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Citizens Rising Up Against Their Own Governments, Worldwide – All at the Same Time
There’s an outstanding op-ed by a German college professor named Ralph Shoellhammer in Newsweek (yeah, I know, Newsweek – trust me…) that I thought you might be interested in. He begins the article with these two paragraphs:
A popular uprising of working-class people against the elites and their values is underway—and it’s crossing the globe. There is a growing resistance by the middle and lower classes against what Rob Henderson has coined the “luxury beliefs” of the elites, as everyday folks realize the harm it causes them and their communities.
There were early glimmerings last February, when the Canadian Trucker Convoy pitched working class truck drivers against a “laptop class” demanding ever more restrictive COVID-19 policies. You saw it as well in the victory of Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, who ran on parents’ rights in education and went on to win both suburbs and rural areas. You can see it in the growing support of Hispanic voters for a Republican Party, which increasingly identifies as anti-woke, and pro-working class. And now we’re seeing the latest iteration in the Netherlands in the form of a farmer’s protest against new environmental rulings that will ruin them.
He later says,
Yet the sympathies of the Dutch are not with their government; they are solidly with their farmers … But while the Dutch people are on the side of the farmers, their elites are behaving much as they did in Canada and the U.S., and not just those in government. Media outlets are refusing to even report the protests, and when they do, they cast the farmers as extremists.
He concludes with:
Ultimately, there is a risk that climate policies will do to Europe what Marxism did to Latin America. A continent with all the conditions for widespread prosperity and a healthy environment will impoverish and ruin itself for ideological reasons.
In the end, both the people and the climate will be worse off.
I think he makes a very good point. There is a great deal of conflict and strife in the world right now, but it’s not the traditional wars between countries over land or resources. Many of these conflicts are between citizens and their own governments and elites, who the people feel no longer represent their best interests. And they’re not fighting over land or resources — they’re fighting over freedom.
And this time, it’s not freedom from Socialism, Communism, Marxism, or any other political system of centralized control. It’s freedom from the ideology of Climate Change.
That seems like an important difference, although it’s possible that the Marxists have simply selected another approach with the same goal in mind, so freedom lovers simply find themselves arguing with climate models rather than economic redistribution policies.
The important point, though, is that the people are not fighting against imperial aggression from foreign powers who seek to conquer their land. They’re fighting against their own governments, most of whom are elected by the people themselves. But despite the ostensibly Democratic underpinnings of many of these governments, the people have come to the belief that their own government is a hostile force to their society. And this belief (combined with their perception that their own hostile government is being aided and abetted by the media and powerful corporations) has led to panic among many and varied groups of people in countries around the world.
Brexit and the election of Donald Trump fall into this category. It’s fascinating that the same phenomenon is happening simultaneously in America, Sri Lanka, Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, and many other places around the globe, which would seem to have little in common with one another.
And none of these countries are known for having brutal, oppressive, tyrannical systems of government like Cuba or North Korea. We’re talking about Canada, for Pete’s sake. America’s President is not Kim Jong-Un. It’s Joe Biden, for Pete’s sake.
What’s going on? Why is this happening now? Will this trend of people fighting their own governments continue to spread across the globe? How will all this turn out?
Professor Schoellhammer has written a fascinating piece – please do read the whole thing.
And let me know what you think. He brings up a few outstanding points, but I’m not sure where all this leads.
Thanks in advance for your input.
Published in General
I mainline it twice a day.
But seriously back to Dr. B’s post… As usual better reporting here than in any MSM. Self proclaimed conservatives can certainly complaint against leftist politicians but the greatest hurdle is the fourth estate. You don’t know what you don’t know. This is a concerted effort…not a conspiracy.
Information on These uprisings can be found but only if you are plugged into solid information sources. As Dr. B. mentioned, most of the masses simply aren’t plugged in. Ignorance is bliss. Errr, correction. The ostrich with his head in the sand will still get trampled by the oncoming stampede. Not sure that is bliss.
So it’s not so much bliss but is it simple unawareness? No stress, no fuss, no muss just the useful idiots.
Or maybe it’s simply the path of least resistance. “Something about this feels off but hey…everyone else seems to be on board. It must be the “right” thing to do. Peer pressure on an epic scale.
Mine is self-generated.
If we had time and could elect a solid Republican, then fire a huge chunk of the bureaucrats at state and national level and save the Republic. Do we have time? The Chinese face challenges and know they have to neutralize the US and keep us in hands friendly to China. They already have Africa and will have all of South America by the time Biden is replaced in almost three more years, by which time the Democrats will have neutralized the US. I don’t think we can wait and see. Europeans will support us if we survive, but will support China if we don’t. China is not yet seen as a threat to their elite, just as it isn’t seen as an existential threat by most Democrats.
There is a huge disconnect between what most sane people care about and what gets shoved down our throats to care about. Media covers for government. Here is an eye-opening poll from Rasmussen Reports:
Perhaps realization of mass formation psychosis has hit all at once.
Media is the most powerful branch of our government.
To be fair, this disconnect between what the average citizen says is a top issue and what the media treats as a top issue has been this way all my life. Though I believe in recent years it’s gotten more pronounced. The disconnect in the lists above is startling.
Don’t be a “conservative inflationist”. That might be Ground Zero for everything. If you need help, ask me. lol
Also management hates me when I go this direction. lol
This doesn’t get talked about a lot, but George Soros has an adjunct to NPR with 100 journalists on call. He wants to buy NPR. The fact that they get a little bit of money from the government allows the GOP to keep their thumb on it.
The first one is a real bitch because every single word means something.
Governments are not happy with these uppity citizens.
Wow. That’s a terrifying quote…
Doc, I think that you are misunderstanding the referenced column. He is clearly talking about something happening right now, as he claims that the “earliest glimmerings” were last February — meaning February 2022 — with the Canadian trucker protest. The author does not seem to connect this with either Trump or Brexit, which occurred about 6 years ago.
The only recent events that seem to be anything like “citizens rising up” are: (1) the Canadian trucker protest in February; (2) the Sri Lanka protests that apparently started in March and led to the storming of the President’s house this month; and (3) the Dutch farmer protest, which apparently started last month.
This is a small number of widely separated and disparate events. I don’t see a connection, other than the fact that mob tactics were used by protesters who seem, at least in some vague way, to be on the political Right.
I’m inclined to discount the significance of Sri Lanka, which is a third-world country, and in which I don’t even know the politics of the protesters. It does appear that the government adopted stupid environmental regulations that led to an economic disaster, though it also appears that the country is heavily dependent on tourism revenue and suffered major economic losses from the Covid pandemic.
We might want to add one other odd and troubling event to the list — the January 6 riot, about a year and a half ago now.
It is very troubling, to me, to see people on the political Right adopting the type of tactics that I associate with Saul Alinsky, BLM, and Antifa. I don’t like it.
I do understand the concern about unresponsive government. The problem is that, in the US and Canada and the Netherlands, we have elected governments. We don’t have some unaccountable “elite” that never has to face the voters. These countries are getting the government for which they voted. Their governments stink, because the people vote for politicians with bad ideas.
I do think that a lot of those voters have been lied to, by their teachers, their professors, their politicians, and their media. On the other hand, they seem eager to believe the lies. This does seem to be the way that people are.
I do see it on the Right occasionally, too, like the overblown claims about Covid vaccines killing people or about Trump having won the election by millions of votes. I do think that vaccine policy was, and remains, foolish regarding young people, who are not at serious risk, and I do think that there were some election irregularities that may have tipped the result to Biden. But I don’t believe the extreme claims.
The Left seems to have the same problem. These people seem to think that the planet is about to go up in flames, so they adopt all sorts of foolish policies that impoverish people.
i.e.
http://financialrepressionauthority.com/2017/07/26/the-roundtable-insight-george-bragues-on-how-the-financial-markets-are-influenced-by-politics/
A lot of people are less willing than you apparently are, to believe that recent elections have been fair and accurate.
Climate Change is the religion of Western Socialists. There is no practical difference in results with regard to Socialism, Climate Change, Communism, Marxism. They all worship at the alter of a central planning oligarch that decides “what’s best” for their masses.
I’ve been watching and listening to all kinds of things that talk about this and the side effects and it’s a disaster.
Energy is life. Forcing so much change so fast is a going to fail. You can’t print money to make up for it.
Comrades Unite!
For a moment there, I thought that there was an era where Germans were protesting watery Mexican beer.
In the early days of the Soviet Union, many of the proletariat fell for the official party line that there were shortages because of the war between the Red and White armies.
So often, when I hear the Leftist propaganda on Pacifica radio, I realize American Leftists are so devoted to the cause, they gladly swallow whatever tripe is offered up as an excuse for how badly things are going in the USA, since Jan 20th 2021.
That is the vibe I get from my brother-in-law. The next time he pushes me on anything political it’s going to be amusing. lol
Remind yourself not to be a European.
Joe Biden wants to fuel China with it instead.
I’ve run into a bunch of podcasts lately that make it very clear that it’s really stupid to not get as much fossil fuel out of the ground as possible.
Drew is one of my suppliers.
It’s bliss while you’ve got your head in the ground, unaware. And yes, when circumstances force you to look up, it may not be bliss anymore.
Religion? I would say, generally not. Climate change is the 100-mile-wide asteroid hurtling toward earth, that can only be seen by the specialized few who are equipped to see it. The asteroid will hit earth eventually, they say, and in the mean time the earth’s population lives without rest, ever bearing in mind the coming doom. And they talk about it with trembling and trepidation, shouting out demands to build at any cost a mighty nuclear tipped rocket and send it out into space to meet the menace and blow it up.
And they empty their pockets to pay for their own salvation. Maybe it is a religion after all.
It tastes good with lemon. But then again so does water.