by Edward Ring
Less than a week ago, a lone assassin’s bullet came within inches of killing Donald Trump. If it had, the unrest and polarization we’re already experiencing in America would have gotten much worse. There will be plenty of theories and explanations about how this close call will affect the election, inspire more violence, or spur calls for unity and tranquil. But what is it about Trump that has made him the target of relentless and unified slander, and worse, from every established American institution for nearly a decade?
Trump represents a movement. It is bigger than him and bigger than MAGA. Trump and MAGA have their counterparts all over the world, especially in Europe. The people in these movements have at least two common grievances: they do not want their national cultures destroyed, and they do not want their standard of living destroyed. And in every country where these movements have arisen, that is exactly what is happening, and it is happening swift.
In response to these legitimate concerns, expressed by people who can no longer afford homes, who can no longer survive running a petite business, and who no longer feel safe and sound or welcome in their own countries, the established media—everywhere—has labeled them “far right.” It’s tempting to digress and point to the political buffoons, from Canada to Ireland and dozens of other national arenas, who repeat the approved insults. But we hear them all. The bottom line: we’re too white, and the oceans will boil. If you oppose them, you’re a racist and a “denier.”
But why is this happening? Why have Western countries only since 2000 accepted tens of millions of immigrants from the most desperate places on Earth? This is not about easing population pressures in these countries. In 2000, Africa’s total population was 820 million. Today it is 1.5 billionBy 2050, in just over two decades, Africa’s population is expected to escalate to 2.5 billionShould we invite a billion Africans to settle in Europe? Or maybe there’s room in Ohio.
Again, it’s tempting to be fooled by tales of “diversity” gone wrong. But that shouldn’t surprise anyone. The European left, like its American counterpart, is doing everything it can to discourage assimilation. Bring in millions of people who have nothing in common with the hereditary population, then teach them that they are victims of racism while allowing them to overwhelm taxpayer-funded public services, and voilà, there’s tension.
But to get to the heart of the matter, it is clear that mass migration from the regions of the world where population is exploding to the developed Western world will not lend a hand the nations from which these immigrants come. There are simply too many of them. It is not impressive. So this migration must be in the interests of the European nations. Is that it?
It’s not just mass migration that’s disrupting things in Western countries; it’s also environmental edicts in the name of fighting climate change. These regulations, which apply to most Western countries but are strangely diminished, if not non-existent elsewhere, have been with us for decades. In recent years, catalyzed by the supposed climate crisis, they have expanded to encompass every aspect of our lives. And once again, we must resist the temptation to list countless examples of environmental policies leading to shortages and high prices and, with an irony that has become passé, environmental destruction. Offshore wind farms and the cradle-to-cradle impact of electric vehicles come immediately to mind.
The shared consequences of mass migration and extreme environmentalism need to be discussed. In both cases, the middle class in Western countries is being hurt economically, aspirational low-income communities are being denied opportunities for upward mobility, more and more people are becoming more dependent on government, and the richest people and the largest corporations are seeing their power and wealth grow. Last week I tried to explain these forces in more detail, taking California as an example. But it is everywhere, and it is the most powerful coalition of corrupt interest groups that the populations of up-to-date Western nations have ever faced.
Resistance to this upward/downward (mostly upward) transfer of middle-class wealth can now be labeled racist and anti-ecological by the establishment, and therefore stigmatized as selfish and immoral, and of course “far-right.” As this resistance grows, it threatens the agenda. That is why Trump, Orban, Wilders, Meloni, Le Pen, and dozens of other emerging leaders are either ruthlessly stigmatized, legally challenged, politically outwitted, co-opted, or assassinated.
The establishment’s most outrageous and highly effective tactic has been to mobilize the political left to be their foot soldiers. Once again, the process is rife with irony. The consequences of government policies that harm the impoverished and benefit the wealthy 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 gasp of a racist and privileged white middle class sucking the life out of a depleted planet. Their solution? Redistribution.
While many left-wing 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 found in neoliberal free trade, although that would define the economic worldview of many Never Trump supporters, if any of them ever really thought about it. These two ideological polarities are, in practice, two sides of the same coin: both facilitate the centralization of power and property. It’s a pragmatic ideology of importing migrants, fomenting the climate crisis, and preventing “far-right” (at all costs) Western elites from ruling the world. For them, ideology is just window dressing.
And so it is, as President Biden says when he has the presence of mind to shout these lies, that “Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans pose a threat to the very soul of this country.” And from Ottawa to Dublin, the same fully owned political puppets are using the same playbook.
If “far-right” populism is to have any chance of preventing elites and their leftist foot soldiers from achieving absolute victory, a number of things need to happen. They need to recognize and curtail the abuses of these pernicious varieties of capitalism—casino capitalism, globalist capitalism, crony capitalism, monopoly capitalism—while maintaining an absolute commitment to competitive, decentralized capitalism as the only way to protect private property, social mobility, and economic freedom. They need to recognize the value of ecology while rejecting the corrupt abuses promoted by the climate lobby and powerful economic and political interests. It is a arduous balance. And they need to work with nationalist movements in developing countries that are not helped by emigration and are, if anything, even more likely to be victims of extreme environmental constraints, while avoiding supporting corrupt elites in those countries.
None of this is effortless, but in the meantime, there is another elephant in the room. Demographic implosion. Women in developed countries are not having children at anywhere near replacement rates.
Short of flooding city after city with foreigners who have no intention of ever assimilating, there are solutions. Maintaining productivity in an aging society by automating industry. That will happen anyway, and in some Asian countries it is already the de facto strategy. Or, perhaps more life-affirmingly, stopping the environmental extremism that has made everything rare and exorbitant. Reducing excess demand by stopping mass immigration, and then increasing supply by allowing homebuilders, miners, loggers, farmers, ranchers, and manufacturers to work again without crippling constraints on their efforts. Lowering the cost of living so that people can afford to buy homes and raise families.
This solution still may not work. We have not yet fully come to terms with the impact that the knowledge economy, combined with widespread birth control, has had on the decisions women make in their lives. If people could afford to have families, would women choose to do so? Would they still prefer careers? And despite the deliberate devaluation of masculinity over the past few decades, with women earning more than their potential partners, does that make them less attracted to these men as potential fathers? There is evidence to support this theory.
Perhaps only communities closely bound together by faith or tribal roots can overcome the 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 getting in their way,” that’s what he’s referring to. Whether you love Trump or hate him, it’s a good time to reflect on the forces at work in America and the West today. It’s complicated, and conventional labels and paradigms no longer apply.
– – –
Edward Ring is the author of American Greatness.
Photo “President Donald Trump” by Gage Skidmore CC BY-SA 2.0.
