Lot to consider and I don't have time this week, but one might argue that WWII and then the cold war were bulwarks against a "natural" level of right-wing populism, which is coming back into its own. (Weren't the Dreyfus affair, Spanish American war, late 19th century rise of Germany, and early 20th century Japan all, in some sense, a reflection of right-wing populism?) I don't vouch for this idea with any conviction, as I would need to know more about global politics and history, but liberalism/progressivism takes a few steps to get to cognitively. One has to "rise above" home-spun natural prejudices to get to some version of liberalism. The Declaration of Independence and the Declaration of the Rights of Man are not exactly "man on the street" takes.

I know that if one wants to sell tv, books, news, music, sports, the best bet is to aim low. Perhaps the reemergence of right-wing populism is simply the people reasserting itself against the "elites", who held sway post-WWII. Then again, Hillary not winning was basically a fluke, and she was no great shakes as a candidate, so perhaps the reemergence if populism is simply the olds having a stronger voice at a time when the pretend rational justification for right-wing positions are no longer credible. Also, Trump is so random, that one should avoid constructing a theory of history in which he plays a central role.

It could just be random chance, with right wing winning by default this time due to the last wave of nationalistic populism being mostly left-wing (see Chavez, most of Latin America, and big chunks of Asia).

I am not embedding nationalism as a core part of the definition of "right wing" by the way. If you define it that way, then my answer is just economic growth of the last 40 years have disproportionately benefitted those at the top 10% and bottom 80% of the global income scale. With the 80th to 90th percentile (basically middle class of developed nations) see virtually no gains.

Many of these people are the people who many of us in Trump/Kavanaugh threads call the "deplorables." They are scared. People richer than they are (basically, in their view, the coastal elites) are leaving them well behind. Meanwhile, people traditionally poorer than they are, are catching up rapidly (changing the coloring and look of what they consider middle class.)

The situation in Brazil is even more extreme with the top earners growing with the best the world has to offer (it's not hard to find a six figure job in Brazil if you could get an American graduate degree from a prestigious university and speak Portugese) while the middle class stagnated and the bottom half just recently hitting a level of wealth (see laptops and TVs even in favelas now) where they could afford to be politically aware.

That's a recipe for political instability anywhere.

It's worth pointing out that early 20th progressivism and what we might now call social democratic movements made really incremental, slow, hard-fought gains before say 1915, but a lot of the stuff we now cherish as hallmarks of a well-ordered liberal world (women's / universal suffrage, minimum wage, child labor laws, the 8 hour workday, government pensions, the modern welfare state, etc.) didn't emerge until AFTER the communist menace started to loom over the West. Of course, as you note, the period from say 1915-1950 had a few other critical events like two world wars and the Depression. Hard to separate out the causes exactly about what is really influencing millions of people over a generation and I don't discount the effects of the wars.

But I think it's undeniably true that PART of what made elites and ownership class ready to deal with the democratic masses in liberal, democratic ways was the very real threat and terrifying threat of socialist and communist revolutions that loomed over the period. And sure, the threat from communists became especially acute as a response cataclysmic wars and to the global economic malaise of the 1930s.

But I think I've mentioned this many times over the past few years, and it's to that point, and history is instructive here: the rise of a newly aggressive, demanding right-wing achieving some measure of success acquiring political power globally can be chalked up to the failures of the left to provide any meaningful counter movement.

And so I think we're in some big moments of transition (labor, technology, migration, cultural) -- globally, people are reeling, there's alot of froth. That's destabilizing for people. Some formerly powerful people are having their stations jeopardized, or feeling like the system cannot be worked around. Inequality is too vast, hierarchies too entrenched. Often they are the people at the top end or top tiers of the hierarchies and voting for right-wing solutions to keep their place in a world that seems uncontrollable and unpredictable.

That's what is motivating people to dismiss what are seen as tired, unworkable solutions of the recent past (technocratic liberalism). The right has answers; they're utterly deplorable, terrible answers, and I'd argue they're not that popular. But they at least speak meaningfully to the frustration, the loss, the fears some people are feeling. And so they're able to win with committed and motivated minorities of democratic populations colluding with billionaires and motivated monied interests to entrench right wing political interests. But a huge part of the story is that there's no organized left counter movement, and no real leftist threat to keep the elites in-check and fearing a tit-for-tat retaliation. That threat DID exist for a lot of the early to mid twentieth century and the result was, IMO, a far more responsive set of elites to the real concerns of the masses.

This could be. And I'm not of the "history always repeats itself" mindset or that it's necessarily cyclical. Perhaps we really have crossed some boundaries into a different phenomenons of mass political participation and engagement and the internet/social media are breaking our brains. I don't think it's absurd.

Also I'm not like a historian so treat me as just an amateur dude who likes to read and write.

But, OK, those two points aside: I would just point out that based on my limited knowledge, I *do* think we can find neighboring typologies and parallels in history that feel close to our current time. This isn't the world's first go around with authoritarianism and right-wing populism. It's not the world's first encounter with new technologies disrupting social institutions that send populations into chaos, that make governments and institutions reel; consider the impact of the printing press on 15th-16th century European religious life, the Reformation, the European wars of religion, the fierce social conflicts the period produced, and rise of modernity.

So I'd say: yeah, the internet / social media are huge influence factors but the historical analogues (here's this new tool that is cultivating global inter-connectedness set against the backdrop of decaying institutions and restive populations and a fast-evolving world) are extent.

Turn it around the other way: is there any such thing as a global internet, social media, heavily networked computers WITHOUT telling the story of global finance capitalism, of militarism, of modern commerce? Against the backdrop of competing systems like communism and socialism? The internet and computers and transistors doesn't just spring out of nowhere; you can easily see it as a parallel development or a co-morbid symptom of the very same processes that are influencing people, making the world feel destabilized and different.

I'm obviously spinning a pretty leftist yarn here, but why not see the internet and social media as the products of the same modern capitalist system that are uprooting populations, causing global migrations, changing labor and settlement patterns, influencing institutions like churches and organized religions and labor unions and families? The dawning of the internet was a military project undertaken at least partly to give us supremacy over the Soviets; lots of computing and technological developers that are the basis of modern technology emerge as de facto military projects (remember you cannot separate out modern American academia and the resources that flow to our institutions of high education without the underlying, frankly military and commercial justifications for public funding headed that way).

And the internet's ascendancy into the primacy of ours lives absolutely cannot be separated from the commercial interests that underpin it, of the economic system that underlies the whole thing.

Put differently yet still: in the world of cause and effect, why isn't social media an effect? Cynically, Zuckerberg and Google and @jack don't create these platforms which take our worst impulses as inputs and throws them back at the world for clicks -- they didn't do that to change the world, despite what the press releases and biopics tell you. They did it to make gobtobs of ****ing money. Their financiers and capital looking for the next vehicle to grow into an even larger pile of capital found its way to them because of a set of systemic social decisions (regulatory, financial, economic, commercial, etc.) that really shape the world -- and I think the true cause underlying those decisions lies elsewhere, and I think social media is just an effect of the real systemic factors.

That is to say, bluntly, I think the true ultimate CAUSE is capitalism and then social media and the internet are effects. Critical ones, sure. They're producing an accelerated feedback loop. But it's that same cause (capitalism, specifically modern finance capitalism) that is causing governments to embrace liberal global trade, motivating governments to roll back regulatory schemes and the welfare state, it's underlying mass migrations of people chasing jobs and resources across the globe, evolving labor patterns and moving people into various sectors or out of the workplace in lieu of automation, modifying social life (secularization, women working, etc.).

Last way to think about this: if a someone who died in 1450 or 1750 or 1950 something was reanimated and arrived at your doorstep, and you had to explain how the world really worked and what got us from there -- the world they knew -- to here, the world we live in, and you started with the internet, you missed the better explanation. To the 1450 person, you'd have to explain the eradication of feudalism due to the dawning of capitalism, of the marketization of labor and commodities. To the 1750 person, you'd have to explain how modern finance capitalism evolved from the more rudimentary capitalist systems they knew first and all the **** that followed next. And to the 1950 person or whoever, you'd basically have to explain how the Cold War resolved itself and capitalism won and everything that followed sprung from there. Not the other way around, where you'd start with the technology and work backwards into how it's influences our economic and social ordering of the world, feel pretty strongly that would get it wrong. The best explanation starts with how we organize ourselves economically and specifically around capitalism (e.g., the processes of production exist to accumulate profits which are then re-invested in the financial system). From there you could explain everything else neatly and sequentially with the appropriate cause --> effects, and the internet and social media would just be another effect (a big one, to be sure).

I guess the only redeeming bit about Brazil is that is seems to be a pretty much entirely home grown disaster. Maybe that's a sign that you're reaching maturity as a country - your can **** things up on your own without the US being the primary mover.....

MM MD

But what about Western Europe? Hasn't technocratic liberalism there been working tolerably well through some combination of redistribution and having workers (ala Germany and Elizabeth Warren's proposal re corporate governance) participate more in their employers? (And these in societies, perhaps not coincidentally, much closer to the tip of the spear of the communist menace). Thatcherism is something of a counter-example, but in some ways the English are closer to the US than to Europe (thinking mainly of common law traditions), though they certainly wouldn't scrap the NHS. Same with Canada, which has also has right-ish movements but as a pale echo of the US.

Now, the rise of "right-wing" movements in Western Europe (forget about Poland and Hungry, which are still working toward being "modern" societies) seems to be largely in response to migration and cultural concerns and a desire not to share the wealth with "others". And they don't have much concern for low taxes and less services (ie., less technocracy).

In the US you have the unique situation of a tradition of immigration, history of religiosity, "individualism", and the historical power of moneyed interests, without a significant fraction co-opted by the left, supporting candidates and "legitimate" right-wing think tanks, with 50 states to mess with. How far does the right get without abortion as an issue? Even losing 5% of their support could have led to a something approaching a death spiral. Add in race and they probably lose at least another 10%, and without it as a wedge issue the US could be pretty far toward semi-robust socialism (blacks and browns functioning much like immigrant "others" do in Europe.) So, I don't think it's a problem with technocracy or even disruption so much as forces unique to the US converging to create the bitter stew of contemporary US politics/Trumpism, where symbols are more important than facts or legitimate policies.

(Note, I didn't see Dvault's last post before writing this and am going back to bed.)

One thing Brazil has more in common with the US is a history of diverse populations and history of slavery, and thus racism, that can move politics in strange directions. Maybe some similarity with India and history of caste system and religious differences.

PS, Niall Furgeson is an idiot.


https://twitter.com/nfergus/status/1049535168254377984

One thing that I think makes everywhere more susceptible to nationalist populism is the collapse of any viable global narratives that can promote internationalism after the end of the cold war.

There's always been grievances about people different to ourselves, and even in times of relative economic plenty you can find people who think they've missed out or been wrong treated, but politicians need to marshall those feelings into particular stories. It's usually fear based, to give them an identifiable enemy who's responsible for their ills. Post cold war that fear is the 'terrorist' who can even be a citizen of your own country, rather than a particular brand of foreigner who lives over there.

The efforts to combat that in concert with other friendly countries are all such obvious disasters that no one has the will to think about them any more, they're just depressing messes, so the focus has to be on internal security - keeping the terrorists out, rather than fighting them or eradicating them. Other countries then become sources of infection. More widely the multi-polar world is complicated and has no obvious good guys and bad guys, except through the prism of 'us' (your country) being 'good' because they're you, and anyone who is against you 'bad' for no other reason than their opposition.

I don't think this is all of it, and I certainly don't hark back to the cold war, but when the right's go to animating story of fear involved concerted international action and alliances, then the sort of insular, right populism that is currently on the rise didn't quite fit so well.

Guy was stabbed to death because he didn't support Bolsonaro the day before yesterday. Sick.

This was during Roger Waters last concert:

I've been following this pretty closely with much fear and trepidation. Jair Bolsonaro is worse than Trump.

As for the rise of the right. My thoughts are that in general people flock to liberty when they want to be free and they flock to authoritarianism when they want to be safe.

So why the sudden desire for protection over freedom? why do so many feel unsafe?
That's a complicated question but clearly we are seeing the beginning of things falling apart. In their place something new will emerge. It's not clear at all what that might be.

What's with the question mark next to Putin?

If you had to listen to Kondzilla, you'd probably vote for Bolsonaro too.

Bolsonaro's odds of winning have been hanging around 70-75%.

Good luck Brazil.

Good luck. Brazil. You guys need it.

We all need it. If Bolsonaro is able to enact his platform and can start paving over the Amazon (some hyperbole, but not a lot), it’s gg human race.

One of his ministers said "back in the day we didn't have IBAMA busting our balls". Ibama is the brazilian organization that takes care of everything related to the environment in the country.
And yeah, Bolsonaro has already admitted he doesn't give a **** about the amazon.

-

More than 50 attacks from Bolsonaro's supporters have been recorded all around the country after election day.

I'm still in a whatsapp group of old poker playing friends and half of them support bolsonaro. it's crazy the stuff they come up with.

One of them supports the old dictatorship and wants Bolsonaro to bring it back. Other thinks nazism is a leftist movement (something that has been talked a lot in Brazil recently and we had the german embassy clear it up for them) that wasn't enough to change their minds.

The US has meddled significantly in Brazil and was absolutely involved in the BS impeachment of Dilma

Two good articles to help flesh out much of KansasCT’s backstory. Both are long but combined I think they really give a good understanding (based on my attempts to learn and follow Brazilian politics over the last four years). As has been famously stated “Brazil is complicated”



https://theintercept.com/2018/10/11/...workers-party/

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/1...d-be-dictator/

The amazon could still be saved by paying (a lot) of money. Bolsonaro would gladly accept a yearly ransom payment not to cut down the amazon. Which is a kind of solution that has been mentioned a lot of times to preserve areas in poor countries. Of course it is not a comfortable thing to do and it could have bad repercussion in other countries.

But do we have an alternative?

The Middle East cut all its trees down 2000 years ago.
Europe cut all its trees down 1000 years ago.
The USA and Canada will soon finish cutting all their trees down.
What makes you think they give a damn?

Only Russia has trees anymore, and their quite happy with global warming.

More on that: Marielle Franco was a politician murdered 6 months ago because she was a black, lesbian woman in Rio trying to fight corruption. People say corrupt cops killed her (see elite squad movie for more on that). after she died there were lots of protests from the left but conservatives like Bolsonaro and his followers thought it was too much for the death of only one person (two because her driver also died).

After a while, a street was named after Marielle. That made conservatives unhappy and one of them, a Bolsonaro supporter and candidate for a spot as state representative in Rio destroyed her street sign. After that happened, this guy was the most voted state representative in Rio.

It's pretty sickening knowing that he has the approval of basically everyone there.

The only fact ever releases from her murder investigation was that the bullets were confirmed registered to the military police

Authoritarians make it damn clear. He will do exactly what he said. If you're in his way make preparations sooner rather than later.

The US has about 70% of the land forested at present that was forested in 1630 - the 30% of deforestation occurred by the start of the 1900's or so, and hasn't changed since then. In a good portion of the Sierra there are actually more trees than in the 1800's, but that's often because the area was logged over and the new growth hasn't been managed well (leads to worse fires)

Canada since 2004 has cut down a shocking .07% of their forests, and that number is likely to level off given the political climate about shipping wood chips to Japan.

That's enough facts for now. Carry on with the bull****.

MM MD