Rightwing populists will keep winning until we grasp this truth about human nature | George Monbiot
Rightwing populists will keep winning until we grasp this truth about human nature | George Monbiot
I'm not at all convinced, because the poor aren't the ones who elected Trump. Both the rich and the poor voted for Harris. Here's the data:
Edit: This is not the most up-to date poll, although it is substantially correct. See my post below.
Ordinary people don't keep track of billionaires. Almost no one even knows how many billionaires there are, or how many billions they have. I don't know and I bet that even most people who blame billionaires for everything don't know. If there are twice as many now as there were before and each one has twice as much money, the public won't even notice.
IMO Trump support is due to envy and resentment, but it's not the resentment of the rich by the poor. It's the resentment of the middle class by the working class. Look at the results by college education:
(Note that while income and education are correlated, my first plot shows that the people without a college education who are voting for Trump aren't voting for him simply because they're poor.)
It used to be the case that mass media was controlled largely by people with middle class values. The people who opposed vaccination and supported renaming the Gulf of Mexico were called crackpots and they wouldn't appear in most mainstream newspapers or TV news. Neither the Democrat nor the Republican candidate for President would agree with them.
Now, thanks to the internet, these people have been able to organize into a mass movement and they want to smash the institutions built by the middle class that looks down on them. They voted for Trump because he's culturally one of them, despite the fact that he's a college-educated billionaire.
Do experts say Trump is a fascist? Do experts say vaccination is essential for public health? Do experts say tariffs will wreck the economy? Now Trump will make those experts cry delicious liberal tears...
The first chart is from August 2023.
My apologies. Here's CNN's exit poll. The results are substantially similar. I added a note to my original post.
Note that CNN also has a chart of this data with the "less than $30k" and "$30k to $50k" categories merged, which conceals this phenomenon. I think that can give people the wrong idea.
This isn't how Presidents are elected either. Even though Trump narrowly won the popular vote, at the state level you might see a different picture. We're all Americans but the concerns of a Floridian aren't the same as the concerns of a Californian.
Thanks for the research
Tim Walz gets that you need to humiliate fascists engaging in bad faith and promote progressive policies to engage populist leftist support, hopefully the rest get the message for midterms
In the debates Walz said, "But the expansion of Israel and its proxies is an absolute, fundamental necessity for the United States"
Expansion huh.
No to Walz, forever. "Expansion" there is done through murder and theft from civilians. Walz and genocide-dems like him can all can go eff themselves.
And he also told Israelis in a visit to Israel and Syria in 2009 that expansion into the West Bank is preventing peace, and supported the 2015 Iran nuclear deal against AIPAC. I don't think his position is as clear as you've made it seem based on one debate quote.
TW: Well, I think first and foremost what we saw on October 7th was a horrific act of violence against the people of Israel. They have certainly, and the vice president said it, I've said it, have the right to defend themselves and the United States will always stand by that, but we can't allow what's happened in Gaza to happen. The Palestinian people have every right to life and liberty themselves. We need to continue, I think to put the leverage on to make sure we move towards a two state solution. I think we're at a critical point right now. We need the Netanyahu government to start moving in that direction. But I think those folks who are speaking out loudly in Michigan are speaking out for all the right reasons. It's a humanitarian crisis. It can't stand the way it is. And we need to find a way that people can live together in this and we’ve said it and continue to say it, getting a ceasefire with the return of the hostages and then moving towards a sustainable two state solution is the only way forward.
He's not wrong.
We're still a bunch of greedy monkeys, and no amount of education or "proper parenting" can fully override the base biology all the time for every person.
As much as it would be great to be better, we aren't even close.
Yeah, he raises a good point.
The question then becomes: how do we make the people who feel excluded (and hence want to burn everything down) feel included?
I thought facts didn’t care about their feelings.
How about helping the people who are genuinely being excluded?
Offer them universal healthcare, make daycare actually affordable so that peole can afford to uave a family and work. Go after slumlords who are buying uo property to rent out. Breakup monopolies that are price gouging at every step of the supply chain. Require that any factory/firm that is outsourcing give the employees the right to first refusal so that they can keep important businesses in their community.
The problem is that all of this is anti-market, so liberal parties will nevwr accept them. But those are the sort of policies that immediately benefit people. It becomes a lot harder to say minorities are ruining your life if your life has become noticablly better
Wasn't it better in the 90's already, and it got worse in the last 20 years?
Better? Define better...
There was still plenty of poverty in the 90s, and the violence situation was actually worse than it is currently.
We’re still a bunch of greedy monkeys
Lol no. This is beyond pseudo-science. Not even accurate for monkeys much less humans.
Are you saying that Monkeys aren't monkeys? Or that we aren't greedy? Or that Monkeys aren't greedy?
It's absolutely accurate, go walk through a mall, see how many people buying shit they don't need just to show off to their friends.
This is the lesson that the political left needs to learn. Relying on our "better nature" is not an effective strategy. People remain vulnerable, now more than ever, to the tactics of propaganda. If we want to create a better future, we need to accept that we need to wield those tactics better than our enemies.
If we want a fair and just society, the idea needs to be sold to the populace. Collectively, we cannot be trusted to independently choose a better future for ourselves.
Beating our enemies by lying better to the public? No thanks.
I'd rather beat my enemies by being better then them and showing it, and simply breaking the ability of my enemies to lie.
Fox news, for example, should never have been allowed to be what it is today. A judge literally ruled that they don't have to be factual. That right there was when things started going sideways. For the longest time, people laughed at Fox for being the bunch of mentally challenged idiots that they are and all the ridiculous lies they were spouting all day every day, but nobosy though of the influence it had. Nobody realized that there was a huge amount of people listening to these lies, all day, every day.
Fox news should be outlawed, and it's pundits should literally be strung up in the streets for the harm they've caused. I don't say that lightly, I would never say that about any journalist, or person, really, but these guys and gals are the cream of the crop, the Himmler of the 2000's, they are the reason why millions of useful idiot sheep voted for trump.
Nobody, and then I mean NOBODY would have voted trump had they had access to actual factual news. Nobody would have walked in a pizza place with an assault rifle, demanding to see the non existent basement with the non existent children being not sacrificed. Some of it is conspiracy theories from Facebook (yet another player that should have been fined into a shallow grave) but a lot of this trash has been, and continues.to be spouted by fox news, oan, etc .
These are propaganda systems that should have been prohibited 30 years ago. Now its too late but better too late then never, i guess? Prohibit Fox news, prohibit news that is proven false, prohibit news made by political parties. We need journalists, we need good journalism, but it must be independent from political bias and influence.
We should get independent news organizations that are funded and monitored by independent foundations which get their money from the government. Each of these foundations should be monitored by yet another layer of independent foundations. They must, by law, report facts with ad little bias as possible.
Use the tools that will work in the world we have. Not the world we wish we had.
Propaganda is just marketing for political ideology. Most people are unprincipled homunculi and need to have these ideas sold to them.
I don't need to grasp some "truth" about "human nature".
I just want a non-genocidal candidate. Murdering people is really the worst form of inequality.
That's the actual problem at the heart of this fascism.
brutal, blunt and true.
Fucking depressing, and totally accurate
Humans just aren't actually good. We're capable of amazing things, and also great cruelty
We're right in the middle. The scales tip in whatever direction circumstances dictate. It's quite something, especially because we all want to b the the "good guy". We're just not wired that way
Humans are selfish. It just depends on what they’re selfish with. Me? I’m selfish with my time. Others, money, or labor, or any number or combination of things. Humans are good, we just can’t agree on what ‘good’ is.
It isn't simply wanting to destroy that which excludes you. They want to destroy what they fear. They fear exclusion. They fear those different from them. They fear having to change. They fear losing what they have.
Conservative media and politicians stole these fears and create new ones. Migrant caravans, CRT, FEMA camps, Antifa. These people will run to anyone who indulges their fear and says they can fix it.
More like rightwing populists will keep winning until liberals and leftists stop being delusional. Common sense tends to be a winning strategy.
What common sense? All i see is Democrats running alongside the Chenneys. Right now in my homestate (Ohio) the Republican controlled government is trying to get rid of the cannabis policy that voters overwhelminly supported 2 years ago. Democrats can openly run on a platform of ensuring that Issue 2 is fully supported and make huge gains across the state. Instead they all ran ads about how they are going to help Donald Trump with the border and make sure your kids never have to see a trans person and wonder why they keep losing ground to the Republicans.
Liberals are delusional if they think they're leftists.
I haven't seen any leftists in any elections.
We're entirely extraparlimentary in the US