“Populism”, to judge by the thundering denunciations of the media-political class, means popular ideas which are not approved by the elite.
Which is, in fact, almost exactly what it means: “range of political stances that emphasize the idea of the people and often juxtapose this group against the elite”.
Now, you’d expect the legacy media, and the left wing of politics — the Democrats, Labour, and the Greens — to be all over this like a rash. Championing the welfare of the common people against the elite is supposed to be their entire reason for being. The media brag endlessly about supposedly “speaking truth to power”.
The only problem for the media-political left is that they are the elite. They’re the Establishment, the Sun Kings, the oligarchs sitting on the top of the heap.
So, when the people rise up against the elite, naturally the left and their media lickspittles rain fury on those dirty, ungrateful “deplorables”.
A popular uprising of working-class people against the elites and their values is underway—and it’s crossing the globe. There is a growing resistance by the middle and lower classes against what Rob Henderson has coined the “luxury beliefs” of the elites, as everyday folks realize the harm it causes them and their communities.
The Trump election and Brexit were the first fingers given to the elite. Just looking at the Remainers, in their luxury yachts and pleasure boats, screaming abuse at the Leave fishermen, gave the game away.
Fault lines between the plebs and the patricians only intensified during Covid. The “laptop class” just loved sitting at home on full pay — and erupted in screeching fury at blue-collar workers and small business owners protesting against lockdowns and mandates.
Canadian elite scion Justin Trudeau didn’t even bother hiding his visceral disdain for protesting truck drivers. Australian union bosses on eye-watering salaries turned on their own members, demonising them as “Nazis” and “white supremacists” for protesting lockdowns.
You saw it as well in the victory of Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, who ran on parents’ rights in education and went on to win both suburbs and rural areas. You can see it in the growing support of Hispanic voters for a Republican Party, which increasingly identifies as anti-woke, and pro-working class. And now we’re seeing the latest iteration in the Netherlands in the form of a farmer’s protest against new environmental rulings that will ruin them.
Climate change alarmism is the ultimate luxury belief. Its foot soldiers are drawn solidly from private schools and elite universities. Its political leaders are all ensconced in the richest inner-city suburbs — as far from the natural environment as it’s possible to be.
The new environmental regulations are so extreme that they would force many to shutter, including people whose families have been farming for three or four generations. In protest, farmers have been blockading streets and refusing to deliver their products to supermarket chains. It’s been leading to serious shortages of eggs and milk, among other food items.
But the effects will be global. The Netherlands is the world’s second largest agricultural exporter after the United States, making the country of barely 17 million inhabitants a food superpower. Given global food shortages and rising prices, the role of Dutch farmers in the global food chain has never been more important. But if you thought the Dutch government was going to take that into account and ensure that people can put food on the table, you would be wrong; when offered the choice between food security and acting against “climate change,” the Dutch government decided to pursue the latter.
Which should hardly be surprising. Climate change activists were perfectly content to see African farmers driven violently from their lands in order to make way for “biofuel” crops. They’re likewise entirely satisfied with African children slaving away in hellish conditions to dig the raw materials for their EV’s batteries. Climate change protests invariably aim to stop ordinary people from getting to work.
If the proles get uppity, then the elite will just clamp down harder.
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic allowed the government of Prime Minister Mark Rutte to ban protests in 2020 and 2021. With the reignited demonstrations this year, the authorities have also switched to a more aggressive approach. There have been arrests and even warning shots fired by police at farmers, one almost killing a 16-year-old protestor […]
But while the Dutch people are on the side of the farmers, their elites are behaving much as they did in Canada and the U.S., and not just those in government. Media outlets are refusing to even report the protests, and when they do, they cast the farmers as extremists.
If you want to know who really benefits from climate change alarmism, simply look to who’s driving it. From the scion of a pair of multimillionaire Swedish artists to the flocks of private jets flitting from one luxury resort climate conference to another, climate change is the ultimate luxury issue.
Ultimately, there is a risk that climate policies will do to Europe what Marxism did to Latin America. A continent with all the conditions for widespread prosperity and a healthy environment will impoverish and ruin itself for ideological reasons.
Newsweek
Yet the left-elite still lionise the Marxist regimes of Latin America.
Which tells you all you need to know.
