My Response to George Monbiot on Demagogues

Monbiot writes in the Guardian: Demagogues thrive by whipping up our fury. Here’s how to thwart them.

I believe the present wave of authoritarian, nationalistic, and violent politics is the direct result of 40 years of neoliberalism undercutting workers pay and conditions, undermining job security, and generally telling the citizen that they don't matter. 40 years of neoliberal politicians and corporate CEOs corrupting public office and subverting democracy.

There is no govt money for the people because it's all going to subsidise multinational corporations. We have pogroms against "benefit cheats" but tax cheats who steal 100x more are routinely ignored.

This is a mirror of what we saw during the decline of classical liberalism. It "concentrated vast wealth in the hands of a relatively small number of industrialists and financiers," and the masses did not benefit; it caused cycles of boom and bust; and lastly those who had great wealthy used it to buy influence in and control of government, and to manipulate the electorate. (Adapted from Encyclopedia Britannica).

While authoritarian, nationalistic, and violent politics did not take hold everywhere as a result, it did take hold in enough places that we had to fight WWII to stop it. And after that we saw a brief period of humanistic, society-oriented politics until the early 1970s when the economic liberals merged their ideas with the new monetarism to create the new classical liberalism or neoliberalism. The neoliberals launched a "counterattack" against what Lewis Powell called the attack on the free enterprise system. They bought up the media. They bought up business schools. They founded think tanks to employ the business school graduates to keep the message in the media. They built power base that is more or less impervious to governance and democracy.

We did not learn the lessons of history. And now the farce is playing out as tragedy. The difference this time is that 40 years of neoliberalism have ignited climate change, which may well already be irreversible.

In response to this, Monbiot really does have much to offer beyond some simple common sense. I agree that insulting the opposition is a mistake. Insults raise the tension and make resolution less likely. Of course appeasement is not going to work in this case either. This also has historical precedent. 

I think we have to take to the streets in large numbers and demand change. But the UK is a deeply divided country at present, and this favours the Romans Tories, while the Judeans Left cannot stop their infighting even for a second. So a political solution seems a long way off, because the party that creates discord is not going to be stopped by the party embodying discord. In the USA the impeachment of Trump looks encouraging, but remember that Pence will be his replacement. Elsewhere things seem to hang in the balance. And every day the earth is heating up...