8 ms·

All around the world, nationalists are gaining ground. Why?

59 points by amexrap 10y ago

striking 10y ago
I'll directly quote a comment by HN user thewarrior (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12907320 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12907320), one of my favorite comments, here: --- It is possible to view this as an isolated event or a trend. Coming on the heels of BREXIT this is a trend. The attempts at building an interconnected globalised world are beginning to fail. A bunch of elites decided to create their own trans-national utopia unchecked by borders and dismissed all criticism as racist or bigoted. The globalisation project has been rejected by a majority of the population. Whether it is for economic reasons or just plain bigotry is something for the sociologists to study and not something I can pontificate on. Also people seem to care a LOT about immigration and preserving their culture. Instead of patronising these people it's time we tried to understand their concerns and try to assuage them. There is no genuine leftist alternative. It's a choice between center-right "left" that's sold out to the establishment and the far right.Economists need to stop acting like priests in the medieval ages who justified the existing order . The rural voter who lost his job doesn't care about the theory of comparitive advantage. If this trend holds this will soon take hold in France and other European nations. This is a return to the world of the 1920s. Not gloom and doom but a much more unstable global order with every country for itself. Not what we need when we face planet scale threats like global warming. Get out of your bubble. Hang out more on subreddits you don't agree with. The divide is bridged one person at a time. PS - Reposted my comment from another thread as it got flagged. Hope its OK with the mods. EDIT: His concession speech seems to indicate that he's beginning to appreciate what he's been entrusted with.
- gthtjtkt 10y ago
  Reminds me of Glenn Greenwald's article on the subject: > The indisputable fact is that prevailing institutions of authority in the West, for decades, have relentlessly and with complete indifference stomped on the economic welfare and social security of hundreds of millions of people. While elite circles gorged themselves on globalism, free trade, Wall Street casino gambling, and endless wars (wars that enriched the perpetrators and sent the poorest and most marginalized to bear all their burdens), they completely ignored the victims of their gluttony, except when those victims piped up a bit too much — when they caused a ruckus — and were then scornfully condemned as troglodytes who were the deserved losers in the glorious, global game of meritocracy. Also: > opinion-making elites were so clustered, so incestuous, so far removed from the people who would decide this election — so contemptuous of them — that they were not only incapable of seeing the trends toward Trump but were unwittingly accelerating those trends with their own condescending, self-glorifying behavior. https://theintercept.com/2016/11/09/democrats-trump-and-the-ongoing-dangerous-refusal-to-learn-the-lesson-of-brexit/ https://theintercept.com/2016/11/09/democrats-trump-and-the-... Worth a read for anyone who's still confused about how/why Brexit and Trump happened. The filter bubbles created by sites like Facebook, Google and Reddit seem to be much stronger than most people realize, and many still don't understand that they're trapped in a bubble at all. Or if you prefer a video, Russell Brand did a great job of explaining it as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3Ou5uFFn8Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3Ou5uFFn8Q To no one's surprise, neither of these items made it anywhere near the front page of Reddit.
  - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
    > > opinion-making elites were so clustered, so incestuous, so far removed from the people who would decide this election — so contemptuous of them — that they were not only incapable of seeing the trends toward Trump but were unwittingly accelerating those trends with their own condescending, self-glorifying behavior. Two hundred years ago, this kind of behavior led to the French Revolution, and the end of many of those elites at the guillotine. Now they just get an election result they don't like (at least so far). That's genuine progress.
    - YZF 10y ago
      Who is they? I see some elites that like the results and some that don't. The "elite" seems just as divided as the rest of the people. Trump is elite. It's true that democrats generally got more support amongst college educated people but those guys aren't really elite in any sense and plenty of them still voted for Republicans. There are absolutely no parallels to the french revolution. So yeah, progress for sure.
      - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
        Well, "they" in my context (and Glenn Greenwald's statement) are "opinion-making elites". They're the mainstream media, not the rich.
        YZF 10y ago
        Well obviously the "opinion-making elites" in the "mainstream" media were not able to "make" the opinions of 50% of the people. So 50% is mainstream? Where do the other 50% get their opinions? EDIT: I'm not ignoring this narrative about the elites but I don't think it's actually true. Trump golfed with the Clintons. They came to his wedding. He was a TV persona. During the elections he intentionally took an adversarial position towards the media to support this narrative (esp. taking on Fox News). From where I'm sitting they are all elite in the same way. The same mainstream opinion making elites hurt the Clinton campaign by endlessly talking about the re-opening of the e-mail investigation. Media is definitely opinionated and doesn't offer a diversity of views (which I sometimes see as annoying) but there's some points where it's almost like you'd say that the mainstream elite in education teaches evolution while ignoring the non-mainstream view of creationism.
- allemagne 10y ago
  The majority of voters voted against Trump.
  - b_emery 10y ago
    Exactly. So no need to fit a narrative to it.
  - sremani 10y ago
    This was the exact explanation[1] given in India when the Left and INC were getting into a "unholy" alliance to form government. I find this hilarious, by the extension of the argument, majority of voters voted against every candidate. edit: [1]the argument was majority of voters voted against BJP.
  - MK999 10y ago
    If you don't consider voter fraud.
- elcct 10y ago
  It is also that big entities like to reach deep into people pockets and spend their money on vanity projects and there is no responsibility whatsoever. It is especially visible in the EU. Sometimes it gets tragicomical - in IT for example, you can get government grants for supposedly innovative projects. So then you can get websites about cats (there was no website about cat like that, so it's an innovation!) and other non-sense out of tax payer pockets. That's just tip of the iceberg. I am not saying that in the smaller, self-governing entities could be any different, but it will be easier to spot who is responsible and no longer suitable for office. That's rather not possible in the EU. Bureaucrats are getting fatter and fatter, civil servants are getting more and more important with more and more powers and little liability. They tell you how you have to live and you must obey. If you do not, you are being labelled bigot, outsider, racist, fascist or whatever label works... and people just want freedom.
  - blub 10y ago
    You will have to be more specific than "websites about cats", or I will have to call out your post for what it is - nonsense. Who tells you how to live? Examples please. Who must you obey and in what circumstances? What are the vanity projects?
- lj3 10y ago
  > Get out of your bubble. > Hang out more on subreddits you don't agree with. > The divide is bridged one person at a time. It's amazing to me how such seemingly smart people can see what's going on and completely miss the point. You still think it's just a matter of educating the dumb, racist rednecks that reside in the rural flyover areas. It's not. Those "idiots" understand your point of view. They reject it completely. It doesn't reflect any reality they recognize, which is why none of you saw it coming. You pay too much attention to ideology and how you wish things were instead of reality and how things actually are. You can reach out all you like. It won't "bridge the divide." It'll create more opposition. More divide. You need to start thinking hard about whether your positions are as accurate as you've always believed them to be.
  - jackmott 10y ago
    Ok which position have I got wrong? Should we be putting gay people in jail? I know global warming is real, I've checked the math personally. Help me out.
    - lj3 10y ago
      > Help me out. Where's my incentive to "help you out"? You ask, but you don't really want to know. You've already made up your mind. That much is obvious in how you phrased your question.
    - jerf 10y ago
      You're falling victim to the bubble again, thinking that the only difference is that they thing "gay people should be in jail". You'd be far better off thinking about questions like, how come when places are run under the policies that Democrats seem to favor, African Americans aren't making any economic progress? Why does my 25 year old child have to still live with me? Why am I paying for a college that seems more interested in indoctrinating my child than educating them? Why are several demographics seeing significant rises in suicide rates? Why does the government count me as no longer unemployed because I haven't been able to find a job in some number of years? Why did my mandatory health care cut its benefits and go up in price by 50% this year? Why is it when I raise these concerns people just mock me for wanting to put gay people in jail? Why is it that the response to my every concern is to be called racist? Something I think the HN crowd needs to remember is that while we are not really in the "elite", we are at least in the low elite. We make money and stock options. When someone comes into our industry making $60K a year we ask them what they're doing wrong to make merely 50% over the median wage. Thinking that all this cultural conflict is over whether gay people are sent to prison is just another way of distancing yourself from the real problems, and ensuring that this electoral result keeps happening. Many of these people are making less in a year than I keep in my bank account as my rainy day fund. Many things matter to them that you or I would just spend our way around. I'll also suggest that it doesn't do much good to say something like "Well, sure, the people I elected may be in charge but I don't actually agree with what they're doing" or some dodge like that. I said "policies that Democrats seem to favor" up above carefully, because it may be the case that you don't favor them yourself, but it doesn't matter, because you (collectively) are voting for people who do. I see HN frequently disagreeing with what you might call the establishment liberal consensus on things like surveillance, but that's not terribly relevant to understanding what's actually going on out there in the world because the SV liberal deviations are not electorally significant.
- f_allwein 10y ago
  don't agree with the comment you quote. What I like about the Economist article (discussed here) is that it does not need terms like "bunch of elites" or "attempts at building an interconnected globalised world are beginning to fail" to explain the phenomenon of nationalism. Instead, it points (far down, in the 'Nations once again' section) to factors like pessimism in industrialized countries, nationalism as "a cheap and easy way to generate enthusiasm for the state, and to deflect blame for what is wrong" and the role of social media. Moreover, I like that there's a sort-of positive bit at the end as it points out that young people are still overwhelmingly globalists, so the current trend towards nationalism could be reversed soon.
  - tomp 10y ago
    I found the article pretty lacking. It failed to even mention what is in my opinion the most important, and the most significant reason for Trump/Brexit/Le Pen: that the elites might be wrong. Why is diversity good? Why is it better to not offend people rather than preserve free speech? Why would immigration, especially uncontrollable immigration, be beneficial? What if some cultures are better? And even if they're not, why is it bad for Westerners to like their own culture? Why should we respect foreign cultures if they don't respect our own? Why should you lose your job if you make a joke in public that some people deem offensive? Why is racism against whites and sexism against men acceptable? In the recent years, these questions weren't being asked and the "right" answer was just assumed by the elites. What's more, it was forbidden to even ask questions like these!
    - drewrv 10y ago
      It's not that most of these questions are assumed, or that they're forbidden to talk about, it's that they're so obvious it's not even interesting to discuss. > Why is diversity good? If I need heart surgery, I want the most qualified heart surgeon. Not the most qualified white person born within N miles of me. > Why is it better to not offend people rather than preserve free speech? Free speech is doing quite well, it has never been easier to express yourself to a huge audience. > Why should you lose your job if you make a joke in public that some people deem offensive? Many people would rather find a new job than work with jerks. Companies are trying to protect the bottom line and it's easier to replace one person than many.
- YZF 10y ago
  The more I think about the results of the US elections the more my conclusion is that it doesn't yield itself to simple explanations. This is not about some dude who lost his factory job and feels he is being patronized. I'm not denying this dude's existence or his feeling but there are a lot of people here with different feelings. For sure the lines of communication need to remain open to deal with the divide and as you say, this is a one person at a time thing. Another part is communication from the top which we haven't seen enough, both words and actions. I would say the overall trend though is still towards a more unified humanity. Yes, there are bumps on the road, but if you look at the world today people are a lot closer than they ever were in history. The consume the same products. The cultural gap is much smaller. Racism and xenophobia were always there. I think these are weaker forces today then they were historically. The world economy is changing but that is only partly due to globalization and more due to changes in technology, demographics, global warming and other factors. This change is certainly impacting individuals who need solutions. This is a complicated problem that needs complex solutions. Neither candidate in the recent US elections offered any. Some of the problems in the US, e.g. racial tensions and inequality go back more than 100 years. Some of the economic problems go back more than 20 years. There's been a lot of kicking the can down the road and eventually things catch up with you.
  - rhizome 10y ago
    To be fair, portraying global unity as an unalloyed good is an ideological stance.
    - YZF 10y ago
      It needs to be a rational discussion. If we don't have unity then what do we get instead? If different nations aren't equal partners than what are they? I do realize though how difficult it is for people to agree on these things, partly because of their beliefs that at times seem to override any rational argument. That's partly where we need more and better leadership to demonstrate that things can actually work out and be win-win.
      - rhizome 10y ago
zxcvvcxz 10y ago
Maybe because you can't force globalism and multiculturalism down people's throats. Maybe there should be actual sensible discussions about the merits and drawbacks of these concepts, rather than name-calling and assumed acceptance.
- benbenolson 10y ago
  While your comment is rather snarky, I think the sentiment is true: many people are tired of being called racists, bigots, misogynists, etc., for simply opposing nationalism. At the same time, much has been revealed through various leaks, pulling back the curtain on various activities that many don't agree with. I think this mentality of "the people versus the elites" (aka populism) has caught on quickly throughout the world, with the refugee and immigration issues being a catalyst.
  - robotresearcher 10y ago
    | many people are tired of being called racists, bigots, misogynists, etc., for simply opposing nationalism Now I'm completely confused. Is this really happening?
    - benbenolson 10y ago
      Oh, sorry, I must have not been paying attention. I mean "supporting nationalism."
camboyero1992 10y ago
Because democracy doesn't work in a world where people are turned into consumer-zombies that care about nothing except their next dose of dopamine.
PaulHoule 10y ago
Tariffs are one thing, but since the 1990s globalization has been about "non-tariff trade barriers" which seems to be a euphemism for environmental, health and safety laws.
zzleeper 10y ago
For me the most interesting chart is #2, "My Country is the Best Country in the World". Some countries (US, AUS, and a bit less the UK) show a marked divide between young and old responders for this. Any ideas why?
- klank 10y ago
  The younger ones see what the older ones are doing?
helpfulanon 10y ago
Based on the tone of comments around here lately, I'm getting the sense that HN has been populated by closeted alt-right for a while now.
- newswriter99 10y ago
  "closeted alt-right" Alt-right is just a meaningless catch-all term to describe someone who is sarcastic and "not-liberal." According to this definition, Bill Hicks was alt-right. Thus, the term has zero value.
  - liquidise 10y ago
    The wikipedia entry[1] is even worse. It literally lists the associated platforms as including: "white supremacism, Islamophobia, antifeminism, homophobia, antisemitism, ethno-nationalism". You'd swear these people, whoever they are, are the American ISIS. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-right https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-right
  - pixl97 10y ago
    It's getting to the point even liberals are worried that other liberals have gone too far http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wo...
  - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
    I disagree with both of you. helpfulanon: I think there are more people than you expected here who are willing to state that they lean right. (That's not the same as "closeted alt-right" by any means.) Some of those people are a bit strident right now. But there are a bunch of people who lean left who are pretty bitter, too. And I think that the only thing that changed was that we had an election. Those people who lean right, leaned right before the election. They didn't just come here in the past week to triumphantly throw their weight around. newswriter99: According to your definition. I don't think that's the right definition, though. Wikipedia's definition seems pretty accurate: "The alt-right is a loose group of people with far right ideologies who reject mainstream conservatism in the United States." That's why they're "alt" - they reject the normal, mainstream right. So not everyone who voted Republican is alt-right. Trump, however, is certainly not a candidate who embraced normal conservatism, so it might be fair to call him an alt-right candidate.
hkmurakami 10y ago
When a country's economy falters, the first reaction is usually nationalism, whether it be through state directed propaganda (e.g. China) or self directed by the maligned (e.g. US, Britain). Scapegoats feel good.
Diederich 10y ago
People are more afraid of more things than ever. Many of the fears are quite concrete and actionable, such as climate change displacement. My theory is that in an age of 'infinite communication' and 'infinite information', few people can keep a conscious and subconscious rational, risk appropriate outlook when bombarded with an endless array of not only bad news but also associated vivid imagery. Even though we as a species are safer than we ever have been, even though women are doing better than ever, even when the worst kinds of poverty are at historic lows, we're more afraid than ever. (Note: I'm not saying things are all peachy, and we have a long ways to go, but the historical trends are clear) Our evolutionary psychology is based on over-reaction to bad things, because that has been, for nearly all of our existence, a survival advantage. Now, though we try to look at things rationally, that evolutionary baggage is still there, making us afraid, on conscious and subconscious levels. That's one part of it. The other part is the more directed role technology plays. Social media wants as much of our attention as possible. That's a business model. I think they have discovered, via actual direction and/or via various machine learning sources, that our attention is maximized when we are formed into like-minded groups or tribes, and when those tribes are 'fighting' inside the social media lobster cage. I don't mean to say that there aren't 'villains and heroes', because there certainly are. But I do believe that most of this churn is straightforward, natural and even an inevitable result of the explosive increase in connectivity and communication capabilities. In short, technology is the main reason we're getting kind of crazy. And I have no good ideas about how to realistically bend the curve back toward less crazy.
h4nkoslo 10y ago
The present internationalist regime is a holdover from the Cold War. Institutions (social or political) like the EU or Buckleyite conservatism or the promotion of a trans-national, US educated elite itself (eg Barack Obama Sr) were explicitly founded & run with a mission of countering the USSR. With the collapse of the USSR & communism generally, these institutions no longer had a sensible mission and started spiraling into rent-seeking and self perpetuation without any sensible feedback being exerted on them, to the point where they began to feed on the populace.
vtange 10y ago
I have a feeling we're all trying to imitate China. For at least a decade now a dominant rhetoric has been, 'China spends all their time and effort focused on their own country, as opposed to being involved in human rights, foreign aid and foreign wars, and look at how much GDP growth they're getting! At the same time however, I feel that there has also been a 'push back' effect in terms between local and global culture. With every move we make trying to stitch together the world with a unified, global ideals system, the value of local culture and traditions gets magnified, especially among conservatives and nationalists. In a world under economic stress, it is easy for nationalists to win when all they have to do is point to China's growth story.
ismail 10y ago
What is the difference between populism and nationalism? Niall Fergusson seems to think that it is populism we are facing around the world specifically in the northern hemisphere. The experiment seems to have failed in other countries. https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/02/28/having-populist-moment/zjlU4sGIT7NMieozkmnfbO/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/02/28/having-populi...
- krzyk 10y ago
  You could ask similar question: what is the difference between socialism and populism? All extremes are bad.
tdkl 10y ago
Lying about "fake news" after the loss by media doesn't help either : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyS3Ghevf2I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyS3Ghevf2I
pipio21 10y ago
"Napoleon’s Grande Armée marched not just for the glory of France but for liberty, equality and fraternity." Ohh, man, I can't withstand "The economist" anymore. The non sense propaganda is growing and growing as they feel their Keynesian power threatened . Napoleon destroyed my native country, Spain and half of Europe because of just one thing, personal glory. Napoleon was a sociopathic ambitious man who claimed to be against Monarchy but declared himself Emperor and his son and family as Throne's heirs. There is always good words with any invasion. Liberty, equality and fraternity are destroyed when you have to use blood, extortion and humiliation in order to impose them. In Spain there were people that followed those values, in peace, the "afrancesados", but most of them revolted against France when the invasion happened. French people consider Napoleon a hero, like Lincoln or Washington in the USA or Bolivar in Venezuela, I understand it, every country has their heroes but the Economist?. The Economist have been going to big contortions in their arguments in order to defend the Keynesianism order. For example Hillary earning a quarter million dollars for a single speech from the same people that later benefits from her politics was totally normal because scientific Nobel prices could win 50.000 after having changed the world in something. Now reading the article I don't know how to start, it colvolves and cortorts again the arguments in order to portray as lunatics anyone against the Soros worldview. I travel around the world around and I see different cultures, what the Economist interest represent is creating a single world country with a single currency, with a single elite in charge. But people want to preserve their culture and their interests and it is totally ok and good for the world. In the past we had competition in policies, we could see West Germany with an economic system and East Germany with another and we could compare. Now this people want nobody to be able to compare, they want all the world banning cash, all the world with negative interest rates, all the world printing money like crazy, Corporations having more power that States. And they don't want competition, because if someone else follows other policies, it could prove their system not being so good as they claim it to be.
drinchev 10y ago
Really nice article. Last week I was at Websummit in Lisbon. Right after Trump won the election, there was a lot of noise about it and almost every talk included some comments about where the world is going to. Sadly one of the talks was about AI and robots, which included a demo of a robot, that was promised to "Replace people in child-care, public service, restaurants, etc.". Boy, I was so shocked when they said that. The only way that you can fix this statement is with the follow up : "Once we have the basic income, technology won't be so unfair".

59 points by amexrap 10y ago

I'll directly quote a comment by HN user thewarrior (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12907320 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12907320), one of my favorite comments, here: --- It is possible to view this as an isolated event or a trend. Coming on the heels of BREXIT this is a trend. The attempts at building an interconnected globalised world are beginning to fail. A bunch of elites decided to create their own trans-national utopia unchecked by borders and dismissed all criticism as racist or bigoted. The globalisation project has been rejected by a majority of the population. Whether it is for economic reasons or just plain bigotry is something for the sociologists to study and not something I can pontificate on. Also people seem to care a LOT about immigration and preserving their culture. Instead of patronising these people it's time we tried to understand their concerns and try to assuage them. There is no genuine leftist alternative. It's a choice between center-right "left" that's sold out to the establishment and the far right.Economists need to stop acting like priests in the medieval ages who justified the existing order . The rural voter who lost his job doesn't care about the theory of comparitive advantage. If this trend holds this will soon take hold in France and other European nations. This is a return to the world of the 1920s. Not gloom and doom but a much more unstable global order with every country for itself. Not what we need when we face planet scale threats like global warming. Get out of your bubble. Hang out more on subreddits you don't agree with. The divide is bridged one person at a time. PS - Reposted my comment from another thread as it got flagged. Hope its OK with the mods. EDIT: His concession speech seems to indicate that he's beginning to appreciate what he's been entrusted with.

gthtjtkt 10y ago
Reminds me of Glenn Greenwald's article on the subject: > The indisputable fact is that prevailing institutions of authority in the West, for decades, have relentlessly and with complete indifference stomped on the economic welfare and social security of hundreds of millions of people. While elite circles gorged themselves on globalism, free trade, Wall Street casino gambling, and endless wars (wars that enriched the perpetrators and sent the poorest and most marginalized to bear all their burdens), they completely ignored the victims of their gluttony, except when those victims piped up a bit too much — when they caused a ruckus — and were then scornfully condemned as troglodytes who were the deserved losers in the glorious, global game of meritocracy. Also: > opinion-making elites were so clustered, so incestuous, so far removed from the people who would decide this election — so contemptuous of them — that they were not only incapable of seeing the trends toward Trump but were unwittingly accelerating those trends with their own condescending, self-glorifying behavior. https://theintercept.com/2016/11/09/democrats-trump-and-the-ongoing-dangerous-refusal-to-learn-the-lesson-of-brexit/ https://theintercept.com/2016/11/09/democrats-trump-and-the-... Worth a read for anyone who's still confused about how/why Brexit and Trump happened. The filter bubbles created by sites like Facebook, Google and Reddit seem to be much stronger than most people realize, and many still don't understand that they're trapped in a bubble at all. Or if you prefer a video, Russell Brand did a great job of explaining it as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3Ou5uFFn8Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3Ou5uFFn8Q To no one's surprise, neither of these items made it anywhere near the front page of Reddit.
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago
  > > opinion-making elites were so clustered, so incestuous, so far removed from the people who would decide this election — so contemptuous of them — that they were not only incapable of seeing the trends toward Trump but were unwittingly accelerating those trends with their own condescending, self-glorifying behavior. Two hundred years ago, this kind of behavior led to the French Revolution, and the end of many of those elites at the guillotine. Now they just get an election result they don't like (at least so far). That's genuine progress.
  - YZF 10y ago
    Who is they? I see some elites that like the results and some that don't. The "elite" seems just as divided as the rest of the people. Trump is elite. It's true that democrats generally got more support amongst college educated people but those guys aren't really elite in any sense and plenty of them still voted for Republicans. There are absolutely no parallels to the french revolution. So yeah, progress for sure.
    - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
      Well, "they" in my context (and Glenn Greenwald's statement) are "opinion-making elites". They're the mainstream media, not the rich.
      - YZF 10y ago
        Well obviously the "opinion-making elites" in the "mainstream" media were not able to "make" the opinions of 50% of the people. So 50% is mainstream? Where do the other 50% get their opinions? EDIT: I'm not ignoring this narrative about the elites but I don't think it's actually true. Trump golfed with the Clintons. They came to his wedding. He was a TV persona. During the elections he intentionally took an adversarial position towards the media to support this narrative (esp. taking on Fox News). From where I'm sitting they are all elite in the same way. The same mainstream opinion making elites hurt the Clinton campaign by endlessly talking about the re-opening of the e-mail investigation. Media is definitely opinionated and doesn't offer a diversity of views (which I sometimes see as annoying) but there's some points where it's almost like you'd say that the mainstream elite in education teaches evolution while ignoring the non-mainstream view of creationism.
allemagne 10y ago
The majority of voters voted against Trump.
- b_emery 10y ago
  Exactly. So no need to fit a narrative to it.
- sremani 10y ago
  This was the exact explanation[1] given in India when the Left and INC were getting into a "unholy" alliance to form government. I find this hilarious, by the extension of the argument, majority of voters voted against every candidate. edit: [1]the argument was majority of voters voted against BJP.
- MK999 10y ago
  If you don't consider voter fraud.
elcct 10y ago
It is also that big entities like to reach deep into people pockets and spend their money on vanity projects and there is no responsibility whatsoever. It is especially visible in the EU. Sometimes it gets tragicomical - in IT for example, you can get government grants for supposedly innovative projects. So then you can get websites about cats (there was no website about cat like that, so it's an innovation!) and other non-sense out of tax payer pockets. That's just tip of the iceberg. I am not saying that in the smaller, self-governing entities could be any different, but it will be easier to spot who is responsible and no longer suitable for office. That's rather not possible in the EU. Bureaucrats are getting fatter and fatter, civil servants are getting more and more important with more and more powers and little liability. They tell you how you have to live and you must obey. If you do not, you are being labelled bigot, outsider, racist, fascist or whatever label works... and people just want freedom.
- blub 10y ago
  You will have to be more specific than "websites about cats", or I will have to call out your post for what it is - nonsense. Who tells you how to live? Examples please. Who must you obey and in what circumstances? What are the vanity projects?
lj3 10y ago
> Get out of your bubble. > Hang out more on subreddits you don't agree with. > The divide is bridged one person at a time. It's amazing to me how such seemingly smart people can see what's going on and completely miss the point. You still think it's just a matter of educating the dumb, racist rednecks that reside in the rural flyover areas. It's not. Those "idiots" understand your point of view. They reject it completely. It doesn't reflect any reality they recognize, which is why none of you saw it coming. You pay too much attention to ideology and how you wish things were instead of reality and how things actually are. You can reach out all you like. It won't "bridge the divide." It'll create more opposition. More divide. You need to start thinking hard about whether your positions are as accurate as you've always believed them to be.
- jackmott 10y ago
  Ok which position have I got wrong? Should we be putting gay people in jail? I know global warming is real, I've checked the math personally. Help me out.
  - lj3 10y ago
    > Help me out. Where's my incentive to "help you out"? You ask, but you don't really want to know. You've already made up your mind. That much is obvious in how you phrased your question.
  - jerf 10y ago
    You're falling victim to the bubble again, thinking that the only difference is that they thing "gay people should be in jail". You'd be far better off thinking about questions like, how come when places are run under the policies that Democrats seem to favor, African Americans aren't making any economic progress? Why does my 25 year old child have to still live with me? Why am I paying for a college that seems more interested in indoctrinating my child than educating them? Why are several demographics seeing significant rises in suicide rates? Why does the government count me as no longer unemployed because I haven't been able to find a job in some number of years? Why did my mandatory health care cut its benefits and go up in price by 50% this year? Why is it when I raise these concerns people just mock me for wanting to put gay people in jail? Why is it that the response to my every concern is to be called racist? Something I think the HN crowd needs to remember is that while we are not really in the "elite", we are at least in the low elite. We make money and stock options. When someone comes into our industry making $60K a year we ask them what they're doing wrong to make merely 50% over the median wage. Thinking that all this cultural conflict is over whether gay people are sent to prison is just another way of distancing yourself from the real problems, and ensuring that this electoral result keeps happening. Many of these people are making less in a year than I keep in my bank account as my rainy day fund. Many things matter to them that you or I would just spend our way around. I'll also suggest that it doesn't do much good to say something like "Well, sure, the people I elected may be in charge but I don't actually agree with what they're doing" or some dodge like that. I said "policies that Democrats seem to favor" up above carefully, because it may be the case that you don't favor them yourself, but it doesn't matter, because you (collectively) are voting for people who do. I see HN frequently disagreeing with what you might call the establishment liberal consensus on things like surveillance, but that's not terribly relevant to understanding what's actually going on out there in the world because the SV liberal deviations are not electorally significant.
f_allwein 10y ago
don't agree with the comment you quote. What I like about the Economist article (discussed here) is that it does not need terms like "bunch of elites" or "attempts at building an interconnected globalised world are beginning to fail" to explain the phenomenon of nationalism. Instead, it points (far down, in the 'Nations once again' section) to factors like pessimism in industrialized countries, nationalism as "a cheap and easy way to generate enthusiasm for the state, and to deflect blame for what is wrong" and the role of social media. Moreover, I like that there's a sort-of positive bit at the end as it points out that young people are still overwhelmingly globalists, so the current trend towards nationalism could be reversed soon.
- tomp 10y ago
  I found the article pretty lacking. It failed to even mention what is in my opinion the most important, and the most significant reason for Trump/Brexit/Le Pen: that the elites might be wrong. Why is diversity good? Why is it better to not offend people rather than preserve free speech? Why would immigration, especially uncontrollable immigration, be beneficial? What if some cultures are better? And even if they're not, why is it bad for Westerners to like their own culture? Why should we respect foreign cultures if they don't respect our own? Why should you lose your job if you make a joke in public that some people deem offensive? Why is racism against whites and sexism against men acceptable? In the recent years, these questions weren't being asked and the "right" answer was just assumed by the elites. What's more, it was forbidden to even ask questions like these!
  - drewrv 10y ago
    It's not that most of these questions are assumed, or that they're forbidden to talk about, it's that they're so obvious it's not even interesting to discuss. > Why is diversity good? If I need heart surgery, I want the most qualified heart surgeon. Not the most qualified white person born within N miles of me. > Why is it better to not offend people rather than preserve free speech? Free speech is doing quite well, it has never been easier to express yourself to a huge audience. > Why should you lose your job if you make a joke in public that some people deem offensive? Many people would rather find a new job than work with jerks. Companies are trying to protect the bottom line and it's easier to replace one person than many.
YZF 10y ago
The more I think about the results of the US elections the more my conclusion is that it doesn't yield itself to simple explanations. This is not about some dude who lost his factory job and feels he is being patronized. I'm not denying this dude's existence or his feeling but there are a lot of people here with different feelings. For sure the lines of communication need to remain open to deal with the divide and as you say, this is a one person at a time thing. Another part is communication from the top which we haven't seen enough, both words and actions. I would say the overall trend though is still towards a more unified humanity. Yes, there are bumps on the road, but if you look at the world today people are a lot closer than they ever were in history. The consume the same products. The cultural gap is much smaller. Racism and xenophobia were always there. I think these are weaker forces today then they were historically. The world economy is changing but that is only partly due to globalization and more due to changes in technology, demographics, global warming and other factors. This change is certainly impacting individuals who need solutions. This is a complicated problem that needs complex solutions. Neither candidate in the recent US elections offered any. Some of the problems in the US, e.g. racial tensions and inequality go back more than 100 years. Some of the economic problems go back more than 20 years. There's been a lot of kicking the can down the road and eventually things catch up with you.
- rhizome 10y ago
  To be fair, portraying global unity as an unalloyed good is an ideological stance.
  - YZF 10y ago
    It needs to be a rational discussion. If we don't have unity then what do we get instead? If different nations aren't equal partners than what are they? I do realize though how difficult it is for people to agree on these things, partly because of their beliefs that at times seem to override any rational argument. That's partly where we need more and better leadership to demonstrate that things can actually work out and be win-win.
    - rhizome 10y ago

zxcvvcxz 10y ago

Maybe because you can't force globalism and multiculturalism down people's throats. Maybe there should be actual sensible discussions about the merits and drawbacks of these concepts, rather than name-calling and assumed acceptance.

benbenolson 10y ago
While your comment is rather snarky, I think the sentiment is true: many people are tired of being called racists, bigots, misogynists, etc., for simply opposing nationalism. At the same time, much has been revealed through various leaks, pulling back the curtain on various activities that many don't agree with. I think this mentality of "the people versus the elites" (aka populism) has caught on quickly throughout the world, with the refugee and immigration issues being a catalyst.
- robotresearcher 10y ago
  | many people are tired of being called racists, bigots, misogynists, etc., for simply opposing nationalism Now I'm completely confused. Is this really happening?
  - benbenolson 10y ago
    Oh, sorry, I must have not been paying attention. I mean "supporting nationalism."

camboyero1992 10y ago

Because democracy doesn't work in a world where people are turned into consumer-zombies that care about nothing except their next dose of dopamine.

PaulHoule 10y ago

Tariffs are one thing, but since the 1990s globalization has been about "non-tariff trade barriers" which seems to be a euphemism for environmental, health and safety laws.

zzleeper 10y ago

For me the most interesting chart is #2, "My Country is the Best Country in the World". Some countries (US, AUS, and a bit less the UK) show a marked divide between young and old responders for this. Any ideas why?

klank 10y ago
The younger ones see what the older ones are doing?

helpfulanon 10y ago

Based on the tone of comments around here lately, I'm getting the sense that HN has been populated by closeted alt-right for a while now.

newswriter99 10y ago
"closeted alt-right" Alt-right is just a meaningless catch-all term to describe someone who is sarcastic and "not-liberal." According to this definition, Bill Hicks was alt-right. Thus, the term has zero value.
- liquidise 10y ago
  The wikipedia entry[1] is even worse. It literally lists the associated platforms as including: "white supremacism, Islamophobia, antifeminism, homophobia, antisemitism, ethno-nationalism". You'd swear these people, whoever they are, are the American ISIS. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-right https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-right
- pixl97 10y ago
  It's getting to the point even liberals are worried that other liberals have gone too far http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wo...
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago
  I disagree with both of you. helpfulanon: I think there are more people than you expected here who are willing to state that they lean right. (That's not the same as "closeted alt-right" by any means.) Some of those people are a bit strident right now. But there are a bunch of people who lean left who are pretty bitter, too. And I think that the only thing that changed was that we had an election. Those people who lean right, leaned right before the election. They didn't just come here in the past week to triumphantly throw their weight around. newswriter99: According to your definition. I don't think that's the right definition, though. Wikipedia's definition seems pretty accurate: "The alt-right is a loose group of people with far right ideologies who reject mainstream conservatism in the United States." That's why they're "alt" - they reject the normal, mainstream right. So not everyone who voted Republican is alt-right. Trump, however, is certainly not a candidate who embraced normal conservatism, so it might be fair to call him an alt-right candidate.

hkmurakami 10y ago

When a country's economy falters, the first reaction is usually nationalism, whether it be through state directed propaganda (e.g. China) or self directed by the maligned (e.g. US, Britain). Scapegoats feel good.

Diederich 10y ago

People are more afraid of more things than ever. Many of the fears are quite concrete and actionable, such as climate change displacement. My theory is that in an age of 'infinite communication' and 'infinite information', few people can keep a conscious and subconscious rational, risk appropriate outlook when bombarded with an endless array of not only bad news but also associated vivid imagery. Even though we as a species are safer than we ever have been, even though women are doing better than ever, even when the worst kinds of poverty are at historic lows, we're more afraid than ever. (Note: I'm not saying things are all peachy, and we have a long ways to go, but the historical trends are clear) Our evolutionary psychology is based on over-reaction to bad things, because that has been, for nearly all of our existence, a survival advantage. Now, though we try to look at things rationally, that evolutionary baggage is still there, making us afraid, on conscious and subconscious levels. That's one part of it. The other part is the more directed role technology plays. Social media wants as much of our attention as possible. That's a business model. I think they have discovered, via actual direction and/or via various machine learning sources, that our attention is maximized when we are formed into like-minded groups or tribes, and when those tribes are 'fighting' inside the social media lobster cage. I don't mean to say that there aren't 'villains and heroes', because there certainly are. But I do believe that most of this churn is straightforward, natural and even an inevitable result of the explosive increase in connectivity and communication capabilities. In short, technology is the main reason we're getting kind of crazy. And I have no good ideas about how to realistically bend the curve back toward less crazy.

h4nkoslo 10y ago

The present internationalist regime is a holdover from the Cold War. Institutions (social or political) like the EU or Buckleyite conservatism or the promotion of a trans-national, US educated elite itself (eg Barack Obama Sr) were explicitly founded & run with a mission of countering the USSR. With the collapse of the USSR & communism generally, these institutions no longer had a sensible mission and started spiraling into rent-seeking and self perpetuation without any sensible feedback being exerted on them, to the point where they began to feed on the populace.

vtange 10y ago

I have a feeling we're all trying to imitate China. For at least a decade now a dominant rhetoric has been, 'China spends all their time and effort focused on their own country, as opposed to being involved in human rights, foreign aid and foreign wars, and look at how much GDP growth they're getting! At the same time however, I feel that there has also been a 'push back' effect in terms between local and global culture. With every move we make trying to stitch together the world with a unified, global ideals system, the value of local culture and traditions gets magnified, especially among conservatives and nationalists. In a world under economic stress, it is easy for nationalists to win when all they have to do is point to China's growth story.

ismail 10y ago

What is the difference between populism and nationalism? Niall Fergusson seems to think that it is populism we are facing around the world specifically in the northern hemisphere. The experiment seems to have failed in other countries. https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/02/28/having-populist-moment/zjlU4sGIT7NMieozkmnfbO/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/02/28/having-populi...

krzyk 10y ago
You could ask similar question: what is the difference between socialism and populism? All extremes are bad.

tdkl 10y ago

Lying about "fake news" after the loss by media doesn't help either : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyS3Ghevf2I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyS3Ghevf2I

pipio21 10y ago

"Napoleon’s Grande Armée marched not just for the glory of France but for liberty, equality and fraternity." Ohh, man, I can't withstand "The economist" anymore. The non sense propaganda is growing and growing as they feel their Keynesian power threatened . Napoleon destroyed my native country, Spain and half of Europe because of just one thing, personal glory. Napoleon was a sociopathic ambitious man who claimed to be against Monarchy but declared himself Emperor and his son and family as Throne's heirs. There is always good words with any invasion. Liberty, equality and fraternity are destroyed when you have to use blood, extortion and humiliation in order to impose them. In Spain there were people that followed those values, in peace, the "afrancesados", but most of them revolted against France when the invasion happened. French people consider Napoleon a hero, like Lincoln or Washington in the USA or Bolivar in Venezuela, I understand it, every country has their heroes but the Economist?. The Economist have been going to big contortions in their arguments in order to defend the Keynesianism order. For example Hillary earning a quarter million dollars for a single speech from the same people that later benefits from her politics was totally normal because scientific Nobel prices could win 50.000 after having changed the world in something. Now reading the article I don't know how to start, it colvolves and cortorts again the arguments in order to portray as lunatics anyone against the Soros worldview. I travel around the world around and I see different cultures, what the Economist interest represent is creating a single world country with a single currency, with a single elite in charge. But people want to preserve their culture and their interests and it is totally ok and good for the world. In the past we had competition in policies, we could see West Germany with an economic system and East Germany with another and we could compare. Now this people want nobody to be able to compare, they want all the world banning cash, all the world with negative interest rates, all the world printing money like crazy, Corporations having more power that States. And they don't want competition, because if someone else follows other policies, it could prove their system not being so good as they claim it to be.

drinchev 10y ago

Really nice article. Last week I was at Websummit in Lisbon. Right after Trump won the election, there was a lot of noise about it and almost every talk included some comments about where the world is going to. Sadly one of the talks was about AI and robots, which included a demo of a robot, that was promised to "Replace people in child-care, public service, restaurants, etc.". Boy, I was so shocked when they said that. The only way that you can fix this statement is with the follow up : "Once we have the basic income, technology won't be so unfair".