 R. J. Rummel, Death by Government (NY: Routledge, 1997), p. 9.
2 Irving Louis Horowitz, “Foreword,” in Ibid., p. xiii.
3 For further reading, see A. James Gregor, The Faces of Janus: Marxism and
Fascism in the Twentieth Century (Yale University Press, 2000); Fascism and
History: Chapters in Concept Formation (Cambridge Scholars Publishing: 2019);
The Fascist Persuasion in Radical Politics. (Princeton University Press: 1974);
Italian Fascism and Developmental Dictatorship (Princeton University Press:
1979); Marxism and the Making of China: A Doctrinal History (Palgrave
Macmillan: 2014); Marxism, Fascism, and Totalitarianism: Chapters in the
Intellectual History of Radicalism (Stanford University Press: 2009); and Maria Hsia
Chang, The Labors of Sisyphus: The Economic Development of Communist China
(New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1998).
4 Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History?,” The National Interest, Summer 1989,
p. 1,
https://www.embl.de/aboutus/science_society/discussion/discussion_2006/ref1-
22june06.pdf. Retrieved July 21, 2020.
5 Ibid., p. 3.
6 Barry Eichengreen, The Populist Temptation: Economic Grievance and Political
Reaction in the Modern Era (Oxford University Press, 2018),

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-populist-temptation-
9780190866280?cc=us&lang=en&#. Retrieved July 23, 2020.
7 See, for example, Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason. (Verso, Reprint Edition,
2018); Cas Mudde and Cristoval Rovira Kaltwasser. Populism: A Very Short
Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017); Jan-Werner Müller, What
is Populism? (University of Pennsylvania, 2016); and Paul Taggart, Populism (Open
University Press, 2000).
8 Mudde and Kaltwasser, Populism: A Very Short Introduction, op. cit., p. 1.
20 Chapter One
9 Peter C. Baker, “’We the People’: the battle to define populism,” The Guardian,
January 10, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/jan/10/we-the-people-
the-battle-to-define-populism. Retrieved July 24, 2020.
10 “Populism,” Lexico, https://www.lexico.com/definition/populism. Retrieved July
23, 2020.
11 “Elitism” and “elite,” Lexico, op. cit., https://www.lexico.com/definition/elitism
and https://www.lexico.com/definition/elite. Retrieved November 13, 2020.

12 Mudde and Kaltwasser, Populism: A Very Short Introduction, op. cit., pp. 5-6.
13 “Populism” and “Populist,” Lexico, op. cit.
14 Arthur Keith, “Nationality and Race: From an Anthropologist’s Point of View,” a
lecture to the Oxford University Junior Scientific Club (London: Oxford University
Press, 1919), p. 6. For more on the definitions of nation and nationalism, see Maria
Hsia Chang, Return of the Dragon: China’s Wounded Nationalism (Boulder, CO:
Westview Press), chapter 2: “On Nationalism”.
CHAPTER TWO
POPULISM OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION
A. JAMES GREGOR
It was common knowledge that in the time leading up to the First World
War, Tsarist Russia had experienced a popular protest movement that was
a mélange of socialist and broadly democratic sentiment, involving the
peasantry and a coterie of urban intellectuals who supplied motivation.
What had been sought at the time was political change for an economic
system more responsive to the demand for equity. Most impressive was the
fact that the form assumed by the protest was popular—involving members
of the general population pitted against established political leadership. A
general resemblance was perceived between that protest and the protest that
brought Boris Yeltin to power and sealed the end of the Soviet Union. As a
result of the perceived similarity, it was early decided that the emergent
political form might conveniently be identified as populist. Analysts
suggested that Yeltsin’s rise had been the product of a spontaneous protest
that in substance was a modern expression of the populist movement of the
Narodniki—late nineteenth century intellectuals who imagined that they

might, by agitation, precipitate a revolutionary awakening among the
peasantry of Romanov Russia. The Narodniks conceived themselves “going
to the people (narod)” to awaken them to the possibility of systemic change.
With the gradual disaggregation of the Soviet Union through the decade of
the 1990s, social science failed in every manner in which it could fail. Not
a single recognized political scientist had predicted the collapse and
disappearance of the USSR. We had misunderstood all the signs that we
now, in retrospect, seem to clearly understand. Seeking not to fail again,
political and social scientists have chosen to study populism with renewed
vigor.
Yeltsin and his followers appeared to be a contemporary version of the

Russian populism of the late nineteenth century. Like the Narodniks, Yeltsin
22 Chapter Two
had “gone to the people” and succeeded in mobilizing inert masses toward
a nonviolent transformation of the prevailing political arrangement. The
movement that carried Yeltsin to power clearly distinguished itself from the
arrangement it replaced. The entire sequence that rode the crest of popular
sentiment was essentially electoral and non-violent, though no less
transformative than a violent alternative.
But historians quickly indicated that the differences between the two
political manifestations in Russian history were sufficiently emphatic to
render comparison problematic. The Narodniks, for example, sought to
mobilize the peasantry, not for peaceful activity, but for the overthrow of
the Romanov dynasty and the instauration of a kind of agricultural socialism
that would result in the universal redistribution of land, and the
establishment of the village commune as the central institution of a new
egalitarian order.
In fact, so implausible was the entire Narodnik program that very soon the
urban-based leadership of the movement was compelled to opt for
alternative strategies. Rather than the simple persuasion of the peasantry to
achieve their purpose, the intellectuals were driven to organize terroristic
cells, convinced that rather than peasant appeal, violence would compel the
monarchy to concede the changes sought. In 1877, their terrorist strategy
culminated in the assassination of the Tsar. Rather than concessions, the
authorities reacted with repression so severe that Narodnism, for all intents
and purposes, was extinguished.
Most analysts concluded that the history of the Narodniks really revealed
little affinity with, and could not be helpful in informing us about the
contemporary dynamics, the population and the leadership that produced
the events that resulted in the Yeltsin presidency. The populism of the
Narodniks did not seem to reveal anything that might be helpful in
explaining the appearance or the course of the political movement that
brought Yeltsin to power. If the term “populism,” understood to refer to the
Russian Narodniks, is employed as a sorting concept, the results would be
confusing and unconvincing. An alternative historical instance would have
to be sought to discharge that cognitive function. In fact, just such an
alternative was forthcoming.
One of the more notable political events of the twenty-first century was the
rise of Vladimir Putin to power as President of the Russian Federation, the
successor to the Soviet Union. The very appearance of the Russian
Populism of the Russian Federation 23
Federation was itself arresting, replacing as it did a seemingly durable,

unitary-party, authoritarian regime that was one of the two major global
military powers at the time. The transition from the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics to the Russian Federation was accomplished with
remarkably little violence, as was Putin’s accession to power in 1999
without resistance.
Vladimir Putin frequently is identified in the professional literature as a

populist. In order to indicate its special character, his populism is often
distinguished by an antecedent qualifier. Among the qualifiers employed,
“sovereign,” “authoritarian” and “illiberal” are perhaps the most frequent.
The fact that his populism requires qualification is significant in itself. For
the purposes of analysis, more important than how his presumed populism
is qualified is the fact that both its advent and its history have been unusual.
The recession of Soviet rule was largely the result of the efforts of Boris
Yeltsin who, by exploiting popular sentiment over the course of a decade,
managed to erode public support for the prevailing Communist system.
Through behaviors now considered populist, he undermined public
acquiescence to continued rule by the Communist Party establishment. By
supporting the systemic reforms initiated by Mikael Gorbachev, Yeltsin
identified himself with the broad sentiments of the non-party public. Given
the opportunity to freely express their interests, the general public sought
relief from the Soviet system in the introduction of market governance of
production.
Yeltsin seemed to intuitively appreciate that the success of reforms would

irreversibly transform the offending system. Anticipating resistance by the
establishment, he appealed to the general public to support his efforts, and
prepared to organize what proved to be successful resistance against
restorative coup attempts.
Yeltsin’s political activities were accompanied by familiar populist

posturing—unaffected speech, engaging directly with the public, riding
public transportation rather than government limousines, lunching in local
eateries rather than in dining facilities hosting political celebrities, traveling
in public without security guards, and making overt representations against
those intrusive “oligarchs” who had arisen with the disappearance of the
Soviet Union’s bureaucratic apparatchiks—all of which seemed to generate
a significant measure of public approval. His two elections to the presidency
24 Chapter Two
before the final dissolution of the Soviet Union were made with substantial
electoral majorities of over fifty percent of total votes cast.
Between the first and second elections, Yeltsin’s presidency was afflicted
by a multiplicity of grave and complex problems ranging from difficulties
attending the transition from the inclusive one-party state to a federated,
representative republic riven by factions and afflicted by separatist
impulses. Adding to Yeltsin’s challenges was his attempt to fit the
Commonwealth of Independent States that sought to politically retain the
constituent republics of the former Soviet Union in an alternative structure.
As the old system dissolved, a new system struggled between, and among,
the three branches of the newly proposed representative democracy.
At the same time, the productive system was undergoing a transformation

from a command to a market-guided economy, as state-owned assets were
sold to individuals in a process that remains clouded to this day. A team of
foreign consultants sought to rationalize the process, but apparently could
not. In any event, the economy suffered under the changes. There was
massive capital flight coupled with what appeared to be corruption on an
unprecedented scale. At the same time, there was a decline in the
international price of oil—the principal marketable resource of the
Federation. Unemployment beset the working population, and public
services, ranging from medical care to security, diminished in catastrophic
measure. The life conditions of almost one-third of the entire population fell
below the poverty level. Food was in short supply, alcohol and drug use
increased dramatically, malnourishment became common, the birth rate
plummeted, and mortality rates escalated. All these problems were

compounded because of the massive loss of operating capital. The impact
of all those tensions generated resistance among the new system’s
politicians and resulted in a call for the impeachment of President Yeltsin.
Throughout all of this, Yeltsin also had to wrestle with the special problems
that attended the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Chechnya, for example,
had opted for complete independence, and by the time of Yeltsin’s
presidency was prepared to employ military and terroristic violence to
secure its purpose.
Yeltsin attempted to suppress Chechen separatism by military force. His

initial resistance to the threats of Chechen violence was well received by his
constituency until combatant and noncombatant casualties began to mount.
The Russian troops sent to suppress the Chechen separatists were conscripts
—ill-trained, ill-armed, and indifferently led. They performed poorly, and

were finally withdrawn, leaving the issue of Chechen independence
unresolved.
The decline in the international price of oil generated economic difficulties

that added to the increasing political turmoil. At the same time, Yeltsin’s
personal physical problems multiplied. He was seen less and less in public,
and when he was seen, appeared more and more reticent, distracted, and
increasingly aloof. It was evident that by 1999, Boris Yeltsin was politically
spent.
Analysts had never been comfortable with Yeltsin. The discomfort arose not
necessarily because of his personal behavior, but out of the
acknowledgment of the unfamiliar political properties of the system that
harbored him. While the system displayed some of the features of
representative democracy, it seemed far less predictable, as though the
participants somehow misunderstood their roles or had misplaced some
relevant script.
Yeltsin was president by popular choice. He was, in fact, the first popularly
elected leader of Russia in a thousand years—all of which rendered the
character of his tenure entirely unchartered. Although generally supported
by western representative democracies during his tenure, Yeltsin was beset
by indigenous coup attempts as well as armed uprisings. The security of his
office seemed to hang on nothing more than the irregular sensibilities of a
volatile public who oscillated between giving him their support and
tentative tolerance. Yeltsin clearly was not vested with anything like
traditional authority. Neither he, nor the people of Russia, appeared
comfortable with the new political arrangements.
In the Russian Federation, the institutional environment had become

increasingly unfamiliar. Gone were the rigidities and accompanying
assurances of one-party authority. Continuities seemed to have devolved
into episodes, and rule had become a function of personal popularity.
Yeltsin’s initial introduction of elective, representative political institutions
into what had been authoritarian Russia, together with the implementation
of a market-governed economy for what had been a command system,
seemed to bring him popular approval and political security. During one of
those periods of security, he presented himself as a political “independent,”
abandoned his membership in the Communist Party, and even banned the
party’s activities altogether. A short time later, however, his political
26 Chapter Two
survival became tenuous as popular support eroded from a sharp decline in

Russia’s economic activity and the government defaulting on international
financial obligations.
All of which took a toll on Yeltsin’s health. Almost immediately after his
second election to the presidency in 1996, he underwent complex cardiac
surgery. Soon after, he resigned from the presidency.
Yeltsin had never been in full control of his cabinet. Turnover was high,
which suggested indecisiveness and fecklessness on his part. He had several
prime ministers, the last of whom was Vladimir Putin. When Yeltsin retired,
he chose Putin as his replacement.
Vladimir Putin and Populism

In December 1999, Boris Yeltsin decided to resign his responsibilities and
appointed Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin interim President of the
Russian Federation. Putin inherited an office that had been won, at least in
significant measure, by populist appeal. But Putin was not heir to that
popularity. At the time of his accession, his popularity in polls was
measured in single digits. Nonetheless, Putin has been deemed a populist by
many analysts, and Putin himself seems to favor (or suffer) populism in
some form.
Immediately before he assumed the presidency, Putin affirmed his absolute

commitment to representative democracy. In a brief biographical essay
written at the time, he renounced the Marxist-Leninist system that preceded

him, deeming it anachronistic and unsuitable for the modern world. While
he lamented the catastrophic consequences of its disappearance, he
expressed no investment in its restoration.
For Putin, the collapse of the Soviet Union had been catastrophic for a
number of reasons. He deplored the scattering of the ethnic Russian
population over what is now spoken of as Russia’s “near afar”—the
republics that, for decades, had been integral parts of the former Soviet
Union. Putin’s sentiment appears genuine and enduring, and expresses the
nationalism that is at the center of his political convictions.
Together with the sense of loss that arises from the Russian diaspora is the
recognition that the disintegration of the Soviet Union brought with it an
erosion of international political status. For half a century Marxist-Leninist
Russia was an arbiter of global affairs; by the first years of the new century,
however, it had been reduced to a country of modest pretention, with an
economy about the size of that of Italy, and a military incapable of
suppressing revolution within its own boundaries. Worse still, Russia faces
irreversible demographic decline with its population reduced to half that of
the United States, along with rising mortality rates and declining birth rates.
Poverty remained oppressive, afflicting almost fifty percent of the general
population. Russia had become a nation in political, economic, military, and
demographic eclipse.
Putin faced an assortment of problems that threatened the very survival of

Russia as an historic continuity—problems that could not be easily
remedied, but required simultaneous, rather than sequential, resolution. To
restart the economy while it suffered persistent and massive capital flight
was almost impossible. If the problems with the economy could not be
solved, the issues with poverty, mortality and the birth rate could not be
addressed; and without the resolution of the economic problems, the
military issue could not be considered.
Putin chose the restoration of the nation’s economy as his first responsibility.
For almost a decade, the growth of the Federation’s economy, measured in
terms of the nominal gross domestic product (GDP), registered about seven
percent per annum. The extent of poverty correspondingly diminished.
Mortality rates were reduced with the increased availability of medical
services. Unemployment was ameliorated. In general, Putin’s efforts were
impressive and won the approval of Russia’s general population.
All of that was accomplished in the context inherited from Yeltsin’s rule.
Whatever Yeltsin had accomplished was jeopardized by military weakness.
But centrifugal forces threatening the integrity of political control, along
with the suppression of separatist impulse in the republics, ethnic enclaves,
and districts, required either the convincing threat or the actual employment
of military force.
Putin recognized the problems he had inherited from Yeltsin. (1) Yeltsin’s
failed attempt to suppress the Chechen separatists caused him vital popular
support. (2) Russia’s military capabilities had become dangerously impaired.
(3) To maintain and foster public support, the Russian government would
be required to field a military capable of controlling whatever threats,
internal or external, might arise. That alone would require (4) the total
28 Chapter Two
rehabilitation of the Russian economy, with special emphasis on heavy

industry and advanced technology.
To resolve the inherited problems would be a major project—that of the

reconstruction and rehabilitation of the Russian nation. It was a national
project as demanding as any of the projects assumed by the one-party
revolutionary systems of the twentieth century, the critical difference being
Putin’s project was to be undertaken in the context of a populist political
system that is measured in electoral cycles of popular approval and public
sentiment. As a consequence, one can only expect the behavior of Putin’s
populism to be different from that of other populisms.
Like most populists, Putin is a nationalist. His is a restorative nationalism—

animated by irredentist urges, symbolic enhancements, and exalted
aspirations—and a wounded nationalism that seeks remedy. It is a
nationalism that rests on a foundation of regular allusions to those times
when Russian culture and Russian power had shaped the civilized world.
That nationalism constitutes the abiding substance of Putin’s political

beliefs. He has no ideology to speak of, if an ideology is understood to be
an articulated coherence of empirical claims and normative imperatives that
have prescriptive purpose. The absence of ideology was another of the
inheritance from the Yeltsin regime. At the time of the founding of the
Federation, Yeltsin specifically rejected any notion that the new state
required an informing ideology. Familiar as he was with the nature and
function of a formal ideology—having been one of the highest ranking
leaders of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union—Yeltsin insisted that

the new representative system that was in the process of realization would
have little use for such a legitimating rationale.
Putin has raised no objection to that judgment. Although he makes regular

reference to his wounded nationalism, he does not support his convictions
with an articulated ideology. On occasion, as a case in point, when it serves
his purpose, he will suggest that Russia is Eurasian in orientation and
specifically speaks of the Eurasian doctrine of Lev Gumilev, but never
identifies with it. When he wishes to emphasize either Russia’s uniqueness
or its Eurasian origins, Putin will speak of the Mongol influence on the
historic generation of the Russian state. At other times, when it suits his
purpose, he will emphasize Russia’s specific European affinities.
In fact, Putin’s nationalism shares many properties with the nationalism of

pre-Soviet Russia. It displays the same mixture of elements, together with
the invocation of an endemic political authoritarianism. There are some
features of the nineteenth century Slavophile tradition, mixed with
fragments of the thought of Nikolai Danilevsky and the pronouncements of
Fyodor Dostoyevsky—all resurfacing in Putin’s public speeches and
interviews.
But Putin’s nationalism does not possess an identifiable ideological

character. It is eclectic, sharing the properties of a generic wounded
nationalism. Other than some specific properties, it is the kind of
nationalism one would expect to find among contemporary populists. It is
basically sentimental and opportunistic. It will exploit intellectual resources
without necessarily investing in them. It will be assertive and aggressive
when Putin deems it necessary to affect his purpose.
In recent years, Putin has made use of, among others, the political thought
of Ivan Ilyin (1883-1954). Putin refers to Ilyin in major addresses, and
makes affirmative references to Ilyin’s anti-Soviet work, Our Tasks. Ilyin
was a convinced Christian, as were most of the pre- and anti-Soviet
nationalists. Similarly, Putin’s nationalism has a prominent cultural
component, of which religion constitutes a significant expression, as
evidenced in Putin’s establishment of an enduring relationship with the
Russian Orthodox Church.
In a major public demonstration of respect, Putin had Ilyin’s body

transported from Switzerland where it had been buried, to be interred in

Moscow. None of these affirmative expressions of approval, however,
commits Putin to Ilyin’s ideology. Although Putin clearly identifies with
some elements of Ilyin’s thought, the evidence does not indicate Ilyin is
Putin’s philosopher. Putin’s political thought is far too rich in variation and
shades of emphasis to identify with a single source.
Not being ideologically grounded, Putin’s nationalism is essentially

opportunistic. Its irredentist intentions are clear—Putin means to restore as
much of the original Russian empire as possible, but only when the effort
does not jeopardize his overall enterprise. At the same time, his nationalism
is not simply a sentiment of irredentism—the restoration of “lost”
territories—but is an expression of a security imperative as well. With the
disintegration of the Soviet Union, Russia suddenly found itself without
security in depth. In Eastern Europe, its potential enemies have camped on
30 Chapter Two
Russia’s borders. Where the Soviet Union enjoyed a deep, surrounding

perimeter, staffed by armed satellite allies in Europe, the Russian Federation
finds itself with a border occupied by potential military opponents
permanently established on its doorstep. Putin’s response has been perfectly
predictable: He has sought to secure territory that he is convinced is
essential to Russia’s immediate defense. Crimea, in Ukraine, is a case in
point.
When Ukraine separated itself from the Commonwealth of Independent

States, the issue of the naval base at Sevastopol became critical. Sevastopol
had served as a naval base for the Soviet Union for half-a-hundred years.
Since Russia has no secure access to warm water ports, the naval base at
Sevastopol in Crimea has been essential to its defense by providing support
facilities that allow Russian combat vessels access to the Mediterranean.
Moved by the defense urgency of the issue, Putin ordered an occupation of

the peninsula during the first months of 2014, which provoked the
imposition of economic sanctions on the Russian Federation by a
constellation of Western representative democracies. Moscow’s unflinching
response is evidence of Putin’s seriousness of purpose.
As a result of all this, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has
moved fully operational multinational combat forces to positions in Poland
and the Baltic States. As critical as these territories may be for a robust
forward defense of Russia, they can no longer serve. Any effort by Moscow
to regain access would immediately provoke response by NATO’s armed
forces. However much moved by its security concerns, Moscow will find it
difficult to act with any independence in Eastern Europe or the Baltic region.
The West is aware of Putin’s dispositions—an awareness that, in the future,
must function as part of NATO’s strategic calculations.
One of Putin’s principal concerns is the security of the Russian Federation.

In addition to a deepening of the Federation’s security perimeter via the
naval base at Sevastopol in Crimea, Putin has assembled a program that
maximizes Russia’s deterrent capabilities. He has publicly argued that the
lethality of Russia’s response serves as a deterrent to any aggression. Putin
speaks of an inventory of hypersonic, precision-guided nuclear missiles,
forever prepared for launch from both concealed and mobile sites. There is
every evidence of the substantial credibility of Putin’s claims, which make
an armed attack on the Russian Federation an unlikely eventuality. That
suggests, in turn, that Putin will have considerable room to maneuver, both
politically and militarily, for the foreseeable future.
Given the intrinsic irredentism of his nationalism, one would have to

anticipate some restorative efforts on Putin’s part. At present, Ukraine
seemingly occupies his initiatives. Although Putin does not seem to wish to
provoke a full-scale conflict, conventional or otherwise, still the danger of
armed conflict is always present.
Putin, as an aggrieved nationalist, believes that Russia has suffered a cosmic

wrong. In his judgment, Russia has been reduced from being an historic
center of culture and civilization to marginal status, in a world preoccupied
with material, rather than spiritual, satisfactions. To fully redress that
grievance, Russia requires a restoration of its status as a world power.
Putin’s Project
Putin’s political conduct is informed by a sustained commitment to a
durable and demanding project. Unlike the typical populist, Putin has
chosen to enlist himself in a project requiring an indeterminate length of
time as well as the investment of exacting human and material capital. At
the same time, Putin has found himself constrained by the limitations
imposed by the democratic constitution that legitimates the Russian
Federation. The result has been a series of “illiberal” political behaviors
duly recorded by his domestic and foreign opponents.
When, in September 1999, Putin was preparing to assume political

responsibility for the Federation, a series of massive explosions destroyed
blocks of occupied apartments, killing hundreds and wounding thousands.
The timing of the explosions assured the death of sleeping victims, both
adults and children alike. An implacable sense of anguish precipitated a
collective call for vengeance from the citizens of the Federation.
According to the authorities, the perpetrators of the attack were Chechen

separatists, against whom Yeltsin had been ineffective. Putin saw how
Yeltsin’s political circumstances had been undermined by that failed war,
and fully understood that dealing with Chechen terrorism was of
incalculable significance to his political future. Putin embarked on a savage
and unrelenting war of suppression, dispatching the best of the Russian
military to Chechnya. The Russian air force indiscriminately bombed
Chechen cities, including Grozny, the capital. Casualties numbered in the
32 Chapter Two
many thousands. The Chechens were defeated, and a traumatized

submissiveness settled on the population.
The Russian population was supportive. Terrorists had been punished, and
the Russian military had demonstrated its prowess. Putin, who had been
largely unknown before the Second Chechen War, received superlative
ratings at its conclusion. It was an experience that could only fix several
convictions among his beliefs. Yeltsin’s First Chechen War had demonstrated
the inadequacies of the then-current Russian military forces, which
humiliated the Federation. It became Putin’s purpose to rehabilitate the
Russian military. He interpreted public response to the war as evidence of
the public’s demand for security, and was convinced that if he planned to
rule effectively, he would have to deploy a world-class military.
Putin was also aware that if he were to attempt the rehabilitation of a

seriously depleted military, he would have to revive the Federation’s
economy that had been grievously impaired by the disintegration of the
Soviet Union. In effect, by the time he assumed the presidency of the
Russian Federation, Putin had put together the elements of a formidable and
complex project. He must also have been aware that the political system he
was to rule would be a constraint on his efforts. As has been suggested in
this chapter, populist political arrangements make little provision for
working on enduring projects, but instead are conformed to deal with
transient policies.
When, in 1999, Putin assumed the presidency of the Russian Federation, he

was well aware of the ills that plagued his unhappy nation, a mere shadow
of the former Soviet Union. In control of only part of the economy of what
once was a composite community, the productivity of the Russian
Federation had seriously diminished.
Putin very early realized that restoring the nation’s economy and
reestablishing its security required more extensive controls than those made
available by the populist arrangements he had inherited. Seeking to restore
and enhance productivity, for example, would require more than a response
to popular cues—it required the systematic and controlled mobilization of
the population, as well as the resources of the nation. All of this would
require an extended period of time and the organized compliance of the
populace.
The essentially liberal constitution that governed Russian politics by the end
of the 1990s left Putin limited instrumentalities to achieve his ends. Unlike
Yeltsin, Putin gave no indication that he had an abiding commitment to
political populism. For Putin, populism was simply the working environment
he had inherited. Putin’s initial popularity provided little assurance of
continuity. Given his options, Putin decided to work within the limitations
left him by the Yeltsin constitution. Popular support remained substantial
throughout the period of Putin’s revisions of economic regulations. His tax
reforms, reducing obligations through flat tax regulations, stimulated
productivity and were largely approved by his constituency. His approval,
measured by his ratings in the polls, fluctuated with his proposal to alter
pension accessibility. The apparent fragility of his support seems to have
convinced him that pursuit of his projects necessitated greater control of the
Federation’s population than that allowed by the liberal constitution.
In pursuit of his ends, Putin began to exercise increasing controls over the
Federation’s judicial system, believing the controls as necessary to achieve
his multifaceted and demanding project. Foreign and domestic critics
complain that court cases in the Federation that have a high salience
invariably prompt government intervention that resulted in the courts’
compliance with the Kremlin’s preferences. In cases where the government
has little or no interest, most Russians are seemingly content with the
operation of the judiciary.
Among Russians in general, there is a sense that the courts, to an uncertain

degree, are influenced by non-judicial factors, at times subject to bribery
and government influence. Such sentiments are not unusual given the
history of jurisprudence in Russia under Soviet rule. That the sometime
corrupt prevailing system seems acceptable to most Russians is probably
the consequence of having experienced jurisprudence under a unitary party-
dominant alternative. Rather than dissipating energy in political conflict,
Russians collaborate in making the nation an international power that is no
longer subject to foreign intrigue.
A similar logic apparently governs Putin’s dealings with the media.

Immediately after his accession to the presidency, Putin found the
communication and information media generally opposed to his efforts.
Clearly governed by liberal preferences, the media of the Russian
Federation consistently defended “individual human rights” against an
“authoritarian” presidency. Within the first years of Putin’s presidency,
funding sources for television outlets and print media were investigated;
34 Chapter Two
special interests were identified and isolated. The oligarchs favored by

Yeltsin were now identified as self-serving and anti-national. Under Putin,
the Kremlin applied a variety of pressures to deflect the media’s opposition
or have them cease operation entirely.
By Putin’s third term in office, the communications media had been largely
domesticated. Currently, there remains one major television station and a
few small print publications that are not controlled or directly influenced by
the government. Putin’s response to criticism is that left uncontrolled, the
media would be a portavoce for international liberal sentiment by warping
Russian political opinion to serve the ends of others.
Putin has not concealed the fact that his convictions are “illiberal,” and that
his preferred form of governance is a “sovereign democracy.” But he has
not betrayed the fundamentally democratic mode of governance fashioned
by Yeltsin. He has obeyed the Federation’s constitution and subjected
himself to periodic judgment by the national electorate. His electoral
victories have invariably been in the range of seventy percent. While there
have been regular complaints of “irregularities,” there is little direct
evidence of electoral fraud.
There is ample evidence that Putin remains very popular among the general
population. Many, if not most, Russians credit Putin with reestablishing
Russia’s international reputation and restoring it to a measure of prominence.
Under Putin, Russia is an exemplar of traditional values with which most
Russians identify—those of Christian faith, traditional morality, and
personal conservatism.
Irridentism is a major component of Putin’s project of national restoration,

the success of which depends on Russia’s ability to project power and
defend itself. That, in turn, necessitates a refurbishment of the armed forces,
a selective expansion of inventory, a systematic cultivation of the most
advanced technology, and regular capital investment.
It is clear that Moscow does not intend to attempt equivalency with Western
arms. The strategy is one of deploying deterrent force that makes aggression
most unlikely, and of marshaling sufficient modern ground, air and naval
assets to prevail in local or regional conventional conflicts. As part of its
deterrent capabilities, the Russian military is increasing its space
deployments.
After the disaggregation of the Soviet Union, the Russian military suffered
major losses in both inventory and command capabilities. Over the years of
Yeltsin’s tenure there was a virtual collapse of the military. Under Putin,
following the revival of the national economy, major reconstruction of the
military was undertaken. Much of existing equipment and many bases had
to be abandoned. The air and space defense forces were reorganized as the
“aerospace force”. By 2015, the Russian military was deploying advanced
MiG-35s and contracting for stealth, air superiority, and ground attack
Sukhoi SU-57s. Though few in number, the advanced aircraft are candidates
for foreign sales, which serve as a potential resource of funding for
continued research and development.
Russia has developed cyber capabilities that make it the equal of any
potential opponent, and an existential threat to the most advanced military.
It is not clear that the Western powers have developed an adequate defense.
Recently, the Russian aerospace force has undertaken long distance flights,
reappearing over both the North Pacific and Atlantic. One long distance
aircraft traveled to Venezuela in a show of solidarity. For the first time in
many years, aircraft of the aerospace force are conducting regular flights
over the Russian Far East. At the same time, the Russian navy has sought to
enhance its blue water capabilities, with Russian combat vessels the size of
missile cruisers appearing once again in the Western Pacific. Together with
the increased activity, Moscow has commissioned one of the world’s largest
icebreakers for tours in the Artic regions.
While still a relatively small force, the Russian military is modern,

disciplined, technologically advanced, staffed by well-trained combatants,
well-provisioned, and prepared for service in increasingly distant and
demanding deployments. What is not clear is whether the Kremlin can
continue to invest in its armed forces as heavily in the future as it has in the
past. Western assessments of its investments in terms of GDP remain
uncertain. While Putin has restored the Russian economy to the degree that
it is among the ten most productive in the world, it continues to operate
under the weight of international sanctions, which may hobble the
maintenance of a modern, technologically advanced military.
The Future of Russian Populism

The Russian Federation is not in a happy place. For about a quarter century
it has striven to restore itself as a global power. During the first years of its
36 Chapter Two
existence, it made overtures to relate with the West, but the attempts proved
abortive. Since that time, both the United Nations (UN) and NATO have
proved to be more contentious than supportive. On frequent occasions, UN
human rights organizations objected to the behavior of the Kremlin for
failing to conform to the UN’s essentially liberal-democratic civil and
human rights standards. Russia’s attempts to curb separatist activities in
Georgia and Ukraine had precipitated threatening responses from both the
world and NATO. The UN has sought to intervene not only in Ukraine, but
in the separatist regions of Georgia. Even with Belarus, Moscow has had its
difficulties. As a general reaction, NATO moved its forces into Poland and
the Baltic states. With all of this, Russia can expect little tranquility in the
coming years but only recurrent tensions generated by regional efforts at
political independence. That, in turn, will foster continued foreign direct and
indirect intervention. There is no reason to believe that any of that will
change in the calculable future.
Beyond that, there is a systemic issue that the Kremlin, one day, will be
obliged to confront. That issue turns on China and its escalating economic
and military power. In the near term, the Russian Federation benefits from
its economic and security relationship with Beijing—Russia satisfies
China’s fuel requirements, and China provides Russia with a security
perimeter in depth all along its Far Eastern flank.
That arrangement may be temporary. The reasons are not far to seek. A great
deal of China remains unexplored in terms of domestic resources; some
geologists are convinced that China may be rich in subsoil potential. If that
is so, and China proceeds to discover and exploit its own domestic fuel
deposits, one of the critical factors sustaining the relationship between
Moscow and Beijing could be effectively cancelled.
More interesting in this context is the acknowledgment that the Russian Far
East and the adjacent Artic waters are in all probability possessed of an
abundance of critical resources, including fossil fuels and rare earth
minerals. Equally arresting is the fact that China has never accepted Russian
occupation of the territories of Northeastern Asia. The Chinese have always
held that the Russian seizure of that large territory was accomplished by an
“unequal” treaty during the Qing dynasty, at a time when China was unable
to defend itself.
In his time, Mao Zedong warned the Russians that China would one day
undertake a reckoning. The Chinese have never accepted Russia’s occupation
of Siberia and related territories. To this day, Chinese maps and

documentaries give the names of the cities and geological features of the
region in Chinese, rather than Russian. The Chinese have begun to
undertake regular military flights over the region, as well as routine naval
tours of the adjacent Artic regions.
There is evidence that since the disaggregation of the Soviet Union, Russian
residents in the Far Eastern territories have begun to return to European
Russia. There are no confirmed statistics, but the translocations appear
substantial. There is also some evidence that their place is being occupied
by cross-border Chinese. All of which suggests that Russia’s hold on the
territory may be more fragile than is currently appreciated. All of which
means that the entire region harbors potential conflict.
Regions such as Tajikistan, while nominally under Russian control, are

unstable. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union a large portion of Tajikistan
is controlled by warlords who flout the law and operate quite independently
of any control. Beijing has become increasingly concerned and may, at
some point, choose to intervene to bring order, which could begin an
irreversible process threatening Russian control of the entire Far Eastern
territories.
The Chinese have given no overt sign that they are prepared to move on the
territory in the foreseeable future. But the Chinese are very patient and
animated by their own irredentist nationalism, which entails the acquisition
of the Russian Far East to redress what they have long considered a grievous
affront. When that takes place, Russia will find itself in very difficult
circumstances. A defense of its Far Eastern possessions against the Chinese
would sorely tax Russian capabilities.
The loss of the Far Eastern territories would strip Russia of its in-depth
security in the East, bringing China’s massive military within striking
distance of the heartland of the Federation. At the same time, the loss of the
area’s resource potential would reduce still further Russia’s international
status.
All of these difficulties mount as Putin concludes his final term as president
of the Russian Federation. In 2024, in accordance with the provisions of the
Russian Constitution which allow an individual only two consecutive terms
in office, Putin will conclude his tenure as executive head of the Russian
state. Should he not choose to surrender his leadership responsibilities, he
38 Chapter Two
can either have a chosen surrogate assume the office until he can become
eligible again (as he had done in the past), or he can have the constitution
altered to permit him eligibility.
Since the year 2000, Vladimir Putin has effectively been president of the
Russian Federation. Using place holders when appropriate, he has respected
the letter of the constitutional prescriptions concerning eligibility. At the
end of his current eligibility in 2024, he will be over seventy years of age.
While he has announced that he will not run for office at that time, there is
no assurance that will be the case, particularly if one or more of Russia’s
problems have matured. Depending on the conditions prevailing at the time,
decisions may be entertained that would permit Putin to continue as
president beyond the limits mandated by the constitution. More fateful still
would be a decision to modify the very form of governance, eliminating the
features of populism that make the president’s tenure a function of election
cycles.
Putin has already modified the powers of the president, far exceeding those
enjoyed by Yeltsin when the system was initially established. Putin has
entered into relations with United Russia—the political party that has
supervised Putin’s elections throughout his campaigns, and that now
dominates the lower house of the Federation’s parliament. Putin has charged
the youth contingents of United Russia to carry his message to the general
electorate—a responsibility totally unanticipated by the populist political
system he inherited from Yeltsin.
What is absent is a communicable ideology, an eventuality that many in the

Russian Federation seem to have already begun to anticipate. The fact is
that Putin has modified the populist system to such an extent that a transition
to a one-party dominant arrangement does not appear entirely out of the
question. That would allow him to serve as president at his own discretion,
solving the problem of continuity.
Should Putin’s popularity continue until 2024, the transition to a single-

party, state-dominant system would be eminently possible. Russian
populism would then become a temporary deviation in the historical
continuity of Russian state authoritarianism.
For Further Reading

Defense Intelligence Agency, Russia Military Power. Washington, D.C.,
2017.
Gregor, A. James, “Fascism and the New Russian Nationalism,” Communist
and Post-Communist Studies, 31:1 (1998), pp. 1-20.
Johnson, Matthew R, Russian Populist: The Political Thought of Vladimir
Putin. The Barnes Review 2012.
“Vladimir Putin Meets with Members of the Valdai Discussion Club.
Transcript of the Plenary Session of the 13th Annual Meeting,” Valdai
Discussion Club, October 27, 2016,
https://valdaiclub.com/events/posts/articles/vladimir-putin-took-part-
in-the-valdai-discussion-club-s-plenary-session/.
CHAPTER THREE
POPULISM IN CENTRAL EUROPE:

POLAND AND HUNGARY
A. JAMES GREGOR
Populist political expressions have surfaced throughout the European

Union. In each nation they had a different history and pursued a different
trajectory, but they all displayed features in common that identified them
all, basically, as members of the same political phenomenon.
As the Soviet Union disintegrated during the final years of the twentieth
century, the political communities that had been the willing or unwilling
components of its empire began to agitate for independence, demanding
liberation from Soviet dominance. They sought increasing opportunities for
political choice—the use of their own language and the right to fly their own
ethnic-national flag. There were successive waves of popular resistance to
Soviet control in the Eastern portions of Central Europe and in the Baltic
states. In some places the resistance mounted to organized violence. The

response on the part of the leadership in Moscow was to tender and
temporize. In December 1991, Boris Yeltsin became president of a
Commonwealth of Independent States in a final effort to hold together the
remnants of the Russian empire.
In the West, the unanticipated disintegration of the Soviet Union prompted

the celebratory publication of Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History.
Fukuyama and other western pundits maintained that the crumbling of
communist party rule in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe would leave
behind a century of ideologically grounded conflict, and usher in an era of
global liberalism and multiparty democracies. History, however, was not to
offer so neat an outcome.
42 Chapter Three
Poland
Even before the formal collapse of the Soviet Union, there were unanticipated
political stirrings in the Eastern states of Central Europe. In Warsaw, twin
brothers Jaroslaw and Lech KaczyĔski (b. 1949) had been active in the
founding of Solidarity, the independent labor union that was so influential
in undermining Soviet control of Poland. The KaczyĔski brothers were
allies of Lech WalĊsa, the leader of Solidarity, until the disappearance of
the Communist government when a disagreement concerning the role to be
assigned to bureaucrats in the new system prompted a separation. While
WalĊsa sought reconciliation between all parties, the KaczyĔski brothers,
being anti-communist in principle, objected to what they took to be the
excessive presence in the post-Soviet government of those who had assisted
Communist rule of Poland.
As Soviet control increasingly relaxed, new institutions rose to fill the

vacancy, guided by foreign, ideologically-liberal consultants. Privatization
of state property created special difficulties, as those in position to influence
the process stood to benefit in a variety of fashions. An elaborate system of
reciprocities emerged, creating a caste of privileged participants. Clientelist
relations increasingly took shape, distributing welfare benefits and property.
Urban dwellers and those skilled in organizational arrangements tended to
benefit the most, while those who were rural and less well-skilled were
neglected and became increasingly aggrieved.
During the first decade of the twenty-first century, the Polish economy,
freed from the constraints of Soviet control, grew at a commendable pace.

All of which only compounded the disadvantages of those not part of the
emerging post-Soviet “path dependency” power arrangements that favored
the individuals and groups who were members of the successful institutions.
Institutions locked into path dependency tended to become increasingly
rigid; favoritism and clientelistic preferences resulted in increasing income
differentials in the general society.
It was during this period that the KaczyĔski brothers organized the Law and
Justice Party (Prawo i SprawledliwoĞü or PiS) to give voice to those who
were disenfranchised in the expanding economy. Their efforts succeeded so
well that in 2015, for the first time since 1989, a single political party won
a dominant majority of seats in the lower chamber of the Polish parliament.
Populism in Central Europe: Poland and Hungary 43
The groups that composed the membership of the Law and Justice Party
were those largely neglected by the liberals who engineered post-Soviet
Polish developments. Among the neglected were farmers and traditional
families. Farmers had been bypassed by the rapid industrialization of Poland
after the lifting of the developmental constraints built into the Soviet
Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon). At the same time, the
liberals who had structured Poland’s economic developments neglected the
conditions surrounding family life. For the Law and Justice Party, the
traditional family was an integral part of the Catholic commitment to the
maintenance and furtherance of collective religious life.
The KaczyĔski brothers held both farmers and families to be essential to the
restoration of Poland as a sovereign and respected community. They held
the modernization and enhancement of agriculture necessary so that the
nation could provide for its own critical sustenance and survival. Beyond
the religious imperative, the KaczyĔski brothers supported the family
because stable family life could create the conditions for a higher birth rate
for a nation that had suffered disheartening demographic losses in and after
the recent war. What the brothers never concealed was the fact that their
politics, predicated on both religious and nationalist sentiments, were
grounded in a form of anti-liberalism.
By the middle of the first decade of the new century, the KaczyĔski brothers
were elected to leadership positions in the new Republic of Poland—Lech
to the presidency, and Jaroslaw to the prime ministry. Populism had come
to Poland.
Almost immediately, the brothers launched a variety of social programs that

won broad approval from the general citizenry, both urban and rural.
Workers were particularly approving. The Party initiated legislation that
distributed benefits to the families of Poland which, in four years, reduced
household poverty by an estimated 20 to 40 percent, and poverty among
children by an estimated 70 to 90 percent. A minimum wage rate for
workers was introduced that well exceeded the demands advanced during
labor protests years before. Medical care was freely supplied for those over
75 years of age, along with a reduction in the age at which workers could
receive retirement benefits. Those accomplishments, together with the appeal
of an emphatic nationalism, secured a durable support base for the Law and
Justice Party, which endured even after the death of Lech KacziĔski in an
aircraft accident in 2010.
44 Chapter Three
After the death of his brother, Jaroslaw KacziĔski emerged as Poland’s

“strong man”. Innocent of public office other than membership in the lower
chamber of the Parliament (the Sejm), Jaroslaw controlled the nation’s
politics through the members of the Law and Justice Party who had been
elected to public office, most notably the President and the Prime Minister,
elected in 2015, who frequented KacziĔski’s small private apartment to
receive instructions and develop a common political strategy.
Buoyed by its decisive electoral victory in October 2015, the Law and
Justice Party set to reform the judiciary. As soon as it became evident that
Law and Justice would win a majority of seats in parliament, the liberal
Civic Platform Party sought to assure continued liberal influence in the
courts by nominating five new judges to the Constitutional Tribunal, the
most important constitutional court in Poland.
The Law and Justice majority in parliament immediately rejected the

nominations. In a complex series of legal and political judgments it was
decided that the Civic Platform nominations would not be seated, and Law
and Justice would nominate and seat alternatives that gave the Party control
of the judicial environment. European Union groups concerned with civil
rights issued threats of sanctions and denounced the Law and Justice Party
as “anti-democratic” and a violation of human rights. The Western liberal
media uniformly denounced the Polish political leadership, as well as
characterized Polish populism as both authoritarian in intent and violative
of civil rights.
In response, the Law and Justice Party argued that their concern was to
protect Poland’s democracy by not allowing a roundly defeated and rejected
liberalism to dictate the nation’s judicial and political future. To allow the
Civic Platform to seat its judicial nominees would mean a nullification of
what the popular vote had decisively renounced. Law and Justice argued
that the political leadership of the European Union (EU) was composed of
unreconstructed liberals seeking to salvage liberalism in Poland through the
continuation of its agents’ domination of Poland’s politics after they had
been defeated in elections. The way to oppose anti-liberal developments in
Poland was by defeating the Law and Justice Party at the ballot box—
something the liberals apparently were unable to do.
That was the core of the argument Law and Justice would advance whenever
its opponents accuse the party of “authoritarian violation of the separation
of governmental powers,” and a “denial of civil rights.” Law and Justice
insisted that what the government sought was the full expression of the
choices made by the electorate of Poland. To allow the defeated liberal
parties to continue to influence national policies would be anti-democratic—
a willful obstruction of the will of the people.
The leaders of Hungary and the Baltic states supported Poland’s position,
as did the leaders of a variety of populist movements in Europe. They
maintained that the efforts by civil rights liberals in the EU were interfering
in the internal political affairs of Poland, and that Warsaw had every
sovereign right to fix the conditions for its own political arrangements. They
all rejected the notion that Poland be made subject to sanction.
While the Law and Justice Party does not have an official ideology, its
political disposition is evident in its behavior. It considers itself advocating
an “illiberal, but thoroughly consistent, democracy” against the anti-
democratic mummery of a dominant European liberalism. While democratic
in principle, Law and Justice rejects the traditional liberal conviction that
society is no more than a voluntary association of persons drawn together
exclusively to defend and further their individual wellbeing.
The KacziĔski brothers were well trained in the European and Roman
Catholic tradition of political jurisprudence. They fully accepted the
Thomistic interpretation of the Aristotelean conviction that the community
has existential priority over the individual members of that community. In
nature, individuals are not simply born “endowed” with a roster of
“unalienable rights.” Rights are derivative, rather than endowed.
In order that individuals survive their birth, they must depend on a primary
community of support—some variation of the family. If individuals have
rights, those rights are derivative of their membership in a community. In
the case of the family community, it has existential precedence over its
constituent members. The family not only provides for the physical survival
of individuals, but communicates to its members the initial precepts of a
value system (synderesis) that serves as the rational foundation of morality.
It is that morality in which individual rights find their origin.
The very nature of moral life and the rights, both individual and group, that
attend it, constitute the grounds for culture and civilization. Their very
complexity gives rise to demands for a larger and more diverse political
community in which alternative behaviors may be freely chosen and
individuals develop into multifaceted personalities and mature moral
46 Chapter Three
agents. Complex communities offer individual members the possibility of

moral perfection that, in the view of Catholic jurisprudence, is the intended
natural purpose of a truly human existence. On becoming members of such
a covenant community, individuals minimally assume a debt of gratitude as
well as a habit of thoughtful compliance. All things being equal, every
member of such a community has a moral obligation to work in its support
and ensure its integrity, thereby contributing to the survival and moral
enhancement of future generations.
This is the essence of the “civic nationalism” that is at the core of the
nationalism of the Law and Justice Party. It is a conception that makes
loyalty and compliance the prerequisites for membership in the community.
There are no ethnic or racial requirements. While Poland is remarkably
homogeneous in its ethnic composition (97 percent Polish) and religious
affiliation (87.2 percent Catholic), those properties are not required for
citizenship. Citizenship requires only conscientious loyalty to Poland.
Jaroslaw KacziĔski has made all this quite clear. In that sense, the Law and
Justice Party does have a supportive rationale, but the rationale is religious,
not political. It is one that can be quite complicated if pursued into the
complexities of Catholic doctrine. Doctrine, however, is rarely made a
public issue in Poland. In public statements KacziĔski regularly gives his
views a secular expression. He has identified his nationalism, for example,
with that of Józef Pilsudski, the interwar ruler of Poland, whose vision of a
“Greater Poland” was that of a multi-ethnic, federated community potentially
composed of, among others, Lithuanians, Czechs, Slovaks, Serbs, Ukrainians,
and Jews.1 He never suggested that any religion become a requirement for
citizenship.
The Law and Justice Party has not identified itself with ethnic nationalism.
Its objections to the requirement that it accept a mandated quota of refugees
from the Middle East and/or Africa are based, not on xenophobic biological
or ethnic considerations, but on the not unreasonable concern that Muslim
immigrants, informed by anti-Christian religious sentiments, could not be
easily assimilated into Poland’s Catholic community.
The Law and Justice Party holds that given the prevailing realities, the
national community requires rigorous self-defense from both subversive
dissent and external aggression. Both Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle
considered rule by a virtuous monarch—selected by the community at
large—as the best alternative. Given an environment peopled by individuals
each motivated by a recalcitrant free will, KacziĔski favors an “illiberal

democracy” as the next best governance to rule by a virtuous monarch—a
self-conscious moral authoritarian, periodically reconfirmed in office by the
people in elections.
The profoundly conservative government envisioned by the Law and Justice

Party differs in significant measure from the liberalism advocated by the
West in that the Party is the advocate of political continuities—of behaviors
that will sustain and advance the community’s wellbeing. The Party resists
what it takes to be “subversive” changes in political life, including the
legalization of same-sex marriages and the normalization of homosexual
behavior, because such conduct, based as it is on nothing other than personal
preference, does nothing to further the wellbeing and future of the national
community. Such behaviors are singularly selfish and jeopardizes the future
of the national community by corrupting its citizens and distracting them
from their public responsibilities.
Western liberals see such postures as threatening to individual liberties and

corrosive of democracy, ignoring the fact that democracies have long
considered such regulations governing personal conduct as codifications of
public decency, and that the contemporary allowance is an indulgence from
the vantage point of history. Whatever the case, Poland’s populists conceive
themselves as defending traditional morality and the very continuity of their
nation.
Poland’s liberals, the products of Western tutelage, find such political

convictions intrinsically objectionable. The liberals’ allies in the privately-

owned and public media—the vast majority of the print media, together with
television, and internet communication—were uniformly negative in their
coverage of Law and Justice’s activities from the Party’s first entrance into
political activity.
As the Party struggled to gain electoral support, it found that the media were
not only dominated by individualistic liberals, but that Poland’s privately-
owned media were (and remain) largely owned and/or financed by
foreigners. After its electoral success in 2015, there was a call among Party
activists to “Polonize” the private media to little effect. At the same time, a
vigorous effort was made to replace the administrative bureaucracy of
Poland’s public media with Law and Justice loyalists. The result is that
media delivery in Poland is very mixed—with the public media providing
48 Chapter Three
generally positive accounts of government activity, and the private media

reports that are almost uniformly negative.
The Party’s efforts to “Polonize” the media has brought censure from the
European Union’s bureaucratic guardians of press freedom—a matter of
grave concern for the political leadership in Warsaw as Poland is one of the
principal recipients of EU’s economic assistance. Since the beginning of the
century, aid from Brussels has provided major financial support for
Poland’s agro-industrial development. Any sanctions for civil rights
violations that could reduce the measure of EU funding would have
significant impact on Poland’s continued development, particularly its
agricultural modernization. The development of Poland’s transportation and
communications infrastructure would suffer, as would its ability to conduct
scientific research. Given such concerns, it is unlikely that the populist
leadership in Warsaw will proceed in any aggressive fashion against the
domestic private media.
Given the circumstances, a durable “illiberal democracy” in Poland is

unlikely. While 60 percent of Poland’s population is urban, most of the
support for the Law and Justice Party is rural, which suggests that the Party
may have limited occasion for increased and increasing recruitment. For the
present, the anti-populist opposition is scattered over a number of left-
oriented and moderate parties, but it is likely that circumstances will bring
them together at some future date when their numbers will prove decisive.
Kaczniski has few options, and his increasing age contributes to his
disadvantages. He has been assertive in dealing with his opposition, but
internal and external constraints act to limit his Party’s time-horizon.
The future of Polish populism. Beginning in 2015, the Law and Justice
Party has won significant political elections, especially in provincial
contest, but its electoral victories never exceeded 40-45 percent of the
overall popular vote. The Party’s support remains essentially rural with little
prospect of expansion. Its victory in the European parliamentary elections
largely reflected the same electoral distribution of support. That the
electoral base of the Law and Justice Party is rural and composed of
individuals of relatively specific educational and income properties, is
incontestable. That those facts would change in the foreseeable future is
unlikely. Unlike the rural population, the Polish urban population is secular,
liberal and globalist in general orientation. Their inability, thus far, of
defeating the Law and Justice Party is a consequence of urban voters
distributing their ballots over a number of opposition parties. The opposition
to Law and Justice is not unified: The far-left parties refuse to vote with the
moderates, while Civic Platform supporters refuse to vote with either. As
long as its opposition remains fragmented, Law and Justice will prevail by
default.
A great deal depends on the charismatic Jarowslav KaczyĔski, who will

soon be in his seventies. Because of his dominant role in Polish affairs, any
diminution of energy and resolve on his part could seriously impact the
political effectiveness of his party. The question of succession in any
charismatically-led institution is always a critical issue, and in the case of
the Law and Justice Party of particular significance.
The quality and quantity of Poland’s trade and diplomatic relations depend
heavily on the attitudes of the Law and Justice Party. Being nationalists, the
Party resists political and trade relations with Russia and Germany. Moscow
has been Poland’s enemy for a painfully long period of time. Its imposition
of a Marxist-Leninist dictatorship over Poland in the aftermath of the
Second World War, and the memory of the massacre of Poles at the hands
of Soviets during that conflict, are still fresh in the minds of survivors.
Polish relations with Germany are no better. The German occupation of
Poland during the Second World War left a memory of suppression and
systematic violence that remains vivid to this day. The fact that
contemporary Germany not only represents the very liberal views of
Brussels, but has publicly objected to Poland’s domestic political behavior,
has done nothing to moderate Warsaw’s foreign policy dispositions.
Poland’s alienation from Russia and Germany works against its critical
interests. Both countries are influential in any EU deliberations concerning
Poland’s economic future. As has been suggested, developmental grants are
essential to the continued growth of the nation’s productive system.
Domestically, any punitive action by Brussels could well undermine the
electoral support of Law and Justice. Whether or not the EU chooses to
invoke such sanctions against Poland depends on a great many factors,
among which is the number of allies to which Warsaw can appeal.
The fact is that Poland needs every ally in the European Union to whom it
can appeal. Brussels fears a coalition of Euroskeptic nations. For the
present, the collateral support of other populist polities can foreclose any
punitive action by Brussels against Poland. Continued support, however, is
not assured, given the fragility of populist systems. Of the present roster of
50 Chapter Three
European populisms, support for Poland by Viktor Orbán’s Hungary seems

the most secure.
Hungary
At the end of the 1980s, as the Soviet Union withdrew its controls, Viktor
Orbán (b. 1963) was one of the young political activists who sought the
transformation of the Hungarian political and economic system. The
promise of Western liberalism early captured his allegiance. Orbán quickly
demonstrated a talent for political leadership and, by age 35, became one of
the youngest prime ministers in the history of Hungary.
The first years of an independent Hungary were tumultuous. In the transition

from a command to a market economy, privatization of property resulted in
a transfer of wealth that produced a disturbing measure of income inequality
and the impoverishment of entire subgroups of the working population. As
a consequence, socialism underwent a totally unexpected revival.
In 2002 and 2006, Orbán and his political associates were defeated by a
resurgent socialism. Taken together, these developments led Orbán to
entertain grave misgivings concerning political and economic liberalism.
Virtually without resistance, liberalism had allowed socialism, once again,
to become a threat to the nation. Irreducibly opposed to socialism in
whatever form, Orbán labored to assure that his party—Fidesz or the
Hungarian Civic Alliance Party—would be an undefeatable opponent of
any reconstituted socialism.
Orbán rejected socialism because it was anti-national and an ally of

globalism. Under socialism, nothing would remain of the thousand-year
history of the Hungarian nation. Orbán rejected socialism’s secularism —a
worldview that he believed to be demeaning of and antithetical to Hungary’s
Christian tradition. He also renounced socialism’s economic instrumentalities
as retardant and retrogressive.
Orbán conceived the nation the repository of material and spiritual values
that made individual life meaningful. A non-socialist economy would be
vehicle for collective material gratification in an environment of spiritual
fulfillment. He conceived nationalism the basis of the politics of Fidesz, and
Christianity its inspiration. Orbán sought to protect and foster both. The
result was an explicit affirmation of a convinced political conservatism.
As it turned out, Orbán’s brand of conservative nationalism was a formula

for almost instant success. In 2010, Fidesz decisively won nation-wide
elections, garnering over 70 percent of the popular vote and 263 seats or
68.13 percent of the 386-seat unicameral parliament, the National
Assembly. That provided Fidesz a supermajority and the power to alter the
national constitution. (After 2014, the National Assembly was trimmed
down to 199 seats.)
Fidesz modified the Constitutional Court by altering the number and the
tenure of judges. The retirement of judges was fixed at age 62, which created
new vacancies that allowed Fidesz to nominate and seat enough judges to
influence the political disposition of the Court.
Although the modifications did not contravene the Hungarian constitution,

they were condemned by the liberals in Brussels. Fidesz argued it was more
democratic than preserving a court that gave expression to liberal opinions
that the electorate had decisively rejected in several elections. That
argument was typical of Fidesz’s response to criticism: It claimed to
represent the views of the people of Hungary instead of any privileged
foreign or domestic elite.
In so claiming, Fidesz represented the facts. The reality was that the bulk of
Hungary’s electorate identified with the politics of Orbán, as did much of
the media. It was within these political parameters that the migrant surge of
late summer 2015 swept over Europe.
Military conflict throughout the Middle East, instability in Southeast Asia,

and political violence in North Africa and the sub-Saharan states generated
population movements unseen since the chaos of the Second World War.
As many as 50 million persons demonstrated a readiness to leave their home
countries to resettle somewhere more secure, although many migrants
simply wanted somewhere economically more appealing. Whatever the
motives, more than a million migrants appeared in the Balkans, seeking an
avenue to Northern Europe and the Scandinavian countries.
Using the Balkans as a transit passage, over 100,000 migrants crossed the
borders of Hungary—the first EU country they reached on their way to more
attractive economic termini. The effect on Hungarians was traumatic.
Hungary is a small nation of about 10 million citizens, with an economy that

is smaller than that of the state of Nevada in the United States. The flood of
52 Chapter Three
migrants that descended on the farmlands and roads of rural Hungary left
major afflictions in their wake. Beyond the debris and human waste were
damaged crops and property, sexual molestation and desecration of
religious artifacts. Whether or not, or in what measure true, the reaction was
a political demand to defend its citizens. Almost immediately, the Hungarian
government sought to seal its borders. A razor-wire fence was constructed
along the Serbian and Croatian border, and migrants were refused entry. In
response, Brussels denounced Hungary as having violated the human rights
of migrants, which presumably included the right to cross borders anywhere
without any constraints whatever.
At the same time, in their efforts to protect themselves, Croatia, Serbia, and
Slovenia urged that the “Balkan entry route” into Europe be closed.
Supporting their appeal, Budapest warned that Muslim jihadists were using
the route to penetrate Europe to take advantage of the abundant “soft
targets” to which they would thereby gain access.
The European Union responded with proposing a program to vet migrants

before their entry. But the proposal was rejected by Albania, Bosnia, and
Montenegro—the first countries to which migrants would make entry—
because of the daunting prospect of housing and caring for an indeterminate
number of to-be-vetted migrants.
In contrast, Chancellor Angela Merkel recommended a relatively free flow

of migrants into Germany because of Germany’s low birthrate and its
corresponding need for workers. By 2018, over six million immigrants were
living in Germany. The German Minister of the Interior admitted that the
flood of immigrants presented an almost insoluble set of problems. Migrants
resisted assimilation; most refused or could not learn to speak German. They
characteristically organized themselves into self-regarding family-clans,
obeying their own rules of conduct. Comprising less than 13 percent of the
population, migrants were responsible for almost 35 percent of recorded
crime. In Saxony, a stabbing of a German by migrants precipitated a
massive protest that verged on rioting.
Noting all of that, the Hungarian government became more entrenched in

its anti-immigration resistance—a policy that the liberal agencies of the EU
condemned as xenophobic and racist, but which appeared to reflect the
views of the Hungarian people. The liberals insisted that the public attitudes
of Hungarians had been shaped by government control of the public media.
Hungarian intellectuals countered that their government was informed by
the free choice of citizens, and that the content of the public media reflected
popular preferences. The government was not imposing its preferences on
the people; it was giving the people a voice.
Fidesz intellectuals argued that public sentiment is a product of multiple

influences, ranging from opinions expressed in the family, at school, in
churches, among friends, in voluntary associations of sundry sorts, and via
the entertainment and information media. The most effective influences
respond to demand. The government does not create the demand; it responds
to it.
As illustration, it is a fact that the majority of the news and information

outlets in Hungary voluntarily joined a Central European Press and Media
Foundation that favors the politics of the Fidesz. Liberals complained that
the ruling Party has not offered support to information and entertainment
outlets that are “independent,” i.e., opposed to the government. In response,
Fidesz questioned how many liberal governments have underwritten anti-
government opinions.
There are pro-liberal and anti-government information and entertainment

outlets in Hungary. It is true that they do not prosper, but no one has
demonstrated that it is because they are oppressed by the government
instead of their lacluster appeal.
There is little confirmable evidence that the government or its agents violate
the law to affect their purpose. Certainly, there is no evidence that the
authorities overtly engage in illegalities. The result is that although the

human rights agencies of the EU have threatened to prosecute the Hungarian
government for violating individual and collective rights, to date Brussels
has done very little other than complained.
Fidesz calls the system in Hungary a “controlled” or “stable” democracy—

but a democracy nonetheless. Part of its control grows out of restrictions on
the flow of foreign funding for anti-government domestic agencies (NGOs).
In fact, Hungary’s political stability can be attributed to Fidesz legislation
directed against the activities of foreigners who are intent on undermining
the system with liberal propaganda. Hungarian authorities argued that
activities such as those of George Soros and his Open Society Foundations
do not actually promote free expression of opinion because conservative
opinions are suppressed as “hate speech”. The suppression of the free
exchange of ideas is in the eye of the beholder.
54 Chapter Three
Instead, the Hungarian government maintains that liberal granting agencies

systematically act to subvert the popularly elected government through the
media and other public institutions, especially education. Budapest claims
to have found evidence in textbooks of liberal revisions of the history of
Hungary.
All of this led to tensions with the Central European University (CEU) that
was founded in 1991 and funded by George Soros. The government
maintained that the entire tenor of instruction at CEU has been politicized,
to the detriment of the political orientation of the general population. The
tensions became so pronounced that in December 2018, the university
announced it would cease operations in Hungary and relocate to Vienna,
Austria.
In 2019, Orbán advanced the notion of the development of a greater

“Christian democracy” of like-minded communities in the Carpathian
Basin—those of Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. He
envisions an association of members animated by a spirit of religion, art,
inquiry and business, who are each free to control its own political affairs,
as well as the entry or exclusion of aliens into its territory. It is hoped this
community will preserve Europe’s Christian heritage and communitarian
political beliefs, and eventually spread beyond its Carpathian confines to
include other European countries.
The future of Hungarian populism. Like all populist movements, that of

Hungary has its unique features. Its future will reflect the consequence of a
number of interacting personalities and cultural, demographic, and
historical factors. One of those determinants is surely Viktor Orbán himself.
Determined, intelligent, strategically perspicacious, and persuasive, Orbán
has shepherded Hungary from straitened economic circumstances to a
respectable rate of growth. It is in the ranks of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) and contributes to the organized defense of Europe,
but its chosen form of sovereign democracy has made it the subject of
criticism by the liberal democrats of the EU.
The European Union was formed to house and foster liberal democratic
systems, with the clear intent of creating a continent in which individual
nation-states would no longer maintain an identifiable presence. The fact
that Hungary seeks to retain its national identity, its particular culture, and
its traditional religion has generated considerable tension within the Union.
Some have gone so far as to deem the Hungarian political system

“subversive of democracy”. A further source of consternation is Hungary’s
cultivation of stable commercial and diplomatic relations with Putin’s
Russian Federation. Liberals interpret Budapest’s foreign policy, together
with its objection to the imposition of sanctions on Russia, as the behavior
of a Russian “Trojan horse” within the EU.
For its part, Budapest resists the EU’s imposition of sanctions on individual
nations because of their domestic politics and/or their international conduct,
arguing that the punishments meted out are arbitrary and difficult to justify.
Some Hungarian intellectuals claim that international standards are so
discrepant as to be contradictory. While some world bodies impose
sanctions on the Russian Federation for its occupation of Crimea, others
overlook the Chinese occupation of the contested islands of the South China
Sea. While the EU denounces the Christian democracy of Poland and
Hungary as not sufficiently democratic, neither the EU nor the United
Nations objects to the one-party dictatorship of the People’s Republic of
China. Whatever the case, Hungary is not disposed to taking the sanctioning
judgments of Brussels very seriously, which will remain a contentious issue
for the foreseeable future.
For the time being, irrespective of the chorus of objections from the liberal
media and those who speak in their name, Hungary proceeds with its foreign
relations behavior while maintaining its active membership in the EU and
in NATO’s collective defense of Europe. At the same time, it has
simultaneously entered into intricate and sustained relationships with the
Russian Federation.
Hungary is dependent on foreign sources for energy, among which Russia

is the most prominent. The current pipelines that supply Hungary are a
legacy from the days of Soviet arrangements, as is its sole nuclear plant for
which Russia is currently supplying two new reactors at concessionary
prices.
While the majority of Hungary’s economic activity is with members of the

EU, about 25 percent is with the Russian Federation. The energy and
commercial relations between Hungary and the Russian Federation are
governed by normal diplomatic procedures. A number of commentators in
the West perceive something ominous in Hungary’s relationship with
Russia, but there is very little that might credibly count as unseemly
collaboration between the two states. Even Hungary’s difficulties with
56 Chapter Three
Ukraine are not the result of Kremlin influence. Budapest has raised
objections to Ukraine’s treatment of its Hungarian minority, and considers
Kiev’s decision to conduct all instruction within its educational system in
Ukrainian as a disservice to Ukraine’s sizeable Hungarian-speaking
minority.
The reality is that relations between Hungary and the Russian Federation
are proper, and nothing more. Hungary remains a committed member of
NATO’s collective defense of Europe, whose potential enemy is Russia.
Most Hungarians have reservations concerning Russia, from long experience
of tension, threat and military occupation between the two countries. The
relationship with Russia does not appear to be a threat to the EU or NATO.
Hungary follows its own counsel.
Among polities identified as populist, Hungary is unique in many ways, one

of which is its display of properties that suggest durability over time.
Though one of the fastest growing economies in Europe, Hungary appears
commendably stable. Orbán enjoys widespread support from populations
both rural and urban. While Fidesz is but one of more than a dozen political
parties in Hungary, it has won impressive electoral victories in urban,
county, national, and European legislative elections.
Fidesz is a well-organized party, discharging its political functions with

confidence and effectively serves the needs of its leadership, but it is not a
revolutionary unitary party. Currently Fidesz is attempting to fully realize
Orbán’s plans for a Christian Democracy community of nations throughout
the Carpathian Basin—an undertaking that requires special capabilities and

may affect the party’s domestic activities.
Born in 1963, Orbán is a relatively young political leader of a party that is

among the most admired of European nationalist parties. Modest in both
population and the size of its economy, Hungary has one of the fastest
growing economies in Europe. Of the populisms that have surfaced since
the turn of the century, Hungary demonstrates the best possibilities of
survival into the future, although how it will develop can hardly be predicted
with any assurance. That it will remain a Christian illiberal democracy is
perhaps its most unlikely prospect because the empirical evidence is that
secularism inevitably follows increasing industrialization and urbanization.
A great deal depends on who succeeds Orbán. Uncharacteristically for a

populist, his legacy appears durable. Should he prove long-lived, his
influence could be significant. What that means for the European Union is
problematic. What it could mean for liberal democracy is perhaps the most
interesting question of all.
For Further Reading

Eatwell, Roger. National Populism: The Revolt against Liberal Democracy.
Penguin Random House, 2018.
Judis, John R. The Nationalist Revival: Trade, Immigration, and the Revolt
against Globalism. Columbia Global Reports, 2018.
Judis, John R. The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession
Transformed American and European Politics. Columbia Global
Reports, 2016.
Lendval, Paul. Orbán: Europe’s New Strongman. C. Hurst & Co., 2016.
O’Sullivan, John. The Second Term of Viktor Orbán: Beyond Prejudice and
Enthusiasm. Social Affairs Unit. 2015.
Notes
1 Critics insist that the Law and Justice Party is tendentially anti-Semitic, but the
evidence is far from convincing. The Party has sought to stop the common practice
of identifying the extermination camps that the German occupation constructed in
Poland as “Polish death-camps”. That is easily understood and hardly evidence of
anti-Semitism. The Party has objected to the regular references to “Polish anti-
Semitism” for obvious reasons. The entire history of anti-Semitism in Poland is
complex and confusing, and the charge of anti-Semitism so serious, that it requires
very careful evaluation.
CHAPTER FOUR
POPULISM IN THE UNITED KINGDOM:

BREXIT
MARIA HSIA CHANG
The word “Brexit” is the conflation of two words, “Britain” and “exit”. It
means the withdrawal or departure of Great Britain from the European
Union.
In 1973, the United Kingdom, the nation-state comprised of Great Britain

and Northern Ireland, joined the European Communities (EC), a move that
was popularly endorsed in a 1975 referendum. The EC had been created in
1963 by the Merger Treaty that combined the executive bodies of three
international organizations—the European Coal and Steel Community
(ECSC), European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC), and the European
Economic Community (EEC)—under a single governing body, the
Commission of the European Communities.1
Thirty years later in 1993, the EEC was renamed by the Maastricht Treaty
as the European Community (EC). In 2009, the EC officially became the
European Union (EU)—a political and economic union of European states
with a common European citizenship; a common policy on security, foreign
affairs, trade, agriculture, fisheries and regional development; a standardized
system of laws in specified matters; a single currency, the euro; and a single
market of free movement of people, goods, services and capital.2
Now numbering 27 member states with an estimated total population of

about 447 million, the EU has as its governing body a Parliament, the
delegates to which ostensibly represent but are not elected by the populaces
of the member states. As such, unlike the previous European Communities
that was a confederation in which constituent states were unified for specific
and specified purposes but retained their identities as wholly independent
and sovereign states, the European Union more resembles a federation in
60 Chapter Four
which member states have partially surrendered their national sovereignty

while retaining some degree of control over their internal affairs.
In the case of the United Kingdom, although its membership in the European
Communities had been endorsed by a popular referendum, the British
people had not given their consent to either the Maastricht Treaty or the
UK’s membership in the European Union. As Dr. Madsen Pirie, co-founder
and president of the Adam Smith Institute, observed, “Many people in the
UK thought that European integration was completed with the
establishment of a single market [the EC], and were opposed to the creation
of a European state as a political entity.”3 All of which culminated in a
referendum on the European Union in 2016, more commonly known as the
Brexit referendum.
The Brexit Referendum

Even before the UK joined the European Union, there were dissenting
voices from mainly the political left, the Labour Party. Beginning in the
1990s, however, Euroscepticism became a cause of a wing within the
Conservative Party, and of single-issue parties like the Referendum Party
and the UK Independence Party (UKIP). Pressure was put on Conservative
Prime Minister David Cameron to hold a referendum on whether the UK
should continue its membership in the EU.
On June 23, 2016, despite threats, dire warnings of financial doom, and
opposition from UK and international elites—including PM Cameron,
former PM Tony Blair, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and U.S.

President Barack Obama—the British people voted 51.89 percent to 48.11
percent to leave the European Union. In total, more than 30 million people
voted: 17,410,742 elected to leave, 16,141,241 voted to remain. The 72.21
percent voter turnout was the highest at a UK-wide election since 1992,
which roughly calculates to 38% of the population (“Leavers”) wanting to
leave the EU and roughly 35% wanting to remain (“Remainers”).4
Issues. Among the issues in the debate over Brexit were economic concerns
of trade, the red tape of EU regulations, the number of jobs that could be
lost or gained by a withdrawal, and the UK paying more into the EU budget
than it received.
But the predominant grievance of the Leavers was immigration—the open

borders within the EU which enable migrants freely to enter the UK and
Populism in the United Kingdom: Brexit 61
claim housing and other welfare benefits. Rowena Mason, political

correspondent for The Guardian, observed that "Polling suggests discontent
with the scale of migration to the UK has been the biggest factor pushing
Britons to vote out."5 For his part, Times columnist Philip Collins stated
outright that "This was a referendum about immigration disguised as a
referendum about the European Union."6
Julia Hartley-Brewer of The Telegraph identified immigration as “a simple

issue of principle: the British people will not accept a situation where their
taxes fund benefits for people who have no moral right to them” because
they had not “first made any contribution.” Those benefits, according to
government figures, cost UK taxpayers £530 million in 2013, which
Hartley-Brewer called “not a small number to ordinary taxpayers.”7
At the root of immigration and other issues is national sovereignty—the

supreme, absolute and uncontrollable power by which an independent state
is governed, without any interference from outside sources or bodies.
Indeed, polls found that the main reasons people voted Leave were "the
principle that decisions about the UK should be taken in the UK" and that
leaving "offered the best chance for the UK to regain control over
immigration and its own borders".8
As Hartley-Brewer put it, “the fundamental issue” is that “it should be the
people of Britain, through our own elected representatives, who should
decide who is and who is not entitled to benefit from our hard-earned taxes,
not unelected Brussels bureaucrats—or even the elected representatives of
other European countries. It should be a matter for us and us alone.” Those

sentiments were shared by Dr. Pirie, for whom the principle at stake is
sovereignty—"whether the British people through their elected
representatives can make the laws that prevail in this country,” instead of a
European Parliament “that passes laws telling us how to feed our dogs.”
Only a sovereign and independent Britain could “protect the liberties that
are part of its inheritance from Magna Carta onwards.”9
Pirie’s identification of national sovereignty as the central issue in the Brexit

referendum was echoed by one of his readers. In a comment on Pirie’s blog
post, Bob Graham protested that the UK’s membership in the EU had never
received popular endorsement. For Graham, that is “the heart of the
issue”—the denial to the people of the UK “the right to vote yes or no” when
the UK first joined the EU to form "a United States of Europe.”10
62 Chapter Four
Voter demographics. According to polling data, there was no gender

difference between Leavers and Remainers, with 52 percent of both men
and women voting to leave. But there were differences in age,
race/ethnicity, urban/rural, and political ideology or beliefs:11
x Age: Older voters were more likely to vote Leave, while younger
voters tended to vote Remain. Of those aged 18-24, 27 percent voted
to leave, compared to 60 percent of voters aged over 65. Just over 70
percent of 18-24-year-olds voted Remain, whereas 40 percent of
those aged 65 and over supported Remain.12
x Race/ethnicity: A majority (53 percent) of white voters wanted to
leave, while 33 percent of Asian voters and 27 percent of black
voters chose Leave.
x Urban/rural: Sascha O Becker, Thiemo Fetzer and Dennis Novy
found that voters in rural areas were more likely to vote for Brexit
than those living in urban areas.13
x Ideology: Whereas a strong majority (58 percent) of Conservative
voters favored leaving the EU, only a minority of Labour voters (37
percent) and of Scottish National Party supporters (36 percent)
favored leaving. Voting to leave the EU was also strongly associated
with holding socially conservative political beliefs, thinking life in
Britain is getting worse rather than better, opposing cosmopolitanism,
and believing feminism, multiculturalism and globalization to be
forces for ill.
There is one difference between Remainers and Leavers which is relevant

to the subject of populism. Recall that in Chapter One of this volume, one
way to define populism is by what it is not—elitism. The Oxford English
Dictionary defines “elite” as “A group or class of people seen as having the
most power and influence in a society, especially on account of their wealth
or privilege.”14 Wealth, privilege, power and influence all pivot on
socioeconomic status (SES) or class, which is determined by income,
occupation, and education. By those measures, Remainers were more elitist
than Leavers.
Income. Controlling for age, gender and ethnicity, Matthew Goodwin and
Oliver Heath15 found that support for Brexit was 10 percentage points higher
among households with income below £20,000 than among households with
income above £60,000. The unemployed, people in low-skilled and manual
occupations, and those who felt their financial situation had worsened were
also more likely to support leaving the EU.16 Becker, et al., also found that
both individuals and areas with low income and manufacturing employment
were more likely to vote Leave.17
Occupation. Whereas those in manufacturing and low-skilled occupations

favored leaving the EU, polls found that majorities of those in elitist
occupations, such as business leaders, lawyers, scientists and economists,
favored remaining.
A survey of 2,200 business leaders conducted in May 2016 by the British

Chambers of Commerce found that 54 percent supported remaining in the
EU, while 37 percent favored exit.18 Surveys conducted by Deloitte in June-
July 2016 of 120 chief financial officers (CFO) of large UK companies
found that 62 percent of the CFOs agreed that it was “in the interests of UK
businesses for the UK to remain a member of the EU”; only 6 percent
disagreed.19 Surveys and polls also found that majorities of those in
managerial, professional and administrative occupations favored remaining
in the EU: 67 percent of employers and managers;20 83 percent of scientists
(“researchers”);21 77 percent of partners in law firms;22 and clear majorities
of economists.23
Education. Income and occupation, however, did not account as strongly as

education for whether one voted leave or remain. Goodwin and Heath found
that “other things being equal,” support for leave was 30 percentage points
higher among those with only a high school (secondary) education or less,
than it was for people with a college degree.24 For his part, Sampson found
that 65 percent of those without a university degree voted to leave, while
only 41 percent of voters with a degree chose leave.25
Commenting on Becker, et al.’s study, Vasso Ioannidou, Professor of

Finance at Lancaster University, pointed out that “One variable—the share
of population with no [educational] qualifications—can explain as much as
62% of the variation in the Vote Leave share! No other variable, among the
nearly 30 variables considered, is found to have such a strong explanatory
power.” From that factual observation, Ioannidou made the leap to proffer
his opinion as to why Brits who “lacked educational qualifications” tended
to vote Leave:26
Education (or the lack of it) could matter more for two broad reasons. First,
people with low or no qualifications may be harder hit by immigration,
globalization, and austerity measures. . . . Second, people with low or no
qualifications may be exactly the demographic that is more easily swayed
by the misinformation and unrealistic promises of the Leave campaign.
64 Chapter Four
Education may thus be proxying for the role of the anti-EU propaganda that
dominated the tabloid press at the run-up to the election.
In other words, although one in four Leavers had a college degree and
research had found that Leave voters were as knowledgeable about the EU
as Remainers,27 Professor Ioannidou concluded that not being college
educated had rendered Leavers weak-minded and thus susceptible to anti-EU
propaganda. Ioannidou is not alone in his presumption—one that is redolent of
the low regard that Remainer elites had for Leavers.
Remainer Elites’ Contempt for Pro-Brexit Leavers

Even before he became prime minister, then-Conservative Party leader
David Cameron derided those who favored Brexit as a bunch of “fruitcakes,
loonies and closet racists”.28
On April 23, 2016, two months before the Brexit referendum, The Telegraph
published an opinion essay of mixed messages by then-U.S. President
Barack Obama.29 He began by stating that he respected Britons’ autonomy
of will—that “the question of whether or not the UK remains a part of the
EU is a matter for British voters to decide for yourselves”—but then
proceeded to tell the British people they must stay in the EU because “in
today’s world, even as we all cherish our sovereignty, the nations who wield
their influence most effectively are the nations that do it through the
collective action that today’s challenges demand.”
It was probably a coincidence that Obama’s op/ed marked the point in polls
when public opinion in the UK began a sharp rise favoring Leave. On the
day after the Brexit referendum, Tyler Durden of ZeroHedge30 noted that
“one look at the charts and it becomes pretty clear when exactly the
inflection point occurred.” That point was April 22nd when Obama’s op/ed
was published, which led Durden to conclude that “It appears the Brits don’t
like being told what to do by other nations’ leaders.”
Half a year after the referendum, on January 5, 2017, Sky News hosted a
debate on the state of the United Kingdom since the Brexit vote.31 Panelist
Lionel (b. Margaret Ann) Shriver, an award-winning American author and
journalist who lived in London, said that when she returned to the UK after
a summer in the United States, she found an entirely different country—a
post-Brexit referendum UK where the “Remainers are at the Leavers’
throats.” She said she found the Remainers’ attitudes towards the people
who voted for leave to be “very distasteful”—"a real contempt of, not just
bitterness, but an aggressive contempt.” Shriver made special note of the
“incredibly unfair” leap made by Remainers equating Leavers’ concern
about immigration with racism.
Lending substance to Shriver’s observation was Sky News’ footage of anti-

Brexit protesters carrying a hand-lettered sign that equated anti-immigration
with racism, “STOP BREXIT / FIGHT RACISM AND THE
SCAPEGOATING of immigrants”.32
Another debate panelist, former Cabinet minister and Brexit campaigner

Michael Gove, noted the elitist character of Remainers. Gove said that while
the working class overwhelmingly supported Brexit, many Remainers were
elites who held a different worldview, some of whom dominated politics,
the media and the “national conversation out of all proportion.”
The Sky News video also gave a voice to ordinary Leavers, including an
interview with a man-on-the-street who pointed out that racism is calling
someone a racial epithet, but wanting to control immigration is not racism.
Sky News also interviewed workers at a large Burleigh manufacturing plant.
According to the workers, Remainers were anti-nationalist elites who
dominated the “London-centric” UK government and who, in advocating
the UK to remain in the EU, were only “doing it for themselves, and not for
the country.”
Many of the comments left by viewers of the YouTube video of the Sky
News debate33 agreed with Shriver’s observation about the contempt

Remainers had for Leavers, and their characterization of Leavers as
uneducated, stupid racists. Below is a sample of viewer comments:
“Yes, contempt. That woman [Shriver] called it right.”
“Absolutely right! The amount of abuse from Remainers has been

unbelievable.”
“Yup, I see this contempt demonstrated almost every day. Mainly on the
BBC.”
“You lot that keeps calling leavers stupid and proclaiming yourselves more
intelligent.”
66 Chapter Four
“Remainers . . . freely dish out damning accusations of racism, sexism,

mysogyny [sic] and homophobia and without even listening to the other's
point of view.”
“When you try and engage in dialogue with remainers they start to become
abusive when you don't agree with what they say. No one deserves to be
called an ill educated stupid c***.”
“I was very much on the fence up until maybe a week beforehand and have
to say it was the arrogant, dogmatic swagger of the Remain camp that put
me over to Leave. They didn't speak for me, I didn't want to be associated
with that. All they did—and continue to do—is treat the Leave vote like
trash.”
“Aggressive contempt is too mild a term. I'd say active hatred is more like
it.”
“The liberal-leftists seem to have a belief that it is only their views that
count, all others are derided with contempt that they should have voted a
different way from what is 'correct' in their views. That this is fundamentally
undemocratic doesn't seem to permeate their views.”
“If there's one thing that has become abundantly clear last year (first with
Brexit and then with Donald Trump's election victory), it's the Left's
complete and utter contempt for democracy when they don't get their way.
And it's always capped off by the way they think they're so intellectually and
morally superior to the rest of us. I said the day before the referendum result
that if Remain had won then I would've just accepted it and wept. But look
at the Remoaners—it's been nearly 10 months and they're still having
tantrums because the vote went against them. First they tried to demand a
second referendum, then they tried to contest it in the courts, and then tried
to claim that it was swung by Russian hackers. They need to take a look at
themselves before they start judging others; they're acting like a load of
spoilt kids.”
A few of the comments on the Sky News video were from Remainers who
took issue with what panelist Shriver had said. Ironically, their comments
simply confirmed Shriver’s observation that Remainers were contemptuous
of Leavers.
As examples, one Remainer viewer wrote that “If 48% of the people hold
you in contempt, its [sic] because you are contemptible.” Another called
Leavers “Nazis” and equated the Brexit referendum with the election in
Germany in the 1930s which voted Hitler and the National Socialists into
power. Leavers being Nazis justified the contempt Remainers had for them
because “Contempt for racists and xenophobes is the right thing to do” since
“theres [sic] only one right side.” Yet another Remainer commenter who
calls him/herself “stable genius,” attributed the outcome of the Brexit
referendum to stupid Leavers being duped by Russia. According to stable
genius,
“Leave Voters were conned and subjected to masses of dubious propaganda

from Russia! Most brexiteers from the intellectual area below an IQ of 100
are similar in profile to those who voted for Trump in the USA. Gullible
people. Sad really. Impossible to argue logically with people who eat cheap
veggies from Lincolnshire and get served with low prices at McDonalds and
restaurants one day and then want to deport the migrant workers the next.”
Then there was actor Neil Dudgeon. In tweets in March and April of 2018,
Dudgeon referred to the 17,410,742 fellow Brits who had voted for Brexit
by the pejorative label of “far right”. He called them insane (“out of your
minds”) and equated post-Brexit UK with totalitarian North Korea.34
Such was Remainers’ resentment against Leavers that nearly three years
after the Brexit referendum, on January 27, 2019, during an appearance on
the Australian TV show “News Breakfast,” when asked her view on Brexit,
actress Miriam Margolyes fumed:35
"Well, bollocks is what it is. It’s wrong and it’s based on ignorance, people
were lied to. Politicians didn’t tell the truth, particularly Boris Johnson. . . .
[Brexit is] absolute nonsense, piffle. And David Cameron, who was our
prime minister, he should be boiled in oil."
Aftermath
Pro-Brexit politicians like UKIP leader Nigel Farage hailed the referendum
as the UK’s “independence day”. Boris Johnson, the former mayor of
London and public face of Vote Leave, exulted that the UK now had a
“glorious opportunity” to pass its own laws, set its own taxes and control its
own borders. Anti-Brexit Prime Minister David Cameron, however,
humiliated by the referendum result, declared he would step down by
October. He said, “The British people have voted to leave the European
Union and their will must be respected. The will of the British people is an
instruction that must be delivered.”36
In July 2016, former Home Secretary Theresa May was elected Conservative
Party leader and became the UK's second female prime minister after
Margaret Thatcher. The following March, under her leadership, London
68 Chapter Four
began the formal process of withdrawing from the EU by invoking Article

50 of the Treaty on European Union, thereby giving formal notice to the
European Council of the UK’s intention to leave the Union. Article 50 gave
the UK a period of up to two years to negotiate its withdrawal, after which
treaties between the UK and the EU, such as trade agreements, would cease
to apply. But the withdrawal agreement required the approval of the UK
Parliament, as well as a majority of EU member countries.
It was parliamentary deadlock that repeatedly impeded the ratification of a

withdrawal agreement and so delayed the UK’s actual exit from the EU for
more than two years.
The Conservative Party had governed as a single-party majority government

since 2015. In 2017, the party had a working majority of 17 seats against
the Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn. In June 2017, three months after
she became prime minister, May called a snap election, hoping the election
would deliver a larger Conservative majority that could strengthen her hand
in the forthcoming Brexit negotiations with the EU.37
Instead of strengthening her hand, the results of the new election weakened
May and the Conservative Party. Although the Conservative Party remained
the largest single party in the House of Commons, it lost its majority with a
net loss of 13 seats. In contrast, the Labour Party made a net gain of 30 seats,
the first time the party had gained seats since 1997. The Conservative Party
then formed a minority government with support from the Democratic
Unionist Party (DUP) of Northern Ireland.
After the election, UK-EU withdrawal negotiations formally began, which

culminated in a withdrawal agreement in November 2018. But the UK
Parliament voted against ratifying the agreement three times. Opposition
came from both the Labour Party as well as some members of the
Conservative Party—concerning the customs union, financial settlement,
and border controls between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
The Liberal Democrats, Scottish National Party (SNP) and others even
proposed a second referendum to reverse Brexit.
Having failed to gain parliamentary approval for the withdrawal agreement,

Theresa May resigned as prime minister in July 2019, and was succeeded
by Boris Johnson.
The Second Brexit Referendum

On October 17, 2019, the UK and EU negotiated a revised withdrawal
agreement that was endorsed by the European Council, but once again
rejected by the UK Parliament 322-306. During the parliamentary vote, tens
of thousands of anti-Brexit protesters marched through London demanding
a new referendum to reverse the 2016 mandate.
Johnson withdrew the rejected withdrawal agreement and called for an early
general election. On December 12, 2019, in an election widely seen as a
second Brexit referendum, voters delivered a devastating defeat to the
Labour Party but gave the Conservative Party, the only party to run on a
platform of delivering the result of the 2016 referendum, an 80-seat majority
in Parliament, the largest Tory margin since the days of Margaret Thatcher.
The Conservatives, traditionally the party of the rich, took territory that
Labour had held for nearly a century—in Leigh, Workington, Wrexham,
Ashfield, Bolsover, Darlington and a slew of other working class seats in
the North and Midlands of England.38
The election was also a major victory for Johnson, who had made delivering
Brexit the key objective of his premiership. According to Daniel McCarthy,
“Johnson did it by purging his party—he made it clear that outspoken
opponents of Brexit were unwelcome, no matter how high-ranking or
prestigious they might once have been.”
Less than a month later, on January 9, 2020, the comfortable majority won
by Conservatives secured Parliament’s passage of the Withdrawal Agreement

Bill by a vote of 330-231. The agreement was signed by President of the
European Parliament David Sassoli on January 29 and ratified by the EU
Council the next day. And so, at 11 p.m. on January 31, 2020, the United
Kingdom became the first member to quit the European Union.
January 31 began a year-long transition period of UK-EU negotiations over

their future relationship. Until then, EU’s Court of Justice would continue
to have jurisdiction over the UK; the UK would remain subject to EU law
and continue to be part of the EU customs union and single market but
would no longer participate in the EU’s decision-making process and in EU
institutions (such as the European Parliament and the Council), agencies,
offices or other bodies.39
70 Chapter Four
Remainer elites’ reaction. Anti-Brexit elites reacted to the second Brexit

referendum by doubling down on their contemptuous dismissal of Leavers
as ignorant, lowly-educated racists. As examples, John Bercow, Speaker of
the House of Commons, reportedly drove a car with a sticker saying that the
people’s decision to leave the EU was “bollocks”.40 Comedy writer James
Felton said it was racist to be pro-Brexit, while singer Lily Allen wrote on
social media that Boris Johnson won the election because of “racism” and
“misogyny”. Journalist Paul Mason called Leavers selfish “far right” racists;
actor-producer Steve Coogan called Brexit supporters “ill-informed,
ignorant, and uneducated.” For his part, comedian Mark Steel called
Leavers “the most entitled, embittered, sneering, nasty, selfish racist foul
fuckwits,” whereas Remainers were “the decent people”.41
More than their contemptuous dismissal of Leavers, Piers Morgan observed

that Remainers’ fury had grown “ever more hysterical” since the first Brexit
referendum.42
As examples, in a message to his millions of social media followers, rapper

Stormzy resorted to plain abuse, calling Boris Johnson a “f***ing pr*ck”.43
Television broadcaster Terry Christian tweeted that he hoped pro-Brexit
voters would suffer financially and that elderly (“pensioners”) Leavers
would be punished by getting a “good virulent strain” of flu.44 An unnamed
woman in a sweatshirt imprinted with the words “Fuck Boris,” who said she
was planning to be a medical doctor, declared on camera that she wished
Boris Johnson “a horrible death”.45 For her part, actress Miriam Margolyes,
who had said PM David Cameron should “boil in oil” for the 2016 Brexit
referendum, also wished death for Boris Johnson. Appearing on UK

Channel 4’s “The Last Leg” show on May 8, 2020, Margoyles said she
hoped Johnson would die from the Coronavirus Disease 19 (COVID-19): “I
had difficulty not wanting Boris Johnson to die. I wanted him to die.”46
Writing for The Telegraph, journalist Robert Taylor named other elites,
whom he called “the guilty men of Remain”.47 Among those men were Tony
Blair, David Gauke, Hugh Grant, Dominic Grieve, Michael Heseltine, Gary
Lineker, John Major, George Soros “and his millions,” Chuka Umunna, and
“just about every Liberal Democrat MP”. Taylor singled out Brian Kerr, a
member of the House of Lords and a Justice of the Supreme Court of the
UK, for special disapprobation. Taylor wrote:
Lord Kerr, one of the architects of Article 50, who fought tooth and nail to
overturn the [2016] referendum result, assuring the world that Britain would
“come to heel”. You heard him right. The world’s oldest democracy should
ignore the decision of its people and come to the heel of the European Union,
literally like a dog.
Vowing that the elites’ attempt to deny democracy will never be forgiven,
Taylor delivered this stinging rebuke to the guilty men of Remain:
[W]hile there is no disgrace in defeat, there certainly is disgrace in refusing

to accept it, in spending three and a half years fighting to overturn it and
only, finally, giving in when the voters have made their views clear not once
(in the EU referendum), not twice (with the general election of 2017) but
three times (with Boris’s election victory last month). . . .
These are the Guilty Men, who refused to accept democracy. It is only now,
after the general election and its massive mandate for Boris, that the scale of
that guilt is clear. They said that Leave voters were duped by a right-wing
plot – so stupid that we didn’t realise it – and that if we had the chance to
think again, we’d reverse our decision. They rejoiced in older voters dying
off, predicting that this would make a Remain victory a certainty. . . . They
refused to condemn those who called Leavers everything from bigots and
racists to imbeciles.
Because of this Leaver stupidity, they calculated, our vote to leave the
European Union could be overturned, however foul the means. So, they
colluded with the EU and foreign governments to undermine the British
position in Brexit negotiations, aiming either for no Brexit at all or a
withdrawal agreement that would leave the UK subject to all EU rules in
perpetuity....
Yet, despite it all, the voters still decided to “Get Brexit done”. And finally,
today, it will be. Millions of us have told these Guilty Men where to go.
A Matter of National Sovereignty

There is at least one thing the Brexit referenda achieved—the unmasking of
many elites, for whom nationalism is a dirty word, as arrogant narcissists
who think they alone have the right answers and have only contempt for
“ordinary” people.
In the words of columnist and self-identified Marxist libertarian Brendan

O’Neill, the Brexit referendum exposed “the vast moral divide that now
separates the new elite . . . from ordinary people.” O’Neill called the new
elite “Anywhere” people—geographically-mobile post-nationalists who are
“often sniffy about those old, apparently outdated values of community life
72 Chapter Four
and familial loyalty,” whereas ordinary Brits are “Somewhere” people, who
“view nation, place, family and belonging as incredibly important.”48
University of Kent politics professor Matthew Goodwin also identified

national sovereignty as the overarching division between Leavers and
Remainers. Contrary to the popular notion that Leavers were ignorant and
had been duped by nefarious foreign (Russian) disinformation, Goodwin
pointed out that almost every study since the 2016 referendum found that
Leavers knew exactly for what they were voting. Their two dominant
motives were to return powers from the EU to the nation state and, an
offshoot of sovereignty, to lower the overall level of immigration into
Britain.49
Goodwin further expanded on Leavers as national populists in his book co-

authored with University of Bath politics emeritus professor Roger Eatwell,
National Populism Against Liberal Democracy. Brexit supporters were not
driven “simply” by individual self-interest or objective economic concerns.
As many as six in ten Leavers said that “significant damage to the British
economy would be “a price worth paying for Brexit,” while four in ten were
willing to see their own relatives lose their jobs if it meant the UK would
leave the EU.
For Eatwell and Goodwin, pro-Brexit national populists shared “coherent,

deeply felt and in some cases legitimate concerns” about how the UK and
the West were changing. Fearing the possible destruction of the national
group’s historic identity and established ways of life due to immigration and
the resultant “unprecedented” “hyper ethnic change,” Leavers sought to

“reassert the primacy of the nation over distant and unaccountable
international organizations; to reassert cherished and rooted national
identities over rootless and diffuse transnational ones; to reassert the
importance of stability and conformity over the never-ending and disruptive
instability that flows from globalization and rapid ethnic change; and to
reassert the will of the people over those of elitist liberal democrats who
appear increasingly detached from the life experiences and outlooks of the
average citizen.”
Eatwell and Goodwin highlighted the role of the press and the media in the
Remainer elites’ portrayal of Leavers, especially their “concerted” failure
to clearly explain exactly what it was about the EU that seemed so bad that
people wanted the UK to leave. To paint Leavers as ignorant, stupid, racist
xenophobes, the media focused on the Leavers’ anger about immigration—
"the prospect of literally millions of 3rd world migrants sloshing around.

unemployable, undeportable, unassimilated in your lifetime or mine”
because the EU was unwilling or unable to control its borders. But the
immigration issue was simply a symptom of the root problem—the loss of
sovereignty that led to the UK no longer in control of who could come in or
how long they could stay.
Eatwell and Goodwill then detailed how, besides immigration, the UK’s
national sovereignty had been undermined by membership in the EU. There
was the loss of the ability to make trade agreements and to ban imports of
goods or services. Most importantly was the subjugation of all UK laws to
EU laws, which meant UK courts and even Parliament, the raison d’être of
which is to make laws, were no longer sovereign.
Eatwell and Goodwill pointed out that none of these issues and concerns
was discussed “cooly” by the press and media. At the same time, Remainer
political elites used politically correct agendas to silence any opposition. By
caricaturing Leavers as ignorant, xenophobic racists, the elites could simply
dismiss Leavers’ concerns for the importance of community and the
preservation of Britain’s cultural heritage.50
The import that Leavers placed on national sovereignty was not misplaced.
Nearly a year after the 2016 Brexit referendum, a secret document came to
light which showed that for half a century, the British people had been kept
in the dark about the truth of what membership in the European Economic
Community (EEC)—renamed the European Union in 2009—actually
entailed.51
The document, FCO30/1048,52 dated April 2017, was prepared for then-
Prime Minister Edward Heath’s53 Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Classified under the UK’s Official Secrets Act and locked away for almost
50 years, the document instructed London to keep the British public in the
dark about what membership in the EEC meant, and predicted that in about
30 years when voters realized what was happening, it would be too late for
the UK to leave.
FCO30/1048’s unnamed author anticipated that EEC law would take

precedence over British courts; that there would be a United States of
Europe with a single currency; that the British Parliament would be
sidelined as ever more power was passed to the EEC’s administrative center
in Brussels; and that the increased role of Brussels in the lives of the British
74 Chapter Four
people would lead to a “popular feeling of alienation from Government,”

which the author attributed to Britain being populated by xenophobes with
“mistrust of foreigners.” In effect, by ceding judicial and executive powers
to the EEC, Britain would in time become little more than a puppet state of
Brussels. It would be the greatest surrender of Britain’s national sovereignty
since the Norman conquest of England in 1066.
Acknowledging that Britain’s membership in the EEC would mean

“extensive limitations upon our freedom of action,” the author nevertheless
dismissed national sovereignty as “a technical concept with in many ways
only limited bearing on the questions of power and influence that form the
normal preoccupation of foreign policy.” The briefing paper then instructed
UK ministers to conceal the truth from the British public, and to attribute
unpopular measures to the EEC bureaucracy’s “remote and unmanageable
workings” so as not to exacerbate public concern and to preserve the
impression that London, rather than an unelected body of foreign
politicians, was still calling the shots. FCO30/1048 also correctly predicted
the ruse would last for at least the twentieth century, by which time Britain
would be so completely chained to Brussels it would be impossible to leave.
Commenting on the author of FCO30/1048, journalist Christopher Booker

observed:
Here was a civil servant advising that our politicians should connive in
concealing what Heath was letting us in for, not least in hiding the extent to
which Britain would no longer be a democratic country but one essentially
governed by unelected and unaccountable officials. One way to create an

illusion that this system was still democratic, this anonymous mandarin
suggested, would be to give people the chance to vote for new
representatives at European, regional and local levels . . . as meaningless . .
. figureheads.
More shocking than FCO30/1048 was a report in May 2012, more than four
years before the Brexit referendum, that a group of senior Eurocrats were
secretly plotting to replace then-President of the European Council Herman
Van Rompug with a super-powerful EU president who would abolish the
UK as a sovereign state altogether.
Citing as his source David Stoddart, an Independent Labour in the House of

Lords, Express Newspapers political editor Macer Hall reported that the
new EU president would not be directly elected by voters, and that David
Cameron’s coalition government was doing nothing to prevent “the sinister
plot.” Lord Stoddart told Hall it was a plot “by people who want to abolish
nation states and create a United States of Europe.” Stoddart said, “These
people are determined to achieve their final objective. The only hope for
Britain is to leave the EU and become an independent nation.”54
On January 31, 2020, at 11 p.m., after a delay of more than three and a half
years and a second referendum, the United Kingdom finally broke free from
the European Union and regained its national sovereignty.
Notes
1 “Merging the Executives,” CVCE.eu,
https://www.cvce.eu/obj/merging_the_executives-en-575850b6-f472-406a-936d-
8c08a9e0db32.html. Retrieved May 25, 2020.
2 “Five things you need to know about the Maastricht Treaty,” European Central
Bank, February 15, 2017, https://www.ecb.europa.eu/explainers/tell-me-more/

html/25_years_maastricht.en.html. Retrieved May 28, 2020.
3 Dr. Madsen Pirie, “The Meaning of Maastricht,” Adam Smith Institute, February
7, 2019, https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/the-meaning-of-maastricht. Retrieved

June 3, 2020.
4 “EU Referendum Results,” BBC,
https://www.bbc.com/news/politics/eu_referendum/results. Retrieved May 28, 2020.

5 Rowena Mason, “How did UK end up voting to leave the European Union?,” The
Guardian, June 24, 2016. Retrieved June 26, 2016.

6 As quoted by Olivia Ward in “Toxic Brexit debate has led the U.K. into political
turmoil: Analysis” Toronto Star, June 25, 2016. Retrieved June 26, 2016.
7 Julia Hartley-Brewer, “If David Cameron doesn’t stop European migrants claiming
benefits, Britain cannot stay in the EU,” The Telegraph, December 9, 2015,
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/eureferendum/12041041/If-David-
Cameron-doesnt-stop-European-migrants-claiming-benefits-Britain-cannot-stay-
in-the-EU.html. Retrieved June 3, 2020.
8 Lord Ashcroft, “How the United Kingdom voted on Thursday…and why,” Lord
Ashcroft Polls, June 24, 2016. Retrieved June 7, 2020.

9 Dr. Madsen Pirie, “Something Important That Mr Cameron Should Understand,”
Adam Smith Institute, June 17, 2015,

https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/international/something-important-that-mr-
cameron-should-understand/. Retrieved June 3, 2020.
10 Ibid.
11 Thomas Sampson, “Brexit, The Economics of International Disintegration,” CEP
(Center for Economic Performance) Discussion Paper No. 1499, September 2017,
pp. 2-3, 15-16, http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1499.pdf. Retrieved June 7,
2020.
12 Vicky Spratt, “The truth about young people and Brexit,” BBC, October 5, 2018,
76 Chapter Four
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/b8d097b0-3ad4-4dd9-aa25-af6374292de0.
Retrieved June 7, 2020.
13 Sascha O Becker, Thiemo Fetzer and Dennis Novy, “Who voted for Brexit? A
comprehensive district-level analysis,” Economic Policy, 32:92 (October 1, 2017),

pp. 601–650,
https://academic.oup.com/economicpolicy/article/32/92/601/4459491. Retrieved June
9, 2020.
14 “Elite,” Lexico, https://www.lexico.com/definition/elite. Retrieved May 31, 2020.
15 Matthew Goodwin is Professor of Politics and International Relations at the
University of Kent. Oliver Heath is Professor of Politics and co-director of the

Democracy and Elections Centre, at Royal Holloway University of London.
16 Matthew Goodwin and Oliver Heath, “Brexit Vote Explained: Poverty, Low Skills
and Lack of Opportunities,” Joseph Rowntree Foundation, August 31, 2016,

https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/brexit-vote-explained-poverty-low-skills-and-lack-
opportunities. Retrieved June 9, 2020.
17 Sascha O Becker, Thiemo Fetzer and Dennis Novy, “Who voted for Brexit? A
comprehensive district-level analysis,” Economic Policy, 32:92 (October 1, 2017),

pp. 601–650,
https://academic.oup.com/economicpolicy/article/32/92/601/4459491. Retrieved
June 9, 2020.
18Larry Elliott, “Business support for EU membership has fallen in run-up to vote,”
The Guardian, May 9, 2016,

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/may/10/eu-referendum-business-
leaders-remain-brexit-bcc-survey. Retrieved June 10, 2020.
19 “The Deloitte CFO Survey: Brexit hits confidence,” Deloitte, Q2 2016,
https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/uk/Documents/finance/deloitte-
uk-finance-cfo-survey-q2-2016.pdf. Retrieved June 10, 2020.
20 John Curtice, “Britain divided? Who supports and who opposes EU membership,”
What UK Thinks, October 2015, https://whatukthinks.org/eu/wp-content/uploads/

2015/10/Analysis-paper-1-Britain-divided.pdf. Retrieved June 10, 2020.
21 Daniel Cressey, “Scientists say 'no' to UK exit from Europe in Nature poll,”
Nature, March 30, 2016, https://www.nature.com/news/scientists-say-no-to-uk-

exit-from-europe-in-nature-poll-1.19636. Retrieved June 20, 2020.
22 James Booth, “Partners overwhelmingly anti-Brexit as confidence in Britain
staying in falters,” Legal Week, March 2, 2016, https://www.law.com/international-

edition/sites/jamesbooth/2016/03/02/partners-overwhelmingly-anti-brexit-as-
confidence-in-britain-staying-in-falters/?slreturn=20200511033124. Retrieved 14
May 2016.
23 “Economists' Views on Brexit,” Ipsos MORI, May 28, 2016,
https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/economists-views-brexit. Retrieved June

10, 2020.
24 Goodwin and Heath, “Brexit Vote Explained,” op. cit.
25 Thomas Sampson, “Brexit, The Economics of International Disintegration,” op.
cit., p. 15.
26 Sascha O Becker, et al., “Who voted for Brexit? A comprehensive district-level
analysis,” op. cit., p. 645.
27 Noah Carl, Lindsay Richards, and Anthony Heath, “Leave and Remain voters’
knowledge of the EU after the referendum of 2016,” Electoral Studies, vol. 57
(February 2019), pp. 90-98,
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379418302609. Retrieved June
23, 2020.
28 “UKIP demands apology from Cameron,” BBC News, April 4, 2006,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4875026.stm. Retrieved June 20, 2020.

29 Barack Obama, “Barack Obama: As your friend, let me say that the EU makes
Britain even greater,” The Telegraph, April 23, 2016,

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/21/as-your-friend-let-me-tell-you-that-
the-eu-makes-britain-even-gr/. Retrieved June 10, 2020.
30 Tyler Durden, “Was This The Deciding Factor For Brits To Vote ‘Leave’?,”
ZeroHedge, June 24, 2016, https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-24/was-

deciding-factor-brits-vote-leave. Retrieved May 30, 2020.
31 “Nation Divided: The Full Debate,” Sky News, January 5, 2017,
https://news.sky.com/video/nation-divided-the-full-debate-10719308. Retrieved April

29, 2020.
32 At the 25:25 mark in the Sky News video, ibid.
33 “Remainers have aggressive contempt of Brexit voters,” YouTube,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhTGyURYquE (short). Retrieved April 26,

2020.
34 Neil Dudgeon @dudgeon_neil, Twitter, April 6, March 9, and March 14, 2018,
https://twitter.com/dudgeon_neil/status/982225873808982017,
https://twitter.com/dudgeon_neil/status/972305754467258368,
https://twitter.com/dudgeon_neil/status/974010707451809798. Retrieved June 18,
2020.
35 News Breakfast’s tweet of the video of Margoyles’ interview, January 27, 2019,
https://twitter.com/BreakfastNews/status/1089643666090602496?ref_src=twsrc%5
Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fd-
19151877681050074308.ampproject.net%2F2004252135000%2Fframe.html.
Retrieved May 15, 2020.
36 “Brexit: David Cameron to quit after UK votes to leave EU,” BBC, June 24, 2016,
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-36615028. Retrieved June 13, 2020.

37 James McAuley, “After shocking British vote result, Europe ponders fate of Brexit
negotiations,” Washington Post, June 9, 2017,

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/after-british-vote-brexit-negotiations-
could-be-delayed/2017/06/09/1a2fee88-4c9b-11e7-987c-
42ab5745db2e_story.html. Retrieved June 14, 2020.
38 James Forsyth, “Boris Johnson’s spectacular win heralds a new era for Britain,”
Spectator USA, Dec. 13, 2019, https://spectator.us/boris-johnson-spectacular-win-

heralds-britain/. Retrieved Dec. 13, 2019.
39 “Questions and Answers on the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European
Union on 31 January 2020,” European Commission, January 24, 2020,

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/qanda_20_104. Retrieved June
16, 2020.
78 Chapter Four
40 Robert Taylor, “The Guilty Men of Remain will never be forgotten,” The
Telegraph, February 1, 2020,
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/02/01/guilty-men-remain-elite-will-
never-forgiven/. Retrieved Feb. 9, 2020.
41 Paul Joseph Watson, “Leftist Losers React to UK Election,” YouTube, December
15, 2019, https://youtu.be/VcuoEVcsLcs. Retrieved June 16, 2020.

42 Piers Morgan, “PIERS MORGAN: Boris Johnson's triumph proves democracy-
denying radical socialists backed by self-righteous celebrities on Twitter are

electoral poison – and if Democrats fall for the same delusion, Trump will decimate
them in 2020,” Daily Mail, December 13, 2019,
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7789231/PIERS-MORGAN-Boris-
Johnson-triumph-socialists-celebrities-electoral-poison-Trump-decimate-2020.
html. Retrieved Dec. 13, 2019.
43 Ibid.
44 “Terry Christian—the true face of Remoaner bigotry,” Spiked, January 28, 2020,
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/01/28/terry-christian-the-true-face-of-
remoaner-bigotry/. Retrieved June 23, 2020.

46 Ellie Phillips, “’I wanted him to DIE!’: Outrage as Harry Potter star Miriam
Margolyes says she wishes coronavirus had killed Boris Johnson when Prime
Minister was struck by the bug,” Daily Mail, May 9, 2020,
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-8303091/Harry-Potter-star-Miriam-
Margolyes-admits-wanted-PM-Boris-Johnson-DIE-COVID-19.html. Retrieved May
15, 2020.
47 Robert Taylor, “The Guilty Men of Remain will never be forgotten,” The

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/02/01/guilty-men-remain-elite-will-
never-forgiven/. Retrieved Feb. 9, 2020.

48 Brendan O’Neill, “Why people who hate Brexit love Megxit,” Spectator USA,
Jan. 11, 2019, https://spectator.us/people-hate-brexit-love-megxit/. Retrieved June

16, 2020.
49 Professor Matthew Goodwin, “The Remainers’ caricature of Leave voters is
wrong and shows they still fail to understand why people backed Brexit,” Brexit
Central, October 24, 2018, https://brexitcentral.com/remainers-caricature-leave-
voters-wrong-shows-still-fail-understand-people-backed-brexit/.Retrieved March
26, 2020.
50 Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin, National Populism Against Liberal
Democracy (London, UK: Penguin, 2018), pp. 36, 30, xxii, xxix, xxxii, and 9.
51 Lara Deauville, “REVEALED: How Whitehall thought British public TOO
STUPID to be trusted with EU decision,” Express, November 24, 2017,

https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/883540/FCO-30-1048-Brexit-EU-secret-
document-damned-Britain-EU-membership. Retrieved June 20, 2020.
52 “FCO 30 1048,” A Case for Treason, http://www.acasefortreason.co.uk/fco-30-
1048/. Retrieved June 20, 2020.
53 Born into a lower middle-class family, life-long bachelor Edward Heath was
leader of the Conservative Party from 1965 to 1975, and became Sir Edward Heath
in 1992. In 2015, ten years after his death at age 89 in 2005, Heath was named in
several police investigations into historical child sex abuse and satanic ritual abuse.
Detectives said if he were alive, Heath would have been interviewed “under caution”
in relation to seven out of 42 allegations, including the alleged rape of an 11-year-
old, but that nothing should be inferred about his guilt or innocence. “Edward
Heath,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Heath. Retrieved June 22,
2020.
54 Macer Hall, “EU plot to scrap Britain,” Express, May 4, 2012,
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/318045/EU-plot-to-scrap-Britain. Retrieved June

20, 2020.
CHAPTER FIVE
POPULISM IN ITALY AND FRANCE
MARIA HSIA CHANG
Over the past few decades, in virtually all western democratic countries, a
series of intercorrelated developments have taken place. There has been a
crisis in traditional political representation—elective assemblies lost their
authority and popular participation has declined. Among the more
immediate consequences is the proliferation of new political forms,
sufficiently distinct to be identified by specialists as instances of an inclusive
category “populist.” Some speak of our time as engaging a populist
Zeitgeist. In the twenty years since 2000, academic studies of populism
increased 584 percent, from 288 to 1,681 publications.1
Populism found fertile grounds in the Latin countries of Europe following

the recession of 2007-2008 which created conditions for the coming
together of popular discontent. Less than a week after the June 2016 Brexit
referendum, calls for a similar direct public vote spread like wildfire across
Europe.
Analysts labeled the populist movements with the pejorative term of

“extremist,” and warned that Brexit could lead to the break-up of the
European Union (EU) itself. A study by the European Council on Foreign
Relations (ECFR) found that “insurgent parties” in thirty-four EU countries
were calling for a public vote on matters ranging from refugee policy to
membership in the EU. ECFR’s Mark Leonard warned that the “insurgent
parties” could not be dismissed as fringe parties and that they represented
“a revolution” in European foreign policy. “Even where they don’t win
power directly, they are so politically powerful that they are forcing
mainstream parties to adopt their positions.”2
Among the thirty-four EU countries calling for a Brexit-like referendum

were Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy,
82 Chapter Five
Netherlands, Poland and Sweden. Two of them—Italy and France—are the

subject of this chapter.
Italy
In the wake of Brexit, Italy’s populist Five Star Movement officially called
for a referendum on whether to keep the euro currency. Since Italian law
does not allow referendums to change international treaties, an Italexit
referendum would be an expression of public opinion without the force of
law, but it would send a clear signal to Rome.3
By April 2020, a Tecne Institute poll found that nearly half of all Italians,
49 percent, were in favor of leaving the EU—20 percent more than a year
and a half ago when the question was last put to the public.4 That poll finding
is all the more impressive given the fact that just 18 years ago in 2002, after
the introduction of the euro, Italy was the second most pro-euro country
after Luxembourg, with 79 percent expressing a positive opinion.5
According to the Pew Research Center, there are two main populist parties
in Italy—the Five Star Movement and the League.6
Five Star Movement. The Five Star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle or

M5S) was founded in 2009 by comedian and blogger Beppe Grillo and web
strategist Gianroberto Casaleggio as “a free association of citizens”
articulating a critique of the “establishment” as being indifferent to the
interests of “the people.” Disillusioned with representative democracy, Five
Stars’ founders believed that the internet could be marshaled for a direct
democracy and a new kind of political party—one without organization,
money, ideology or headquarters. Grillo instead used his blog, Il Blog di
Beppe Grillo,7 and the social networking site, Meetup.com, to bring people
together to campaign on local issues and field candidates for elections.8
The "five stars" of M5S refer to the five issues of public water, sustainable
transport, sustainable development, right to internet access, and
environmentalism. In a conversation with his deputies in 2013, Grillo
referred to the Five Star Movement as “populist”. He said: “We are
populists, we talk to people's bellies and we don't have to be ashamed. . . .
We are the belly (la pancia) of the people."9 As a populist movement, Five
Star also advocates e-democracy, zero-cost politics, degrowth, nonviolence
and most recently, universal income.10
Populism in Italy and France 83
Pew Research Center rated Five Star as ideologically centric (5.2 on the left-
right scale) and vehemently anti-elitist (9.9 on anti-elitism).11 The
movement variously is described as populist,12 anti-establishment,13 anti-
immigration,14 anti-globalist,15 environmentalist,16 and Eurosceptic.17
Since its founding in 2009, Five Star quickly rose in prominence:
x Four years after it was founded, Five Star catapulted to become the
second most voted-for party in the 2013 general election, although
the party won only 109 of 630 positions in the Italian Parliament’s
lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, because Five Star refused to
ally with another party to form a coalition government.
x Luigi Di Maio was one of the 109 Five Star parliamentary
representatives who, at age 27, became the youngest vice president
of the Chamber of Deputies. In September 2017, with more than 82
percent of the vote, he was elected prime ministerial candidate and
political head of Five Star.
x In 2016, two Five Star members, Virginia Raggi and Chiara
Appendino, were elected mayors of Rome and Turin, respectively.
x In the March 2018 general election, although Five Star was the
political party that garnered the largest number of votes, a center-
right alliance that included the populist League party won a plurality
of seats in both houses of Parliament. With no political party winning
an outright majority, the result was a hung parliament. In May 2018,
Five Star Movement and the League reached an agreement to form
a new government, with law professor Giuseppe Conte as prime
minister, and Di Maio and the League’s Matteo Salvini as deputy

prime ministers. Di Maio was also appointed minister of economic
development, labor and social policies. As minister, Di Maio
implemented "citizens' income" (reddito di cittadinanza)—a welfare
program that was one of Five Star’s main proposals in the 2018
campaign, which provided poor people with a basic income of a
maximum of €780 per month, as well as assistance in finding a job.
In its first year, the program had almost 2.7 million applications.18
x In August 2019, Five Star and the League disagreed on the
construction of the Turin-Lyon high-speed railway. To force early
elections and hopefully improve the League’s standing in Parliament
so that he could become the next prime minister, Deputy Prime
Minister Salvini announced a motion of no confidence against Conte,
which Five Star opposed.19 Conte resigned his post to President
Sergio Mattarella. The resignation was short-lived, lasting only eight
84 Chapter Five
days, which ended when Five Star forged an alliance with the center-
left Democratic Party (PD) to make a new ruling majority in
Parliament. Conte convened a new cabinet, with Di Maio as minister
of foreign affairs. Di Maio then resigned as leader of Five Star.20
Through ups and downs, Five Star Movement’s poll ratings had stood at
around 30 percent, just behind the Democratic Party. Writing in December
2016, University of Salford Professor of Politics James Newell observed
that a vote for Five Star was more a protest vote that drew support from all
parts of the political spectrum than an endorsement of the party’s eclectic
left-right mix of beliefs. People voted for it because of their disgust with the
political class “in whom vast swathes have virtually no confidence.” United
only in their desire to shake up the status quo, Five Star activists and
supporters were divided across the whole range of issues separating left and
right, including those on the EU, taxation, and migrants. In Newell’s
judgment:21
It is doubtful that such a party can remain cohesive when faced with the
pressures of governing. The M5S would probably crumble under the weight
of the responsibility for making choices that can only benefit some while
hurting others. . . . [P]rotest parties railing against “the system” are as likely
to find themselves being absorbed by it as they are to transform it once in
office. Faced with the day-to-day pressure, they are doomed to become a
party just like all the others.
League (Lega). The Northern League (Lega Nord) was founded in 1991 as
a federation of six regional parties in northern and north-central Italy

seeking independence from Rome to form a new nation of Padania. In the
run-up to the 2018 general election, Northern League was rebranded League
(Lega), although Lega Nord remains the official name in the party’s statute.
The founder of Northern League was Umberto Bossi, a native of Lombardy

in northwest Italy who was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 2008
where he represented Lombardy until 2018. Bossi was minister of reforms
in Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s 2001-2004 and 2008-2011 cabinets.
In April 2012, Bossi resigned as leader (federal secretary) of Northern
League after he was accused by prosecutors of using money earmarked for
the League on house renovations and his family.22 After an internal struggle
and a brief leadership by a triumvirate, Matteo Salvini took over as the
League’s official leader in December 2013.
Founded as a regional party with the aim of secession, the League began as
an ideologically catch-all party. As Bossi said in 1982 to his early followers,
“It does not matter how old you are or what your job or political tendency
is. What matters is that…we have a fundamental common goal that is before
and above our political party divisions."23
The Pew Research Center considered the League to be on the ideological

right (8.3 on the left-right rating) and anti-elitist (7.8 on anti-elitism).24
Since its inception, however, the League had often varied its tone and
policies—from libertarian socialism and social liberalism to social
conservatism; anti-clericalism to a pro-Catholic Church stance; and
Europeanism to Euroscepticism.25 Calling the League “a kind of chameleonic
party,” Davide Vampa, a lecturer in politics and international relations at
Aston University, UK, pointed out that it is precisely the League’s ability to
adapt that is the key to its survival.26
The League’s chameleon quality is reflected in its supporters who span the
left-right continuum. In the 1992 general election, 25.4% of League
supporters were former Christian Democratic voters, 18% were Communists,
12.5% Socialists, and 6.6% were former voters of the post-fascist Italian
Social Movement.27 A 1998 Abacus poll found that 29.4% of League voters
identified as centrist, 38.9% identified with the right, and 39% with the
left.28
Originating as a regional, secessionist party, under the leadership of Matteo

Salvini in 2013, the Northern League redefined itself as populist and
committed itself almost entirely to a struggle against foreign immigration.

Not only had the League abandoned much of its original pacifism and
environmentalism,29 it seemed to have relinquished secession and Padanian
nationalism altogether. Salvini also rowed back Northern League’s promise
to take Italy out of the euro. Furthermore, although the League had
advocated the transformation of Italy from a centralized polity into a federal
republic in which the regions, especially those in the north, would have
more fiscal autonomy, in January 2018, to make the party more appealing
nationally in the upcoming elections, Salvini dropped the word “Nord” from
Lega Nord, as well as all references to federalism and Padania.30 Salvini
also created a sister party, Us with Salvini, in southern Italy—the same
southern Italy that Northern League once derided as populated with
“beggars, thieves and good-for-nothing rednecks.”31
86 Chapter Five
To broaden the League’s appeal, Salvini spoke to the concerns of poorer

ethnic Italians with an “Italy First” populist program of anti-immigration,
anti-globalization, and anti-EU. Tapping into popular anti-immigration
sentiments, he called for the criminalization of undocumented migrants and
cracking down on aid groups that helped migrants come into Italy by sea.
In a campaign speech in the south, Salvini said: “We can’t turn Italy into a
refugee camp.”32
Giovanni Orsina, professor of government at Luiss University in Rome,

observed that the issues Salvini focused on—those of “migration, taxes,
bureaucracy, defending a depressed area against the ills of globalization”—
resonated in the south because southern Italy had borne the brunt of an
influx of poor migrants across the Mediterranean. As Adriana Domeniconi,
a Senate candidate for the League from the south, put it, “We’ve become
the EU’s rubbish dump.”33
For years Italy has been the primary route into Europe for hundreds of
thousands of asylum seekers and other migrants. The Italian peninsula’s
proximity to coastal North Africa has led to the crossing of the Mediterranean
Sea as the most used route for undocumented migrants. Their principal
destination by boats and rafts are the southernmost Italian territories—the
Pelagie Islands—just 70 miles (113 km) from Tunisia and 103 miles (167
km) from Libya, the two countries in North Africa accounting for more than
80 percent of migrants reaching Italy.34 According to the European Union’s
Dublin Regulation,35 migrants are to apply for legal residence, protection or
asylum permits in the first EU country they cross into. This means that once
the migrants have landed in Italy, they effectively are barred from leaving
Italy until their case has been processed and positively concluded.
Since 2013, Italy had taken in more than 700,000 migrants, mainly from
sub-Saharan Africa.36 A peak was reached in the year from August 2016 to
July 2017 when almost 183,000 migrants made their way to Italy. Between
August 2019 and the end of July 2020, more than 21,000 people reached
Italy—an increase of 148 percent from a year ago.37 Italy’s Interior Minister
Luciana Lamorgese said, “We have seen entire families leave to reach
Italian territory.”38
In 2018, a Pew Research Center poll found that a majority (71%) of Italians
wanted fewer immigrants to be allowed into the country, 18% wanted to
keep the current level, and only 5% wanted to increase immigration.39 In
2019, according to a poll published by Corriere della Sera, half of all
Italians (51%) favored closing Italy's ports to migrants arriving via the
Mediterranean; 60% faulted Europe for the migrant emergency, including
61% of League supporters and 70% of Five Star supporters.40 Anti-
immigration, however, is an issue that transcends Italy’s populist parties. In
June 2017, former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, leader of the center-left
Democratic Party, said Italy had no moral duty to host migrants, and urged
his country to escape its “do-gooder mentality”.41
In the 2013 parliamentary election, Northern League took only 4% of the

vote. Five years later in the 2018 general election, however, under the
leadership of Salvini, the League catapulted to be the third-largest party
behind the Five Star Movement and the Democratic Party, with 17.4% of
votes for the Chamber of Deputies and 17.6% of votes for the Senate. In the
2019 European Parliament election, the League was the largest party, with
34.3% of votes. In the most recent regional elections, the League was the
largest party in the northern regions of Veneto, Lombardy, Fruili-Venezia
Giulia, Trentino and Piedmont, in the central region of Umbria, and in the
southern region of Abruzzo; the second-largest party in Aosta Valley and
Emilia-Romagna in the north, Tuscany in central Italy, and Basilicata in the
south; and the third-largest party in Liguria and South Tyrol in the north,
and in Marche in central Italy.42
Writing in the Italian Journal of Political Science, Roberto Biorcio,

professor of sociology at the University of Milan-Bicocca, had this to say
about the League:43
Initially greeted with contempt and irony by political elites and the media,
the League succeeded in a few years to . . . build one of the most important
Italian political parties. In a time of crisis of participation and decline of
mass parties, this new political entity managed to promote new militancy
and create a strong organization, with a network spread throughout the
country.
No Europe for Italy. In addition to the established Five Star and League
populist parties, there is an embryonic movement, No Europe for Italy.
On July 23, 2020, independent Senator Gianluigi Paragone, a former Five

Star member who acknowledged Brexiteer Nigel Farage as a model,
declared he would launch a new political party, No Europe for Italy, for the
express purpose of taking Italy out of the European Union.
88 Chapter Five
Calling the EU “the biggest political fraud of the past few decades” which
cannot be reformed, Paragone decried all the “so-called eurosceptic parties”
that believed the EU could be reformed from within. He claimed his new
party would give Italians “the first ever opportunity to express their view”
because Italy “lacks a party that explicitly proposes Italy’s exit from the EU
and Eurozone.”44
Expressing the anger felt by many Italians at what they perceived to be the
EU’s failure to respond quickly enough to Italy’s pleas for help when the
COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic struck, Paragone told reporters in Rome:
“I say ‘No’ to this Europe and I start afresh with Italy, because I want to
start from the sovereignty of a state which has all the cards it needs to play
all the markets. The euro is in fact a slightly-devalued Deutsche Mark, so
Germany does better in a Germanic union.”45
Undeterred by initial studies showing No Europe for Italy lagging behind

the main parties in polls, Paragone believed that, after the League and the
Five Star Movement had dropped their vow to quit the EU, his openly anti-
EU party would be the vehicle for growing anti-Brussels sentiment across
Italy. 46
France
According to the Pew Research Center, there are two populist parties in
France. They are La France Insoumise on the left, and National Rally on
the right.47
Unsubmissive France (La France Insoumise). Founded on February 10,

2016 by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a former co-president of the Left Party and a
member of the European Parliament, La France Insoumise is a democratic-
socialist party considered by Pew Research Center to be anti-elitist (8.9
rating) and radical left in its ideology, with a rating of 1.0 on the left-right
scale.48
The English translation of insoumise is unsubmissive, but there seems to be

no commonly accepted term in English for La France Insoumise. It is
variously rendered into English as Rebellious, Indomitable, Unbowed or
Unsubmissive France.49
Unsubmissive France’s goal is to implement eco- or green-socialism—an

anti-globalist variant of Marxism that merges socialism with ecology or
environmentalism. Eco-socialists advocate the abolition of capitalism,

convinced that capitalism, through globalization and imperialism, is the
cause of poverty, war and environmental degradation. In place of capitalism
would be common ownership of the means of production,50 which Karl
Marx had envisioned as a distinguishing feature of communism. That being
so, another term for eco-socialists may be eco-communists, which would
account for Unsubmissive France having the support of leftist parties,
groups and individuals, including the French Communist Party, Left Party,
Pole of Communist Revival in France, Rebellious Socialists, and some
elected officials and leaders of Europe Ecology – The Greens (EELV).
Being anti-globalization, Unsubmissive France favors the country’s

withdrawal from international free trade agreements such as the Transatlantic
Trade and Investment Partnership (TPP) and the Comprehensive Economic
and Trade Agreement (CETA), as well as from the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) to avoid French involvement in U.S.-instigated wars.
Concerning the European Union, Unsubmissive France proposes a
"democratic re-founding" of EU treaties to change the Union’s monetary,
agricultural and environmental policies. If the EU is not democratically re-
fashioned, France should unilaterally withdraw from European treaties and,
by implication, from the EU itself.
Unlike traditional political parties, Unsubmissive France is loosely

organized at best. Instead of a well-defined structure, the party relies on
local “action groups” of like-minded people to do what needs to be done.
There is also the option of participating without joining an action group by
simply engaging in activities such as distributing leaflets or by joining the

party online with an email address and a postal code.51 During the 2017
presidential election, members of Unsubmissive France formed local
“support committees” across the country and abroad to promote
Mélenchon's candidacy by canvassing door-to-door, distributing campaign
literature, and forming “citizens’ assemblies”.52
In the 2017 elections, Mélenchon came in fourth in the first presidential

round with 19.58% of the votes, two percent short of what was needed to
qualify him for the second round. In the National Assembly elections,
Unsubmissive France garnered 11.03 percent of the votes and 17 seats. The
party did not field candidates in the Senate elections, claiming that the
“archaic” voting system would not allow it to win seats and that the Senate
is undemocratic, useless and should be abolished.53
90 Chapter Five
National Rally (né National Front). Founded in 1972 as the National Front
(Front National), National Rally (Rassemblement national) is classified by
the Pew Research Center as anti-elitist (8.9 rating) and radical right, with a
score of 9.7 on the left-right scale.54
Jean-Marie Le Pen, a politician who had served as a member of the National

Assembly and as a municipal and regional councilor, established the
National Front to unify assorted nationalist movements at the time. He was
National Front’s leader from its inception until his resignation in 2011, and
the party’s honorary president until 2015.
A fringe party in its first decade, National Front (NF) became a major force
of French nationalism after 1984, and has put forward a candidate at every
presidential election but one since 1974. In the first round of the 2002
presidential elections, Le Pen obtained 16.86 percent of the votes, which
qualified him for the second round—the first time for someone with far-
right views. Le Pen, however, lost by a large margin in the second round to
then-President Jacques Chirac, a conservative.
From its beginning, National Front had been anti-European Union and anti-
immigration, both legal and illegal. The party advocated significant cuts to
legal immigration; opposed French membership in the EU, eurozone,
NATO, and the Schengen Area (26 countries in the EU where passports and
any other types of border control at their mutual borders are abolished); and
favored economic interventionism, protectionism, and a zero-tolerance
approach to law and order.
Le Pen was also the first far-right European politician to inveigh against
Muslim immigration from the former French colonies in North Africa.
Nicknamed the "Devil of the Republic" by the mainstream media55 for his
Holocaust denial and opposition to Muslim immigration, Le Pen was
described by John Lichfield, Paris correspondent for The Independent, as “a
sincere anti-semite and racist, descended from an extreme nationalist
tradition in France,”56 and by Der Spiegel as a “primitive and old-fashioned”
racist and anti-Semite.57 Britannica calls his party “neofascist” for
resurrecting slogans used by French fascists in the 1930s.58 Despite being a
“neofascist” “primitive,” Le Pen shocked the French elite59 by capturing
more votes than Socialist candidate Lionel Jospin in the first round of the
2002 presidential elections, but was defeated in the second round as
disparate parties rallied together behind incumbent Jacques Chirac to return
him to office with the largest margin of victory in the history of the French
presidency.
In 2012, after her father resigned from the NF, former lawyer Marine Le
Pen, youngest daughter of Jean-Marie, was elected party leader with a two-
thirds vote. Marine began a systematic de-demonization (dédiabolisation)
or normalization of the party by softening its rhetoric and censuring
controversial members like her father and his allies. In May 2015, Jean-
Marie was suspended from the party he had founded after he refused to
attend a disciplinary hearing for dismissing the gas chambers used in Nazi
concentration camps as a mere “detail” of history.60 In August 2015, the
bitter feud between Jean-Marie and the daughter he had groomed, led to the
elder Le Pen being expelled from the National Front altogether after a three-
hour extraordinary party congress.61 The next year, Jean-Marie founded a
new political party, the Jeanne Committees (Comités Jeanne), named after
Joan of Arc.
Marine Le Pen is described as a “second generation manager of a family

enterprise” who is non-dogmatic and lacks firm convictions, convinced only
that “Le Pen PLC” can only succeed if re-branded as patriotic instead of
racist. To that end, the party was moved away from its Poujadiste,62 anti-
state, anti-Communist, racist origins to something more resembling
traditional conservatism. The National Front withdrew from the far-right
Alliance of European National Movements and joined the more moderate
European Alliance of Freedom. All overt signs of anti-semitism and racism
were stamped out, although antipathy toward fundamentalist Islam and
Muslim immigration remains.63 In March 2018, in a move to further

distance the party from her father, Marine proposed renaming National
Front to National Rally. On June 1, 2018, with the approval of 80.81 percent
of its adherents, the party was formally renamed.
Marine aimed to unite the factions of the French Right into a nationalist
movement based on traditional free market and Catholic values, although
she herself, though raised a Roman Catholic, is pro-abortion and twice-
divorced.64 In a February 2017 interview with La Croix International,
Marine claimed to have “a strong faith” and “have never doubted it,” but
maintained religions should not tell the French people how to vote.
Admitting to being “angry with the Church because I think that it interferes
in everything except what it should really be concerned with,” Marine took
issue with Pope Francis’ and French bishops’ open-borders stance on
immigration which demanded “that states go against the interests of their
92 Chapter Five
own people by not placing conditions on the acceptance of significant

numbers of migrants”.65
In the interest of the preservation of French culture and economy, the NF

opposes unconstrained immigration, legal and clandestine. In the words of
Marine Le Pen, “Without a policy restricting immigration, it becomes
difficult, if not impossible, to fight against communalism and the rise of
ways of life at odds with laïcité, France’s distinctive form of secularism,
and other laws and values of the French Republic. An additional burden is
mass unemployment, which is itself exacerbated by immigration.”66
Rejecting the “Islamophobia” label, Marine Le Pen, in a 2015 New York

Times op/ed, took pains to point out that her objection was to the “totalitarian
ideology” of “Islamic fundamentalism” and its attendant terrorism, rather
than to the Islamic faith—a distinction she claimed the French government
was “reluctant” to make.67
As for globalization and the European Union, although France was a

founding member of the EU, French voters, however, in recent years had
grown increasingly disenchanted with the EU’s free-market and open-
border policies, and rejected a proposed EU constitution in a 2005
referendum. Since its inception, National Front had been anti-EU for reasons
of national sovereignty. In 2012, in support of economic protectionism, Marine
Le Pen described globalization as “getting slaves to make things abroad to
sell to unemployed people here.”68 In 2016, declaring her support for Brexit
and promising French voters their own referendum, Marine said, “I would
have voted for Brexit. France has a thousand more reasons to leave than the
UK because we have the euro and Schengen. This [Brexit] result shows the
EU is decaying, there are cracks everywhere.”69
More recently however, Marine Le Pen softened her opposition to the EU.
In January 2019, she “definitively” ruled out the exit of France from the
eurozone. She told Le Figaro: “We are pragmatists, we are not ideologues.
If we regain all our sovereignty, if we reform the European Central Bank
(ECB), and if the euro remains a major problem, we will put the problem
back on the table.”70
On April 15, 2019, Marine Le Pen presented the party's manifesto and
program for the upcoming European Parliament elections in Strasbourg,
France, in which she retreated from earlier calls for France to abandon the
euro and to quit the EU. Declining to explain why she no longer favored a
Frexit, Le Pen proposed reforming the EU into a more authentic European

democracy via an “alliance of nations" by taking decision-making away
from the technocrats of Brussels. The European Commission and its "28
commissioners who weren't democratically elected, its president drunk on
power" should be abolished and their powers transferred to the European
Council and a modified European Parliament. The latter’s role should be
redefined “so that it serves nations and not be the registration chamber of
the Commission” and put "in charge of examining and debating and voting
on all treaties, texts and directives proposed by the Council of heads of
state.” National borders should be reinstated and controls of Europe's
external borders reinforced by transforming Frontex—the EU's border and
coast guard agency—from a "migrant hosting agency" to overseeing a
"border policy…that prevents illegal immigration."71
Since Marine Le Pen was elected leader of the NF in 2011, its popularity
steadily increased to become a major political party by 2015. On its website,
National Rally claims a membership and “sympathizers” numbering 83,000
across France and abroad, from all socio-professional classes and
backgrounds.72 Below are the post-2011 electoral achievements of National
Front/Rally and Marine Le Pen:
x In the 2012 elections, National Front won 13.07% of the legislative

votes and two seats in parliament, while Marine came third in the
first presidential round, with 17.9% of votes, the best showing ever
for an NF presidential candidate.
x In a May 2013 presidential preference poll, Marine came in second
place with 24% of the votes, ahead of then-President François

Hollande’s 20%.73
x In the March 2014 municipal elections, NF scored what the media
called a “historic” victory, gaining some 1,500 seats in local councils
and the mayoralty of 12 cities in southern and northern France—the
latter a traditional stronghold of the Socialist Party.74
x In the 2014 European Parliament election, National Front “stunned”
France’s elite by riding a wave of Euroskepticism to finish first with
26% of the votes, and 25 of France’s 74 seats. Reuters called it “the
first time the anti-immigrant, anti-EU party had won a nationwide
election in its four-decade history.”75
x In the 2017 elections, Marine temporarily stepped down as NF’s
leader in a bid to appeal to voters. Although a number of polls had
Marine in the lead, she was defeated in the second presidential round
by 66% to 34%, but was elected to the National Assembly for the
94 Chapter Five
first time. In the legislative election, National Front was the third
most voted party, winning 13.02% of the votes and eight seats.
x In the 2019 European Parliament election, National Rally came first
with over 23% of votes and 23 seats.
x In 2020, National Rally was the most popular party with France’s
white working class.76
Writing in July 2020, John Lichfield observed that there were many barriers
to National Rally enjoying more electoral successes. They included the
party’s “chaotic finances”; the increasing divide between the party in the
North (blue collar, ex-left-voting, anti-immigrant, pro-big state) and South
(ex-center-right, anti-state and anti-Muslim); and a section of the party—as
well as a large part of the wider French “hard right and ultra-right”—who
“would like to see the back of the Le Pens” because they believe the family
name and control of the party are “a barrier to the kind of success that the
nationalist-populist anti-European right has enjoyed in Italy or Austria.”77
To those barriers can be added the interpersonal conflicts and policy

disagreements within the National Rally which had led to the departure of
key officials. Among the disaffected are Florian Philippot, the party’s vice
president and one of the architects of its “de-demonization” strategy,
described as Marine Le Pen’s right hand and ideological alter ego. In
October 2017, unhappy with the party’s reversal on the EU and euro,
Philippot and his key aides left National Front to form a new political party,
the hard Eurosceptic Les Patriotes (The Patriots).78
In June 2020, Louis Aliot, vice president of National Rally and a member
of the National Assembly who was Marine’s lover for a decade before they
separated in 2019, was elected mayor of Perpignan in southwest France. But
Aliot did not run for mayor as a member of National Rally. His campaign
was heavily influenced by Robert Menard, the hard-right but non-National
Rally mayor of nearby Béziers who had been campaigning openly for a new
post-Le Pen leadership of the French populist right. The informal alliance
between Aliot and Menard is said to exacerbate the ideological split in the
National Rally between “its southern and northern tribes.”79
Other Populist Movements. To France’s two populist parties, Unsubmissive

France and National Rally, can be added the Yellow Vests Movement and
the Generation Frexit campaign.
Generation Frexit. In September 2020, inspired by Brexit, Charles-Henri

Gallois launched a new campaign, Generation Frexit, which advocates a
referendum for France to “take back control” by leaving the EU.
Gallois is a member of a minor political party, the hard Euroskeptic Popular

Republican Union (Union Populaire Républicaine), which was founded in
2007 and has won zero seat in the French and European Parliaments. In an
exclusive interview with Express, Gallois said: “For me, the UK Brexit
campaign has been incredible. It was a war for European nations to regain
control. What we want to do is help the French get a referendum on our
country’s membership of the European Union – and advocate for Frexit in
this referendum.”80
Yellow Vests Movement (Mouvement des gilets jaunes). On November 17,

2018, after a May 29 online petition against a projected 2019 tax increase
on gas and diesel fuel had attracted nearly a million signatures,81 mass
demonstrations broke out across France. The protesters, estimated to
number nearly 300,000, wore the yellow safety vests (gilets jaunes) that
French law requires all drivers to have in their vehicles—thus, the moniker
“Yellow Vests”.
No one had claimed authorship of the vests, just as no one had stepped
forward as leader of the protests, but the ubiquitous and inexpensive yellow
vests likely were chosen as “a unifying thread and call to arms” to symbolize
“the difference between the haves and the have-nots” because of the vests’
association with working-class industries, such as the construction industry.82
Indeed, increases in fuel taxes and prices especially affected the working
and lower-middle classes who, living in the less-expensive outskirts of
urban cities, depended on their cars for transportation and to earn a living.
According to a study by the Institut des Politiques Publiques, the bottom

one-fifth of households in income would fare the worst under France’s
2018-2019 budget, whereas the richest one percent would gain the most.83
At the beginning of the yellow vest protests, a gallon of gas cost $6.48,
double the average cost of $3 a gallon in the United States. Taxes accounted
for 60% of the cost of gas in France. Diesel prices in France increased by
16% in 2018, with taxes on both gas and diesel increasing at the same time
and a further tax increase planned for 2019, making diesel as expensive as
petrol.
96 Chapter Five
Whereas PM Emmanuel Macron maintained that fuel tax increases were to

combat climate change by discouraging fossil-fuel use, the yellow vest
protesters claimed that the fuel taxes financed tax cuts for big business.84 In
the words of the BBC, “It’s no accident that cars were the spark that ignited
this anger. Not needing one has become a status symbol in France. Those in
city centres have a wealth of public transport to choose from, but you need
to be rich enough to live in the centre of Paris or Marseille or Bordeaux, and
most people are not.”85
On December 5, Macron gave in to the protesters by scrapping the fuel-tax

increase set for January. Despite that, the nation-wide demonstrations
demanding the ouster of Macron continued for months. On successive
Saturdays, protesters blocked roads, intersections and fuel depots. The
protests became more numerous and militant, some developing into major
riots. The police responded with violence, deploying explosive grenades
and flashballs, which resulted in injuries of loss of limb and sight. By late
December 2018, nine protesters had been killed, most from road accidents;
2,891 were injured (1,843 protesters and 1,048 police).86
Although the protests initially were sparked by fuel tax increases, on

November 29, twelve days after the first demonstrations, the Yellow Vests
issued a press release containing a list of 42 populist demands (“people’s
directives”) which went viral on social media. The demands covered a wide
range of topics spanning the conventional left-right ideological spectrum.
They included no fuel tax increases; an end to homelessness and the
economic austerity policy; a more progressive income tax; a wealth tax on
those with assets of more than €1.3 million ($1.54 million); a minimum
wage of €1,300 ($1,538) per month; pensions and wages indexed to
inflation; a ban on outsourcing jobs and industries; an end to the CICE tax
credits and incentives for large corporations; protection of small businesses
by banning the construction of large shopping centers; a better migrant
policy that repatriates failed asylum seekers and culturally integrates
immigrants by instructing them in French language, history and civics;
amending the Constitution by adding the people’s right of referendum; and
lastly, “Obey the will of the people.”87
Yellow Vest protesters also spanned the political spectrum. According to an

Elabe Institute poll, few had voted for Macron in the 2017 presidential
election; many either did not vote or voted for far-right (Marine Le Pen) or
far-left (Jean-Luc Mélenchon) candidates. Polls also show the Yellow Vests
had the backing of about 70 percent of the population, despite the violence.88
The grassroots Yellow Vests Movement appeared to be anarchic, associated

with no political party, with neither leader nor organizational structure.
Anyone could join the movement by simply donning a yellow vest and
showing up at protests. There had been eight spokespeople, who disagreed
with each other. Yellow Vest members generally opposed decision-making
authority; their hostility to politicians and the elite extended to their
rejecting and even threatening informal leaders.89 The Yellow Vests’ anti-
establishment hostility was also directed at the media. According to
Reporters Without Borders, journalists were spat on and assaulted
physically with stones, beer cans, and eggs, and verbally assaulted by being
called “bastards,” “liars,” “sell-outs,” “collaborators” and “Macronistes”.
Freelance reporter Céline Durchon, who was surrounded by several hundred
angry protesters in the southern city of Montpellier, said: “I’ve never felt so
much hatred.”90
The Yellow Vests’ resentment towards the establishment was reciprocated

by the French elite with sneering contempt.
According to Marxist scholar Richard Greeman, a common denominator

between the Yellow Vests and historical French popular movements is “the
near-universal contempt” with which they were treated by France’s
“political class” establishment—comprised of the royalty, the nobility, the
upper clergy, official academic historians, and today the media and the
leadership of the unions and Left parties. Reducing the protests to the single
issue of gas taxes, the French elite portrayed the Yellow Vests Movement
as “desperate and angry lower middle class people,” “red-necks” and
“vandals”.91
When Gilles Le Gendre, a senior politician from Macron’s party, was asked
what the government should have done differently about the Yellow Vests,
he replied: “We were probably too intelligent, too subtle.”92 For his part,
academic geographer Christophe Guilluy, author of the 2014 La France
Périphérique, comment on a sacrifié les classes populaires (Peripheral
France and How We’ve Sold Out the Working Classes), said the Yellow
Vests Movement was the equivalent of the Brexit movement in that
opposition to both came from “the professional classes – academics,
journalists, media workers and so on – who think of themselves as liberal-
left but who are entitled and superior in manner.” In France, these are the
people who voted for Macron who, according to Le Gendre, “are arrogant
enough not only to believe that you should think like them, but that they are
always morally superior and always right.”93
98 Chapter Five
In the United States, too, establishment elites regard the populism and
supporters of Donald Trump with unconcealed contempt. They are the
subject of the chapter to follow.
Notes
1 Library of Congress,
https://www.loc.gov/books/?all=true&dates=2000/2099&q=populism.
Retrieved December 12, 2020.
2 Joey Millar, “EU BACKLASH: Brexit ‘TSUNAMI’ expected as 34 referendums
set to rock union” Express, July 1, 2016,

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/684131/brexit-eu-referendum-tsunami-
france-italy-netherlands. Retrieved July 31, 2020.
3 Katie Mansfield, “Brexit SPREADS across Europe: Italy, France, Holland and
Denmark ALL call for referendums,” Express, June 26, 2016,

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/682339/Brexit-spreads-across-Europe-
Italy-France-Holland-Denmark-all-call-for-referendums. Retrieved August 5, 2020.
4 N.A., “EU faces revolt as half of Italians now want to leave bloc in huge surge in
euroscepticism,” Express, April 14, 2020,

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1268467/eu-news-Italy-eu-membership-
euroscepticism-poll-italiexit-latest. Retrieved August 5, 2020.
5 Angelo Amante, “Italexit! Popular senator launches party to take Italy out of EU,”
Reuters, July 21, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-italy-politics-italexit/

italexit-popular-senator-launches-party-to-take-italy-out-of-eu-idUSKCN24M1N8.
Retrieved August 5, 2020.
6 Richard Wike, Jacob Poushter, Laura Silver, Kat Devlin, Janell Fetterolf,
Alexandra Castillo and Christine Huang, “Appendix A: Classifying European

populist parties,” Pew Research Center, October 14, 2019,
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/10/14/appendix-a-classifying-european-
populist-parties/. Retrieved August 6, 2020.
7 Il Blog di Beppe Grillo, https://www.beppegrillo.it/. Retrieved August 8, 2020.
8 James Newell, “What is Italy’s Five Star movement,” The Conversation, December
1, 2016, https://theconversation.com/what-is-italys-five-star-movement-69596.
9 Martina Castigliani, “Grillo, confessione a eletti M5S: 'Finzione politica
l'impeachment di Napolitano',” Il Fatto Quotidiano, October 20, 2013,

https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2013/10/30/grillo-confessione-a-porte-chiuse-
napolitano-sotto-accusa-e-finzione-politica/760888/. Retrieved August 6, 2020.
10 Beppe Grillo, “Reddito Universale: èarrivato il momento,” Il Blog di Beppe Grillo,
March 30, 2020, https://www.beppegrillo.it/reddito-universale-e-arrivato-il-momento/.

11 Richard Wike, et al., “Appendix A: Classifying European populist parties,” op.

cit.
12 Maria Elizabetta Lanzone, “The “post-modern” populism in Italy: The case of the
Five Star Movement,” in Dwayne Woods and Barbara Wejnert (eds.). Many Faces
of Populism: Current Perspectives (Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing, 2014).
13 Donatella M. Viola, “Italy,” in Donatella M. Viola (ed.), Routledge Handbook of
European Elections (UK: Routledge, 2015), p. 113.

14 Matthew McManus, The Rise of Post-Modern Conservatism: Neoliberalism, Post-
Modern Culture, and Reactionary Politics (London, UK: Springer Nature, 2020), p.
199.
15 Linda Reeder, Italy in the Modern World: Society, Culture and Identity (London,
UK: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020), p. 262.

16 John Hooper, “Parliamentary gridlock in Italy as Five Star Movement refuses to
make deal,” The Guardian, March 15, 2013,

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/15/five-star-movement-italy.
17 Michael Day, “Italian election: Surge in popularity for eurosceptic protest party
headed by stand-up comedian Beppe Grillo raises fears in EU,” The Independent,
February 22, 2013, . Retrieved August 8, 2020.
18 “2.7 million people apply for Italy's basic income scheme,” The Local, April
24, 2019, https://www.thelocal.it/20190424/million-people-apply-for-italys-

basic-income-scheme. Retrieved August 9, 2020.
19 Nick Squires, “Italy's League files no confidence motion in prime minister in bid
to trigger election,” The Telegraph, August 9, 2019,

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/08/09/italys-league-files-no-confidence-
motion-prime-minister-inbid/. Retrieved August 9, 2020.
20 “Conte wins crucial support for new Italian govt coalition,” SRN News, August
28, 2019, https://www.srnnews.com/conte-wins-crucial-support-for-new-italian-

govt-coalition/. Retrieved August 9, 2020.

21 James Newell, “What is Italy’s Five Star movement,” op. cit.
22 John Hopper, “Umberto Bossi resigns as leader of Northern League amid funding
scandal,” The Guardian, April 5, 2012,

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/apr/05/umberto-bossi-resigns-northern-
league. Retrieved August 13, 2020.
23 David Parenzo and Davide Romano, Romanzo padano. Da Bossi a Bossi. Storia
della Lega (Milan: Sperling & Kupfer, 2008), p. 19.

cit.
25 Parenzo and Romano, Romanzo padano, op. cit., pp. 49–52.
26 Jessica Phelan, “Is Italy’s League a ‘far-right’ party?,” The Local.it, February 28,
2018, https://www.thelocal.it/20180228/is-italy-northern-league-a-far-right-party.
27 Pietro Ignazi, Partiti politici in Italia (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2010), pp. 87–88.
28 Roberto Biorcio, “La Lega Nord e la transizione italiana,” Rivista italiana di
scienza politica, Issue 1 (April 1999), p. 73,
100 Chapter Five
https://web.archive.org/web/20170808154607/https://formazioneonline.unisalento.
it/pluginfile.php/23746/mod_resource/content/1/Biorcio1999_LegaNord.pdf.
29 Davide Romano, “Romanzo padano, la Lega di Bossi: Berlusconi seduttore e
Maroni ex venduto. Parla Davide Romano,” Politica e Società 2.0, September 29,
2009.
30 Anna De Filippo, “La Nega Nord,” Life in Italy, December 7, 2018,
https://www.lifeinitaly.com/culture/la-lega-nord/. Retrieved August 15, 2020.

31 John Follain, “Italy's Northern League Is Suddenly in Love With the South,”
Bloomberg, February 19, 2018, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-

20/italy-s-northern-league-is-suddenly-in-love-with-the-south. Retrieved August
15, 2020.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid.
34 “Number of migrants landing in Italy more than doubles in past year,” Yahoo!
News, August 15, 2020, https://news.yahoo.com/number-migrants-landing-italy-

more-162735320.html. Retrieved August 16, 2020.
35 “Convention determining the State responsible for examining applications for
asylum lodged in one of the Member States of the European Communities

(Deposited with the Government of Ireland),” Council of the European Union,
January 9, 1997, https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/documents-publications/
treaties-agreements/agreement/?id=1990090. Retrieved August 16, 2020.
36 Fanny Carrier, “What will Italy’s new government mean for migrants?,” The Local,
May 21, 2018, https://www.thelocal.it/20180521/what-will-italys-new-government-

mean-for-migrants. Retrieved August 16, 2020.
37 “Number of migrants landing in Italy more than doubles in past year,” Yahoo!
News, op. cit.

38 “Number of migrants landing in Italy more than doubles in past year,” Metro US,
August 15, 2020, https://www.metro.us/number-of-migrants-landing/. Retrieved

August 16, 2020.
39 Phillip Connor and Jens Manuel Krogstad, “Many worldwide oppose more
migration – both into and out of their countries,” Pew Research Center, December
10, 2018, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/12/10/many-worldwide-
oppose-more-migration-both-into-and-out-of-their-countries/. Retrieved August 16,
2020.
40 Nando Pagnoncelli, “Le colpe dell’emergenza migranti? Il 60% punta il dito
contro l’Europa,” Corriere della Sera, January 11, 2019,

https://www.corriere.it/politica/19_gennaio_11/colpe-dell-emergenza-migranti-
salvini-conte-dimaio-dacb3282-15e0-11e9-9cd3-6f68d3bb44a0.shtml. Retrieved
August 16, 2020.
41 Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, “African migrants fear for future as Italy struggles with
surge in arrivals,” Reuters, July 18, 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-italy-

migrants-africa/african-migrants-fear-for-future-as-italy-struggles-with-surge-in-
arrivals-idUSKBN1A30QD. Retrieved August 16, 2020.
42 “Archivio storico delle elezioni (Historical Archive of Elections),” Ministero

dell'Interno (Ministry of the Interior), Governo italiano (Italian Government),
https://elezionistorico.interno.gov.it/index.php. Retrieved August 16, 2020.
43 Roberto Biorcio, “La Lega Nord e la transizione italiana,” op. cit., pp. 71, 78.
44 Freddie Sayers, “Meet the leader of the new Italexit party,” The Post, July 15,
2020, https://unherd.com/thepost/meet-the-leader-of-the-new-italexit-party/.
Retrieved September 22, 2020.
45 John Follain, “Populist Senator Founds ‘Italexit’ Party to Quit EU, Ditch Euro,”
Bloomberg, July 23, 2020, https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/populist-senator-

founds-e2-80-98italexit-e2-80-99-party-to-quit-eu-ditch-euro/ar-BB1766pH.
46 Joe Barnes, “Time to say goodbye: EU on alert as Italy’s biggest euroskeptics
TEAM UP for Italexit,” Express, July 29, 2020,

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1315852/EU-news-Italy-Italexit-Gianluigi-
Paragone-Matteo-Salvini-League-latest-update. Retrieved August 28, 2020.
cit.
48 Ibid.
49 Christine Buckley, “’Unsubmissive’ France…and other awkward political
translations,” France 24, April 14, 2017, https://www.france24.com/en/20170414-

france-politics-presidential-race-unsubmissive-awkward-translations-melenchon-
macron-fillon. Retrieved September 3, 2020.
50 Joel Kovel and Michael Löwy, “EcoSocialist Manifesto,” Green Left, September
2001, http://www.greenleft.org.uk/manifesto.shtml. Retrieved September 3, 2020.

51 “La cartes des groups d’action,” La France Insoumise,
https://lafranceinsoumise.fr/groupes-action/carte-groupes/. Retrieved September 3,

2020.
52 “20 comités de soutien à Jean-Luc Mélenchon en Val-de-Marne,” 94citoyens.com,
March 23, 2016, https://94.citoyens.com/2016/pres-de-20-comites-de-soutien-a-

jean-luc-melenchon-en-val-de-marne,23-03-2016.html. Retrieved September 5,
2020.
53 Laure Equy, “Pourquoi La France insoumise fait l’impasse sur less sénatoriales,”
Libération, September 9, 2017,

https://www.liberation.fr/politiques/2017/09/09/pourquoi-la-france-insoumise-fait-
l-impasse-sur-les-senatoriales_1595107. Retrieved September 7, 2020.
cit.
55 Victoria Craw, “National Front leader Marine Le Pen tipped for French
Presidential run following terror attacks,” News.com.au, January 23, 2015,

https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/leaders/national-front-leader-marine-le-
pen-tipped-for-french-presidential-run-following-terror-attacks/news-
story/e772a1f86fa2e8e322bfa25ebe9c0fdc. Retrieved September 26, 2020.
56 John Lichfield, “The everlasting saga of the Le Pen family,” Unherd, July 9, 2020,
https://unherd.com/2020/07/the-everlasting-saga-of-the-le-pen-family/.
Retrieved September 21, 2020.
102 Chapter Five
57 Spiegel Staff, “The Rise of Europe’s Right-Wing Populists,” Der Spiegel, September
28, 2010, https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/continent-of-fear-the-rise-of-
europe-s-right-wing-populists-a-719842.html. Retrieved August 25, 2020.
58 Michael Ray, “National Front,” Britannica,
https://www.britannica.com/topic/National-Front-political-party-France. Retrieved
October 8, 2020.
59 Spiegel Staff, “The Rise of Europe’s Right-Wing Populists,” Der Spiegel,
September 28, 2010, https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/continent-of-fear-

the-rise-of-europe-s-right-wing-populists-a-719842.html. Retrieved August 25,
2020.
60 Alissa J. Rubin and Aurelien Breeden, “Far-Right Party in France Tries to Push
Jean-Marie Le Pen, Provocative Founder, to the Margins,” The New York Times,
May 4, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/05/world/europe/far-right-party-
in-france-tries-to-push-jean-marie-le-pen-provocative-founder-to-the-
margins.html. Retrieved September 29, 2020.
61 “French National Front expels founder Jean-Marie Le Pen,“ BBC News, August
20, 2015, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34009901. Retrieved September

29, 2020.
62 The term “Poujadiste” refers to the populist right-wing movement founded by
Pierre Poujade in 1954 to protect artisans and small businesses.

63 John Lichfield, “The everlasting saga of the Le Pen family,” Unherd, July 9, 2020,
https://unherd.com/2020/07/the-everlasting-saga-of-the-le-pen-family/. Retrieved
September 21, 2020.
64 Ibid.
65 Bernard Gorce and Céline Rouden, “Len Pen: Nationalism is neither illegal nor
immoral,” La Croix International, February 24, 2017,

https://freewestmedia.com/2017/04/16/le-pen-sovereignty-is-neither-illegal-nor-
immoral/. Retrieved September 30, 2020.
66 Marine Le Pen, “To Call This Thread by Its Name,” The New York Times, January
18, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/19/opinion/marine-le-pen-france-was-

attacked-by-islamic-fundamentalism.html. Retrieved September 30, 2020.
67 Ibid.
68 Hadhn Rippon, “The European far right: actually right? Or left? Or something
altogether different?,” The Conversation, May 3, 2012,

https://theconversation.com/the-european-far-right-actually-right-or-left-or-
something-altogether-different-6796. Retrieved October 8, 2020.
69 Katie Mansfield, “Brexit SPREADS across Europe,” op. cit.
70 Charles Sapin, “Le Rassemblement national abandonne définitivement la sortie
de l’euro,” Le Figaro, January 16, 2019,

https://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/2019/01/16/01002-20190116ARTFIG00326-le-
rn-abandonne-la-sortie-de-l-euro.php. Retrieved September 31, 2020.
71 Rym Momtaz, “French far right wants to scrap European Commission,” Politico,
April 15, 2019, https://www.politico.eu/article/marine-le-pen-national-rally-french-

far-right-wants-to-scrap-european-commission/. Retrieved October 9, 2020.
72 Rassemblement National, https://rassemblementnational.fr/. Retrieved October 9,
2020.
73 “Un an après la presidentielle, Marine Le Pen devancerait François Hollande,”

L’Obs, May 3, 2013,
https://www.nouvelobs.com/politique/20130503.OBS8113/un-an-apres-la-
presidentielle-marine-le-pen-devancerait-francois-hollande.html.
Retrieved 31 March 2015.
74 Palash Gosch, “French Municipal Elections: Far-Right National Front Scores
Impressive Gains, But Hopes For Real Political Power Remain A Fantasy,”
International Business Times, March 31, 2014, https://www.ibtimes.com/french-
municipal-elections-far-right-national-front-scores-impressive-gains-hopes-real-
political. Retrieved September 31, 2020.
75 Mark John and Leila Abboud, “Far-right National Front stuns French elite with
EU ‘earthquake’,” Reuters, March 31, 2015,

https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSBREA4O0CP20140525. Retrieved September
31, 2020.
76 John Lichfield, “The everlasting saga of the Le Pen family,” op. cit.
77 Indicators of National Rally’s “chaotic finances” include two prosecutions for
alleged fraud, a failure to repay a Russian loan, and “dethroned” Jean-Marie Le

Pen’s demand for repayment of several million euros. John Lichfield, “The
everlasting saga of the Le Pen family,” Unherd, July 9, 2020,
https://unherd.com/2020/07/the-everlasting-saga-of-the-le-pen-family/. Retrieved
September 21, 2020.
78 “Florian Philippot annonce qu'il quitte le Front national,“ Le Monde, September
21, 2017, https://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2017/09/21/florian-philippot-

annonce-qu-il-quitte-le-front-national_5188871_823448.html. Retrieved October 9,
2020.
79 John Lichfield, “The everlasting saga of the Le Pen family,” op. cit.
80 Martina Bet, “French politician’s ferocious critique of Theresa May exposed: ‘She
was a Remainer!’,” Express, September 5, 2020,

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1331465/brexit-news-france-frexit-
referendum-theresa-may-negotiations-remainer-spt. Retrieved October 9, 2020.
81 “Priscillia Ludosky, une Martiniquaise derrière les gilets jaunes,” FA Guadaloupe,
November 20, 2018,

https://www.guadeloupe.franceantilles.fr/actualite/social/priscillia-ludosky-une-
martiniquaise-derriere-les-gilets-jaunes-513388.php. Retrieved October 12, 2020.
82 Vanessa Friedman, “The Power of the Yellow Vest,” The New York Times,
December 4, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/04/fashion/yellow-vests-

france-protest-fashion.html. Retrieved October 12, 2020.
83 “France protests: Fuel tax rises in 2019 budget dropped,” BBC News, December
5, 2018, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46460445. Retrieved October

18, 2020.
84 Richard Lough and Simon Carraud, “France’s Macron hunts for way out of
‘yellow vest’ crisis,” Reuters, December 3, 2018,

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-protests-idUSKBN1O20UZ. Retrieved
October 22, 2020.
85 Lucy Williamson, “The gilets jaunes,” BBC, December 8, 2018,
104 Chapter Five
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/yellow_vests. Retrieved October 22,

2020.
86 Mélanie Vecchio, “Gilets jaunes: 2891 blessés depuis le début du mouvement,”
BFM TV, December 21, 2018, https://www.bfmtv.com/police-justice/gilets-jaunes-

et-lyceens-2891-blesses-depuis-le-debut-du-mouvement_AN-201812200115.html.
Retrieved October 22, 2020.
87 Nawal Sayed, “SEE Lists Yellow Vests’ Demands to End Protests in France,”
SEEegy, December 8, 2018, https://see.news/see-publishes-yellow-vests-demands-

to-end-protests-in-france/. Retrieved October 22, 2020.
88 Michel Rose and Luke Baker, “No leader, lots of anger: can France’s ‘yellow
vests’ become a political force?,” Reuters, December 6, 2018,

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-protests-future/no-leader-lots-of-anger-
can-frances-yellow-vests-become-a-political-force-idUSKBN1O51ON. Retrieved
October 22, 2020.
89 John Lichfield, “Never before have I seen blind anger like this on the streets of
Paris,” The Guardian, December 3, 2018,

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/03/paris-streets-riots-
violence. Retrieved October 22, 2020.
90 “Reporters attacked at ‘yellow vest’ protests in France,” Reporters Without
Borders, November 29, 2018, https://rsf.org/en/news/reporters-attacked-yellow-

vest-protests-france. Retrieved October 22, 2020.
91 Richard Greeman, “Letter from Richard Greeman on Yellow Vests in Historic
Perspective,” Lalit, August 12, 2018,

https://www.lalitmauritius.org/en/newsarticle/2195/letter-from-richard-greeman-
on-yellow-vests-in-historic-perspective/. Retrieved October 10, 2020.
92 Pascal-Emmanuel Gobrey, “The Failure of the French Elite,” The Wall Street
Journal, February 22, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-failure-of-the-french-

elite-11550851097. Retrieved September 15, 2020.
93 Andrew Hussey, “The French elites against the working class,” New Statesman,
July 24, 2019, https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/2019/07/french-elites-

against-working-class. Retrieved September 15, 2020.
CHAPTER SIX
THE POPULISM OF DONALD TRUMP
MARIA HSIA CHANG
In Chapter One of this volume, populism is defined as a political movement

that is popular, anti-elitist, committed to electoral democracy and, therefore,
seeks to effect change through non-revolutionary and non-violent due-
process methods of election, legislation and the court. Given populism’s
dependence on the support of fickle voters, support for populist parties can
be changeable and transient, which makes the duration and impact of
populist movements more fleeting than enduring.
By that definition, the political movement that elected Donald John Trump
to the presidency of the United States can be considered populist.
Additionally, since many of his supporters were animated by a robust
American nationalism, that makes the populism of Trump a populism of the
right, instead of the left.
The defining attributes of populism were displayed from the beginning in

Trump’s speech of June 16, 20151 when he announced his presidential
candidacy with a nationalist, anti-globalist appeal to “make America great
again”. Describing America as a shadow of its former self, Trump asked:
“When was the last time anybody saw us beating . . . China in a trade deal?
When did we beat Japan at anything? When do we beat Mexico at the
border?. . . . We owe China $1.3 trillion. We owe Japan more than that. So
they come in, they take our jobs, they take our money, and then they loan us
back the money, and we pay them in interest, and then the dollar goes up so
their deal's even better. How stupid are our leaders? How stupid are these
politicians to allow this to happen?”
Trump maintained that what led to an America “in serious trouble” with an
anemic gross domestic product (GDP), the worst labor participation rate
since 1978, and an 18-20 percent real unemployment rate, was the
106 Chapter Six
outsourcing of manufacturing to countries like China and Mexico, an

example of which was Ford’s announcement that it would build a $2.5
billion car-truck-and-parts manufacturing plant in Mexico instead of in the
United States.
The porous U.S.-Mexico border was symptomatic of once-mighty

America’s inability to secure itself. Trump vowed that the situation at the
border had “got to stop” and that he would “build a great, great wall on our
southern border” and “have Mexico pay for that wall.”
Presenting himself as a political outsider who was using his own money and
therefore not beholding to special interests and lobbyists, Trump promised
to be that leader who would bring manufacturing jobs back from abroad
and, in so doing, “take the brand of the United States and make it great
again.”
On September 24, 2019, in a speech to the United Nations General

Assembly,2 Trump reaffirmed his populist commitment with a ringing
endorsement of national sovereignty and a declaration of war against
globalism and globalist elites. Calling globalism a “tyranny” that “protects
not the interests of many, but the privilege of few,” Trump described the
elites as “those whose thirst for control deludes them into thinking they are
destined to rule over others…[but] who want only to rule themselves.” The
“tyrannical” elites included a “permanent political class” that was “openly
disdainful, dismissive, and defiant of the will of the people”; a “faceless
bureaucracy” of the unelected administrative state which “operates in secret
and weakens democratic rule”; the media and academic institutions that
engage in “flat-out assaults” on America’s history, traditions and values;
and social media platforms that discriminate against conservatives by
“silencing, coercing, canceling, or blacklisting” disapproved speech.
Trump then enumerated how the forces of globalism which had “exerted a
religious pull over past leaders, causing them to ignore their own national
interests” must be confronted. He called for reform of the international
trading system that, for decades, had been “exploited by nations acting in
very bad faith” against the interests of the United States. Railing against the
$15 trillion U.S. trade deficits incurred over the last quarter century, and the
outsourcing of American jobs to enrich a small handful “at the expense of
the middle class,” Trump vowed to negotiate trade terms that would be
balanced, fair and reciprocal.
The Populism of Donald Trump 107
Trump also opposed globalism in the matter of illegal immigration. On

behalf of not just the United States but other similarly beleaguered
countries, he called out the “growing cottage industry of radical activists
and non-governmental organizations” who promote illegal immigration and
migration, and “demand the erasure of national borders”.
Then there was the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Trump
insisted that U.S. allies must pay their fair share of defense. Two months
after his U.N. speech, Trump’s pressuring proved fruitful. On November 29,
2019, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced that more
members were meeting the guideline of spending a minimum of two percent
of their GDP on defense—from only three members just a few years ago to
nine. The remaining NATO member countries promised they would do so
by 2024.3
Trump concluded his speech by calling on Americans and other nations to

be patriots who defend and cherish their nation’s history, culture, values and
heritage because the “true good of a nation can only be pursued by those
who love it,” not the globalist elites who had only contempt for the common
people. Only by the will and devotion of patriots could liberty be preserved,
national sovereignty be secured, and democracy sustained. Trump said:
“The free world must embrace its national foundations. It must not attempt
to erase them or replace them. . . . If you want freedom, take pride in your
country. If you want democracy, hold on to your sovereignty. And if you
want peace, love your nation. Wise leaders always put the good of their own
people and their own country first. The future does not belong to globalists.
The future belongs to patriots. The future belongs to sovereign and
independent nations who protect their citizens, respect their neighbors, and
honor the differences that make each country special and unique.”
Profile of 2016 “Red State” Trump Voters

In early March 2016, three months before the last Republican Party primary
elections that sealed Trump’s ascendancy as his party’s presidential
nominee, Politico Magazine contributing editor Michael Lind called Trump
“the Perfect Populist”—"one with broader appeal to the right and the center
than his predecessors in recent American political history—so much so it
could put him in the White House.”4
Lind was unusual among pundits in predicting Trump’s electoral victory as,
according to polling data, he did not have even an outside chance of
108 Chapter Six
winning. What catapulted Trump to the White House, to the enduring shock
and disbelief of the Democratic Party and many in the media, was his
message of middle-class populism, which Victor Davis Hanson identified
as a populism of “less government, doubt over overseas military commitments,
fears of redistribution and globalization, and distrust of cultural elites.”5
Trump’s populist appeal to the middle- and former middle-class who felt
marginalized by the Democratic Party’s use of identity-politics to court
racial minorities, women, and non-heterosexuals, was borne out by the 2016
exit poll data6 revealing deep divisions by race, gender, education, and class
among Americans.
Race. White non-Hispanic voters preferred Trump over Clinton by 21

percentage points (58% to 37%). In contrast, more racial minorities (89%
of African-Americans, 66% of Hispanics, 65% of Asians) voted for Clinton
than for Trump, who had the votes of 41% of women, 8% of African-
Americans, 28% of Hispanics, and 27% of Asians.
Gender. In 2016, the gender gap in presidential vote preference was among
the widest in exit polls dating back to 1972. Women supported Clinton over
Trump by 54% to 42%, while more men supported Trump than Clinton by
53% to 41%, which was a larger margin than the 7-point advantage Mitt
Romney had in 2012 and much different than in 2008 when men preferred
Barack Obama over John McCain by a single point.
Education. College graduates favored Clinton 52%-43%, while those

without a college degree voted for Trump 52%-44%, by far the widest gap
in support among college graduates and non-college graduates in exit polls
dating back to 1980. Among whites, Trump won an overwhelming share of
those without a college degree by 67% to 28%—the largest of any presidential
candidate since 1980. But Trump also outperformed Clinton by a 4-point
margin of 49% to 45% among white college graduates, a group that many
had identified as key to a potential Clinton victory.
Class. Over the course of Barack Obama’s two terms as president, the U.S.
middle class had shifted their allegiance to the Republican Party, which
helped account for Trump’s victory. The Democrats, meanwhile, became a
party of the upper class and “a sliver” of the lower class.7
Whereas Trump successfully defended all 27 middle-class areas won by

Republicans in 2008, Hillary Clinton lost 18 of the 30 middle-class areas
won by Democrats in 2008, most of them in manufacturing-dependent areas

in the Midwest and Northeast where support for Democrats fell in double
digits. In contrast, Trump not only held onto 29 of the 56 communities with
a relatively large share of manufacturing jobs, he won in 15 metro areas that
had supported Obama in 2008, leaving only 12 manufacturing communities
in the Democrats’ column.8
Research by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ)9 confirmed the switch in voter
bases of the two political parties, which explained their changed positions
on trade and immigration to benefit their respective voter blocs. Using real
GDP, median household income, type of employment and education as
measures of socio-economic class, the WSJ found that in just ten years, from
2008 to 2018, the Democratic Party had become the party of not just the
rich, but the super-rich, whereas the Republican Party became the party of
the middle-class and the working poor.
Contrary to a stereotype of the Republican Party or GOP (Grand Old Party)

as the party of the super-rich, in 2008, the GOP won no congressional
districts with GDPs of more than $62 billion. By 2018, the GOP’s
transformation into a party of the middle-class and working poor was
complete, as indicated by their voters’ GDP, median household income, type
of employment, and education.
To begin, in 2018, the GOP had lost all congressional districts with GDPs
above $62 billion; Republican lawmakers did not represent even a single
section of America’s richest districts. Instead, the vast majority of
Republican congressional districts had lower GDPs of $22-40 billion. In

2008, the median household income of Republican congressional districts
was about $51,000; by 2018, Republican median household income had
barely increased, to about $53,000. Between 2008 and 2018, Republican
voters increasingly were in the agricultural, mining, and low-skilled
manufacturing industries, in states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan,
Ohio, and West Virginia which had been gutted by foreign imports and
Washington’s free trade policy. The GOP increased its share of jobs in
agriculture and mining from 53.9% to 60.5%, and in basic manufacturing
from 46.2% to 56.4%, but further decreased its already minority shares of
high-paying jobs in finance and insurance from 39% to 35.7%, and of jobs
in digital and professional industries from 36.3% to 28.9%. In education,
Republicans increased their share of adults with college degrees by only two
percentage points, from about 25% to 27%.
110 Chapter Six
In contrast, in 2008 the Democratic Party was already trending toward being
a party of the super-rich, winning congressional districts with GDPs of $70
billion to $90 billion or more. By 2018, the transformation was complete:
Democrats largely represented voters who lived in the richest districts—
those with GDP of $90 billion or more—and in “a sliver” of poor districts.
Between 2008 and 2017, the median household income of Democrat
congressional districts increased 17% from $52,000 to $62,000, while that
of Republican voters hardly changed at all.
Geographically, between 2008 and 2018, Democrats came to represent

districts in metropolitan areas and major cities along the coasts where the
biggest clusters of high-paying professional jobs were found in finance,
insurance and technology—industries that are globalist, instead of
nationalist, in orientation and, therefore, do not view free trade and foreign
imports as threats. The Democratic Party increased its already majority
share of jobs in finance and insurance from 61% to 64.3%, and in digital
and professional industries from 63.7% to 71.1%, while decreasing its
representation in congressional districts with lower-paying agricultural and
mining jobs from 46.1% to 39.5%, and in low-skill manufacturing jobs from
53.8% to 43.6%. In education, between 2008 and 2017, Democrats boosted
their share of adults with college degrees from 27% to 34.5%.
The shifts in the two parties’ voter bases would explain Republican voters
whose jobs are threatened by free trade becoming the demographic group
most in support of an economic nationalist agenda of tariffs on foreign
imports and reduced foreign competition in the labor market. In contrast,
the Democrats’ voter base of billionaires and professional white-collar

employees in fields unthreatened by free trade would explain the party’s
shift toward a globalist orientation of free trade, multilateral trade
negotiations, and the elimination of all tariffs. Indeed, consistent with their
globalist outlook, the vast majority of the 2020 Democratic presidential
candidates promised they would lift the tariffs placed by President Trump
on foreign steel and aluminum imports. All of this led the Wall Street
Journal to observe that “America’s political polarization is almost
complete. Its two main political parties increasingly represent two different
economies. And they barely overlap.”10
Elites’ Contempt for the White Middle Class

The demographics of Trump voters, however, could not explain their
distrust of the elite—a distrust that, according to Hanson, fundamentally
was a reaction to the elite’s contempt for the white middle class. As Hanson
put it: 11
[S]corn for the white middle class . . . was widespread among many elites,
and it ignited a Trump backlash. . . . The anger that Trump tapped had been
a long time in coming. But few politicians knew it firsthand, much less saw
it as merited or even useful in the political sense. . . . [Trump] had seen a
critical preexisting and vast swath of potential voters in proverbial swing
states who were . . . resentful over the disdain shown them by elites,
especially the likes of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. And they were
irate at the winners of globalization who had somehow blamed them for
being the global economy’s losers.
In other words, the elite’s contempt for the white middle and working
classes predated the 2016 election. In truth, some eight years before, at a
fundraising event in San Francisco on April 6, 2008, presidential hopeful
Barack Obama condescendingly dismissed working-class voters in old
industrial towns decimated by job losses as "bitter” people who “cling to
guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-
immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their
frustrations."12
For her part, at an LGBT fundraiser in Manhattan on September 9, 2016,

Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton urged supporters to “stage
an intervention” if they had friends who might vote for Trump. She then
dismissed the millions of Americans over whom she meant to rule as
president, calling them a “basket of deplorables” who were “racist, sexist,
homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it.”13 After she lost

the election, in a public speech in Mumbai, India on March 10, 2018,
Clinton redoubled her contempt for Trump voters, claiming she had won
“the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward,”14
thereby implying that the 63 million Americans who had voted for Trump
were demoralized, monotonous, listless, and degenerating. Clinton’s aides
were equally elitist. In her book Chasing Hillary, New York Times reporter
Amy Chozick described how Clinton’s inner circle looked down on Trump
voters as fodder for their amusement. According to Chozick, “The
Deplorables always got a laugh, over living-room chats in the Hamptons, at
dinner parties under the stars on Martha’s Vineyard, over passed hors
d’oeuvres in Beverly Hills, and during sunset cocktails in Silicon Valley.”15
Elites less prominent than Obama and Clinton were equally derisive of
Trump supporters. As examples, on August 12, 2016, FBI agent Peter
112 Chapter Six
Strzok texted his extramarital lover Lisa Page that Trump voters stank: “Just
went to a southern Virginia Walmart. I could SMELL the Trump support.”16
Another (unidentified) FBI employee texted an FBI attorney on the day after
the 2016 election that “Trump’s supporters are all poor to middle class,
uneducated, lazy POS [pieces of shit].”17
In a tweet on January 7, 2017, Melinda Byerley, founder of the Silicon

Valley company Timeshare CMO, wrote: “One thing middle America could
do is to realize that no educated person wants to live in a sh**hole with
stupid people. Especially violent, racist, and/or misogynistic ones. . . . When
corporations think about where to locate call centers, factories, development
centers, etc., they also have to deal with the fact that those towns have
nothing going for them. No infrastructure, just a few bars and a terrible
school system.”18
Some members of the media were just as disdainful. In a tweet in August

2018, Politico reporter Marc Caputo mocked the crowd at a Trump rally as
toothless hicks: “If you put everyone’s mouths together in this video, you’d
get a full set of teeth.”19 Although Caputo initially apologized for and
deleted the tweet, he later doubled down, calling Trump supporters “garbage
people”.20 Another journalist, Sarah Jeong, a Harvard Law-educated tech
writer and member of the New York Times’ editorial board who is of Korean
heritage, tweeted: “Are white people genetically predisposed to burn faster
in the sun, thus logically being only fit to live underground like groveling
goblins?”; “Oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel
to old white men”; and “White people marking up the internet with their
opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants.”21
Hillary Clinton wasn’t the only politician who regarded Trump voters with
unconcealed contempt. On September 15, 2018, during a speech at the
Human Rights Campaign’s annual dinner in Washington, D.C., former Vice
President Joe Biden called Trump supporters “a small percentage of the
American people” who were “forces of intolerance,” “virulent people, some
of them the dregs of society.”22 Hanson pointed out that those “dregs of
society” in 2016 numbered 63 million—46% of all voters.23
On October 24, 2020, at a drive-in rally at Bucks County Community

College in Newtown, just north of Philadelphia, Joe Biden again lashed out
at Trump supporters, calling them “chumps”.24 The American Heritage
Dictionary defines "chump" as “A stupid or foolish person; a dolt”; “A
gullible person; a sucker; someone easily taken advantage of; someone

lacking common sense.”25
Nor were Progressives the only elites who held the white middle and
working classes in contempt. Republican “never Trumpers” were equally
condescending.
In a March 2016 op-ed, National Review’s conservative social critic Kevin

Williamson wrote: “The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale
communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative
assets. Morally, they are indefensible. . . . The white American underclass
is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and
used heroin needles.”26 Another elite Republican, Weekly Standard founder
Bill Kristol, said “lazy, spoiled” working-class white Americans should be
replaced by immigrants. On a panel at the American Enterprise Institute on
February 8, 2017, Kristol said:27
“Look, to be totally honest, if things are so bad as you say with the white
working class, don’t you want to get new Americans in? Basically if you are
in free society, a capitalist society, after two, three, four generations of hard
work, everyone becomes kind of decadent, lazy, spoiled, whatever. Then,
luckily, you have these waves of people coming in from Italy, Ireland,
Russia, and now Mexico, who really want to work hard and really want to
succeed, and really want their kids to live better lives than them, and aren’t
sort of clipping coupons or hoping that they can hang on and, meanwhile,
grew up as spoiled kids and so forth.”
Washington Post columnist Max Boot, another “never Trumper” conservative

who became a self-described “man without a party” after the 2016 election,
expressed the same wish. In a June 18, 2018 op-ed, Boot wrote: “If only we
could keep the hard-working Latin American newcomers and deport the
contemptible Republican cowards—that would truly enhance America’s
greatness.”28 For his part, New York Times conservative columnist David
Brooks echoed the same sentiments in a January 29, 2018 op-ed: “These
rural places are often 95 percent white. . . . They are often marked by
economic stagnation, social isolation, family breakdown and high opioid
addiction. . . . It is a blunt fact of life that, these days, immigrants show more
of these virtues than the native-born.”29
Hanson noted that Progressive and conservative “never Trump” elites not
only were racist, they were hypocrites who excused their crude stereotyping
of white middle America by insisting that racism against whites was not
114 Chapter Six
racism. While accusing the middle and working classes of “white privilege,”
the elites themselves were blind to their own outsized “white privilege of
insider contacts, professional degrees, wealth, inheritance, and influence.”30
Trump’s Presidency
In December 2017, nearly eleven months into Trump’s presidency, CNN’s
White House reporter Stephen Collinson conceded that although “A
politician who actually does what he told voters he would do seems almost
unfathomable in Washington, a town of broken promises,” President Trump
had “obstinately” honored the vows he’d made, “even those that horrify the
political and foreign policy establishment, media critics and allied
leaders.”31 By October 2018, Marc A. Thiessen of the Washington Post
Writers Group recognized that “For better or worse, since taking office,
Trump has done exactly what he promised he would do.” Thiessen noted
that where Trump had failed to keep promises, such as building the wall or
repealing Obamacare, it was not for lack of trying, and that Trump
backtracked on a campaign pledge only in a few rare instances, such as
when he reversed course on his promise to withdraw all U.S. forces from
Afghanistan.32
Victor Davis Hanson had identified Trump’s brand as a “middle-class

populism.” A measure of the Trump presidency, therefore, might be how
the middle class fared during his administration.
Economy. According to a report by Sentier Research,33 among whose

clients are the U.S. Census Bureau and the Social Security Administration,
by September 2019, the median- or average-income U.S. family saw an
annual increase of $5,214 since Trump had acceded to office, from about
$61,000 to $66,214.34 Heritage Foundation senior fellow Steve Moore
pointed out that annual median household income gains in the eight years
of the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama were,
respectively, $400 and $1,043, whereas under Trump, in less than three
years, the income gains were 500% to 1,303% larger. Trump’s tax cuts also
added an additional $2,500 to the after-tax income of a typical family of
four, which made the increase in income of most middle-class families
closer to at least $6,000 in the Trump era.35
Nor was the increase in median household income eroded by inflation.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics,
consumer prices for all items increased 1.8% for the 12 months ending
October 2019. Over the same period, prices for all items less food and
energy rose 2.3%, food prices rose 2.1%, while energy prices declined
4.2%.36
Trump’s tax cuts also included a reduction in the business tax rate from
35%—the highest in the developed world—to 21%. That led to businesses
giving wage increases, bonuses and increased benefits to more than 6
million workers, as well as the repatriation of over $1.5 trillion from
overseas and the creation of nearly 9,000 Opportunity Zones with no taxes
on capital gains on long-term investments. The zones, in turn, attracted $52
billion of new investment in economically distressed communities, creating
half a million new jobs.37
Another measure of the economy and middle-class wellbeing is the

unemployment rate. The Federal Reserve estimates the natural rate of
unemployment to range from 4.5% to 5%. Andy Kiersz and Joseph
Zaballos-Roig of Business Insider observed that whereas the unemployment
rate hovered between 4% and 6% for most of the Bush presidency, spiking
dramatically to 7.8% during the 2008-09 financial crisis, which left an
economy in free fall to the Obama administration, during which the
unemployment rate peaked at 10.2% in October 2009, under Trump the
economy recovered to 3.7% by October 2019, the lowest point in 50 years.38
For its part, the Trump White House claimed the creation of 7 million new
jobs, more than 1.2 million of which were in manufacturing and
construction, as well as “record low” unemployment rates for African
Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans,

veterans, individuals with disabilities, those without a high school diploma,
and women. All of which contributed to two successive years of a reduction
in U.S. income inequality by the largest amount in more than a decade.39
Deregulation. According to the Trump White House, for every new

regulation that was adopted, eight old regulations were eliminated. Outdated
state, local and tribal regulations were reduced via the Governors’ Initiative
on Regulatory Innovation. Nearly 25,000 pages were removed from the
Federal Register, more than any previous administration. Approval times
for major infrastructure projects were slashed from ten or more years to two
years or less. Red tape in the healthcare industry was cut, making healthcare
more affordable and reducing the cost of prescription drugs by 10%. “Once
fully in effect,” the twenty major deregulatory actions undertaken by the
116 Chapter Six
Trump Administration would have saved U.S. consumers and businesses

over $220 billion per year.40
Trade. The Trump White House also claimed to have negotiated “fair and
reciprocal” trade agreements to defend American workers and stem the
outsourcing of jobs overseas. Among the trade-related action taken were the
withdrawal from the “job-killing” Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP); ending
the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and replacing it with
the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA); signing an
executive order making it government policy to buy and hire American;
concluding a “fully-enforceable” Phase One trade agreement with China on
pirated and counterfeit goods, and the protection of American ideas, trade
secrets, patents, and trademarks; imposing tariffs on hundreds of billions
worth of Chinese goods, and on foreign aluminum and foreign steel to
protect U.S. vital industries and national security; and signing more than 50
agreements with countries around the world to increase foreign market
access and boost exports of U.S. agriculture products.41
Energy. U.S. energy independence was secured by “unleashing” America’s

oil and natural gas potential via withdrawing from what Trump called “the
unfair, one-sided Paris Climate Agreement”; approving the Keystone XL
and Dakota Access pipelines; and opening the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska to oil and gas leasing. All of which resulted in
the U.S. becoming the number one producer of oil and natural gas in the
world and a net energy exporter for the first time in nearly 70 years, and in
savings for the average American family of $2,500 a year in lower electric
bills and lower prices at the gas pump.42
Border security. Trump also claimed among his achievements the

construction of over 400 miles of walls along the U.S.-Mexico border, and
an end to the “dangerous practice” of Catch-and-Release. Agreements with
Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala stemmed asylum fraud and
resettled illegal migrants in third-party countries pending their asylum
applications. Refugee influx into the United States was reduced by 85% due
to travel bans and the suspension of refugee resettlement from the world’s
most terror-afflicted and dangerous regions.43
Environment. Notwithstanding the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate

accord, the Trump Administration claimed to have safeguarded the
environment with clean air and clean water agreements (e.g., One Trillion
Trees initiative), legislation (e.g., Save Our Seas Act), and over $38 million
in investment in clean water infrastructure. All of which led to the U.S.

having the largest decline in carbon emissions of any country on earth in
2019.44
Writing in the Jewish Journal on July 10, 2019,45 Larry Greenfield

summarized Trump’s economic achievements:
Trump’s policies of economic deregulation, opening energy pipelines and

making the U.S. corporate tax rate competitive have resulted in stronger
economic growth and employment, especially for women and minorities,
increased wages for workers, rising family incomes and net worth, new
investments in the manufacturing sector, sustained consumer confidence and
significant declines in welfare, poverty and the use of food stamps.
But the outbreak of the COVID-19 global pandemic in Spring 2020, which
led to lockdowns, closures of businesses and the resultant unemployment of
millions, decimated much of those economic gains. At its worst, in April
2020, the U.S. unemployment rate rose to an unprecedented 14.7%—a level
not seen since data collection began in 1948—before declining to 6.7% by
November 2020.46
Anti-globalization. Yet another measure of Trump’s presidency might be

its efforts against globalization. By that yardstick, Yale professors and
defenders of globalism Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro would consider
Trump as having kept that campaign promise.
In their book, The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War

Remade the World, Hathaway and Shapiro branded Trump a “present

danger” to the New World Order of “liberal internationalism.” The Economist
shared Hathaway and Shapiro’s globalist outlook. In its review of The
Internationalists, the magazine lamented that liberal internationalism was
under attack from many sides—from militant jihadism, Russia, China, and
North Korea. But “the greatest danger” came from Trump’s America First
doctrine because Trump “explicitly repudiates” liberal internationalism,
“despises international norms,” “disparages free trade,” and “continually
flirts with abandoning America’s essential role in maintaining the global
legal order.”47
Judicial appointments. Another Trump campaign promise was that he

would nominate conservative judges to the Supreme and lower courts—a
promise that helped deliver Trump’s electoral victory in 2016.
118 Chapter Six
Even before he was elected president, candidate Trump had a battle plan to
reshape America’s judiciary. According to Leonard A. Leo, the executive
vice president of the Federalist Society and an informal Trump adviser,
Trump had instructed his transition team to prioritize appointing young,
conservative judges who could resist “tremendous political and social
pressure.” The plan’s implementation was entrusted to Donald F. McGahn
II, who became Trump’s White House counsel.48
The plan to reshape the judiciary was aided by Senate Republicans who,
having gained control of the Senate in 2015, effectively shut down the
judicial confirmation process in the last two years of the Obama administration,
which led to an unusually large number of court vacancies when Trump
assumed office. Furthermore, until the 2018 midterm elections that returned
a Democratic majority to the House of Representatives, the GOP had control
over both houses of Congress, which meant that Senate confirmation of
Trump’s judicial nominees was expedited by simple-majority votes.
After Trump was in office for not even a year, he already was on the verge
of putting more “originalist” (original intent of the Founders) conservatives
in the circuit courts than any other president. By February 2020, in a little
over three years, Trump’s nominees filled two of the nine seats on the
Supreme Court, and a quarter of federal judicial seats, including 137
district-court judges and 51 appellate judges. The Economist observed that
“No president since at least Ronald Reagan has racked up judicial
appointments so quickly.”49 In September 2020, Trump nominated his third
Supreme Court justice, Amy Coney Barrett, an originalist, who was
confirmed by the Senate the next month, bringing the total number of
Trump’s Supreme Court justices to three—a signal achievement for post-
WWII presidents in their first term of office.
True to his word, every one of Trump’s judicial nominees was conservative,
a fact vouched by the Federalist Society and other conservative groups. The
significance was recognized by Baher Azmy, director of the progressive
legal advocacy group, Center for Constitutional Rights, when he lamented
that Trump’s judicial appointments could “end the progressive state as we
know it.”50
In the case of the populism of Donald Trump, the transformation of the

judiciary likely would be his legacy. As Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) observed,
“These new judges are principled constitutionalists who have demonstrated
excellence and professionalism throughout their legal careers. Few legacies

will be longer lasting than this judicial one.”51
The End of the Trump Presidency

As explained in Chapter One of this volume, the duration and impact of
populist movements in established democracies are fleeting because
populist leaders depend on the continuing support of voters who could
change their minds in the next election. Although more than 74 million
Americans voted for him in the 2020 presidential election, 12 million more
than in 2018, Trump lost the presidency to his Democratic opponent Joe
Biden who had over 81 million (51.3%) popular votes and a majority of
Electoral College votes (306:232).52
Donald Trump’s one-term presidency ended in chaos.
On January 20, 2021, as the U. S. Congress convened in a joint session to

certify the Electoral College votes, thousands of Trump supporters gathered
in Washington, D. C., to protest alleged election fraud and irregularities and
“save America.”
At about noon, Trump addressed the protesters from the Ellipse of the White
House. Claiming to have won the election by a landslide, he said he had
“overwhelming evidence” that the election had been “rigged” and “stolen
on a scale never seen before” by “radical-left Democrats” and “the fake
news media.” He cited evidence of electoral irregularities of fraudulent
mail-in ballots, dead and non-citizen voters, people registering to vote after
the deadline, and “illegal and unconstitutional changes” to election
procedures in the battleground or swing states, made by local and state
officials without the mandated approvals by the state legislatures.53
Trump thanked “the more than 140 members of Congress,” calling them
“warriors,” and urged them “to confront this egregious assault on our
democracy.” Referring to Biden as “somebody in there that should not be in
there,” Trump bemoaned that “our country will be destroyed” and “has had
enough. We will not take it anymore.” He vowed, “We will never give up,
we will never concede . . . when there’s theft involved,” and called on his
supporters to “fight like hell” and “to primary the hell out of the ones that
don’t fight” because “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a
country anymore.” Trump ended his speech by inviting the protesters “to
walk down Pennsylvania Avenue” to the Capitol building “to cheer our
120 Chapter Six
brave senators and congressmen and women” and “to peacefully and
patriotically make your voices heard.”54
More than half an hour before Trump concluded his speech, White House
Press Secretary Kaylieh McEnany tweeted at 12:36 p.m. that at the
President’s “direction, the National Guard is on the way along with other
federal protective services. We reiterate President Trump’s call against
violence and to remain peaceful.”55 The Associated Press noted that three
days before, on January 3, the Capitol Police had declined an offer from the
Pentagon to send National Guard troops, and an offer of FBI agents from
the Justice Department. “Instead, despite plenty of warnings of a possible
insurrection and ample resources and time to prepare, the Capitol Police
planned only for a free speech demonstration.56
At around 1 p.m., 12 minutes before Trump ended his speech with an

invitation to the protesters to walk to the Capitol, a mob, estimated by
federal police to number about eight hundred,57 advanced on the Capitol
building. Capitol security advised members of Congress to evacuate their
offices and take cover. At about 2:15 p.m., the crowd breached the police
barricades and entered the building, looting and vandalizing offices,
including that of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). DC mayor Muriel
Bowser declared a curfew and extended a public emergency declaration
until January 21, the day after Biden’s presidential inauguration.
In the mayhem, 140 people were injured, five people died. Capitol Police
officer Brian Sicknick was among the five, initially reported to have died
from being struck by a fire extinguisher, but medical examiners found no
evidence of blunt force trauma.58 Of the four remaining deaths, unarmed 14-
year Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt was shot by a police officer;59 three
other protesters died from “medical emergencies” of a heart attack, a stroke,
and being trampled to death.
After Capitol Police secured the building, the House and Senate reconvened
that night to certify the Electoral College votes. At 3:41 a.m. the next
morning, Vice President Mike Pence confirmed Joe Biden as the winner of
the presidential election.60 Three hours before, at 12:49 a.m., Deputy White
House Chief of Staff Dan Scavino tweeted this statement from Trump:61
Even though I totally disagree with the outcome of the election, and the facts
bear me out, nevertheless there will be an orderly transition on January 20th.
I have always said we would continue our fight to ensure that only legal
votes were counted. While this represents the end of the greatest first term
in presidential history, it’s only the beginning of our fight to Make America
Great Again!
On January 13, a week before Trump’s term of office expired, the U.S.
House of Representatives voted 232:197, including ten Republicans, to
impeach him for a second time for “incitement of insurrection” of the
January 6 storming of Capitol Hill.
In the United States, the reason for impeaching a president is to remove him
from office. As stated in Section 4, Article II of the U.S. Constitution, “The
President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be
removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason,
bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”62 In other words, as
Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute explains, “the American
impeachment process is remedial, not penal: it is limited to office holders,
and judgments are limited to no more than removal from office and
disqualification to hold future office.”63
Notwithstanding the purpose of impeachment, on February 9, twenty days

after Trump already had left office, the Senate began his impeachment
trial—the first of its kind for a departed president. A two-thirds majority
was needed to convict. On February 13, Trump was acquitted by a vote of
57:43. Among the 57 who voted “guilty” were seven Republicans.64
On February 23, 2021, former U.S. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, who
resigned a day after the January 6 riot, testified before the Senate Rules and
Homeland Security committees. His testimony made clear the riot could not
have been provoked by Trump’s speech because the rioters had come
prepared. Sund said:65
“This was an attack that we are learning was pre-planned, and involved
participants from a number of states who came well equipped, coordinated,
and prepared to carry out a violent insurrection at the United States Capitol.
I witnessed insurgents beating police officers with fists, pipes, sticks, bats,
metal barricades, and flag poles. These criminals came prepared for war.
They came with weapons, chemical munitions and explosives. They came
with shields, ballistic protection, and tactical gear. They came with their own
radio system to coordinate the attack, as well as climbing gear and other
equipment to defeat the Capitol’s security features.”
Sund also testified that far-left elements were among the rioters. He said
that the assessment by the U.S. Capitol Police’s Intelligence and Inter-
Agency Coordination Division (IICD) “indicated that members of the Proud
122 Chapter Six
Boys, white supremacist groups, Antifa, and other extremist groups were
expected to participate in the January 6th event and that they may be
inclined to become violent.” Despite the Capitol Police’s own assessment
that there could be violence, the IICD concluded that “the level of
probability of acts of civil disobedience/arrests occurring based on current
intelligence information” was “Remote” to “Improbable”.
In a span of 15 days after he was inaugurated, from January 20 to February

4, 2021, President Biden signed 49 executive orders, more than the previous
three presidents put together in a similar time period.66 The cumulative
effect of those executive orders was the dismantling and erasure of much of
what Trump had achieved—in immigration (Trump’s policies on refugees
and asylum-seekers was rescinded; non-citizens to be included in the census
and apportionment of congressional representatives), border security
(border wall construction halted; ban on U.S. entry for passport holders
from Muslim-majority countries lifted), abortion (U.S. funding of foreign
abortion facilities resumed), the environment (U.S. membership in the Paris
climate accord restored), and energy independence (Keystone XL pipeline
canceled).67
On February 20, 2021, in a virtual address to the online G-7 (Group of Seven
industrialized countries) summit, declaring that the days of “America First”
diplomacy were over, Biden signaled the end of Trump nationalism and a
return to globalism. As reported by the AP, “President Joe Biden used his
first address before a global audience Friday to declare that ‘America is
back, the transatlantic alliance is back,’ after four years of a Trump
administration that flaunted its foreign policy through an ‘America First’

lens.”68
Notes
1 “Transcript: Donald Trump announces his presidency candidacy,” CBS News, June
16, 2015, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/transcript-donald-trump-announces-his-

presidential-candidacy/. Retrieved October 12, 2019.
2 “Remarks by President Trump to the 74th Session of the United Nations General
Assembly,” WhiteHouse.gov, September 25, 2019,

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-74th-
session-united-nations-general-assembly/. Retrieved December 1, 2019.
3 “NATO Secretary General announces increased defence spending by Allies,”
GlobalSecurity.org, November 29, 2019. Retrieved November 30, 2019.

4 Michael Lind, “Donald Trump, the Perfect Populist,” Politico Magazine, March 9,
2016, https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/03/donald-trump-the-perfect-
populist-213697, retrieved October 30, 2019. Lind is a contributing editor of Politico

Magazine and the author of Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern
Takeover of American Politics.
5 Victor Davis Hanson, The Case for Trump (New York: Basic Books, 2019), p. 18.
6 “How Groups Voted in 2016,” Roper Center For Public Opinion Research,
https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/how-groups-voted-2016, retrieved Oct. 17, 2019;

Alec Tyson and Shiva Maniam, “Behind Trump’s victory: Divisions by race, gender,
education,” Pew Research Center, November 9, 2016,
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/behind-trumps-victory-
divisions-by-race-gender-education/. Retrieved Oct. 17, 2019.
7 Aaron Zitner and Dante Chinni, “Democrats and Republicans Aren’t Just Divided.
They Live in Different Worlds,” Wall Street Journal, Sept. 19, 2019,
https://www.wsj.com/graphics/red-economy-blue-economy/. Retrieved October 21,
2019.
8 Ruth Igielnik and Rakesh Kochkar, “GOP gained ground in middle-class
communities in 2016,” Pew Research Center, December 8, 2016,

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/12/08/gop-gained-ground-in-middle-
class-communities-in-2016/, retrieved October 17, 2019. Middle-class communities
were defined as metropolitan areas in which at least 55% of the adult population
lived in middle-income households in 2014. Middle-income households are those
whose annual income is two-thirds to double the national median, after incomes have
been adjusted for household size. In 2014, the national middle-income range was
about $42,000 to $125,000 annually for a household of three.
9 Zitner and Chinni, “Democrats and Republicans Aren’t Just Divided,” op. cit.
10 Ibid.
11 Hanson, The Case for Trump, op. cit., pp. 60, 47, 42, 64.
12 Ed Pilkington, “Obama angers midwest voters with guns and religion remark,”
The Guardian, April 14, 2008,

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/apr/14/barackobama.uselections2008.
Retrieved November 19, 2019.
13 Joe Tacopino, “Clinton: Half of Trump’s supporters are a ‘basket of deplorables’,”
New York Post, https://nypost.com/2016/09/10/clinton-half-of-trumps-supporters-

are-a-basket-of-deplorables/. Retrieved November 19, 2019.
14 Tim Haines, “Hillary Clinton in India: State I Won Are ‘Moving Forward,’ States
Trump Won ‘Looking Backwards’,” Real Clear Politics,

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/03/13/hillary_clinton_in_india_plac
es_i_won_are_moving_forward_own_23_of_americas_gdp.html. Retrieved
November 19, 2019.
15 Philip Wegmann, “The ugly, elitist backstory behind Hillary Clinton’s ‘basket of
deplorables’,” Washington Examiner, April 20, 2018,

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/the-ugly-elitist-backstory-behind-
hillary-clintons-basket-of-deplorables. Retrieved November 19, 2019.
16 Greg Price, “Peter Strzok was asked ‘What does Trump support smell like?’ and
if they’re ‘hillbillies’ during wild House hearing,” Newsweek, July 12, 2, 2018,
https://www.newsweek.com/peter-strzok-trump-smell-hillbillies-1020892.
124 Chapter Six
17 David K. Li, “FBI employee blasted Trump voters: ‘Uneducated, lazy POS,” New
York Post, June 15, 2018, https://nypost.com/2018/06/15/fbi-employee-working-on-
hillary-probe-blasted-trump-supporters-as-lazy-pos-after-election/.
18 Salena Zito, “Why liberal elites are so resentful of middle America,” New York
Post, January 11, 2017, https://nypost.com/2017/01/11/why-liberal-elites-are-so-

resentful-of-middle-america/. Retrieved November 19, 2019.
19 Amber Athey, “Politico Reporter Mocks Trump Supporters As Toothless Hicks,”
Daily Caller, August 1, 2019, https://dailycaller.com/2018/08/01/politico-mocks-

trump-supporters-florida-rally/. Retrieved November 19, 2019.
20 Hanson, The Case for Trump, op. cit., p. 46.
21 Sam Wolfson, “New York Times racism row: how Twitter comes back to haunt
you,” The Guardian, August 3, 2018,

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/aug/03/sarah-jeong-new-york-
times-twitter-posts-racism. Retrieved November 19, 2019.
22 Katherine Rodriguez, “Joe Biden: Trump Supporters Are ‘Virulent,’ ‘Dregs of
Society’,” Breitbart, September 17, 2018,

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2018/09/17/joe-biden-trump-supporters-
virulent-dregs-society/. Retrieved November 20, 2019.
23 Hanson, The Case for Trump, op. cit., p. 45.
24 Mary Kay Linge, “Biden calls Trump supporters ‘chumps’ at Pennsylvania drive-
in rally,” New York Post, October 24, 2020, https://nypost.com/2020/10/24/biden-

rips-trump-supporters-as-chumps-at-pa-drive-in-rally/. Retrieved November 16,
2020.
25 “Chump,” Wordnik, https://www.wordnik.com/words/chump. Retrieved November
16, 2020.
26 Kevin D. Williamson, “The Father-Führer,” National Review, March 28, 2016,
https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2016/03/28/father-f-hrer/. Retrieved
November 19, 2019.

27 Tyler Durden, “Bill Kristol: ‘Decadent, Lazy, Spoiled, White Working Class’
Americans Should be Replaced by Immigrants,” ZeroHedge, February 9, 2017,

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-02-09/bill-kristol-decadent-lazy-spoiled-
white-working-class-americans-should-be-replaced-. Retrieved November 19,
2019.
28 Max Boot, “Has Trump finally gone too far?,” The Washington Post, June 18,
2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/06/18/has-
trump-finally-gone-too-far/. Retrieved November 19, 2019.
29 David Brooks, “The East Germans of the 21st Century,” New York Times, January
29, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/29/opinion/east-germany-immigration-

usa.html. Retrieved November 19, 2019.
30 Hanson, The Case for Trump, op. cit., pp. 42, 46.
31 Stephen Collinson, “Donald Trump—keeper of promises,” CNN,
https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/07/politics/donald-trump-promises-kept/index.html.
32 Marc A. Thiessen, “Trump could be the most honest in modern history,” Chicago
Tribune, October 16, 2018,
https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-perspec-honesty-trump-
keeps-campaign-promises-presidential-truthfulness-1017-story.html.
33 “About Us,” Sentier Research, https://sentierresearch.com/aboutus.html.

34 Gordon Green and John Coder, Household Income Trends September 2019, p. 2,
Sentier Research,
https://sentierresearch.com/reports/Sentier_Household_Income_Trends_Report_Se
ptember_2019_10_30_19.pdf. Retrieved November 23, 2019.
35 Steve Moore, “It’s a middle-class boom—How Americans are really doing under
Trump economy,” Fox Business, October 20, 2019,

https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/steve-moore-middle-class-boom-how-
americans-doing-trump-economy. Retrieved Oct. 28, 2019.
36 “Consumer prices increase 1.8 percent in the 12 months ending October 2019,”
United States Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, November 19, 2019,
https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2019/consumer-prices-increase-1-point-8-percent-
in-the-12-months-ending-october-2019.htm. Retrieved November 23, 2019.
37 “Trump Administration Accomplishments,” WhiteHouse.gov,
https://www.whitehouse.gov/trump-administration-accomplishments/.
Retrieved February 4, 2021.
38 Andy Kiersz and Joseph Zaballos-Roig, “Trump boasts the economy is the best
it’s ever been. Here are 9 charts showing how it’s fared compared to the Obama and
Bush presidencies,” Business Insider, October 10, 2019,
https://www.businessinsider.com/9-charts-comparing-trump-economy-to-obama-
bush-administrations-2019-9. Retrieved November 23, 2019.
39 “Trump Administration Accomplishments,” WhiteHouse.gov.
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid.
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid.
45 Larry Greenfield, “President Trump is the Chemo During These Divisive Times,”
Jewish Journal, July 10, 2019,

https://jewishjournal.com/cover_story/301366/president-donald-trump-is-the-
chemo-during-these-divisive-times/. Retrieved December 1, 2019.
46 “Unemployment Rates During the COVID-19 Pandemic: In Brief,”
Congressional Research Service,

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46554. Retrieved December 16,
2020.
47 “The Liberal Order of the Past 70 Years is under threat,” The Economist, Sept. 21,
2017, https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2017/09/21/the-liberal-order-of-
the-past-70-years-is-under-
threat?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/theliberalorderofthepast70yearsisunderthreat. Retrieved
November 1, 2019.
48 Charlie Savage, “Trump Is Rapidly Reshaping the Judiciary. Here’s How,” The
New York Times, November 11, 2017,
126 Chapter Six
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/11/us/politics/trump-judiciary-appeals-courts-
conservatives.html?partner=msft_msn. Retrieved November 22, 2017.
49 “Donald Trump is appointing federal judges at a blistering pace,” The Economist,
February 14, 2020, https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/02/14/donald-

trump-is-appointing-federal-judges-at-a-blistering-pace. Retrieved February 21,
2020.
50 Jamiles Lartey, “Trump’s judicial picks: ‘The goal is to end the progressive state,”
The Guardian, November 22, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017

/nov/22/federal-court-judicial-nominations-donald-trump. Retrieved December 16,
2020.
51 Sen. Ted Cruz, “Sen. Cruz Op-Ed in Fox News: Trump has achieved historic
impact with THIS action,” Fox News, November 6, 2019,

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/sen-ted-cruz-trumps-court-appointments-will-
have-enormous-impact. Retrieved December 16, 2020.
52 “U.S. Presidential Election Results 2020: Biden Wins,” NBC News, updated
December 18, 2020, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-elections/president-

results. Retrieved February 6, 2021.
53 Associated Press, “Transcript of Trump’s Speech at Rally Before US Capitol
Riot,” U.S. News and World Report, January 13, 2021,

https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2021-01-13/transcript-of-trumps-
speech-at-rally-before-us-capitol-riot. Retrieved February 21, 2021.
54 Ibid.
55 @PressSec45, Twitter, January 6, 2021,
https://twitter.com/PressSec45/status/1346918582832168964. Retrieved February

22, 2021.
56 Colleen Long, Lolita Baldor, Michael Balsamo, and Nomaan Merchant, “Capitol
Police rejected offers of federal help to quell mob,” AP, January 7, 2021,
https://apnews.com/article/capitol-police-reject-federal-help-
9c39a4ddef0ab60a48828a07e4d03380. Retrieved February 22, 2021.

57 Devlin Barrett and Spencer S. Hsu, “Justice Department, FBI debate not charging
some of the Capitol rioters,” The Washington Post, January 23, 2021,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/doj-capitol-rioters-charges-
debate/2021/01/23/3b0cf112-5d97-11eb-8bcf-3877871c819d_story.html.
58 Evan Perez, David Shortell, and Whitney Wild, “Investigators struggle to build
murder case in death of US Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick,” CNN, February
2, 2021, https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/02/politics/brian-sicknick-charges/index.
html. Retrieved February 22, 2021.
59 Jake Dima, “Attorney for Capitol officer who shot Ashli Babbitt disputes claims
he didn’t issue verbal warning,” Washington Examiner, February 24, 2021,

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/lawyer-capitol-police-officer-shot-
ashli-babbitt-false-narrative-didnt-issue-warning. Retrieved February 25, 2021.
60 Edmund DeMarche, “Biden’s Electoral College victory certified—hours after
Capitol chaos,” Fox News, January 7, 2021,

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/congress-certifies-bidens-electoral-college-
victory-after-day-of-chaos-at-capitol. Retrieved February 23, 2021.
61 @DanScavino, Twitter, January 7, 2021,

https://twitter.com/DanScavino/status/1347103015493361664. Retrieved February
21, 2021.
62 “Article II,” Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School,
https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleii. Retrieved February 23, 2021.

Emphasis in italics supplied.
63 “Impeachment,” Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School,
https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/article-2/section-4/impeachment.
64 Dareh Gregorian, “Trump acquitted in impeachment trial; 7 GOP Senators vote
with Democrats to convict,” NBC News, February 13, 2021),

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-acquitted-impeachment-
trial-7-gop-senators-vote-democrats-convict-n1257876. Retrieved February 22,
2021.
65 “Written Testimony of USCP Former Chief of Police Steven A. Sund before the
Senate Committee on Rules and Administration and the Senate Homeland Security
and Government Affairs Committee,” Senate.gov, February 23, 2021,
https://www.rules.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Testimony_Sund.pdf. Retrieved
March 3, 2021.
66 In the same span of time, January 20 to February 4, Biden’s three predecessors—
Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump—signed,

respectively, two, nine, and eight executive orders.
67 Kate Sullivan, et al., “Here are the executive actions Biden has signed so far,”
CNN, February 5, 2021, https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2021/politics/biden-

executive-orders/index.html. Retrieved February 6, 2021.
68 Aamer Madhani, “Biden declared ‘America is back’ in welcome words to allies,”
AP, February 19, 2021, https://apnews.com/article/biden-foreign-policy-g7-summit-

munich-cc10859afd0f542fd268c0a7ddcd9bb6. Retrieved February 22, 2021.
CHAPTER SEVEN
REVOLT AGAINST THE ELITES
MARIA HSIA CHANG
“Wrongs are often forgiven, but contempt never is.

Our pride remembers it forever.”
—Lord Chesterfield1
The Oxford Dictionary defines “elite” as “A group or class of people seen

as having the most power and influence in a society, especially on account
of their wealth or privilege”; and “elitism” as “The belief that a society or
system should be led by an elite”; “The superior attitude or behaviour
associated with an elite.”2
For as long as humans lived in groups with divisions of labor, there likely
have been elites. Certainly, elites and their “superior attitude” date back at
least to biblical times, exemplified in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax
collector in Luke 18, wherein with preening self-regard, the Pharisee
thanked God that he was “not like the rest of humanity—greedy, dishonest,
adulterous.”
That same attitude is found in Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset’s

famous book, La Rebelión de las Masas (The Revolt of the Masses), translated
into English in 1932. In it, Ortega sounded the alarm that the world was
“suffering from a grave demoralisation” and Europe was in “the greatest
crisis”—a crisis of the “rebellion of the masses” against being ruled by the elites.
According to Ortega, humanity was bifurcated into “two classes of creatures”:

the elites and the masses. The elites are a “specially qualified” minority who
carry out the many and diverse operations, activities, and functions of
society that “cannot be properly carried out without special gifts.” In selfless
service to society, these exceptional individuals “make great demands on
themselves, piling up difficulties and duties” toiling in occupations that
include those of “an artistic and refined character” and “the functions of
government and of political judgment in public affairs.”3
130 Chapter Seven
The masses, in contrast, are “the assemblage of persons not specially

qualified.” They are “the average man” who “possesses no quality of
excellence,” being “mediocre and commonplace, ill-gifted”—"mere buoys
that float on the waves” who “demand nothing special of themselves, but
for whom to live is to be every moment what they already are, without
imposing on themselves any effort towards perfection.”4
In the past, knowing they lacked the required “special qualities,” the masses
had “recognised their place in a healthy dynamic social system” and
“asserted no right to intervene” in the operations of society and government.
But no more. According to Ortega, the “evil” “general feature of our time”
is that instead of knowing their proper place, the masses decided to “advance
to the foreground of social life” to “occupy the places” of the specially
qualified individuals, despite the fact that “the masses, by definition, neither
should nor can direct their own personal existence, and still less rule society
in general.” In so doing, the “inferior . . . man of the crowd” not only refused
to “pay tribute” to intelligence, but felt “himself exempt from all submission
to superiors.”5
Ortega noted that the result of this “rebellion of the masses” against the
proper social order was a “hyperdemocracy,” wherein “the commonplace
mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the
rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will.” In this
deformed democracy, the masses crushed “everything that is different,
everything that is excellent, individual, qualified and select. . . . Anybody
who is not like everybody, who does not think like everybody, runs the risk
of being eliminated.”6
The New Elite

Though published some 90 years ago, Ortega’s Revolt of the Masses
remarkably describes how elites in our time regard themselves and the
masses.
Then, as now, the elites view themselves as more intelligent and specially
qualified to rule. That attitude is exemplified by Gilles Le Gendre, a
former French National Assembly legislator (2018-2020) from President
Emmanuel Macron’s En Marche! party. When asked what the government
should have done differently about the populist Yellow Vests
Revolt Against the Elites 131
demonstrations, Le Gendre replied: “We were probably too intelligent, too

subtle.”7
Then, as now, the elites portray the masses as dimwitted simpletons. In the
United States, former Vice President Joe Biden called Trump supporters
“chumps”8—dolts or stupid people. Similarly, Politico reporter Marc
Caputo mocked the crowd at a Trump rally as toothless rednecks—“If you
put everyone’s mouths together in this video, you’d get a full set of teeth.”9
Although the term “redneck” denotes uneducated, narrow-minded white

people in America’s rural South, it turns out that France, too, had rednecks.
In an interview with New Statesman, academic geographer Christophe
Guilluy said that most Parisians and the government dismissed the Yellow
Vest protesters as “ploucs” or rednecks, “with no ideology or ideas beyond
smashing a few heads. . . . That is why nobody in the Macron government
seems to take them seriously.”10
In our time, the elites especially pride themselves on being college educated,
and equate the masses’ alleged lack of one with stupidity. In the United
States, in a text to an FBI attorney, an unidentified FBI employee called all
Trump supporters “poor to middle class, uneducated, lazy POS [pieces of
shit].”11 In the UK, actor-producer Steve Coogan called Brexit supporters
“ill-informed, ignorant, and uneducated.”12 For his part, notwithstanding the
fact that pro-Brexit voters were as knowledgeable about the European
Union as those who were anti-Brexit, with one in four pro-Brexiteers having
a college degree,13 Lancaster University finance professor Vasso Ioannidou
held that not being college educated had rendered Brexiteers weak-minded
and thus susceptible to anti-EU propaganda.14
While intelligence is moderately correlated with educational achievement,15

that does not mean that those without a college education necessarily are
stupid, as attested by the many highly accomplished individuals without a
college degree or education.16 In their study on intelligence and education,
psychologists Ian Deary and Wendy Johnson pointed out that “the same
educational opportunities are not available to everyone” and that there might
be other variables that contribute to the association between intelligence and
education, such as personality traits and their influences on coping styles
and motivations.17
Then, as now, the elites are a-nationalist, if not anti-nationalist. Ortega y

Gasset had advocated the dismantling of national boundaries because only
132 Chapter Seven
the union of the separate European peoples into a superstate “would give
new life to the pulses of Europe.” Calling nationalism—the love for one’s
country and people—“artificial” “blind alleys” and “nothing but a mania,”
Ortega maintained that “every” European intellectual felt limited and
“suffocated within the boundaries of his country.” Finding his nationality
“an absolute limitation,” the intellectual “discovered that to be English,
German, or French is to be provincial.”18 In our time, Bill Kristol, the
founder and editor-at-large of The Weekly Standard, similarly chafed at
nationalism and nationalist sentiments. On the day of Donald Trump’s
inauguration, Kristol tweeted that he found the new president’s “America
First” nationalism “profoundly depressing and vulgar.”19
In a book completed shortly before his death in 1994, Christopher Lasch

offered an explanation for the elites’ antipathy toward nationalism. He
identified the elites as “a new class” of “symbolic analysts” whose livelihoods
“rest not so much on the ownership of property as on the manipulation of
information and professional expertise.” Members of this new class are
found in a wide variety of occupations, including “brokers, bankers, real
estate promoters and developers, engineers, consultants of all kinds, systems
analysts, scientists, doctors, publicists, publishers, editors, advertising
executives, art directors, moviemakers, entertainers, journalists, television
producers and directors, artists, writers, university professors.” Lasch
pointed out that the market in which the new elites operate is international
in scope, their fortunes tied to enterprises that operate across national
boundaries. Having “more in common with their counterparts in Brussels or
Hong Kong than with the masses of Americans not yet plugged into the
network of global communications,” the elites’ loyalties are international

rather than national.20
Unlike the old aristocratic ruling class with their noblesse oblige, however,
today’s cosmopolitan elites lack that sense of moral obligation, priding
themselves on being a suis generis meritocracy of the intelligent. As Lasch
put it:21
Although hereditary advantages play an important part in the attainment of

professional or managerial status, the new class has to maintain the fiction
that its power rests on intelligence alone. Hence it has little sense of ancestral
gratitude or of an obligation to live up to responsibilities inherited from the
past. It thinks of itself as a self-made elite owing its privileges exclusively
to its own efforts.
In effect, globalization has turned the new class of elites into tourists in their
own countries. According to economist and former U.S. labor secretary
Robert Reich, the new elite see themselves as "world citizens, but without
accepting . . . any of the obligations that citizenship in a polity normally
implies" because without national attachments, people have little inclination
to make sacrifices or to accept responsibility for their actions. Their ties to
an international culture of work, information and leisure render the new
elites indifferent to the prospect of national decline. Instead of financing
public services and the public treasury, the new elite invest their money in
“self-enclosed enclaves” of private schools, private security guards, and
even private systems of garbage collection. Having removed themselves
from the common life, many of them have ceased thinking of themselves as
nationals—as Americans, British, French or Italian—altogether.22
Populism as Revolt Against the Elites

Then there is the new elite’s unqualified contempt for the masses. In the
United Kingdom, Lionel Shriver found that those who were anti-Brexit had
“a real contempt of, not just bitterness, but an aggressive contempt” for
fellow-Brits who had voted for Brexit.23 In an op/ed in Foreign Policy,
contributing editor James Traub characterized nationalism as xenophobic
nativism. Bristling at the “ignorant” masses for “denying reality” and
repudiating globalization and the “near-universal opinion of experts,” Traub
called the Brexit referendum a schism between “the sane vs. the mindlessly
angry.” Decrying populism as a “citizen revolt” in which “extremism has
gone mainstream,” Traub urged his fellow elites to assume “the task of
leadership” to “un-delude” the deluded masses.24
Some elites go beyond contempt to a spitefulness toward their fellow

countrymen—the viciousness of which takes one’s breath away—for no
reason other than a difference in policy preference. As Christopher Lasch
put it, when confronted with resistance to their ideas, the elites “betray the
venomous hatred that lies not far beneath the smiling face of upper-middle-
class benevolence. . . . Simultaneously arrogant and insecure, the new elites,
the professional classes in particular, regard the masses with mingled scorn
and apprehension.”25
In the UK, television broadcaster Terry Christian hoped pro-Brexit voters

would suffer financially and the elderly among them get a “good virulent
strain” of flu.26 Actress Miriam Margoyles, who called the Brexit
referendum “absolute nonsense,” said then-PM David Cameron “should be
134 Chapter Seven
boiled in oil” 27 and wished that pro-Brexit PM Boris Johnson would die
from the COVID-19 virus.28
In the United States, too, when Donald Trump briefly was hospitalized with
COVID-19, Steve Cox, an Independent candidate running for Congress in
California’s 39th District, tweeted that he hoped the president would die
from the virus.29 So many people flooded social media wishing likewise that
Facebook, Twitter and TikTok announced that such posts would be
removed for violating their content policies.30
In Australia, Mark Alfano, associate professor of philosophy at Macquarie

University, tweeted his delight at Trump-supporter Rosanne Boyland being
crushed to death by the crowd during the January 6 Capitol riot. Calling
himself “Neon Trotsky,” Alfano retweeted a New York Times tweet on the
death of Boyland, with the comment, “More of this please.” Three days later
on January 18, 2021, Alfano redoubled on his glee, tweeting that “Tragedy
is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when a MAGA chud gets crushed by
fellow rioters and dies.”31 (According to Urban Dictionary, “MAGA chud”
is “an epithet term for supporters of Donald Trump.” MAGA refers to the
Trump slogan “Make America Great Again”; “chud” is an acronym for
Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers from a 1984 horror
movie.32) It should be noted that in March 2020, less than a year ago before
his gleeful tweets, Alfano, whose academic specialty is moral philosophy,
was awarded a $924,000 John Templeton Foundation Grant for a research
project to examine “the best ways to practice intellectual humility in a
fragmented and pluralistic social world.”33
Though animated by immigration and other policy issues, on a visceral level

populism is a reaction to the elites’ disdainful dismissal of ordinary people
and their concerns. As University of Texas-Austin Public Affairs Professor
Michael Lind put it, populist movements such as those led by Donald
Trump, Nigel Farage and Matteo Salvini “represent the legitimate interests
and values of groups that have been excluded by a closed and nepotistic
power elite,” and should be “best understood as a counter-revolution from
below against this neoliberal revolution from above.”34
The elites’ disdain for the masses is captured by Pascal-Emmanuel Gobrey’s

quote from an unnamed government adviser who admitted that the French
people “viscerally reject” Macron because “the class-contempt stuff is not
good.”35 The class contempt goes beyond France. Swedish economist
Fredrik Erixon observed that all around Europe, voters had been rebelling
against the political establishment. But the response from traditional

politicians was to attack their own electorate, calling them “extremists,
fruitcakes, loons, racists” or worse—a tactic that backfired because voters
“don’t respond well to being insulted by the politicians they employ. They
see it as arrogant and entitled. It drives them further into the arms of upstarts
and fringe parties.”36
For his part, Victor Davis Hanson similarly contended that Trump populism
fundamentally was a reaction to the elites’ contempt for the white middle
class: 37
[S]corn for the white middle class . . . was widespread among many elites,
and it ignited a Trump backlash. . . . The anger that Trump tapped had been
a long time in coming. But few politicians knew it firsthand, much less saw
it as merited or even useful in the political sense. . . . [Trump] had seen a
critical preexisting and vast swath of potential voters in proverbial swing
states who were . . . resentful over the disdain shown them by elites,
especially the likes of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
The New Totalitarian Temptation

There is another dimension in the elites’ treatment of the masses which is
more troubling than contempt and which puts democracy in peril.
In his book The Totalitarian Temptation, French philosopher and former

socialist Jean-François Revel warned of the allure that totalitarian political
systems, especially Soviet communism, had for many Western intellectuals.38

Though written 45 years ago, Revel’s observation about this internal
weakness of democracies remains relevant today.
Ortega y Gasset had described the uppity masses as oppressively intolerant,

“crush[ing]” beneath them “everything that is different,” and imposing their
banal notions on the elite with the “force of law.”39 In our time, however,
Ortega’s characterization is more indicative of the elites’ attitude toward
those who hold contrary beliefs and values.
The proper functioning of a democratic polity depends on a pluralism or

marketplace of ideas, wherein a variety of beliefs and opinions freely are
aired, jostling and competing in the public arena. From this competition, the
best ideas are most likely to emerge and triumph. It is that pluralism that is
compromised by the elites’ intolerance for populist movements and their
concerns.
136 Chapter Seven
On August 18, 2019, on the Ben Shapiro Show, British journalist Piers
Morgan was asked if Brexit and Donald Trump were part of a phenomenon
of populist resistance to a “generalized elite.” The video of the interview
evidently touched a nerve as it had gone viral, garnering more than 1.3
million views and over 7,000 comments on YouTube. Morgan replied:40
“Populism is rising because Liberals have become unbearable, and I speak

as a Liberal. . . . The most important thing is to maintain the ability to have
a democratic debate with people . . . that you fundamentally don’t agree with,
and to listen to things you find fundamentally offensive, but you actually
respect someone’s right to think differently to you . . . . [But] Liberals have
become utterly, pathetically illiberal. . . . What’s the point in calling yourself
a Liberal if you don’t allow anyone else to have a different view?. . . .
Liberals . . . want to tell people not just how to lead their lives, but if you
don’t lead it the way I tell you to . . . then I’m gonna ruin your life. I’m
gonna scream abuse at you. I’m gonna get you fired from your job. I’m
gonna get you hounded by your family and friends.”
For his part, Paul Embery, a trade union activist and author of Despised:
Why the Modern Left Loathes the Working Class, called the elites’
intolerance a “creeping despotism” that shuts down legitimate debate by
dismissing opponents as “fascists,” “xenophobes” and “racists.” Embery
lamented that the elites are no longer interested in winning hearts and minds
with reasoned discussion. Instead, “every debate is viewed as a battle
between . . . enlightened progressives versus reactionary bigots,” wherein
the “enlightened” elites “feel a constant need to wield pitchforks and hurl
abuse at opponents.”41
Then there is the elites’ categorical rejection of and efforts to overturn

electoral outcomes not to their liking.
In the UK, those who had lost in the Brexit referendum agitated for another
referendum to reverse the majority’s decision. As Piers Morgan pointed out,
“they say . . . we have to do this all over again, we should ignore the result
of this election because I know more than you, I’m more intelligent than
you, you’re stupid people.’ That’s where we’ve got to, and if that is
accepted, where every result is simply declared null and void, . . . democracy
dies.”42
In France, Christophe Guilluy, too, found the elites’ reaction to populist

movements undemocratic. Calling the Yellow Vests the French equivalent
of the Brexit movement, he warned that the dismissal of Brexiteers and
Yellow Vest protesters as stupid “is why we are losing faith in democracy.”
Like Morgan, Guilluy observed that whereas the Brexit referendum had
been undertaken in accordance with how things are done in a rule-governed
democracy, “it is those who seek to reverse the referendum who are anti-
democratic.”43
In the United States, Democrats refused to accept the results of the 2016
presidential election, insisting that Donald Trump fraudulently had won by
conspiring with Russians. But on March 22, 2019, after a two-year, $25
million investigation, the long-awaited report from Robert Mueller, Special
Counsel for the U.S. Department of Justice, concluded there was no
evidence of a Trump-Russian collusion, nor had Trump committed any
crime of obstruction of justice. In the words of U.S. Attorney General
William Barr in his March 24, 2019 letter to the Senate and House Judiciary
Committees:44
The [Mueller] report explains that the Special Counsel and his staff
thoroughly investigated allegations that members of the presidential
campaign of Donald J. Trump, and others associated with it, conspired with
the Russian government in its efforts to interfere in the 2016 US. presidential
election, or sought to obstruct the related federal investigations. . . . In the
report, the Special Counsel noted that, in completing his investigation, he
employed 19 lawyers who were assisted by a team of approximately 40 FBI
agents, intelligence forensic accountants, and other professional staff. The
Special Counsel issued more than 2,800 subpoenas, executed nearly 500
search warrants, obtained more than 230 orders for communication records,
issued almost 50 orders authorizing use of pen registers, made 13 requests
to foreign governments for evidence, and interviewed approximately 500

witnesses. . . . The Special Counsel’s investigation did not find that the
Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired with the Russian
government in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election . .
. despite multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the
Trump campaign.
The Mueller report notwithstanding, in a partisan vote on December 18,

2019, the Democrat-majority House of Representatives voted 230:197 to
impeach Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. On
February 3, 2020, the Senate acquitted Trump on both counts of
impeachment.45
So alarmed was Christopher Lasch by the elites’ authoritarian impulse that

he devoted his last work, Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy,
138 Chapter Seven
to that subject as a warning to us that democracies are being endangered

from within. In Lasch’s words:46
Once it was the “revolt of the masses” that was held to threaten social order
and the civilizing traditions of Western culture. . . . Today it is the elites,
however—those who control the international flow of money and
information, preside over philanthropic foundations and institutions of
higher learning, manage the instruments of cultural production and thus set
the terms of public debate—that have lost faith in the values, or what remains
of them, of the West. . . . “Diversity”—a slogan that looks attractive on the
face of it—has come to mean the opposite of what it appears to mean. In
practice, diversity turns out to legitimize a new dogmatism, in which rival
minorities take shelter behind a set of beliefs impervious to rational
discussion. . . . How much longer can the spirit of free inquiry and open
debate survive under these conditions?
Diversity of political beliefs and identity especially is lacking among the

new elite of high-tech workers, college professors and journalists.
Using data released by the U.S. Federal Election Commission (FEC),

WIRED magazine found that in the 2020 presidential election, employees
of six high-tech firms contributed nearly 20 times as much money to Joe
Biden as to Donald Trump. $4,787,752 or 95% of political donations by
employees at Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Oracle
went to Biden; just $239,527 went to Trump.47
The lack of political diversity is pronounced in academe where critical

thinking and the free expression and exchange of ideas are supposed to
reign.
In the United States, a 2020 study of 12,372 college professors in 31 states

and the District of Columbia found that nearly half (48.5%) were registered
Democrats; only 5.7% were registered Republicans. Of the 2,112
professors who had made political donations during the 2015-16 and 2017-
18 election cycles, 98.53% (or 2,081 professors) contributed to Democrats;
just 22 professors (1.04%) donated to Republicans.48
In the UK, a 2020 YouGov poll of 820 current and former academics found
that more than one in seven said there was a hostile climate in their
department towards “people with their political beliefs.” The figure was
higher among those who identified as being right-leaning or who had voted
for Brexit. Those academics, according to a report from the Policy
Exchange think tank, were self-censoring because of a hostile work
environment. Some pro-Brexit academics in the social sciences and

humanities said they had refrained from publishing or airing views in their
research and teaching for "fear of consequences" to their careers. The report
warned that academic freedom was under threat: “Hostile or just
uncomfortable attitudes signal to those subject to such discrimination that
they should conceal their views and narrow their research questions to
conform to prevailing norms, if they wish to progress and enjoy a positive
workplace experience.”49
There is also a lack of political diversity among journalists who make up

the vaunted “fourth estate” that supplies the news and other information to
make the “well-informed citizenry” held by Thomas Jefferson to be “the
best defense against tyranny.”
In the United States, as an example, surveys found the journalistic

profession to be dominated by Democrats. In a 2016 survey of 80
journalists, Democrats outnumbered Republicans 21% to 8%. A majority
(86%) of the journalists said they expected Hillary Clinton to win the 2016
presidential election.50 The lack of political diversity was even more
pronounced among the 72 members of the White House press corps, more
than a quarter of whom were registered Democrats; not a single one
identified as Republican. Nearly 90% of the press corps said they expected
Hillary Clinton to be elected president.51
The partisanship of journalists would account for their overwhelmingly

negative coverage of President Trump’s first 100 days in office.
Traditionally, both Congress and news outlets had given presidents a

“honeymoon” period at the start of their first terms so that they can ease into
the office. Gallup found that the typical honeymoon period was seven
months in the last decades of the twentieth century (down from an average
of 26 months earlier in American history).52 But Trump was given none. A
study by Thomas E. Patterson, Bradlee Professor of Government and the
Press at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media,
Politics and Public Policy, found that coverage of President Trump’s first
100 days in office was overwhelmingly negative, accounting for 81.28% of
coverage by major U.S. news outlets (New York Times, Wall Street Journal,
Washington Post, CBS, CNN, Fox News, and NBC), and 85.33% of
coverage by European news outlets (the UK Financial Times and BBC, and
Germany’s ARD). In the words of Patterson:53
140 Chapter Seven
Trump’s coverage during his first 100 days was negative even by the
standards of today’s hyper-critical press. Studies of earlier presidents found
nothing comparable to the level of unfavorable coverage afforded
Trump. . . . [T]he sheer level of negative coverage gives weight to Trump’s
contention, one shared by his core constituency, that the media are hell bent
on destroying his presidency.
In July 2018, one-and-a-half years into Trump’s presidency, the editorial

board of the New York Times, the doyen of American newspapers,
abandoned all journalistic objectivity for political activism. In an op/ed, the
editorial board took the unprecedented step of calling on “Democrats and
progressives” to go to war (“go to the mattresses”) against a sitting president
with unscrupulous mafia tactics (“take a page from ‘The Godfather’”
movie).54 The Times had become the paper of the anti-Trump “resistance”.
It is no wonder that a Gallup poll in September 2020 found that the

percentage of Americans who distrusted the news media was a record high
of 60%. As many as a third (33%) of Americans said that their trust in the
media was "none at all."55
But it is not just Americans who questioned the objectivity of professional

journalists. A 2018 Pew Research Center study of people in 38 countries
found that 44% said the news media were biased in their reporting; only
52% said the media did a good job of reporting fairly on political issues.56
All of which prompted Patterson to conclude that in the United States at
least, “The nation’s watchdog has lost much of its bite and won’t regain it
until the public perceives it as an impartial broker, applying the same

reporting standards to both parties.”57
There is something even more troubling than the new elite’s intolerance of
dissent and lack of political diversity. It is their resort to some of the tactics
of totalitarian systems—those of threats, intimidation, thought reform,
informants, censorship, and political purges to exact revenge on and ensure
that their opponents become permanent outcasts.
A necessary principle of electoral democracies is that of majority rule-

minority rights. Majority rule refers to the political party or individual with
the most votes having the right to rule. Minority rights are rights that are
guaranteed to everyone even if they are not part of the majority, and which
cannot be eliminated by a majority vote. Minority groups can be political,
racial, ethnic, class, religious, linguistic, sexual or gender. Political
minorities include individuals and political parties that lost elections but still
retain their basic rights. Those rights afford protection against the abuse of
power by the majority—what John Stuart Mills called “the tyranny of the
majority”58—and enable the minority party to compete in future elections
to become the majority. In other words, minority rights ensure that the
minority today will not become a permanent minority at the mercy of a
permanent majority.
In the United States, not content with having won the presidency and a
majority in both houses of Congress in the 2020 election, elite Democrats
still saw fit to issue threats against their already defeated opponents.
As examples, four days after the election in an appearance on MSNBC on

November 7, 2020, Washington Post op/ed columnist Jennifer Rubin called
for burning down the Republican Party, leaving no survivors. She said: "It's
not only that Trump has to lose, but that all his enablers have to lose. We
have to collectively in essence burn down the Republican Party. We have to
level them because if there are survivors . . . they will do it again."59 On
January 7, 2021, in a tweet that he subsequently deleted, ABC News'
political director Rick Klein called for the "cleansing" of Trump supporters
from America. He wrote: "The fact is that getting rid of Trump is the easy
part. Cleansing the movement he commands, or getting rid of what he
represents to so many Americans, is going to be something else."60
On January 15, 2021, on HBO's “Real Time with Bill Maher,” former CBS
Evening News anchor Katie Couric—the same Couric who once dismissed
Middle America as “this great unwashed middle of the country”61—called
for the thought reform of Republican members of Congress. She said, “the
question is how are we going to really almost deprogram these people who
have signed up for the cult of Trump.”62 On January 18, 2021, novelist-
screenwriter Don Winslow tweeted a video urging Democrats to become
informants (“citizen detectives”) by using their computers and cell phones
to monitor “extremists” on the internet and report their findings to
authorities.63
In addition to verbal threats and intimidation, the new elite also used
censorship to manipulate and constrict the free flow of information.
To begin, investigative tech reporter Allum Bokhari uncovered a secret plot

by the tech giants to defeat Donald Trump’s re-election. Whistleblowers
told Bokhari that Google, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter saw themselves
as “good censors”—benevolent commissars controlling information to
142 Chapter Seven
“protect” Americans from “dangerous” speech. To that end, the social

media giants censored and manipulated online information to target
undecided voters.64
After Democrats won the 2020 presidential election, the tech giants outright
banished Trump and thousands of his supporters from social media. Trump
was banned for life from Twitter “due to the risk of further incitement of
violence,” and barred indefinitely from Facebook and Instagram. When
Trump and his supporters retreated to Parler, a conservative alternative to
Twitter, in near-unison Google, Apple and Amazon removed Parler from
their platforms.
Victor Davis Hanson pointed out the hypocrisy of big tech’s censorship,
noting that some individuals who had made explicitly violent threats were
not banned from social media. Among them were pop singer Madonna who,
shortly after Trump’s 2017 inauguration, voiced a desire to blow up the
White House with the Trump family in it, and comedienne Kathy Griffin
who, two days after the 2020 election, retweeted the notorious picture of her
holding a prop that looked like the bloody head of a decapitated Donald
Trump. Twitter also refrained from banning Iran’s supreme leader,
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, despite his 2019 tweet calling on his followers to
destroy Israel. Nor was Vicki Osterweil, author of In Defense of Looting—
a book that justifies theft and property destruction—banned from social
media. The taxpayer-subsidized National Public Radio even featured
Osterweil in a sympathetic interview.65
To Hanson’s list can be added Vice President Kamala Harris. In April 2018
on the Ellen Show, then-Senator Harris (D-California) jokingly wished for
the deaths of President Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, and Attorney
General Jeff Sessions. Harris was asked: “If you had to be stuck in an
elevator with either President Trump, Mike Pence, or Jeff Sessions, who
would it be?” Harris replied, laughing, “Does one of us have to come out
alive?”66
Perturbed by the censorship of Trump and his supporters, Kate Ruane,

senior legislative counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU),
warned against the “unchecked power” of the social media giants, and that
banning Trump could set a precedent for big tech companies to silence less
privileged voices. Ruane said in a statement:67
[I]t should concern everyone when companies like Facebook and Twitter
wield the unchecked power to remove people from platforms that have
become indispensable for the speech of billions. . . . President Trump can

turn [to] his press team or Fox News to communicate with the public, but
others . . . will not have that luxury.
Then there is the political purge, a tactic employed by totalitarian systems

against domestic political enemies.
Former Clinton Administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich tweeted that

it was important to “name every official, politician, executive, and media
mogul whose greed and cowardice enabled this catastrophe.”68 Rep. Bill
Pascrell (D-NJ) wanted Speaker Nancy Pelosi to bar from the House of
Representatives the 126 Republicans who had signed an amicus brief in
support of a lawsuit by the State of Texas challenging election results in the
four battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia and
Pennsylvania.69
Elie Mystal, justice correspondent of The Nation, called for a “purge” of the
Republican Party, and for “these Trump people” to be investigated and “face
justice.”70 Kyle Herrig, president of the government watchdog
Accountable.US, said, “The officials immediately responsible for the
administration’s harm should not . . . be able to seek refuge in corporate
boardrooms and universities after Inauguration Day.”71 Former Democratic
National Committee spokesman Hari Sevugan tweeted that “Employers
considering them should know there are consequences for hiring anyone
who helped Trump attack American values.”72
A purge requires the compilation of an enemies list. Three days after the
2020 election, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), former Obama
administration staffer Michael Simon, MSNBC news anchor Chris Hayes,
and other prominent Democrats established the Trump Accountability
Project and a South Africa-style Truth and Reconciliation Commission to
compile just such a list. Those on the list would be barred from holding
public office, joining a corporate board, teaching at a university, or being
employed by other institutions and businesses. The list would include
federal judges who had been appointed by Trump, “every Administration
staffer, campaign staffer, bundler, lawyer who represented them,” “anyone
who took a paycheck to help Trump,” and anyone who challenged the 2020
election results.73
One of the first Trump supporters to be purged was Representative Elise

Stefanik (R-NY). On January 12, 2021, Harvard University's Kennedy
Institute of Politics announced that Stefanik had been removed from the
144 Chapter Seven
institute's senior advisory committee for making “incorrect” and baseless

claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election.74
Rep. Stefanik can thus be counted as among the “anyone who challenged
the 2020 election results”—the ranks of which could number in the millions.
According to a Rasmussen poll conducted on November 17-18, 2020,
nearly half (47%) of likely voters believed the 2020 election had been stolen
from Trump, including 75% of Republicans and nearly 3 of 10 (30%)
Democrats.75
Believing that the 2020 election was fraudulent has become the
contemporary equivalent of “shouting fire in a crowded theater”—a phrase
that is popularly but incorrectly used as exemplifying speech that is not
protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.76 So terrified
are the elites of accusations of voter fraud that recourse was made to station
thousands of National Guard troops in the capital in a show of force to
intimidate and dissuade “anyone who challenged the 2020 election results.”
6,000 of the 26,000 National Guard troops sent to Washington, D.C., for the
inauguration of Joe Biden had remained in the capital, ostensibly to provide
“assistance such as security, communications, medical evacuation, logistics,
and safety support to state, district, and federal agencies,” according to a
National Guard spokesperson.77 In an internal Department of Homeland
Security memo, Robert Salesses, assistant secretary for homeland defense
and global security, said the troops could remain in D.C. until Fall of 2021,
and could be supplemented by reserve and even active military personnel.78
On February 11, 2021, Day 3 of Trump’s Senate impeachment trial, House

impeachment manager Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) admitted to the real
purpose of the National Guard troops when he said: “[President Trump]
does not say the one sentence that would stop future political violence
— ‘The election was not stolen.’ He still hasn’t said that sentence. That is
why National Guard troops in full body armor still patrol outside.”79
Conclusion
The twenty-first century has experienced enough instances of populist
politics to allow analysts to be relatively confident of their identification.
What is yet unknown is what their development might be over time. It is not
at all clear that there is a pattern of development that they all exemplify.
Some populist leaders rose to govern nations, as in the cases of the
KaczyĔski brothers in Poland, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, and Donald Trump

in the United States. Other populists, notably Jean-Marie Le Pen, led
political associations that languished for years at relatively low levels of
performance. Still other populists achieved nothing, disappearing into
history with their followers.
Likewise, it is difficult to anticipate what the effects of populist politics

might be over the long term. We have historical cases in which their
influence endured even in their absence. There are other cases where their
rise and passing had left virtually no trace. The issue requires longitudinal
empirical experience that, as yet, is lacking.
In Chapter One of this volume, populism is defined as a political movement

of an aggrieved people, which is anti-elitist and anti-globalist, non-violent
and non-revolutionary, committed to electoral democracy and seeks to
effect change through voting, law-making, and the courts. Membership in
populist movements can be changeable and transient, which makes the
movement’s duration and impact more fleeting than enduring.
Given the vicissitudes of electoral politics, if a populist leader is voted out,

whatever that was achieved may be undone by the next administration. As
an example, just 15 days into his administration, President Joe Biden signed
a plethora of executive orders that erased most of what Trump had
accomplished in four years.
Some in the media proclaim populism to be on the decline, and that its best
days are over. The COVID-19 pandemic seemed to have led to a decrease
in populism as many looked to government for succor and guidance in
uncertain times. A November 2020 YouGov-Cambridge Globalism survey
of some 26,000 people across 25 countries found that support for populist
beliefs had fallen “markedly” in the past year.80 By December 2020, nearly
a year after the pandemic first erupted, support for Matteo Salvini’s League
in Italy had spiraled from 30% to 25%. In the United Kingdom, pro-Brexit
PM Boris Johnson lost a 20-point lead in polls in less than a year. In France,
Marine Le Pen’s Front lost 40% of officials in local elections.81
But others argue populism is here to stay. As Roger Eatwell and Matthew
Goodwin, among others,82 pointed out in their book, National Populism,
populist movements have deep roots within societies and their reach is
potentially wider than is thought to be because significant numbers of ethnic
146 Chapter Seven
minority voters, college graduates, the self-employed and middle-class

remain receptive to populist appeals.83
In the United States, the words of Eatwell and Goodwin were borne out by
the thousands of people who attended a post-election rally on December 5,
2020, for the loser of the presidential election, Donald Trump. The huge
crowd had waited for more than 90 minutes at the Valdosta Regional Airport
in Georgia before Trump spoke to chants of “We love you!”84 On January
19, 2021, Trump’s last day as president, Rasmussen Reports’ daily
presidential tracking poll found his total approval to be 51%—only eight
percentage points lower than his highest approval rating of 59% on January
26, 2017.85 A CBS News poll in February 2021 found that as many as 70%
of rank-and-file Republicans would join or consider joining a new, Trump-
led political party.86
For that matter, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, international business editor of

the Daily Telegraph, maintained that the storming of the U.S. Capitol
building on January 6 was a demonstration of populist anger against the new
elite. According to Evans-Pritchard, what the storming “exposed is the sheer
hatred felt against privileges and faux-righteousness of the post-national
Anywheres.”87
Those who contend populism is not going away also find support in a 2019
study by the Pew Research Center which found that a majority (51%) of
people in 27 countries across the world were dissatisfied with “the way
democracy is working in their country”; just 45% were satisfied. More
importantly, dissatisfaction with democracy was related to economic

frustration (whether most people had a good chance to improve their
standard of living), the protection of the rights of people to express their
views in public, and perceptions that political elites were corrupt (42%) and
did not care “what ordinary people think” (61%). In Europe, dissatisfaction
with democracy was tied to unfavorable views about the EU and opposition
to immigration—sentiments that fueled and continue to energize populist
movements.88
Populist leaders may come and go, and populist reforms may be fleeting or
coopted by establishment parties as their own. What is certain, however, is
that given the underlying societal conditions that gave rise to populism—
those of unconstrained immigration, the outsourcing of jobs, and the
denigration of national interests, cultures, and traditions—unless the elites
listen to and find a way to address the legitimate concerns of the common
folk on whom they heap scorn and derision, populist movements will
continue to appear and be embraced by the disaffected.
Notes
1 “Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfiedl,” Dedicatio.com,
https://www.dedicatio.com/author/Chesterfield-Earl-Philip-Dormer-Stanhope/.
2 “Elite” and “Elitism,” Lexico, https://www.lexico.com/definition/elite and
https://www.lexico.com/definition/elitism. Retrieved November 13, 2020.

3 José Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses (New York: W. W. Norton, 1993),
pp. 15, 13.

4 Ibid., pp. 13-15.
5 Ibid., pp. 16-17, 11, 189.
6 Ibid., p. 17.
7 Pascal-Emmanuel Gobrey, “The Failure of the French Elite,” The Wall Street
Journal, February 22, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-failure-of-the-french-

elite-11550851097. Retrieved September 15, 2020.
8 Mary Kay Linge, “Biden calls Trump supporters ‘chumps’ at Pennsylvania drive-
in rally,” New York Post, October 24, 2020, https://nypost.com/2020/10/24/biden-

rips-trump-supporters-as-chumps-at-pa-drive-in-rally/. Retrieved November 16,
2020.
9 Amber Athey, “Politico Reporter Mocks Trump Supporters As Toothless Hicks,”
Daily Caller, August 1, 2019, https://dailycaller.com/2018/08/01/politico-mocks-

trump-supporters-florida-rally/, retrieved November 19, 2019.
10 Andrew Hussey, “The French elites against the working class,”
New Statesman, July 24, 2019,

https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/2019/07/french-elites-against-
working-class. Retrieved September 15, 2020.

11 David K. Li, “FBI employee blasted Trump voters: ‘Uneducated, lazy POS,” New
York Post, June 15, 2018, https://nypost.com/2018/06/15/fbi-employee-working-on-

hillary-probe-blasted-trump-supporters-as-lazy-pos-after-election/.

13 Noah Carl, Lindsay Richards, and Anthony Heath, “Leave and Remain voters’
knowledge of the EU after the referendum of 2016,” Electoral Studies, vol. 57

(February 2019), pp. 90-98,
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379418302609. Retrieved
June 23, 2020.
14 Sascha O Becker, Thiemo Fetzer and Dennis Novy. “Who voted for Brexit? A
comprehensive district-level analysis,” Economic Policy, 32:92 (October 1, 2017), p.

645, https://academic.oup.com/economicpolicy/article/32/92/601/4459491. Retrieved
June 9, 2020.
148 Chapter Seven
15 The correlation between occupation and the Henmon-Nelson IQ score is no more

than moderate: 0.39 to 0.44. Robert M. Hauser, “Meritocracy, cognitive ability, and
the sources of occupational success,” CDE Working Paper 98-07, August 17, 2002,
Center for Demography and Ecology, University of Wisconsin-Madison,
https://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~hauser/merit_01_081502_complete.pdf. Retrieved
November 23, 2020.
16 Deji Or, “100 ultra successful people who succeeded without a college degree,”
smartandrelentless, June 1, 2018, http://smartandrelentless.com/100-ultra-successful-

people-who-did-not-get-a-college-degree/. Retrieved November 23, 2020.
17 Ian J. Deary and Wendy Johnson, “Intelligence and education: causal perceptions
drive analytic processes and therefore perceptions,” International Journal of

Epidemiology, 39:5, October 2010, pp.1362–1369,
https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/39/5/1362/802787. Retrieved November 23,
2020.
18 José Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses, op. cit., pp. 183, 148 and 149.
19 @BillKristol, Twitter, January 20, 2017,
https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/822496003391705089. Retrieved November

16, 2020.
20 Christopher Lasch, Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy (New York
& London: W. W. Norton & Company, Revised edition (January 17, 1996), pp. 34-
35.
21 Ibid., p. 39.
22 Ibid., pp. 47, 45.
23 “Nation Divided: The Full Debate,” Sky News, January 5, 2017,
https://news.sky.com/video/nation-divided-the-full-debate-10719308. Retrieved April

29, 2020.
24 James Traub, “It’s Time for the Elites to Rise Up Against the Ignorant Masses,”
Foreign Policy on June 28, 2016, https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/06/28/its-time-for-

the-elites-to-rise-up-against-ignorant-masses-trump-2016-brexit/. Retrieved November

24, 2020.
25 Christopher Lasch, Revolt of the Elites, op. cit., p. 28.
26 “Terry Christian—the true face of Remoaner bigotry,” Spiked, January 28, 2020,
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/01/28/terry-christian-the-true-face-of-
remoaner-bigotry/. Retrieved June 23, 2020.
27 News Breakfast’s tweet of the video of Margoyles’ interview, January 27, 2019,
https://twitter.com/BreakfastNews/status/1089643666090602496?ref_src=twsrc%5
Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fd-
19151877681050074308.ampproject.net%2F2004252135000%2Fframe.html.
Retrieved May 15, 2020.
28 Ellie Phillips, “’I wanted him to DIE!’: Outrage as Harry Potter star Miriam
Margolyes says she wishes coronavirus had killed Boris Johnson when Prime
Minister was struck by the bug,” Daily Mail, May 9, 2020,
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-8303091/Harry-Potter-star-Miriam-
Margolyes-admits-wanted-PM-Boris-Johnson-DIE-COVID-19.html. Retrieved May
15, 2020.
29 Ewan Palmer, “California Candidate For Congress Says He Hopes Trump and
Biden Both Die From Covid,” Newsweek, October 2, 2020,
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-biden-coronavirus-steve-cox-1535919.
30 Bobby Allyn, “Facebook, Twitter and Tiktok Say Wishing Trump’s Death From
Covid Is Not Allowed,” NPR, October 2, 2020, https://www.npr.org/sections/latest-

updates-trump-covid-19-results/2020/10/02/919778961/facebook-twitter-and-
tiktok-say-wishing-trumps-death-from-covid-is-not-allowed. Retrieved November
21, 2020.
31 Troy Sargent, “Professor wishes for death of Trump supporters while studying
‘intellectual humility,’ funded by large grant,” The College Fix, February 2, 2021,
https://www.thecollegefix.com/professor-wishes-for-death-of-trump-supporters-
while-studying-intellectual-humility-funded-by-large-grant/. Retrieved March 3,
2021.
32 “Maga chud,” Urban Dictionary,
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Maga%20chud.
Retrieved March 3, 2021.
33 Troy Sargent, “Professor wishes for death of Trump supporters,” The College Fix.
34 Michael Lind, “Britain’s new class war,” Unherd, February 5, 2020,
https://unherd.com/2020/02/britains-new-class-war/. Retrieved Feb. 6, 2020.

35 Pascal-Emmanuel Gobrey, “The Failure of the French Elite,” op. cit.
36 Fredrik Erixon, “The death of the center in European politics,” Spectator USA,
February 14, 2020, https://spectator.us/death-center-european-politics/. Retrieved

February 21, 2020.
37 Victor Davis Hanson, The Case for Trump (New York: Basic Books, 2019), pp.
60, 47, 42, 64.

38 Jean-François Revel (David Hapgood translator), The Totalitarian Temptation
(New York: Doubleday, 1977).

39 José Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses, op. cit., p. 17.
40 “Piers Morgan | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 64,” YouTube,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlDct_2wJXI&feature=emb_title. Retrieved
November 20, 2020.
41 Paul Embery, “Why is the Left calling me a fascist?,” Unherd, November 27,
2020, https://unherd.com/2020/11/why-is-the-left-calling-me-a-fascist/?tl_inbound
=1&tl_groups[0]=18743&tl_period_type=3. Retrieved November 28, 2020.
42 Ibid.
43 Andrew Hussey, “The French elites against the working class,”
New Statesman, July 24, 2019,

https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/2019/07/french-elites-against-
working-class. Retrieved September 15, 2020.
44 “Attorney General William Barr's Summary of the Mueller Report,”
DocumentCloud.org, https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5779730-Attorney-
General-William-Barr-s-Summary-of-the.html?embed=true. Retrieved December 6,
2020.
150 Chapter Seven
45 One Republican, Mitt Romney, voted to convict on the second count of obstruction
of Congress. Philip Ewing, “'Not Guilty': Trump Acquitted On 2 Articles Of
Impeachment As Historic Trial Closes,” NPR, February 5, 2020,
https://www.npr.org/2020/02/05/801429948/not-guilty-trump-acquitted-on-2-
articles-of-impeachment-as-historic-trial-closes. Retrieved February 8, 2021.
46 Christopher Lasch, Revolt of the Elites, op. cit., pp. 25, 26, 18.
47 Daniel Oberhaus, “Silicon Valley Opens Its Wallet for Joe Biden,” WIRED, June
10, 2020, https://www.wired.com/story/silicon-valley-opens-wallet-joe-biden/.

48 Mitchell Lambert and Sean Stevens, “Partisan Registration and Contributions of
Faculty in Flagship Colleges,” National Association of Scholars, January 17, 2020,

https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/partisan-registration-and-contributions-of-
faculty-in-flagship-colleges. Retrieved November 30, 2020.
49 Gabriela Swerling, “Academic freedom under threat as pro-Brexit professors face
discrimination,” The Telegraph, August 3, 2020,

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/02/academic-freedom-threat-aspro-
brexit-professors-face-discrimination/. Retrieved November 28, 2020.
50 “What Reporters Really Think of 2016,” Politico Magazine, May/June 2016,
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/04/2016-campaign-opinion-
journalists-press-corps-reporters-survey-213844. Retrieved November 30, 2020.
51 Michael Grunwald, “The Selling of Obama,” Politico Magazine, May/June 2016,
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/04/narrative-message-media-
president-barack-obama-administration-communications-213830?paginate=false.
52 Jeffrey M. Jones, “Obama Honeymoon Continues; 7 Months Is Recent Average,”
Gallup, July 3, 2009, https://news.gallup.com/poll/121391/obama-honeymoon-

continues-months-recent-average.aspx. Retrieved December 1, 2020.
53 Thomas E. Patterson, “News Coverage of Donald Trump’s First 100 Days,”
Harvard Kennedy School Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy,
May 18, 2017, https://shorensteincenter.org/news-coverage-donald-trumps-first-
100-days/. Retrieved December 1, 2020.
54 The Editorial Board, “Democrats: Do Not Surrender the Judiciary,” The New York
Times, July 6, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/06/opinion/democrats-

fight-trump-supreme-court.html. Retrieved December 1, 2020.
55 Megan Brenan, “Americans Remain Distrustful of Mass Media,” Gallup,
September 30, 2020, https://news.gallup.com/poll/321116/americans-remain-

distrustful-mass-media.aspx. Retrieved December 1, 2020.
56 Amy Mitchell, Katie Simmons, Katerina Eva Matsa and Laura Silver, “Publics
Globally Want Unbiased News Coverage, but Are Divided on Whether Their News
Media Deliver,” Pew Research Center, January 11, 2018,
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2018/01/11/publics-globally-want-unbiased-
news-coverage-but-are-divided-on-whether-their-news-media-deliver/.
57 Thomas E. Patterson, “News Coverage of Donald Trump’s First 100 Days,” op.
cit.
58 “Tyranny of the Majority,” On Liberty by John Stuart Mills, LitCharts,
https://www.litcharts.com/lit/on-liberty/terms/tyranny-of-the-majority.
59 Bronson Stocking, “A Vengeful Jennifer Rubin Wants Republican Party to 'Burn
Down' and 'No Survivors',” Townhall, November 7, 2020,

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/bronsonstocking/2020/11/07/jennifer-rubin-calls-for-
republican-party-to-be-burned-down-and-no-survivors-n2579673.
60 Paul Bedard, “ABC demands 'cleansing' Trump movement from America,”
Washington Examiner, January 8, 2021,

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/abc-demands-
cleansing-trump-movement-from-america. Retrieved February 27, 2021.
61 John Hudson, “Katie Couric vs. ‘Great Unwashed’ Middle America,” The
Atlantic, October 28, 2010,

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/10/katie-couric-vs-great-
unwashed-middle-america/339735/. Retrieved March 1, 2021.
62 Joseph A. Wulfsohn, “Katie Couric cheers on Trump's impeachment, says GOP
lawmakers need to be 'deprogrammed',” Fox News, January 16, 2021,

https://www.foxnews.com/media/katie-couric-cheers-on-trumps-impeachment-
says-gop-lawmakers-need-to-be-deprogrammed. Retrieved February 27, 2021.
63 @donwinslow, Twitter, January 18, 2021,
https://twitter.com/donwinslow/status/1351326993342627840?ref_src=twsrc%5Etf
w%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1351326993342627840%7Ctwgr
%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fconservativeinstitute.org%2F
conservative-news%2Fleftists-call-army-trump.htm. Retrieved February 27, 2021.
64 Allum Bokhari, #Deleted: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and
Steal the Election (Center Street, 2020).

65 Victor Davis Hanson, “Democrats applaud social media that blacklists, censors
and cancels thousands of Americans,” The Washington Times, January 13, 2021,
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/jan/13/democrats-applaud-social-
media-that-blacklists-cen/. Retrieved February 26, 2021.
66 Hannah Bleau, “Video: Kamala Harris once laughed hysterically after joking
about killing President Trump,” Breitbart, August 12, 2020,

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/08/12/video-kamala-harris-once-laughed-
hysterically-after-joking-about-killing-president-trump/. Retrieved February 27,
2021.
67 Natalie Colarossi, “ACLU Counsel Warns of ‘Unchecked Power’ of Twitter,
Facebook After Trump Suspension,” Newsweek, January 9, 2021,

https://www.newsweek.com/aclu-counsel-warns-unchecked-power-twitter-
facebook-after-trump-suspension-1560248. Retrieved February 27, 2021.
68 W. James Antle III, “Washington revolving door may not turn for Trump alumni,”
Washington Examiner, Nov. 19, 2020,

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/washington-revolving-door-may-not-
turn-for-trump-alumni. Retrieved February 26, 2021.
69 Mary Papenfuss, “Lawmakers Who Backed Texas Lawsuit Should Be Barred
From House: NJ Congressman,” Yahoo!News, December 11, 2020,
152 Chapter Seven
https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/bill-pascrell-house-lawmaker-traitors-texas-
lawsuit-023004107.html. Retrieved February 27, 2021. State of Texas v.
Pennsylvania, et al., argued that officials in the four states conducted the 2020
general election in violation of the U.S. Constitution because they had illegally
altered election laws, causing a flood of mail-in votes without appropriate ballot
integrity measures in place. Texas maintained the resulting irregularities put the
ultimate outcome of the presidential election in doubt. On December 11, 2020, in a
7:2 decision, the Supreme Court dismissed the suit on the grounds that Texas lacked
legal standing because the state had not shown a valid interest to intervene in how
other states handled their elections.
70 Elie Mystal, “We’re Going to Need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to
Recover From Trump,” The Nation, October 20, 2020. Retrieved February 27, 2021.
71 Paul Bedard, “ABC demands ‘cleansing’ Trump movement from America,”
Washington Examiner, January 8, 2021,

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/abc-demands-
cleansing-trump-movement-from-america. Retrieved February 27, 2021.
72 W. James Antle III, “Washington revolving door may not turn for Trump alumni,”
Washington Examiner.
73 Joel B. Pollak, “Leftists, Never Trumpers Begin Compiling Lists of Trump
Supporters,” Breitbart, November 6, 2020, https://www.breitbart.com/2020-

election/2020/11/06/leftists-never-trumpers-begin-compiling-lists-of-trump-
supporters/. Retrieved February 26, 2021. Italics supplied.
74 Natalie Colarossi, “Harvard Removes Rep. Elise Stefanik From Advisory Board
Over Her Claims of Voter Fraud,” Newsweek, January 12, 2021,

https://www.newsweek.com/harvard-removes-rep-elise-stefanik-advisory-board-
over-her-claims-voter-fraud-1560889.
75 “61% Think Trump Should Concede to Biden,” Rasmussen Reports, November
19, 2020,
https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections/election_2020
/61_think_trump_should_concede_to_biden. Retrieved February 24, 2021.
76 In 1969 decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio, the U.S. Supreme Court held that
inflammatory speech—and even speech advocating violence by members of the Ku

Klux Klan—is protected under the First Amendment, unless the speech “is directed
to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce
such action.” See Trevor Timm, “It’s Time to Stop Using the ‘Fire in a Crowded
Theater’ Quote,” The Atlantic, November 12, 2012,
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time-to-stop-using-the-
fire-in-a-crowded-theater-quote/264449/. Retrieved March 3, 2021.
77 Emma Colton, “National Guard could remain in DC until the fall: Report,”
Washington Examiner, February 14, 2021,

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/national-guard-dc-fall-2021.
Retrieved March 1, 2021.
78 Sierra Fox, “National Guard could stay in DC until the fall, source reveals to Fox
5,” Fox 5, February 12, 2021, https://www.fox5dc.com/news/national-guard-could-

stay-in-dc-until-the-fall-source-reveals-to-fox-5. Retrieved March 1, 2021.
79 The video of Lieu’s speech was tweeted by PBS NewsHour. See @NewsHour,
Twitter, February 11, 2021,
https://twitter.com/NewsHour/status/1359929759770288134. Retrieved March 1,
2021.
80 Joel Rogers de Waal, “Globalism Project 2020: populist beliefs down but
conspiracy beliefs up?,” YouGov, November 12, 2020,

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/international/articles-reports/2020/11/12/globalism-
project-2020-populist-beliefs-down-consp. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
81 Matthew Goodwin, “Why we need populism,” UnHerd, November 16, 2020,
https://unherd.com/2020/11/populism-isnt-dead-yet/. Retrieved December 4, 2020.

82 See, for example, Peter C. Baker, “’We the People’: the battle to define populism,”
The Guardian, January 10, 2019,

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/jan/10/we-the-people-the-battle-to-
define-populism. Retrieved July 24, 2020.
83 Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin, National Populism Against Liberal
Democracy (London, UK: Penguin, 2018).

84 Stephanie Dube Dwilson, “How Many Attended Trump’s Georgia Rally? See
Crowd Size Photos,” Heavy.com, December 5, 2020,

https://heavy.com/news/trump-georgia-rally-crowd-size-photos/. Retrieved December
10, 2020.
85 “Trump Approval Index History,” Rasmussen Reports,
https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/trump_administration/tr
ump_approval_index_history. Retrieved March 3, 2021.
86 Anthony Salvanto, Jennifer De Pinto, Fred Backus and Kabir Khanna, “Majority
favor conviction as impeachment trial begins, but many Republicans urge loyalty to
Trump,” CBS News, February 9, 2021,
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/impeachment-trial-trump-conviction-opinion-
poll/. Retrieved March 1, 2021.
87 Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, “Business elites fear a revolution is at hand,” The

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/02/09/business-elites-fear-revolution-
hand/. Retrieved March 1, 2021.
88 Richard Wike, Laura Silver and Alexandra Castillo, “Many Across the Globe Are
Dissatisfied With How Democracy Is Working,” Pew Research Center, April 29,
2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/04/29/many-across-the-globe-are-
dissatisfied-with-how-democracy-is-working/.
INDEX
ABC News, 141 Aston University, 85

Abruzzo, 87 Australia, 134
Accountable.US, 143 Authoritarianism, 6; authoritarian,
Adam Smith Institute, 60 22, 23, 33
Afghanistan, 114 Ayatollah Alik Khameni, 142
Africa, 46; North Africa, 51, 86, 90 Azmy, Baher, 118
Alaska, 46
Albania, 52 Baar, William, 137
Alfano, Mark, 134 Babbitt, Ashli, 120
Aliot, Louis, 94 Balkan(s), 51-52
Allen, Lily, 70 Baltic states, 45
Alliance of European National Barrett, Amy Coney, 118
Movements, 91 Basilicata, 87
Alphabet, 138 BBC, 96, 139
Amazon, 138 Becker, Sascha O., 62
America, 105-108, 110, 113, 117; Beijing, 36-37
American(s), 105-108, 111-113, Ben Shapiro Show, 136
116, 119, 133, 140-143; African Bercow, John, 70
Americans, 108, 115; Asian Berlin, 12
Americans, 115; Berlusconi, Silvio, 84
Hispanics/Hispanic Americans, Beverly Hills, 111
115, 118; Native Americans, Béziers, 94
115 Biden, Joe, 112, 119-120, 122, 131,

America First, 117, 122, 132 138, 144-145
American Civil Liberties Union Biorcio, Roberto, 87
(ACLU), 142 Blair, Tony, 60, 70
American Enterprise Institute, 113 Bokhari, Allum, 141
American Heritage Dictionary, 112 Bolshevik(s), 2, 4-5, 7
Anti-semitic, anti-semitism, 90-91 Booker, Christopher, 74
Aosta Valley, 87 Boot, Max, 113
Appendino, Chiara, 83 Bordeaux, 96
Apple, 138, 142 Bossi, Umberto, 84
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Bowser, Muriel, 120
116 Boyland, Rosanne, 134
ARD, 139 Brexit, 59-60, 64, 67, 69-71, 82, 87,
Aristotle, 46; Aristotelean, 45 92, 97, 131, 133-134, 136, 138-
Article 50, 68, 70 139, 145; anti-Brexit, 67, 69-70,
Asia, 3, 8; Asians, 108; Northeast 131, 133; Brexit referendum,
Asia, 36; Southeast Asia, 51 60-61, 64, 66-71, 73-74, 82,
156 Index
133, 136-137; Withdrawal Citizens’ income 83

Agreement, 69 Civic Reform Party, 44
Britain, 59, 61, 72-75; British, 61, Class(es), 18; class enemies, 5;
67, 72-73, 133; Britons/Brits, middle class, 95. 97, 106, 108-
61, 63-64 111, 114-115, 131, 135;
British Chamber of Commerce, 63 working class, 5, 113-114
Brooks, David, 113 Clinton, Hillary, 108, 111-112, 135,
Brussels, 48-49, 51-52, 61, 73, 93, 139
132; anti=Brussels, 85 CNN, 114, 139
Bucks County Community College, Cold War, 10, 14
112 Collins, Philip, 61
Burleigh, 65 Collins, Stephen, 114
Bush, George W., 114-115 Commonwealth of Independent
Business Insider, 115 States, 24, 30, 41
Byerley, Melinda, 112 Communism, 2, 89, 135;
communist, 1-2, 42, 85; anti-
California, 13, 134 communist, 91
Cameron, David, 60, 64, 67, 70, 74, Comprehensive Economic and
133 Trade Agreement (CETA), 89
Capital, 8 Conservatism, 85, 91; conservative,
Capitalism, 10, 89; capitalist, 7, 113 90, 113, 117-118, 142
Caputo, Mark, 112 Conservative Party, 60, 62, 64, 68-
Castro, Fidel, 9 69
Catholic/Catholic Church, 43, 46, Constitutional Tribunal (Poland), 44
85, 91; Roman Catholic 45, 91 Conte, Giuseppe, 83-84
CBS, 139, 141, 146 Coogan, Steve, 70, 131
Center for Constitutional Rights, Corbyn, Jeremy, 68
118 Cornell Law School Legal
Central European University, 54 Information Institute, 121
Chechnya, 24, 31; Chechen 24-25, Coronavirus Disease 19 (COVID-

27, 31-32 19), 70, 88, 117, 134, 145
Chesterfield, Lord, 129 Council of Mutual Economic
China, 3, 8, 10-11, 36, 105-106, Assistance (Comecon) 43
116-117; Chinese, 10-11, 36-37, Couric, Katie, 141
116; People’s Republic of Cox, Steve, 134
China, 10 Crimea 30
Chinese Communist Party, 3, 10-11 Croatian(s), 52
Chirac, Jacques, 90 Cruz, Ted, 118
Chozik, Amy, 111 Cuba, 9
Christian 29, 34, 50, 54; anti- Czech Republic, 54; Czechs 46
Christian 46; Christianity, 50
Christian Democratic, 85 Dakota Access Pipeline, 116
Christian, Terry, 70, 133 Deary, Ian, 131
Chud, 134 Deng Xiaoping, 11
Chumps, 112, 131 Democide(s), 1, 5
CICE tax, 96 Democracy(ies), 7, 41, 47, 55, 93,
Political Populism in the Twenty-First Century: We the People 157
107, 119, 135-138, 146; En Marche!, 130

Christian democracy, 54-56; Erixon, Fredrik, 134
deformed democracy, 130; Estonia, 12
electoral democracy, 19, 105, Euro, 85, 92, 94; eurozone, 88, 90,
140, 145; hyper democracy, 92
130; liberal democracy, 9, 14, Europe, 2-3, 9, 14-15, 45, 52, 54-55,
41, 54; illiberal democracy, 47, 82, 87-88, 129, 132, 134, 146;
56; representative democracy, 6, Central Europe, 9, 18, 41-42;
14 Eastern Europe, 29, 41;
Democratic socialist, 88 Northern Europe, 51; Southern
Democratic Party (Italy), 84, 87. Europe, 3; Western Europe, 18
Democratic Party (USA), 108-110; European Alliance of Freedom, 91
Democratic National European Central Bank, 92
Committee, 43; Democrats, European Communities (EC), 59
108-110, 118-119, 137-144 European Council (EC), 68-69, 74,
Democratic Unionist Party, 68 93; European Council on
Denmark, 88 Foreign Relations, 82
Deplorables, 111 European Economic Community
Deregulation, 115 (EEC), 59, 73-74
Der Spiegel, 90 European Parliament, 59, 61, 69, 88,
Developmental dictatorship(s), 5, 8- 92-95
9, 14, 19 (n. 3) European Union (EU), 41, 44-49,
Di Maio, Luigi, 83 51-57, 59-63, 65, 67-69, 71-75,
Domeniconi, Adriana, 86 82, 84, 86-89, 92-95, 131, 146;
Dublin Regulation, 86 anti-EU, 64, 86, 90, 92-93; EU
Dudgeon, Neil, 67 Constitution, 92; EU Court of
Duranty, Walter, 4 Justice, 69; Treaty on European
Durchon, Céline, 97 Union, 68
Durden, Tyler, 64 Euroskeptic(ism), 49, 83, 93-95
Evans-Pritchard, Ambrose, 146

Eatwell, Roger, 72-73, 145-146 Express Newspapers, 74
Economist, The, 117-118
Elabe Institute, 96 Facebook, 134, 138, 141-142
Ellen Show, 142 Farage, Nigel, 67, 87, 134
Elite(s), 18, 62, 70-72, 87, 90, 93, Fascism, 2, 6, 14; fascist(s), 1, 7, 16,
97-98, 106, 110-111, 113-114, 17, 90, 136
129-138, 140-141, 146; anti- FBI, 111-112, 131, 137
elite, 83, 85, 88, 105, 145; FCO 30/1048, 73-74, 78 (n. 51, 52)
elitism, 18, 62, 129 Federalist Society, 18
El Salvador, 116 Felton, James, 70
Embery, Paul, 136 Fetzer, Thiemo, 62
Emilia-Romagna, 87 Fidesz (Hungarian Civic Alliance
Emmanuel, King Victor, 6 Party), 50-51, 53, 56
Engels, Friedrich, 2 Financial Times, 139
England, 69, 74; English, 132 Finland, 82
Environmentism(ist), 83, 85, 89 Five Star Movement, 83-84, 87-88
158 Index
Foreign Policy, 133 Grieve, Dominic, 70

Fox News, 139 Griffin, Kathy, 142
France, 18, 82, 88-90, 92-93, 95, 97, Group of Seven (G-7), 122
131, 134, 136, 145; French, Grozny, 31
132-134, 136; National Google, 141-142
Assembly, 89-90, 93-94, 130; Guardian, The, 61
Senate, 89 Guatemala, 116
French Communist Party, 89 Guilluy, Christophe, 97, 131, 136-
French Constitution, 96 137
French Parliament, 95 Gumilev, Lev, 28
Frexit, 92, 95; Generation Frexit, 95
Frontex, 93 Hall, Macer, 74
Fruili-Venezia, 87 Hamptons, 111
Fukuyama, Francis, 14-15, 19 (n. 4), Hanson, Victor Davis, 108, 110-
41 114, 123 (n. 20, 23), 125 (n. 30),
135, 142, 149 (n. 37), 151 (n.
Gallois, Charles-Henri, 95 65)
Gallup poll, 139-140 Harris, Kamala, 142
Gauke, David, 70 Hartley-Brewer, Julia, 61
Genocide, 6 Harvard University: Kennedy
Georgia, 12, 143, 146 Institute of Politics, 143;
Germany/German, 14, 49, 52, 66, Kennedy School 139; Law 112
82, 88, 132, 139; German Hathaway, Oona, 117
Democratic Republic, 9 Hayes, Chris, 143
Giuli, 87 HBO, 141
Globalism, 50, 106-107, 117, 122; Hearth, Oliver, 62-63
anti-globalism, 19, 83, 88, 105, Heath, Edward, 73
117, 145; globalist(s), 18, 106- Heritage Foundation, 114
107, 110; globalization, 63, 86, Herrig, Kyle, 143
92, 111, 117, 133 Heseltine, Michael, 70

Gobrey, Pascal-Emmanuel, 134, Hitler, Adolph, 3, 6, 66
144 (n. 92), 147 (n. 7), 149 (n. Honduras, 116
35) Hong Kong, 11, 132
Goodwin, Matthew, 62-63, 2-73, 76 Horowitz, Irving Louis, 1
(n. 15, 16, 24), 78 (n. 49, 50), House of Commons, 68, 70
145-146, 153 (n. 81, 83) House of Lords, 70, 74
Gorbachev, Mikhail, 12-13, 23 Hungarian Civic Alliance Party (see
Governors’ Initiative on Regulatory Fidesz)
Innovation, 115 Hungary, 18, 45, 50-56, 82, 145;
Graham, Bob, 61 Hungarian(s), 50-52, 54, 56;
Grant, Hugh, 70 Constitutional Court, 51;
Great Leap Forward, 11 National Assembly, 51
Great Proletariat Cultural
Revolution, 10-11 Identity politics, 108
Greeman, Richard, 97 Ilyin, Ivan, 29
Greenfield, Larry, 117
Immigrants, 52, 86, 113; Keystone XL pipeline, 116, 122

immigration, 60, 63, 65, 72, 85, Khrushchev, Nikita, 9
87, 91-92, 122, 146; anti- Kiersz, Andy, 115
immigration, 52, 83, 86, 90, 93, Klein, Rick, 141
107, 111, 146; illegal Korea: Korean, 112; South Korea,
immigration, 93, 116 11; North Korea, 117
Independent, The, 90 Kristol, Bill, 113, 132
India, 111
Instagram, 142 Labour Party, 60, 68-69
Institut des Politiques Publiques, 95 La Croix International, 91, 102 (n.
Internationalist, The, 117 65)
Ioannidou, Vasso, 63, 131 La France Insoumise (see
Iran, 142 Unsubmissive France)
Ireland, 82, 113; Northern Ireland, La France Périphérique, 97
59, 68; Republic of Ireland, 68 Lamorgese, Luciana, 86
Islam(ic), 91-92; Islamophobic, 111 Lancaster University, 63, 131
Israel, 142 Lasch, Christopher, 132-133, 137-
Italian Journal of Political Science, 138, 148 (n. 20, 25), 150 (n. 46)
87 Latin America, 15
Italian Social Movement, 85 Latvia, 12
Italy, 3, 9, 13-14, 18, 82, 84-88, 94, Law and Justice Party, 42-49
113, 145; Italian(s), 6-7, 86-88, League (Lega), 83-85, 87-88, 145
133; Chamber of Deputies, 83- Leave/Leavers, 60-67, 70-73
84; Italian Parliament, 83 Le Figaro, 92
Left, 2, 6, 8, 18, 80, 85, 88, 97, 105;
Japan, 105 left-wing, 4, 6, 9, 15, 18;
Jeanne Committees (Comités far/radical left, 119, 121
Jeanne), 91 Left Party, 88
Jefferson, Thomas, 139 Left-right, 83-85, 88, 96
Jeong, Sarah, 112 Lega Nord (see Northern League_

Jewish Journal, 117 Le Gendre, Gilles, 97, 130-131
Jews, 6, 9, 46 Lenin, Vladimir, 2-3, 5-7
Joan of Arc, 91 Leo, Leonard A., 118
John Templeon Foundation Grant, Leonard, Mark, 82
134 Le Pen, Jean-Marie, 90-91, 145
Johnson, Boris, 67-71, 134, 145 Le Pen, Marine, 91-94, 96, 145
Johnson, Wendy, 131 Leski, Harold 4
Jospin, Lionel, 90 Les Patriotes, 94
Liberal(s), 47, 51, 53, 117, 136;
.DF]\ĔVNL brothers, 42-43, 45, 145; liberalism, 50, 85
.DF]\ĔVNL, Jaroslaw, 42, 44, 46- Liberal Democrat(s), 68, 70, 72
48; .DF]\ĔVNL, Lech, 42-43 Libya, 86
Kaltwasser, Kristoval R., 18 Lichfield, John, 90
Kampuchea, 8 Lieu, Ted, 144
Kazakhstan, 12 Liguria, 87
Kerr, Brian, 70 Lind, Michael, 107, 134
160 Index
Lineker, Gary, 70 Moldova, 12

Lithuania, 12; Lithuanians, 46 Montenegro, 52
London, 64-65, 67 Montpellier, 97
Luiss University, 86 Moore, Steve, 114
Luke 18, 129 Morgan, Piers, 70, 136-137
Lyon, 83 Moscow, 10, 12-13, 29, 34-36, 41
MSNBC, 141, 143
Maastricht Treaty, 59-60, 75 (n. 2) Muddle, Cas, 15, 18
Macquerie University, 134 Mueller, Robert, 137; Mueller
Macron, Emmanuel, 96-97, 130- Report, 137
131, 134 Mumbai, 111
Madonna, 142 Muslim, 52, 90-91, 122; anti-
Magna Carta, 61 Muslim, 94
Maher, Bill, 141 Mussolini, Benito, 3, 6
Major, John, 70 Mystal, Elie, 143
Majority rule, 140
Make America Great Again Narodniki/Narodniks, 21-22
(MAGA), 105, 121, 134 Nation, 18, 107; nation state, 72
Mao Zedong, 3, 6, 8, 10-11, 36; National Front (NF), 90-94, 145
Maoist, 11 Nationalism, 11, 18, 28-29, 46, 50,
Margolyes, Miriam, 67. 70, 133 71, 85, 90, 105, 122, 132; civic
Marseilles, 96 nationalism, 46; irredentist
Martha’s Vineyard, 111 nationalism, 29, 34;
Marx, Karl, 2, 4, 89; Marxism, 2, 4, nationalist(s), 17, 28, 43, 90-91,
88; Marxist, 3, 4, 6-7, 16-17, 71; 94, 105, 110, 132; anti-
Marxist-Leninist, 26, 49 nationalist, 131
Mason, Rowena, 61 National Public Radio, 142
Masses, 130-131, 133-135 National Rally, 88, 90-94
Mattarella, Sergio, 83 National Review, 113
May, Theresa, 67-68 National Socialism, 6, 8, 14;

McGahn, Donald F., 118 National Socialist, 3, 16
McCarthy, Daniel, 69 National sovereignty, 61, 71-73, 75,
McEnany, Kaylieh, 120 92, 106-107
Mediterranean, 30, 86-87 Nazi Germany, 8, 91
Mélenchon, Jean-Luc, 88, 96 NBC, 139
Menard, Robert, 94 Netherlands, 82
Merger Treaty 1963, 59 Nevada, 51
Merkel, Angela, 52, 60 New class, 132-133
Mexico, 105-106, 113, 116 New Economic Policy, 7
Michigan, 109, 143 Newell, James, 84
Microsoft, 138 New World Order, 117
Middle East, 46, 51 New York Times, 92, 111-134, 139-
Migrant(s), 52, 60, 73, 86-87, 93, 140
96, 116; migration, 52 New Statesman, 131
Mills, John Stuart, 141 No Europe for Italy, 87
Minority rights, 140-141
Non-governmental organization Pharisee, 129

(NGO), 53, 107 Philadelphia, 112
North American Free Trade Philippot, Florian, 94
Agreement (NAFTA), 116 Piedmont, 87
North Atlantic Treaty Organization Pilsudski, Josef, 46
(NATO), 30, 36, 54-56, 89-90, Pirie, Madsen, 60-61
107 Poland, 18, 42-47, 49, 54-55, 82,
Northern League (Lega Nord): 84- 145; Polish, 42-44, 49
85, 87 Policy Exchange, 138
Novy, Dennis, 62 Political class, 97, 106
Politico, 107, 112, 131
Obama, Barack, 60, 64, 108-109, Pol Pot, 8
111, 114-115, 118, 135 Pope Francis, 91
Ocasio-Cortez, Alexandria, 143 Popular Republican Union (Union
O’Neill, Brendan, 71 Populaire Républicaine), 95
One Trillion Trees, 116 Populism(s), 15-16, 18-19, 21, 35,
Open Society Foundation, 53 38, 43-44, 48, 50, 54, 56, 62,
Opportunity Zones, 115 82,105, 114, 118, 133-136, 145-
Oracle, 138 146; definition, 15, 18-19, 145;
Orban, Viktor, 50-51, 54, 56, 145 left populism, 18, 105; national
Orsina, Giovanni, 86 populism, 72, 94, 145;
Ortega y Gasset, José, 129-131, 135 populist(s), 15, 17-19, 23, 31,
Osterweil, Vicki, 142 41, 47, 82-84, 88, 94, 96, 105,
Oxford English Dictionary, 62, 129 107, 119, 134-135, 144-147;
right populism, 18, 105
Pacifism, 85 Poujadiste, 91, 102 (n. 62)
Padania(n), 84-85 Progressive(s), 113, 136, 140
Page, Lisa, 112 Proud Boys, 122
Paragone, Gianluigi, 87-88 Purge(s), 140, 143
Paris, 96 Putin, Vladimir, 14, 22, 26-35, 37-

Paris Climate Agreement, 116, 122 38, 55
Parler, 142
Pascrell, Bill, 143 Qing dynasty, 3, 36
Patriot, patriotic, patriotism, 91, 107
Patterson, Thomas E., 139 Race, 108; racism, 113-114;
Pelagie Islands, 86 racist(s), 66, 90-91, 111, 135-
Pelosi, Nancy, 120, 143 136
Pence, Mike, 120, 142 Raggi, Virginia, 83
Pennsylvania, 109 Rasmussen Reports poll, 144, 146
Pennsylvania Avenue, 119 Reagan, Ronald, 118
Perestroika, 12 Red Guards, 10
People’s Party, 15 Red State, 107
Perpignan, 94 Referendum Party, 60
Pew Research Center, 83, 85-86, 88, Reich, Robert, 133, 143
140, 146 Remain(ers), 60, 62, 64-67, 70-73
Renzi, Matteo, 87
162 Index
Reporters Without Borders, 97, 104 Sentier Research, 114

(n. 90) Serbia(n), 52; Serbs, 46
Republican Party (GOP), 107-109, Sessions, Jeff, 142
118, 141, 143; Republicans, Sevugan, Hari, 143
108-110, 113, 121, 138-139, Shapiro, Scott, 117
141, 143-144, 146 Shaw, George Bernard, 4
Reuters, 93 Shriver, Lionel, 64-66, 133
Revel, Jean-François, 135 Siberia, 37
Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal Sicknick, Brian, 120
of Democracy, 137, 148 (n. 20) Silicon Valley, 111-112
Revolt of the Masses, 129-130, 138, Simon, Michael, 143
147 (n. 2-6), 148 (n. 18), 149 (n. Singapore, 11
39) Sky News, 64-66
Revolution, 1, 5; revolutionary, 3, 5- Slovakia, 54
6, 9-10, 15, 18; revolutionary Slovenia, 52
movements, 4 Socialism, 3-4, 22, 50, 85, 88;
Right, 3, 6, 8, 18, 85, 88, 91, 105; socialist(s), 5, 12, 90; green
far/hard/ultra right, 70, 91, 94, socialism, 88
96; right wing, 4-6, 8, 15, 18 Socialist Party (France), 93
Rolland, Romain, 4 Solidarity, 42
Rome, 83-84, 86, 88 Sorel, Georges, 3
Ruane, Kate, 142 Soros, George, 53-54, 70
Rubin, Jennifer, 141 South Africa, 143
Rummel, R. J., 1, 19 (n. 1) Southern Tyrol, 87
Russia, 2, 4, 7, 9, 13, 18, 21, 25-27, Soviet Union, 4, 5, 8, 10-14, 21-24,
29-31, 33-37, 49, 55, 67, 113, 26, 29-30, 32, 35, 37, 41-42, 50;
117; Romanov, 22; Russian(s), Soviet, 9-10, 12, 14, 23, 42, 135
33-34, 41, 137; Russian Stalin, Josef, 4-5, 7, 9; Stalinism, 4
Federation, 13, 22-26, 28, 30- State of Texas v. Pennsylvania, et
33, 36, 38, 55; Russian military, al., 131-132 (n. 69)
31-32, 34-35; Russian Orthodox Steel, Mark, 70
Church, 29; Russian Soviet Stefanik, Elise, 143-144
Federated Socialist Republic, Stoddart, David, 74-75
13; Tsarist Russia, 21 Stoltenberg, Jens 107
Stormzy, 70
Salesses, Robert, 144 Strasbourg, 92
Salvini, Matteo, 83-87,134, 145 Strzok, Peter, 111-112
San Francisco, 111 Sun, Yat-sen, 3
Sassoli, David, 69 Sund, Steven, 121
Save Our Seas Act, 116 Sweden, 82
Saxony, 52 Switzerland, 29
Scandinavian, 51 Symbolic analysts, 132
Scavino, Dan, 120
Schengen Area, 90, 92 Taiwan, 11
Scottish National Party, 62, 68 Tajikistan, 37
Secularism, 50 Taylor, Robert, 70-71
Telegraph, The, 61, 64, 70, 146 117, 122, 131, 134, 137-138,
Texas, 143 145-146; Capitol, 119-121, 134,
Thatcher, Margaret, 69 146; Capitol Police, 121-122;
Thiessen, Marc A., 114 Census Bureau, 114; Congress,
Thomas, Aquinas, 46; Thomistic, 45 118-120, 134, 137, 139, 141;
TikTok, 134 Constitution 121, 144;
Tory, 69 Department of Homeland
Totalitarian(ism), 1, 92, 135, 143; Security, 144; Department of
Totalitarian Temptation, 135 Labor, 114; Department of
Transatlantic Trade and Investment Justice, 137; Electoral College,
Partnership, 89 119-120; Federal Elections
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Commission (FEC), 138;
116 Federal Reserve, 115; First
Traub, James, 133 Amendment, 144; House of
Trentino, 87 Representatives, 118, 120-121,
Trump, Donald, 66, 98, 105-112, 137, 143; National Guard, 120,
114-122, 131-132, 134-146; 144; Senate, 118, 120-121, 137,
Impeachment, 121, 137, 144; 144; Social Security
Never Trumper(s), 113; Trump Administration, 114; Supreme
Accountability Project, 143 Court, 117-118; White House,
Truth and Reconciliation Center, 108-108, 114-116, 119-120,
143 139, 142
Tunisia, 86 United States of Europe, 61, 73, 75
Turin, 83 Umbria, 87
Tuscany, 87 Umunna, Chuka, 70
Twentieth century, 1-2, 4, 16-17, University of Bath, 72
28, 139 University of Kent, 72
Twenty-first century, 15, 17, 42, University of Milan-Bicocca, 87
144 University of Salford, 84
Twitter, 134, 141-142 University of Texas-Austin, 124

Tyranny of the majority, 141 Unsubmissive France (La France
Insoumise), 88-89, 94
Ukraine, 12, 56; Ukrainians, 46 Urban Dictionary, 134
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics U.S.-China, 11
(USSR), 21, 23 U.S. election: 2008 election, 108-
United Kingdom (UK), 18, 60-61, 109; 2016 election, 111-113,
63-65, 68-70, 72-73, 75, 85, 92, 117, 137; 2018 election, 118;
131, 133, 136, 139-140, 145; 2020 election, 119-120, 138-
UK Parliament, 68-69, 73; UK 139, 143-144, 146, 151-152
Supreme Court, 70 US-Mexico border, 106, 116, 122
UK Independent Party (UKIP), 60, US-Mexico-Canada Agreement
67 (USMCA), 116
United Nations General Assembly, US With Salvinia, 85
106 Uzbekistan, 13
United States (US), 15, 18, 27, 51,
64, 95-98, 105-107, 114-115, Valdosta Regional Airport, 146
164 Index
Vampa, Davide, 85 Winslow, Don, 141

Van Rompug, Herman, 74 WIRED magazine, 138
Venezia, 87 Wisconsin, 109, 143
Venezuela, 35 Woltmann, Ludwig, 3
Vienna, 54 World War, 1; First World War, 3,
14, 21; Second World War, 4, 6,
Walesa, Lech, 42 9, 12, 14, 49, 51
Wall Street Journal, 109-110, 139
Walmart, 112 Xenophobe(s), 66, 111, 136;
Warsaw, 42, 45, 48 xeonophobic, 133
Warsaw Pact, 13
Washington, DC, 10, 16, 109, 112, Yale University 117
114, 119, 138, 144 Yellow Vests Movement
Washington Post, 113-114, 139, 141 (Movement des gilets jaunes),
Webb, Beatrice and Sidney, 4 94-97, 130, 136-137; gilets
Weekly Standard, 113, 132 jaune, 95
West, 6, 10, 14, 41, 72, 138; Yeltsin, Boris, 13-14, 21-27, 34-35,
Western, 4, 8, 10, 12, 14, 34-35, 41
44, 47, 50, 82, 135 YouGov poll, 138, 145
West Virginia, 109 YouTube, 65, 136, 141
White(s), 110-113, 135; white
privilege, 114; white Zaballos-Roig, Joseph, 115
supremacist, 122 ZeroHedge, 64
Williamson, Kevin, 113

Maria Hsia Chang and A. James Gregor - Political Populism in The Twenty-First Century - We The People-Cambridge Scholars Publishing (2021)

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Maria Hsia Chang and A. James Gregor - Political Populism in The Twenty-First Century - We The People-Cambridge Scholars Publishing (2021)

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Political Populism in

By Maria Hsia Chang and A. James Gregor

This book first published 2021

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Copyright © 2021 by Maria Hsia Chang and A. James Gregor

ISBN (10): 1-5275-6472-X

Patricia Gayle Chaffin

Loving sister, faithful friend, and my shelter from the storm

Chapter One ................................................................................................ 1

Chapter Two ............................................................................................. 21

Chapter Three ........................................................................................... 41

Chapter Four ............................................................................................. 59

Chapter Five ............................................................................................. 81

Populism in Italy and France

Chapter Six ............................................................................................. 105

Chapter Seven......................................................................................... 129

Index ....................................................................................................... 155

A. James Gregor—generous mentor, brilliant professor and the prolific

The fulfillment of this project had been challenging, undertaken amidst

kindness, patience and support I received from Dr. Robert Rauchhaus;

Maria Hsia Chang

A. JAMES GREGOR AND MARIA HSIA CHANG

The twentieth century was a time of unmitigated distress, involving two

R. J. Rummel called those deaths “democide” or “death by government”—

Most of us have no conception of the character and scope of the destruction

But Lenin’s pursuit of revolution proved difficult. The principal difficulty

In other words, Lenin undertook revolution in circumstances that failed to

acknowledged that the anticipated revolution required that he “creatively

ensuing century. Academicians and political commentators early settled on

Revolutionary Movements of the Left and Right3

For the Soviet Union, Stalin proposed a program of intense industrial

labor, Western intellectuals solemnly maintained that such a system was

There were notable Western scholars who recommended and found

was a consequence of right-wing political efforts. According to the

In retrospect, it is surprising how long such sentiments prevailed. Only with

A clear distinction that identified “left-wing,” mass-mobilizing, revolutionary,

The other variants of revolutionary mass-mobilizing movements of the

remained constant, irrespective of all contrary evidence—only the right is

Revolutionary Mass Movements of the Twentieth Century

them were primarily developmental in intent, driven by an imperative to

Although originally animated by Marxist doctrine that anticipated a

non-Marxist program, designed to preclude the possibility of resistance to

As a necessary consequence of Stalin’s changes, a market could no longer

This was the form of developmental dictatorship variations of which would

All of this grew out of the real or fancied requirements of rapid

National Socialism, although itself not a developmental system, mimicked

In fact, developmental dictatorships, left or right, varied among themselves

In the Caribbean, Fidel Castro’s attempt at economic development with

In contrast, Fascist Italy undertook fairly comprehensive economic and

The death of Stalin in 1953 caused immediate political decompression in

Within the compass of these developments, the political, economic, and

ordered the youth to undertake a “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” in

All of this was accompanied by continuous anti-Soviet rhetoric. Tensions

led to a change in U.S. China policy by the administration of Richard Nixon,

industrialized neighbors—Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and South

Throughout approximately the same period, the Soviet Union suffered

In retrospect, it is not certain if Gorbachev had a specific plan for economic

Along with economic perestroika, Gorbachev proposed an “opening”

freedom, it was agreed that much of the political rationale produced to

Within the increasing political turbulence, punctuated by the 1986 nuclear