EUROPE’S POPULIST REVOLT  … Donald Trump met with his first foreign ally just a few days after winning the U.S. presidency. But it wasn’t one of the world’s leading statesmen who got the invitation to Trump Tower. It was Nigel Farage, a man once considered a footnote in British politics—but who, in 2016, found himself on the snug inside of one of history’s hairpin turns. –TIME, person of the year

The “populism vs. globalism” meme that we analyzed back in midsummer (you read it here first) is swiftly becoming the most important propaganda initiative active today. It might spell Mr. Trump’s doom as a leader unless he counteracts it effectively.

The meme is everywhere now, just as we suspected (and wrote) that it would be. We can see how important it is in the naming of Trump as TIME “Person of the Year.” Populism is featured throughout this issue of the magazine and is the defining description of Trump himself.

But here is a disturbing thought: The bottom line is that globalism must eventually win out if internationalism is to continue to expand.

This means that populism – and Mr. Trump – must lose in the long-term. There is seemingly no doubt (whether he knows it or not) that new president is embroiled in a unfathomably vast propaganda campaign.

More:

Given how fast the [globalist] dominoes are falling … that world might soon be upon us, for better or worse. Italy’s populist parties helped swing a referendum result on Dec. 4 that forced Prime Minister Matteo Renzi to resign.

The Netherlands and France have crucial elections scheduled next year, and front runners in those countries are tapping the same veins of anger at the establishment that fueled the rebellions of 2016.

Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Front in France, has chosen a blue rose as the logo for her presidential campaign, a symbol, she says, of the freak events that now seem almost natural. “I think the British, with the Brexit, then the Americans, with the election of Donald Trump, did that,” she tells TIME. “They made possible the impossible.”

The idea that TIME is preaching is that we must accept the validity of populism and its victories. But in fact TIME is dissembling. Modern history in our view is “directed” … not left to chance.

In fact, the sweep of modern history is globalist, with every major event inevitably ending up reinforcing a gradual internationalism.

After the disaster of World War One you had the formation of the League of Nations. After World War Two you had the creation of the entire globalist infrastructure including the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the United Nations. The BIS was updated as well.

But with the advent of the Internet, globalism has come under sustained attack. Alternative media has created a virtual alternative culture based on Jeffersonian rural agrarianism, free-market – Austrian – economics and the general idea that competitive markets must decide prices and build prosperity rather than the technocracy of massive corporations, governments and armies.

This kind of libertarian culture is anathema to globalists. They have fought hard to degrade and then eradicate it. Until the advent of the Internet, they were well on their way. More recently, the ‘Net and the information that has emerged from it has radically reshaped people’s views and given them a new and hopeful vision.

This doesn’t mean that globalists are going to surrender their internationalist goals however. They never do. In fact, if one studies modern events from the standpoint of directed history it soon becomes apparent that most major sociopolitical and economic trends emerge from groups and individuals associated with globalism.

Within this context it remains difficult to believe that Brexit, Trump and now Renzi are merely part of an aberrant reassertion of nationalist determination. It seems rather more likely they are in a sense part of an enormous realignment of elite manipulations.

It could be as simple as the elite perception that a populist revolt is inevitable and that it is better to manage it than not. If one adopts this (reasonable, to us) perspective then a lot of additional counter-globalist trends begin to align themselves in predictable ways.

Trump is obviously one of  the elements at the center of this manipulation. He is being cast as a “populist” (and nationalist) even though he doesn’t directly use that terminology on a regular basis. Nonetheless, the controlled media defines him this way.

In the past weeks and months, we have seen additions and elaborations to the populist meme. A big wrinkle is the idea that Russia and Putin on the “populist” side of this meme. And portions of the alternative media stand accused of promoting Russian interests within this larger context.

And most recently, here, the Washington Post reported that the CIA had stated that the Russians (presumably with alternative media connivance) had indeed intended to help Trump win the presidential race.

In this way we have a polarization of individuals and facilities. On the one hand you have Trump, the alternative media and Russia. On the other you have Hillary, the mainstream media and NATO.

We expect this polarization  to continue and expand. It not occurring by happenstance in our view but on purpose. The ultimate result, sooner or later, will likely be one or more false flags (or economic disasters) that gradually or swiftly degrade the credibility and usefulness of populism in the eyes of the general public.

What is being set up is a vast, polarized construct, a dialectic that can be manipulated at will and one that could eventually result in the emergence of the wisdom of globalism as the preferred approach to prosperity and world peace. Directed history will make it seem so.

Conclusion: Maybe we’re wrong, of course. This is a “conspiratorial” analysis of recent history, after all. However, it fits with what we understand of the way events have operated for at least the past several centuries. If so, Trump will have to fight hard to break out of dialectic paradigm in which he’s being placed.