There is a tendency for the populist right to take ideas from the critical left, capture them and repurpose the energy they have to mobilise the people to furthering their own goals. Naomi Klein in her latest book “Doppelgänger” has written a great analysis about this phenomenon, and I heartily recommend everyone from the left & right to read this book.
With the recently popular term “Deep State”, the situation is no different. The term “deep state” originates from classical conservatism, referring to simply to the opposite of a thin state. However, the way it is presented to us by the modern populists right it is, in fact, referring to large corporations having a grave and dangerous form of invisible and undemocratic power through massive organisations of lobbyists. However, when this critique is viewed through a libertarian lens, the elimination of the problems of lobbyism can be flattened to simply eliminating the government’s say in anything. The dream of the modern populist “deep state” critics therefore is to reduce Government into such a minuscule proportion that lobbyism itself wouldn’t be required or necessary. Obviously this would not resolve the problem because the multinational corporations would now be wielding immense power through not being restricted by government at all. In all likelihood, the international treaties those corporations would then write would be even less favourable for national interests. However, as the populist right also contains many believers in fascist ideals and in that framework all boils down to everything being conflict and the only end point victory, so obviously they think they would be these winners.
The tendency for the populist right to take leftist ideas and try to harness theirs energy and animating properties to further ideas of conservatism has been called “Diagonalism”. However, in my opinion this is a flattening representation also. It should be noted that the general public’s recognition of the problem has not been decreased but rather increased. Following the principle of charity, we can recognise that the Trumpist or MAGA are in fact engaged with the same problem the 2000s Occupy Wall Street -left were wrestling with. Their idea of a solution is not likely to lead to long-term favourable outcomes, but to lack the analysis of what they are saying when they refer to “deep state” will also mislead one to missrepresent what the source of their frustration is. Identifying the frustration and rejecting the solution is better than rejecting both.
My fear is that this blindness stems from high levels of partisanship in the modern western discourse through media influence being dominated by systems where two parties reign, namely USA and the UK. A political culture has risen where denying support for ideas when your opponent is furthering goals that you would like progress has become prevalent. Partisanship has increased to the point where you don’t want to give them the political credit for doing it simply because you would have to talk positively about your enemy. This is highly prevalent and is poisoning the well of actually doing the political work that a democracy requires. Some have attributed this effect the rise of “political hobbyism”, where thanks to social media most political commentators are not engaging with actual people in actual projects for the community. Without exposure to real world complications they lack the multitude of different flavours of experience and political viewpoints in the real world. Simplifications of actual realities can easily lead to simplified ideas of politics. With enough simplifications, mentalities like: “There are no viable alternatives!”, or: “It’s all just white privilege!” become attractive. Anything that gathers viral support most efficiently.
I would like to end this on a notion of hope however. By giving the populist right the benefit of the doubt, we can deduce that there is a real need in the grassroots of US and European peoples to address the problem of multinational corporations weilding too much influence. This is magnificent. What’s left is to counter the solutions with better ones.
Title image by Midjourney generative AI tools. I’m sorry I can’t credit the artists it stole from. Please support the ideas I have brought forward in my previous texts about AI art to make it possible for proper profit sharing of copyrighted works to become possible!
Read: https://gimulnaut.wordpress.com/2023/01/13/copyright-wars-pt-2-ai-vs-the-public/
And: https://gimulnaut.wordpress.com/2023/04/20/ai-art-is-a-remix-the-djs-of-pictures/
For further discussions into the psychology of left/right, liberal/conservative traits please read: https://gimulnaut.wordpress.com/2022/12/09/compassion-for-the-fearful-conservative-and-the-reckless-liberal/
Toni Aittoniemi
Pirate Party Finland
Gimulnautti 