Populism on the March Why the West Is in Trouble … Trump is part of a broad populist upsurge running through the Western world. It can be seen in countries of widely varying circumstances, from prosperous Sweden to crisis-ridden Greece. In most, populism remains an opposition movement, although one that is growing in strength; in others, such as Hungary, it is now the reigning ideology. But almost everywhere, populism has captured the public’s attention.  What is populism? It means different things to different groups, but all versions share a suspicion of and hostility toward elites, mainstream politics, and established institutions.  -Foreign Affairs

The “populism versus globalism” meme is gradually yielding the predictable result:  “Enlightened” government needs to take an active role in alleviating the “frustration” felt by those attracted to “populism.”

The next phase of this meme can be seen, among other places, in this extensive article in Foreign Affairs magazine entitled, “Populism on the March.”

Foreign Affairs is the mouthpiece publication for the the Council on Foreign Relations that provides globalist instructions and legislation for industrial and political leadership.

Since DB’s focus is on elite memes,  we follow the larger one on a regular basis and have predicted that “populism vs. globalism” constitutes serious propaganda. It may even rise to the level of “global warming” aka “climate change.”

Elite memes are not necessarily false in their entirety but they are at least partially fake. Populism, for instance, in both Europe and America, has more to do with cultural self-protection than the mindless “me first” approach the nomenclature suggests.

Populism is really an outgrowth of greater awareness of how elites have targeted middle classes in order to destroy them  as part of globalism’s implantation.

Elite, mainstream media won’t explain the reality of what’s going on. Instead, the mainstream takes the rightful anger created by elite targeting and characterizes it as a political movement.

Additionally, the explanation for this anger is that certain segments of Western populations are being “left out” of rising world-wide prosperity.

More:

Immigration is the final frontier of globalization. It is the most intrusive and disruptive because as a result of it, people are dealing not with objects or abstractions; instead, they come face-to-face with other human beings, ones who look, sound, and feel different.

And this can give rise to fear, racism, and xenophobia. But not all the reaction is noxious. It must be recognized that the pace of change can move too fast for society to digest.

The ideas of disruption and creative destruction have been celebrated so much that it is easy to forget that they look very different to the people being disrupted.

Western societies will have to focus directly on the dangers of too rapid cultural change. That might involve some limits on the rate of immigration and on the kinds of immigrants who are permitted to enter.

It should involve much greater efforts and resources devoted to integration and assimilation, as well as better safety nets. Most Western countries need much stronger retraining programs for displaced workers, ones more on the scale of the GI Bill: easily available to all, with government, the private sector, and educational institutions all participating.

We can see here a tired litany of government responses to the initial false premise. So-called middle classes in the US barely have $1,000 in savings and perhaps $100,000 or more in debt. The same forces that have virtually bankrupted Western middle classes are now somehow supposed to rectify the ruin.

The article even states that in addition to government activism, an effort must be made to “highlight realities of immigration so that the public is dealing with facts and not phobias.”

How is this to be done? Via”enlightened leadership … that “appeals to their better angels.  Eventually, we will cross this frontier as well.”

We’ve already called “populism versus globalism” a “textbook meme” and indicated that it provides ample opportunity for the kind of directed history that we can see suggested in this article.

The next step will surely involve legislation to implement these suggestions. We are already seeing this with “extremists” as reported by The Washington Post:

The White House announced a plan Wednesday to help prevent Americans from falling prey to violent ideologies of the sort that drove mass killings in New York, San Bernardino, Calif., Chattanooga, Tenn., and Orlando in the past year. The effort … seeks to mobilize teams of teachers, mental health professionals and community leaders to deal with a problem that offers few easy solutions.

Conclusion: The “populism versus globalism” meme has a long way to travel but implemented fully it has a chance to broadly affect a variety of Western institutions and behaviors. It provides justification for a broad array of authoritarian intrusions and justifies this action on numerous levels.