Less than a week ago, a lone assassin’s bullet came within millimeters of killing Donald Trump. Had it succeeded, the unrest and polarization we already endure in America would have gotten significantly worse. There will be endless theories and explanations about how this near miss will affect the election, inspire more violence, or stimulate calls for unity and calm. But what is it about Trump that has made him a target of relentless and unified defamation, or worse, from every established American institution for nearly a decade?
Trump represents a movement. It is bigger than him, and it is bigger than MAGA. Trump and MAGA have counterparts all over the world, especially in Europe. The people in these movements all share at least two common grievances: they don’t want their national cultures destroyed, and they don’t want their standard of living destroyed. And in every country where these movements have arisen, that is exactly what is happening, and it’s happening fast.
In response to these reasonable concerns, voiced by people who can no longer afford homes, can no longer survive operating a small business, and no longer feel safe or welcome in their own countries, the established media—everywhere—refers to them as “far right.” It is tempting to digress and identify the political clowns, from Canada to Ireland and on dozens of other national stages, who regurgitate the approved disparagements. But we hear them all. To summarize: We’re too white, and the oceans are going to boil. If you object, you’re a racist and a “denier.”
But why is this happening? Why have western nations, just since 2000, admitted tens of millions of immigrants from some of the most desperate places on earth? It’s not to relieve population pressures in those nations. In 2000, the total population of Africa was 820 million. Today, it is 1.5 billion. By 2050, barely more than two decades from now, Africa’s population is projected to increase to 2.5 billion. Shall we invite a billion Africans to resettle in Europe? Or maybe there’s room in Ohio.
Again, it is tempting to be sidetracked by tales of “diversity” gone awry. But it shouldn’t surprise anyone. The European Left, just like its American counterpart, is doing everything it can to discourage assimilation. Bring in millions of people who have nothing in common with the legacy population, then teach them they are victims of racism while allowing them to overwhelm taxpayer-supported public services, and voila, there is tension.
To stick to the point, however, it is clear that mass migration from regions of the world where the population is exploding into developed westernized nations will do nothing to help the nations where these immigrants are coming from. There are simply too many of them. It doesn’t make a dent. So this migration must be in the interests of the European nations. Is that it?
It isn’t just mass migration that is disrupting western nations; it is also environmental edicts in the name of fighting climate change. These regulations, affecting most western nations but curiously diminished, if not nonexistent everywhere else, have been with us for decades. In recent years, catalyzed by the alleged climate crisis, they have expanded to reach into every aspect of our lives. And yet again, we must resist the temptation to enumerate the countless examples of environmentalist policies leading to shortages and high prices and, with irony that has by now become passé: environmental destruction. Offshore wind farms and the “cradle-to-cradle” impact of EVs come immediately to mind.
What bears discussion are the shared consequences of mass migration and extreme environmentalism. In both cases, the middle class of western nations is economically harmed, the aspiring low-income communities have their upward mobility taken away, more people become more dependent on the government, and the wealthiest people and the biggest corporations see their power and wealth increase. Last week, I attempted to explain these forces in more detail, using California as an example. But it’s everywhere, and it is the most powerful coalition of corrupt special interests the populations of modern western nations have ever faced.
Resistance to this upward/downward transfer of middle class wealth (mostly upward) can now be tagged by the establishment as racist and anti-environment, and hence stigmatized as selfish and immoral, and, of course, “far right.” To the extent this resistance has grown, it constitutes a threat to the agenda. This is why Trump, Orban, Wilders, Meloni, Le Pen, and dozens of other emerging leaders are either being relentlessly stigmatized, subjected to lawfare, politically outmaneuvered, co-opted, or killed.
The most outrageous, and very effective, tactic of the establishment has been to mobilize the political left to be their foot soldiers. Once again, this process is thick with irony. The consequences of government policies that harm the poor and benefit the rich are precisely the result of the machinations of those oligarchs and corporate globalists that the left traditionally despises. But the economic dead-end that everyone in the West now faces has been sold to the left as the last gasps of a racist and privileged white middle class sucking the life out of an exhausted planet. Their solution? Redistribution.
Although many leftist activists are naïve enough to think that Marxist redistribution is our solution, that’s not what they’re going to get. Nor is our solution to be found in neoliberal free trade, even though that would define the economic world view of many Never Trumpers, to the extent any of them have ever really thought about it. These two ideological polarities, in actual practice, are two sides of the same coin: they both facilitate the centralization of power and ownership. That’s the pragmatic ideology of the migrant-importing, climate crisis-mongering, stop the “far right” (at any cost) western elites who want to rule the world. For them, ideology is window dressing.
And so it is, as President Biden puts it when he’s lucid enough to spout these lies, that “Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans are a threat to the very soul of this country.” And from Ottawa to Dublin, the same wholly owned political puppets use the same playbook.
If “far right” populism is to have any chance to stop the established elites and their leftist foot soldiers from achieving absolute victory, there are a lot of things that have to happen. They have to recognize the meaning and curb the excesses of these pernicious variants of capitalism—casino capitalism, globalist capitalism, crony capitalism, monopoly capitalism—without losing an absolute commitment to competitive, decentralized capitalism as the only way to protect private property, upward mobility, and economic freedom. They have to recognize the value of environmentalism while throwing away the corrupt excesses being pushed by the climate lobby and powerful economic and political special interests. That’s a hard balance. And they have to make common cause with nationalist movements in developing nations that are not helped by outmigration and are, if anything, even more victimized by extreme environmental restrictions, while avoiding supporting the corrupt elites in those nations.
None of this is easy, but meanwhile, there is one more elephant in the room. Demographic implosion. Women in developed nations are not having children at anywhere near replacement rates.
Apart from flooding city after city with foreigners who have no intention of ever assimilating, there are solutions. Retain productivity in an aging society by automating industry. That’s going to happen anyway, and in some Asian nations, it is already the de facto strategy. Or, perhaps more life-affirmingly, stop the environmentalist extremism that has made everything scarce and expensive. Reduce excessive demand by stopping mass immigration, then increase supply by letting home builders, miners, loggers, farmers, ranchers, and manufacturers all work again without crippling restrictions on their efforts. Lower the cost of living so people can afford to purchase homes and start families.
This solution still might not work. We haven’t fully come to terms with the impact that a knowledge economy combined with universally available birth control has had on the decisions women make in their lives. If people could more easily afford to start families, would women choose to do so? Or would they still prefer their careers? And notwithstanding the intentional devaluation of masculinity over the last few decades, when women make more money than their potential male partners, does this make them less attracted to those men as potential fathers? There’s evidence to support that theory.
It is possible that only communities bound tightly together through faith or tribal roots can overcome these many obstacles to sufficient fertility. Which perhaps explains why Christianity itself has been identified, along with MAGA, as a “threat to democracy.”
When Trump says, “They’re not coming for me, they’re coming for you, and I’m just in the way,” this is what he’s referring to. Whether you love Trump or hate him, now is a good moment to reflect on what forces are at work in America and the West today. It’s complicated, and traditional labels and paradigms no longer apply.
