That is certainly the historical conventional wisdom.
In the modern era of widespread social media that can be strongly steered by botnets that the public mistakenly trusts as legit members of the public, and all as steered by agenda-pushing websites or streaming channels such as Fox or QAnon, that can themselves be controlled by a small group of allied dark actors, ISTM that populism can be a much more centrally controlled phenomenon than e.g. even 30 years ago. It doesn’t have to be so controlled; it can still be a wild self-directing phenomenon. But now it can be controlled, or at least much more controlled than was hitherto possible.
Yes, you can whip the populism train a bit too hard and have it jump the tracks altogether. But if you avoid that mistake you can pretty well steer which route it takes. IMO the tiger may not be tamable, but it is rather rideable a good long ways. Much farther than anyone else would want it ridden.
You’re right, Babale - attempts by conventional conservatives to control far right conservatives never seem to work - the energy of popular support is always on the side of the far right, and the conventional conservatives never seem to want to jettison the far right ones. No one should come into this with clouded vision - alliances between the far right and the moderate conservatives wind up meaning government policy is driven by the far right, not by the moderates
I don’t think that’s necessarily true. Fox News and Q don’t control the far right or where it goes. Oh, sure, they can show the far right a target and get them riled up, but only if it aligns with whatever had the populists angry to begin with.
So Fox News and Q can set the frothing crowd against George Soros, Progressive Jewish Billionaire. But if you or I somehow took control of Fox News tomorrow, we wouldn’t really be able to use that sentiment to get Fox News viewers on board with progressive wealth redistribution policies, or to turn them against billionaires like Musk. Maybe the trick would work once or twice, but as soon as Fox or Q deviates too far from where the current wants to go anyways, they’d simply be abandoned by their base.
It’s like a toddler holding a firehose. You can get some cute pictures where it looks like they’re controlling the hose - if you squint, for a second, from the right angle. But they can’t actually control the flow.
Pushing back water with their bare hands? Tell me more about that monkey paw, please. Yellow triangle on a green flag, yellow triangle on a green flag… what does that remind me of?
My fear is that, because those who had direct connection to WW II have long left power, those now in power, and in the electorate, do not have a first-hand, visceral understanding of how awful things can get. Thus, we might - and I sure as hell hope we don’t - get just the right mix of dictators who lead us into a global dark age of some unimaginable kind.
The funny thing is that Milei’s policies will probably open Argentina markets to multinational corporations and devastate local industries, but he hates “socialism” so in Garrison’s limited brain he must be one of the good guys.
The rumors about the traditional right co-opting Milei’s government seem to be true, apparently most of the more important posts (Finance, Security) will be taken by figures of the previous (2015-2019) Macri government, they seem to think they can ride the tiger…
The problem (one of them anyhow) is that Macri’s policies failed completely and they plan to try the same thing…
Meanwhile attacks on feminists and the LGBT community are on a sharp rise and they haven’t even been inaugurated yet.
One could quite reasonably infer that the cartoon shows that these three men are literally “pushing” Cultural Marxism, Socialism, open borders, and climate change on everyone else.
The important thing is… Do they expect they (or their cronies) will make lots of money, even as they are screwing over the country’s economy? I’m pretty sure that’s their bottom line.
Apologies if this has been addressed already, but recently a video has been doing the rounds of Miliei saying he’s going to scrap several ministries (including what even the most ardent of ‘small government’ proponents might imagine are fairly crucial areas such as education and transportation). Assuming he doesn’t actually succeed in doing this (due to the checks and balances already mentioned), how is he going to spin this failure to deliver with his support base?
Not sure to be honest.
But he will probably succeed, If I’m not mistaken he needs a law to do it but congressional norms are to approve the executive decisions on that area (and congress seems to be respecting norms, being far more tame than the U.S. congress)
So it’s goodbye Ministry of Education (Equivalent to the U.S. Department of Education)
I would report more on what’s happening (yesterday was the official inauguration, with the presence of luminaries like Orban and Bolsonaro ) but it’s so depressing that I’m trying to concentrate on other things so I can continue to function.
) but it’s so depressing that I’m trying to concentrate on other things so I can continue to function.