Piketty Analysis Of Trumpism – Inequality & Populist Nativists Versus High Education Globalists

thomaspikettysep2019

Economist Thomas Piketty has analyzed the rise of inequality-driven Trumpist  populism and increasing support by ignorant and xenophobic  poor people for the Right that serves the interests of the wealthy and opposes the Left that is paradoxically increasingly supported by high education and high income voters. Piketty’s “Brahmin Left versus the Merchant Right” analysis deals with France, the US and the UK but is relevant to Trumpist Brazil, Eastern Europe, Australia and BJP-ruled  India .

The full title of Professor Piketty’s cogent numerical analysis is ”Brahmin Left versus the Merchant Right: rising inequality & the changing  structure of political conflict  (evidence from France, Britain and the US, 1948-2017)” [1]. Piketty’s analysis  includes numerous Figures that provide the evidential basis for his analytical propositions. Thomas Piketty is famous for his similarly evidence-based book “Capitalism in the Twenty First Century” that provided detailed quantitative data about the rise of massive inequalities of  wealth and income in the world (especially in Europe and the Anglosphere) under a dominant  neoliberal economic order  [2, 3].

In “Capitalism in the Twenty First Century” Piketty argues that massive inequality is bad for economics (the poor cannot buy the good and services they produce) and bad for democracy ( Big Money buys public perception of reality and hence votes).  Piketty’s solutions involve global transparency about wealth accumulation, and annual wealth taxes to enable movement towards closing the gap between ordinary  Humanity and the One Percenters who now own half the wealth of the world [4, 5]. Thus according to Oxfam “[Its] report, Working for the Few, shows that the wealth of the world is divided in two: almost half going to the richest one per cent; the other half to the remaining 99 per cent” [4, 5].  Indeed France already  has an annual wealth tax rising to 1%,  and Islam has had an annual  wealth tax of 2.5% (zakat) for 1,400 years [6].

Poverty kills and about 15 million people die avoidably from deprivation each year on Spaceship Earth with One Percenters in charge of the flight deck [7]. It can be estimated that this Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust (1,500 million such deaths since 1950) could be halted through proper application of a 4% annual wealth tax that would bring all countries up to the per capita GDP of China and Cuba, countries that are poor (relative to European countries) but for which annual avoidable mortality from deprivation is zero (0) [8].

However, things are set to get far, far worse. Thus several recent reports collectively endorsed by thousands of expert scientists have warned that time is running out to save Humanity and the Biosphere from further catastrophic climate change and further massive biodiversity loss. Massive harm has already occurred due to continuing carbon pollution, population growth and economic growth and it is clear that zero growth in these areas is insufficient  – there must be negative carbon pollution (atmospheric CO2 draw-down to about 300 ppm CO2 from the present disastrous 410 ppm CO2 ), negative population growth (a 50% population decline) and negative economic growth (a 50% economic degrowth with the First World bearing most of the burden) to halt and reverse this worsening disaster [9]. Unless requisite action is taken the world faces a worsening  Climate Genocide in which 10 billion will perish en route to a sustainable human population of merely 0.5-1.0 billion in 2100 [10- 13].

“Requisite action” has been succinctly summarized by Professor Stephen Hawking of 90-Nobel-Laureate University of Cambridge thus (2007, 2018):  “We see great peril if governments and societies do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change” [14, 15]. A 2010 Open Letter by 255 members of the prestigious US National Academy of Sciences, including11 Nobel Laureates, concluded: “Delay is not an option” [16] . The March 2009 Copenhagen Scientific Climate Change Conference concluded that “Inaction is inexcusable” [17, 18]. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently proposed  a $75 per tonne CO2 Carbon Tax as the most efficient way of tackling the worsening Climate Emergency and estimated that if all G20 countries brought  in a $75 per tonne CO2 Carbon Tax by 2030  then  they would save what amounts to  4 million lives from air pollution death over the next 11 years [19]. Trumpist  and leading climate criminal G20 member Australia quickly said “No!”  and as far as I know no G20 countries have said yes – inaction that if sustained would amount to passive mass murder of 4 million people over the coming decade, not to mention scores of millions of  deaths from a worsening Climate Genocide  [20].

The worsening Climate Emergency means that there must be greatly increased sharing of resources that are increasingly scarce from a sustainability perspective. Rational risk assessment by science-informed  Ninety Nine  Percenters would lead to rapid “requisite action” . However  One Percenter domination of Mainstream media means that a significant proportion  of the Ninety Nine  Percenters have been convinced to paradoxically  support an irrational Trumpist position,  reject their own interests and support the egregiously greedy  short-termism of the super-wealthy One Percenters.  Thomas Piketty’s  ”Brahmin Left versus the Merchant Right” provides hard data and hard analysis of this proletarian flight from reason and the rise of Trumpism.  I describe the irrational, anti-science and xenophobic populism of Trumpism  as Stupidity, Ignorance and  Egregious Greed (SIEG as in Dr Strangelove and “Sieg Heil!”).

Piketty summarizes his lengthy, 180 page analysis thus: “Using post-electoral surveys from France, Britain and the US, this paper documents a striking long-run evolution in the structure of political cleavages. In the 1950s-1960s, the vote for left-wing (socialist-labour-democratic) parties was associated with lower education and lower income voters. It has gradually become associated with higher education voters, giving rise to a “multiple-elite” party system in the 2000s-2010s: high-education elites now vote for the “left”, while high-income/high-wealth elites still vote for the “right” (though less and less so). I argue that this can contribute to explain rising inequality and the lack of democratic response to it, as well as the rise of “populism”. I also discuss the origins of this evolution (rise of globalization/migration cleavage, and/or educational expansion per se) as well as future prospects: “multiple-elite” stabilization; complete realignment of the party system along a “globalists” (high-education, high-income) vs “nativists” (low-education, low-income) cleavage; return to class-based redistributive conflict (either from an internationalist or nativist perspective). Two main lessons emerge. First, with multi-dimensional inequality, multiple political equilibria and bifurcations can occur. Next, without a strong egalitarian-internationalist platform, it is difficult to unite low-education, low-income voters from all origins within the same party” [1].

Professor Thomas Piketty successively analyses this Educated Left versus Rich Right dichotomy and  the Trumpist transition  in France, the US and Britain as outlined below.   

Section 1.  Introduction.

In his Introduction Piketty observes that “Income inequality has increased substantially in most world regions since the 1980s, albeit at different speeds…  This process of rising inequality came after a relatively egalitarian period between 1950 and 1980, which itself followed a long sequence of dramatic events – wars, depressions, revolutions – during the first half of the 20th century… Given the recent evolution, one might have expected to observe rising political demand for redistribution, e.g. due to some simple median-voter logic. However so far we seem to be observing for the most part the rise of various forms of xenophobic “populism” and identity-based politics (Trump, Brexit, Le Pen/FN, Modi/BJP, AfD, etc.), rather than the return of class-based (income-based or wealth-based) politics” (page 2  [1]).

Trump dissects out this new divide: “Since the 1970s-1980s, “left-wing” vote has gradually become associated with higher education voters, giving rise to what I propose to label a “multiple-elite” party system in the 2000s-2010s: high-education elites now vote for the “left”, while high-income/high-wealth elites still vote for the “right” (though less and less so). I.e. the “left” has become the party of the intellectual elite (Brahmin left), while the “right” can be viewed as the party of the business elite (Merchant right)… I show that the same transformation happened in France, the US and Britain… despite the many differences in party systems and political histories between these three countries. I argue that this structural evolution can contribute to explain rising inequality and the lack of democratic response to it, as well as the rise of “populism” (as low education, low income voters might feel abandoned)” (page 3 [1]).

Comments. My own country, Australia, has an excellent,  compulsory, preferential voting system for the House of Representatives in which if a candidate does not receive 50% of the vote then second preferences of other parties are taken into account.. In an unexpected result in May 2019 the Rightist  Liberal Party-National Party Coalition was returned   to  power  with 52% of the “two-party preferred vote” to whit 41.4 % of the primary vote plus most second preferences  from the racist, bigoted and populist One Nation Party   (3.1%) and the populist United Australian Party of a mining billionaire Clive Palmer (3.4%),  with the remainder from preferences from other parties. The ostensibly “Left” Labor received  48% of the “two-party preferred vote”, to whit 33.3% of the primary vote plus most second preferences from the pro-environment and pro-human rights Greens (10.4%), with the remainder from preferences from other parties [21]. Progressive Australians were devastated by the election result but the awful reality was that thanks to oligopoly Mainstream media and $60 million in campaign advertising from a billionaire,  a bare majority of   Coalition MPs  were returned with the preferences of the populist minor parties playing a crucial role. Most Labor MPs were elected due to the preferences of the educated and altruistic Greens. Consonant with Piketty’s analysis, while Labor was traditionally the Left party for workers, in 2019 many of the Labor and Greens supporters were “high education and high income” professionals. Conversely, the rich-supported and rich-supporting Right Coalition was crucially supported by “low education and low income” proletarians to achieve  a victory for  Stupidity, Ignorance and  Egregious Greed (SIEG).

Section 2. France.

Piketty analyses the peculiarities of the  French political system and delineates the major changes that have occurred over the last  half a century ago: “The general conclusion is clear: we have gradually moved from a class-based party system to what I propose to label a “multiple-elite” party system. Back in the 1950s-1960s, the party system was defined along class lines: the vote for left-wing parties was associated to both low-education and low-income voters, while the vote for right-wing parties was associated to both high-education and high-income voters. The left vote has gradually been associated with higher education voters, and in the 2000s-2010s we have a system where high-education voters support the “left” while high-income support the “right”” (page 22 [1]). Piketty further observes that the socially-conservative  practising Catholics (who tend to vote Right) have declined, and that the Muslims are generally socially conservative but vote for the Left because they are poor and hated by the far Right. Piketty concludes “The interesting point, however, is that the pro-migrants/anti-migrants halves and the pro-poor/pro-rich halves are almost entirely uncorrelated, in the sense that by combining these two questions we obtain four quarters of comparable size, particularly in 2012-2017… The four quarters can be labelled as Internationalists-Egalitarians (pro-migrants, pro-poor); Internationalists-Inegalitarians (pro-migrants, pro-rich); Nativists-Inegalitarians (anti-migrants, pro-rich); Nativists-Egalitarians (anti-migrants, pro-poor)” (pages 27- 28 [1]).

Comments. The French, while exhibiting the global populist trend, have not descended to the crude depths of Trump America, thereby enhancing their national reputation for being a nation of thinkers and intellectuals as opposed to the more prosaic pursuits of the English being a “nation of grocers” and of the Americans being  committed to “making a buck” and ”getting ahead”.

Section 3.  United States.

Piketty comments: “The US party system is the best existing example of a two-party system (Democrats vs Republicans). As such, it is much simpler than the French party system, and also much simpler than most party systems observed in Europe (including in Britain) and around the world. Although it is formally simple, the US party system is nevertheless relatively exotic and mysterious for many outside observers in Europe and elsewhere: how is it that the Democrats, which were the pro-slavery party in the 19th century, gradually became the New-Deal party and the “progressives” party over the course of the 20th century?” (page 29 [1]).

Piketty concludes a detailed  analysis of trends by commenting  that “Back in the 1940s-1960s, the US party system could be characterized as a class-based system, in the sense that low education and low income voters supported the same party (the Democrats), while high education and high income voters supported the other party (the Republicans). The US have gradually moved toward a “multiple-elite” party system, whereby the high-education elite votes for Democrats and the high-income elite votes for the Republicans. In the same as way for France, it is unclear at this stage whether this “multiple-elite” party system will persist, or whether it will gradually evolve toward a complete realignment of the party system along “globalists” (high education, high income) vs “nativists” (low education, low income) lines” (page 36 [1]).

Piketty considers the voting trends of Whites, women, African Americans and Latinos in a US that has a massively entrenched  culture (outside the intellectual elite) of racism and sexism. Piketty offers the interesting  statistics that “From 1964 onwards Black voters have always given overwhelming majorities (80-95%) to Democratic candidates, and that this has become one of the most structuring (if not the most structuring) characteristics of the structure of US political conflict. In contrast, Whites have never given a majority to a Democratic candidate since 1964 (i.e. with a whites-only voting system based on popular vote all Presidents would have been Republicans”  (page 38 [1]) and that “The Latinos and other non-Black minority voters have always given a strong majority to Democratic candidates: between 55% and 70% of the vote in all presidential elections between 1972 and 2016”  (pages 38-39 [1]). Women have been shifting over the decades from favouring Republicans  to favouring the Democrats. The young now tend to favour Democrats over Republicans.

Those with higher educational attainments are more  pro-Democrat on average: “Above high-school level, the relation between education and Democratic vote is strongly increasing: in particular, 70% of voters with Master degrees (11% of the electorate) supported the Democratic candidate, and 76% of voters with PhD degrees (2% of the electorate), vs 51% of voters with Bachelor degrees (19% of the electorate) and 44% of high-school graduates (59% of the electorate)” (page 33 [1]).

Comments. As illustrated by Thomas Piketty’s US statistics, the better educated and better informed largely support the more progressive side of politics (i.e. the Left). The Trump populist perversion in America well  illustrates the victory of the Stupid, Ignorant and Egregiously Greedy (SIEG) Trumpists over educated, informed and empathic Americans. Professor   Walter “Mac” Davis in his book “Death’s Dream Kingdom. The American Psyche since 9-11” describes how sensible humans attempt to understand themselves (through earnest, honest, and painful  introspection) and others (through empathic internalizing and analyzing of the suffering of others) – as compared to the psychotic,  “ideology-driven” simplicity of “compulsory happiness”, “endless demand”, “axiomatic rightness”, “certainty- and guarantee-demanding”, denial, avoidance of empathy and introspection, and  violent externalizing of inner fears by both the Religious Right and contemporary Capitalist America [22, 23].

Ideology and politics aside, a key difference between the Left and Right is commitment to science and truth by the Left. former. However  economist Piketty has ignored this fundamental divide in his academic desire to be a neutral and non-partisan observer: “The fact that social policies have been relatively segmented in the US (i.e. targeted toward specific groups) has arguably made it more difficult to develop a sense of common interest and to counteract racist perceptions and other prejudices. Next, even in the absence of any racial divide, one can find some other reasons and mechanisms (e.g. related to educational expansion per se) which might have contributed to the shift from “class-based” to “multiple-elite” party system” (page 40, [1]).

The truth of the matter is that decent humans as social animals  have honest and altruistic behaviours heavily influenced by genes (favourable mutations deriving from natural selection) and memes (societally selected ideas and behaviours)[24].  Thoughtful , empathic, altruistic and science-informed people reject neoliberalism that demands maximal freedom for the smart and advantaged to exploit the human and natural resources of the world for private profit, with an asserted trickle-down of benefit for the disadvantaged. Instead a science-based and hence innately truthful Left in its various manifestations seeks to sustainably maximize human happiness, opportunity and dignity for everyone through evolving international and intra-national social contracts [25-30]. The currently dominant neoliberalism  is a thoughtlessly greedy and dangerous ideology that has already brought Humanity and the Biosphere to the edge of disaster with the  worsening Climate Emergency, Climate Genocide and mass species extinction of the present Anthropocene Era [9-20].

The Right is profoundly  dishonest and well illustrates Polya’s Second Law of Economics that  mirrors the Second Law of Thermodynamics (entropy – disorder, chaos, lack of information – inevitably rises)  in stating that Deception about the Cost of Production strives to a maximum [31]. Thus our present carbon-based and neoliberal-dominated world economy overwhelmingly ignores the immense cost of greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution – according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) the world average Carbon Price is a mere $2 per tonne of CO2, whereas to save the planet the IMF argues for a Carbon Price of $75 per ton CO2 by 2030 [19, 20]. Indeed Dr Chris Hope of 90-Nobel-Laureate Cambridge University has estimated a damage-related Carbon Price of $200 per tonne CO2, 100 times greater than the present carbon-related Cost of Production in our present Carbon Economy [32].  Even the social conservatives  Pope Francis I and  Pope Benedict XVI  have clearly stated: “Yet only when the economic and social costs of using up shared environmental resources are recognized with transparency and fully borne by those who incur them, not by other peoples or future generations, can those [economic] actions be considered ethical”[33, 34] .

Just as Piketty politely avoids the truthfulness basis of the Left, so he also ignores Religious Right support for Trump in America (although  he does consider religion in relation to France and Britain).  Professor Richard Dawkins in his book “The God Delusion” quotes a survey published in the scientific journal Nature  that found that 93% of members of the US National Academy of Sciences surveyed  did not have a personal God [35]. In contrast, only 9% of Americans do not believe in God [36]. Jewish Israeli historian Professor Yuval Harari provides the following appalling statistics about anti-science American attitudes to the Darwinian theory of evolution: “According to a 2012 Gallup survey,  only 15 per cent of Americans think that Homo sapiens  evolved through natural selection alone, free of all divine intervention; 32 per cent maintain that humans may have evolved from earlier life forms in a process lasting millions of years, but God orchestrated this entire show; 46 per cent believe that God created humans in their current form sometime in the last 10,000 years, just as the Bible says. Spending three years in college has absolutely no impact on these views. The same survey found that among BA graduates, 46 per cent believe in the creation story, whereas only 14 per cent think that humans evolved without any divine supervision. Even among holders of MA and PhD degrees, 25 per cent believe the Bible, whereas only 29  per cent credit natural selection alone with the creation of our species” (page 119 [37]). The American Right may be good at “making a buck” and “getting ahead” but when it comes to science they are off with the fairies.

Great American journalist I.F. Stone (author of numerous books, including “The Hidden History of the Korean War, 1950-1951”) famously told journalism students: “Among all the things I’m going to tell you today about being a journalist, all you have to remember is two words: governments lie” [38-42]. Eminent American writer Gore Vidal went even further:“Unlike most Americans who lie all the time, I hate lying. And here I am surrounded with these hills [in Hollywood] full of liars — some very talented… Yeah, about themselves, about their beliefs, about their histories. Degrees, from universities — this is piled up lies… Americans are not interested in the truth about anything. They assume everybody is lying because they go out and lie everyday about the automobile they are trying to sell you…This is a country of hoax. P.T. Barnum is the god of this republic, which is no longer a republic alas. It is an oligarchy and a rather vicious one” [43]. The shift to the more truthful and more altruistic Left in America is surely connected with increasing university education, and increasing realization of government and corporate lying   [41, 42, 44, 45] , with the Internet enabling mass access to alternative perceptions of reality.

Section 4. Britain.

Re gender,  Piketty finds that “Regarding gender, I confirm previous findings according to which women have gradually turned from right to level during the past five to six decades…  The trends are the same in France and the US, and the levels are closer to France than then to the US: in the US, women used to be moderately right-wing (pro-Republicans) and over time they have turned strongly left-wing (pro-Democrats); while in both Britain and France, women used to be strongly right-wing and over time they have turned moderately left-wing”(page 43 [1]).

Re age, Piketty finds that: “Regarding age, I again find the same basic pattern as for France and the US: young voters generally tend to support the left substantially more than old voters, but the gap is highly volatile” (page 43 [1]).

Re  education and class, Piketty writes: “The British party system used to be even more “class-based” than the French and US systems: back in the 1950s-1960s, it was very rare for educated individuals to vote for Labour rather for the Conservative; and it took a very long time for the educated elite to shift vote from Conservative to Labour (as compared to France and the US); and when they finally shifted, they did so less massively than in France and the US. This is consistent with the ideological and political origins of the Labour vs Conservative divide in Britain, which are indeed more explicitly class-based (as the very name of the “labour” party indicates) than the cleavages which led to the development of the party systems in the other two countries (page 44 [1]).

Re religion, Piketty finds that  “The proportion of voters reporting “no religion” rose from 3% in 1964 to 48% in 2017 (even more than in France). Just like in France, the Christians vs no-religion divide is strongly associated to Conservatives vs Labour voting pattern (though the magnitude of the effect is somewhat smaller in Britain)… Even more strikingly, British Muslims have always voted massively for the Labour party, typically with scores around 80-95%, just like in France… The basic reason why Muslim and extra-European voters support so massively the Labour party in Britain throughout the 1979-2017 period is also the same as in France: voters with extra-European origins (and especially the Muslims) perceive a lot of hostility from the Conservatives, and more sympathy from the Labour party” (pages 47-49 [1]).

Comments. Britain is still a very class conscious country and this persists with Royalty providing  a significant dead-weight to frank public discussion.  A system of Educational Apartheid helps to keep the “lower classes” in their place. Traitorous and mendacious Zionist defamation of the anti-racist British Left has had a big impact.  For all that the UK is ostensibly a liberal democracy,  it is a very poorly informed one.  Thus the UK BBC has an appalling record of lying by omission as set out in the website “Censorship by the BBC” and elsewhere  [46-48].  Back in the 18th century, in  Chapter 25 of “Candide” entitled  “Visit to Lord Pococurante, Venetian nobleman,” Voltaire writes: “Martin noticed some shelves laden with English books. “I trust”, he said, “that a republican must take pleasure in the majority of those books written with so much freedom”. “Yes”, replied Pococurante, “it’s a fine thing to write what one thinks; it’s the privilege of man. In all Italy people write only what they don’t think; those who inhabit the native land of the Caesars and the Antonines don’t care to have an idea without permission of a Dominican. I would be happy with the freedom that inspires the English geniuses if party feeling and party spirit didn’t corrupt everything estimable in that precious freedom” [41, 42, 49].

A proper democracy requires an informed electorate. However numerous examples can be given of extraordinary British censorship that would rival that of authoritarian  states and clearly impacts electoral behaviour. The most extraordinary example is non-reportage of the WW2 Bengali Holocaust (WW2 Bengal Famine, WW2 Indian Holocaust) in which the British with Australian complicity deliberately starved 6-7 million Indians to death for strategic reasons  in Bengal  and in the neighbouring  provinces of Assam, Bihar and Orissa. This atrocity (the first WW2 atrocity to have been described as a “holocaust”) was also associated with large-scale civilian and military  sexual abuse  of starving women and girls. Yet this immense atrocity has been largely deleted from British historiography and from general public perception. [50- 54]. By way of comparison, just imagine if histories of Germany  overwhelmingly ignored the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million Jews killed through violence or imposed deprivation) [55, 56].

Section 5. Multi-dimensional models of inequality and political cleavages.

In this section Piketty applies a mathematical modelling and statistical approach to his huge collection of  political cleavage data.

Section 6. Conclusions.

Piketty concludes thus: “In this paper, I have used French, US and British post-electoral surveys covering the 1948-2017 period in order to document a striking long-run evolution in the structure of political cleavages. In the 1950s-1960s, the vote for left-wing (socialist-labour-democratic) parties was associated with lower education and lower income voters. It has gradually become associated with higher education voters, giving rise to a “multiple-elite” party system in the 2000s-2010s: high-education elites now vote for the “left”, while high-income/high-wealth elites still vote for the “right” (though less and less so). I have argued that this can contribute to explain rising inequality and the lack of democratic response to it, as well as the rise of “populism”. In effect, globalization and educational expansion have created new dimensions of inequality and conflict, leading to the weakening of previous class-based redistributive coalitions and the gradual development of new cleavages… Unequal access to political finance, medias and influence can contribute to keep electoral politics under the control of elites. The class-based party system that emerged in the mid-20th century was due to specific historical circumstances, and proved to be fragile as social and economic structures evolved. Without a strong and convincing egalitarian-internationalist platform, it is inherently difficult to unite low-education, low-income voters from all origins within the same party” (page 62 [1]).

Final comments.

Thomas Piketty’s detailed paper is a valuable contribution to dissecting out (for France, the US and the UK) the change over recent decades away from a class-based, Left versus Right dichotomy  to a state in which prosperous, educated elites and the informed poor vote for the Left while ever-greedy high-income/high-wealth elites support the Right with the present-day  assistance of a disillusioned, right-wing, xenophobic and uneducated Trumpist proletariat.

Implicit in Thomas Piketty’s analysis is the importance of education in the rise of a progressive and prosperous educated elite. However this advance has been paralleled by a dumbing down,  deception and radicalization of a Trumpist working class. Philosopher Hannah Arendt found common causes of  genocidal Western European imperialism and colonialism on 5 continents and of genocidal 20th century European fascism as an “alliance between the mob and capital”, with a commonality in this union of extreme nationalism, lying, rapacity, atrocity-justifying racism and anti-humanism.  Today American Trumpism is ferociously anti-intellectual, anti-humanist, anti-globalist,  nationalist  and racist, with genocidal Trump threats to “totally destroy” or “obliterate” particular countries. Rampant US Trumpism is paralleled by UK Brexiteers,  and by burgeoning Central European, Brazilian and Australian neo-fascists and Trumpists [57, 58].

The present-day  “alliance between the mob and capital” is no accident and has been effected through One Percenter ownership and perversion of Mainstream media. Just as some huge American corporations backed the rise of German Nazism [61] and many members of the British upper class did likewise [62, 63], so today sections of  the wealthy Establishments are keeping progressive parties out of power by cementing a neo-fascist   “alliance between the mob and capital” . The wealthy overwhelmingly vote in their economic self-interest  but the Trumpist poor have been paradoxically persuaded to vote for the Right  and against their personal and “class” interests on the basis of anti-globalism and xenophobia. Western Democracy has become Kleptocracy, Plutocracy, Murdochracy, Lobbyocracy, Corporatocracy and Dollarocracy in which Big Money purchases people, politicians, parties, policies, public perception of reality, votes, more power and more private profit.

The great thing about democracy is that it permits an ostensible change  of government without bloodshed. However the worsening Climate Emergency and Climate Genocide [13] has revealed that this proposition is now highly disputable. Thus Humanity and the Biosphere on which it critically depends are existentially threatened by anthropogenic climate change. “Business as usual” (BAU) democracy in practice means massive input from and for the super-wealthy,  with this perversion being assisted by a Stupid, Ignorant and Egregiously  Greedy (SIEG), anti-globalist,  racist  and neo-fascist  Trumpist proletariat. In harsh global reality this  means that 8 million people die from air pollution each year,  1 million people die from climate change annually,  and (in the absence of requisite action) about 10 billion people will die this century en route to a sustainable human population of a mere 0.5-1.0 billion in 2100 [13].

What can decent Humanity do in the face of this existential catastrophe? In this worsening Climate Emergency all of  Humanity must commit to sustainable and sharing eco-socialism. We cannot leave the fate of our children, grandchildren and future generations  in the hands of the Socially Conservative and Unscientific  Malefactors  (SCUM) of the Stupid Ignorant and Egregiously Greedy (SIEG) neoliberal Right. The time for “respectful conversation” is well and truly past. Decent people must (a) inform everyone they  can, (b)  insist  that the past, present and future Cost of Production is “fully borne” by the polluters, and (c) urge and apply Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against all people, politicians , parties, collectives, corporations and countries disproportionately involved in the worsening Climate Genocide. The future political dichotomy in an existentially threatened world is not “wealthy elites” versus “educated elites” but simply whether  you are part of the problem or part of the solution.

References.

[1]. Thomas Piketty, ”Brahmin Left versus the Merchant Right: rising inequality & the changing  structure of political conflict  (evidence from France, Britain and the US, 1948-2017)”, WID.world Working Paper Series No. 2018/ 7: http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/Piketty2018.pdf .

[2]. Thomas Piketty,  “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”, Harvard University Press, 2014.

[3]. Gideon Polya, “ Key Book Review: “Capital In The Twenty-First Century” By Thomas Piketty “, Countercurrents, 1 July, 2014: https://countercurrents.org/polya010714.htm .

[4]. Oxfam, “Rapidly growing inequality is worsening poverty around the world”, 20 January 2014: https://www.oxfam.org.au/2014/01/rapidly-growing-inequality-is-worsening-poverty-around-the-world/ .

[5]. Oxfam, “Working for the Few”, 20 January 2014: https://www.oxfam.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/bp-working-for-few-political-capture-economic-inequality-200114-embargo-en.pdf .

[6]. “1% ON 1%: one percent annual wealth tax on One Percenters”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/1-on-1 .

[7]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, this including an avoidable mortality-related history of every country since Neolithic times and now available for free perusal on the web: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/body-count-global-avoidable-mortality_05.html .

[8]. Gideon Polya, “4 % Annual Global Wealth Tax To Stop The 17 Million Deaths Annually”, Countercurrents, 27 June, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya270614.htm ).

[9]. Gideon Polya, “How much negative carbon emissions, negative population growth& negative economic growth is needed to save planet?”, Countercurrents, 28 November 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/11/how-much-negative-carbon-emissions-negative-population-growth-negative-economic-growth-is-needed-to-save-planet .

[10]. “Are we doomed?”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/are-we-doomed .

[11]. “Too late to avoid global warming catastrophe”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/too-late-to-avoid-global-warming .

[12]. “Climate terrorism: 400,000 climate change-related deaths globally annually versus an average of 4 US deaths from political terrorism annually since 9-11”: https://sites.google.com/site/statecrimeandnonstateterrorism/climate-terrorism .

[13]. “Climate Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/climategenocide/ .

[14]. Professor Stephen Hawking quoted in  Will Dunham, “Nuclear, climate perils push Doomsday Clock ahead”, Reuters, 22 January 2007: https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN17314370 .

[15].  Stephen Hawking, “Brief Answers to the Big Questions”, John Murray, 2018, Chapter 7.

[16]. Open Letter signed by 255 members of the US National Academy of Sciences reproduced in “Open letter: Climate change and the integrity of scienceFull text of an open letter from 255 members of the US National Academy of Sciences in defence of climate research”, UK Guardian, 6 May 2010: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/06/climate-science-open-letter .

[17]. Synthesis Report from the March 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, Climate Change, Global risks, challenges & decisions”, Copenhagen 10-12 March, 2009, University of Copenhagen , Denmark : http://lyceum.anu.edu.au/wp-content/blogs/3/uploads//Synthesis%20Report%20Web.pdf .

[18]. Summary of Synthesis Report from 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, YVCAG: https://sites.google.com/site/yarravalleyclimateactiongroup/synthesis-report-of-the-2009-copenhagen-climate-change-conference .

[19]. International Monetary Fund (IMF), “Fiscal Monitor: how to mitigate climate change”. Executive Summary”, September  2019: file:///C:/Users/Gideon/AppData/Local/Temp/execsum-6.pdf .

[20]. Gideon Polya, “Australia rejects  IMF Carbon Tax & preventing 4 million pollution deaths by 2030”, Countercurrents,  15 October 2019: https://countercurrents.org/2019/10/australia-rejects-imf-carbon-tax-preventing-4-million-pollution-deaths-by-2030 .

[21]. “Party totals”, ABC News, 28 August 2019: https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/federal/2019/results/party-totals .

[22]. Walter Davis, “Death’s Dream Kingdom. The American Psyche since 9-11”, Pluto, London, 2006.

[23]. Gideon Polya, “Book review: “Death’s Dream Kingdom. The American Psyche since 9-11”, MWC News, 28 January 2010: http://mwcnews.com/focus/analysis/265-book-review-deaths-dream-kingdom-the-american-psyche-since-9-11.html .

[24]. Richard Dawkins, “The Selfish Gene”, Oxford, 1975.

[25]. Brian Ellis, ”Social Humanism. A New Metaphysics”,  Routledge , UK , 2012.

[26]. Gideon Polya, “Book Review: “Social Humanism. A New Metaphysics” By Brian Ellis –  Last Chance To Save Planet?”, Countercurrents,  19 August, 2012: https://countercurrents.org/polya190812.htm .

[27]. Brian Ellis, “Rationalism. A critique of pure theory”, Australian Scholarly, Melbourne, 2017.

[28]. Gideon Polya, “Review: “Rationalism” by Brian Ellis, Countercurrents, 14 August 2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/08/review-rationalism-by-brian-ellis .

[29]. Brian Ellis (with contributions from Tony Lynch, Greg Bailey and Gideon Polya),   “The New Enlightenment. On Steven Pinker & beyond”,  Australian Scholarly Publishing , Melbourne, 2019.

[30]. Gideon Polya, “Review: “The New Enlightenment” by Brian Ellis – world government & social humanism to save humanity”, Countercurrents, 7 October 2019: https://countercurrents.org/2019/10/review-the-new-enlightenment-by-brian-ellis-world-government-social-humanism-to-save-humanity .

[31]. Gideon Polya, “Polya’s 3 Laws Of Economics Expose Deadly, Dishonest  And Terminal Neoliberal Capitalism”,  Countercurrents, 17 October, 2015: https://countercurrents.org/polya171015.htm .

[32]. Chris Hope, “How high should climate change taxes be?”, Working Paper Series, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, 9.2011: http://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/fileadmin/user_upload/research/workingpapers/wp1109.pdf .

[33]. Gideon Polya,  “Green Left Pope Francis Demands Climate Action “Without Delay” To Prevent Climate “Catastrophe””, Countercurrents, 10 August, 2015: https://www.countercurrents.org/polya100815.htm .

[34]. Gideon Polya, “Pope decrees full Carbon Price”. MWC News, 28 July 2015: http://www.mwcnews.com/focus/analysis/53226-pope-decree.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter .

[35]. Richard Dawkins, “The God Delusion”, Mariner 2008.

[36]. The Pew Center, “Belief in God”: https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/belief-in-god/ .

[37]. Yuval Noah Harari, “Homo Deus. A brief history of tomorrow”, Vintage, London, 2017.

[38]. I.F. Stone, quoted in “Two words – governments lie. Iraqi oil, climate change and Tony Blair”, Media Lens, 22 January 2003: http://www.medialens.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=239:two-words-governments-lie-iraq-oil-climate-change-and-tony-blair&catid=17:alerts-2003&Itemid=42 .

[39]. I.F. Stone, quoted in Gideon Polya, “Iraqi Holocaust”, ConScience, Australasian Science, 2 June 2004: http://www.shiachat.com/forum/index.php?/topic/33427-iraqi-holocaust/ .

[40]. I.F. Stone quoted in Harry Kawilarang, “Quotations on Terrorism”, Trafford Publishing, UK, 2006.

[41].  “Mainstream media censorship”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/home  ;

[42]. “Mainstream media lying”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammedialying/  ;

[43]. . Gore Vidal interviewed by Melvyn Bragg on the South Bank Show”, 2008: http://warincontext.org/2012/08/01/remembering-gore-vidal-change-is-the-nature-of-life-and-its-hope/ .

[44]. Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, “Manufacturing Consent. The political economy of the mass media” , Pantheon, 2002.

[45]. Gideon Polya, “Mainstream media: fake news through lying by omission” , MWC News, 1 April 2017: http://www.mwcnews.com/focus/analysis/64626-mainstream-media.html .

[46]. “Censorship by the BBC”: https://sites.google.com/site/censorshipbythebbc/  .

[47]. Gideon Polya, “Australian ABC and UK BBC fake news through lying by omission”, Countercurrents, 2 May 2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/05/australian-abc-and-uk-bbc-fake-news-through-lying-by-omission .

[48]. “Lying by omissions”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammedialying/lying-by-omission .

[49]. Voltaire, “Candide”.

[50].  Gideon Polya, “Economist Mahima Khanna, Cambridge Stevenson Prize And Dire Indian Poverty”, Countercurrents, 20 November, 2011: https://countercurrents.org/polya201111.htm .

[51]. Gideon Polya, “Australia And Britain Killed 6-7 Million Indians In WW2 Bengal Famine”,  Countercurrents, 29 September, 2011: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya290911.htm .

[52]. Gideon Polya, “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability”, G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2008 edition that is now available for free perusal on the web: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/  .

[53]. Bengali Holocaust (WW2 Bengal Famine” writings of Gideon Polya: https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/bengali-holocaust .

[54]. Gideon Polya, “Britain robbed Indian of $45 trillion & thence 1.8 billion Indians died from deprivation”, Countercurrents, 18 December 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/12/britain-robbed-india-of-45-trillion-thence-1-8-billion-indians-died-from-deprivation .

[55]. Martin Gilbert, “Jewish History Atlas”, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1969.

[56]. Martin Gilbert “Atlas of the Holocaust”, Michael Joseph, London, 1982.

[57]. Hannah Arendt, “The Origins of Totalitarianism”, Shocken, New York, 1951.

[58]. Hannah Arendt, “The Origins of Totalitarianism”, Part 2, subsection III, The Alliance Between Mob and Capital”, pages 123-155.

[59]. Sven Lindqvist ,  “Exterminate All the Brutes”, 1992; English translation, Granta Books, 2002.

[60]. Gideon Polya, “Neoliberalism, neofascism & Trumpism – racist alliance of mob & capital”, Countercurrents, 4 A  ugust 2019: https://countercurrents.org/2019/08/neoliberalism-neofascism-trumpism-racist-alliance-of-mob-capital .

[61]. Ben Aris and Duncan Campbell, “How Bush’s grandfather helped Hitler’s rise to power”, Guardian, 26 September  2004: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar .

[62]. Karina Urbach, “Behind the infant Queen’s gesture lies a dark history if aristocratic Nazi links”, Guardian, 19 July 2015: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/19/nazi-hitler-royal-family .

[63]. Tom Sykes, “How British high society fell in love with the Nazis”, The Daily Beast, 20 July 2015: https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-british-high-society-fell-in-love-with-the-nazis .

Dr Gideon Polya taught science students at a major Australian university for 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds” (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003). He has published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ); see also his contributions “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/australian-complicity-in-iraq-mass-mortality/3369002#transcript   ) and “Ongoing Palestinian Genocide” in “The Plight of the Palestinians (edited by William Cook, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2010: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/4047-the-plight-of-the-palestinians.html ). He has published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/  ) as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/social-economic-history/listen-the-bengal-famine  ;  Gideon Polya: https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/home  ; Gideon Polya Writing: https://sites.google.com/site/gideonpolyawriting/ ; Gideon Polya, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gideon_Polya ) . When words fail one can say it in pictures – for images of Gideon Polya’s huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/  .


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