Debate: The Rise of Populism

The Motion

The first question was “will populism replace liberalism in the future of politics?” Seventy-two percent said “no”. The follow-up question that the moderator asked was interesting, “is there a chance you will change your minds after tonight?” but the response to that question by the audience was astonishing. 43 percent of the audience said that they would not change their vote after the debate. But as it turns out, many still did.

Bannon and Frum had an engaging debate ahead of the U.S midterm elections, but things didn’t go so smoothly. At the start of the debate, Bannon was heckled by a female audience member. The moderator called for an roll of applause to sidestep the situation. She didn’t comply and was eventually asked to leave.

The Highlights

Opening Statements

Steve Bannon

In 2008, the elite said that anarchy and chaos would result if there was no bail out. The Soviets and Al Qaeda couldn’t bring U.S to its knees. No one was able to do that but the elite class did it, the financial, corporate, political elite.

Their solution? Create money and bail themselves out. The Federal Reserve balance sheet was 800 billion dollars before the crisis went up to 4.5 Trillion after the bail out. The little guy bore the burden. In the last ten years, if you owned stocks you had the best period in history. It was a disaster for everyone else.

Donald Trump didn’t cause this, neither did the populists. They were a result of the disaster, not a cause of it.

Seventy percent of the American people believed that the country was in decline – in foreign policy, education, healthcare.

Donald Trump turned that around. (audience laughs)

The elite have left a financial wasteland and decoupled from the middle and lower class. That is why Europe is becoming more populist. Economic nationalism doesn’t care about your sex, gender, background. The jobs are coming back. The revolts in Europe and Latin America are picking up. We are at the start of a new political revolution. It’s either populist nationalism, giving the little guy a piece and breaking up crony capitalism, or is it the Jeremy Corbyn brand of populist socialism.

The party at Davos and the elites have blown too many calls. The rise of China, the seven trillion dollars spent on Iraq and Afghanistan, the deregulation of the financial markets that led to the financial crash. Most of you tonight who work in finance know we are headed towards a new crash.

David Frum

Why are we here? what are we trying to achieve? We are here to engage in the most important challenge that liberal democratic institutions have faced since the end of Communism. Bannon is a historic figure, influencing Brazilian and Italian politics, advised Trump and managed to turn his campaign around. Breitbart transformed conservative politics into a new movement. This was all Bannon.

I want to do two things.

First, I want to speak to those who are undecided. Do Trump and Bannon offer me anything? I want to show that It offers you nothing. It doesn’t care about you or respect you.

Second, I want to speak to those of you who resist Trump’s politics. I know how worried and fearful you are. I want to reassure you. This is not the only time democracy has faced thugs and bullies and would-be dictators. This isn’t the first time these people have plucked themselves in as the wave of the future. They were wrong then and are wrong then.

The last group of people I want to speak to. Those who see what Trump’s politics are and are excited. Many people are excited by tearing everything down, by seeing the destruction of everything. I want to say to them, you will lose. You have been winning for five years, but you will lose, you will be on the wrong side of history. Your children will disavow you.

We have a definitional problem. Big words: Liberal, Populist. It’s strange that I’m on the liberal side of this debate. I am a conservative, but both liberals and conservatives want to conserve the liberal heritage. We are trying to conserve a state that does not steal, a media that does not lie, a court that respects all, votes that are available to everyone – even if those counting the votes fear that those who are voting may vote against them.

(Applause)

What is populism? It claims to speak to the people. But it subdivides people. It gives reasons for people to disintegrate. Those people don’t matter, our people do. Trump did this. Said he got fifty two percent of the women’s vote. But not true, it was fifty two percent of white women.

Why will populism fail? At bottom, one reason. This new populism is a scam, a lie, it is nothing. It’s not that so many of its leaders are crooks, although they are. President Trump is a crook, Victor Orban Is a crook, Marie le pen is a crook. Orban is looting Hungary. Le Penn is stealing parliamentary funds, and is funded by Russian money, and Trump is running the most unethical administration in U.S history, enriching himself as he does.

(Applause)

But I mean it in another way. It is a scam in its own terms. trump runs the economy the way he ran his family businesses. He inherited a lot of money, has proceeded to dissipate it, and is telling everyone what a great job he’s been doing. Trump took credit for 250k jobs created in October 2018. But under Obama, there were 26 months where 300k jobs were created. It’s not Donald Trump’s doing. But here is what he is doing.

The biggest trade deficit with China since the great recession.

Illegal immigration that is running faster than in the two years he took office.

Liberal democracy is stronger than it was. It has built the best societies the world has ever seen.

Rebuttals

Steve Bannon

This is the oldest trick in the book. Smear the deplorables. Hilary tried this. It didn’t work.

The reason Trump rose is because of the administration you worked in. You keep saying that there are so many thieves in the populist movement, the reason you call them that is because those people you mentioned have been winning. You call it illiberal democracy because Orban is winning with seventy-percent of the vote, Di Maio and Slovini are winning. Trump wins with over 300 electoral votes. (Jeers)

Under Bush, we saw the rise of China. We saw the de-industrialization of the U.S. All the factories left. If you read J.D Vance’s Hillbilly’s Elegy, the great sociological study of the deplorables, you’ll see that the shipment of these industrial jobs correlated with an opioid crisis. They took away people’s self-worth and dignity.

The second was the great decisions and the seven trillion dollars (Brown university research) on their analysis of the cost of the wars that we still haven’t won. And we’re still there. Seven trillion since the last financial debacle. The populist movement is not racist. Obama found it easy to create jobs, because he didn’t know the difference between 800 billion dollars and 4.5 trillion dollars. It’s easy to create jobs when you flood the market with liquidity and destroy a primary Judaeo Christian value of the American family: saving. You cannot save anymore. You don’t have a pension plan. That’s the work of the great elites who see the populists as a bunch of racist xenophobes. But these deplorables are the back bone of our country and of Canada too.

David Frum

I worked under Bush and Bannon voted for Bush twice. I met Bannon when we were working on a Hollywood movie, and he sent me a limo (kindly enough). That’s why I’m surprised to see him become the champion of Populism.

(Laughter)

Frum concedes the points Bannon made, about how Liberal Democracy has undermined itself through the wars it has engaged in. But the failures of a good system are not a good reason to turn to an evil one. The populist movement sees the fissures and wants to exploit them, we don’t, we want to fix and renew. The choice is not whether things were handled well. They never have. It is between destruction and renewal, freedom and non-freedom, a society that respects all people, and a society that excludes many people – and makes this suppression the basis of the nation.

Steve Bannon

Fascism looks to worship the state. We are the anti-fascists. We want to deconstruct the state. It is not deregulation, it is taking the leviathan apart bit by bit. Economic nationalism is putting your country first, and not having the maximization of shareholder value, but citizenship value. If populism was so bad, how did we get the new NAFTA deal? The point of NAFTA is to create a geostrategic manufacturing base that will counter East-Asia. And not allow China to game the system through Mexico. The supply chain will start to come back.

David Frum

The way Trump deals with trade is laughable. His son-in-law went on Amazon, found an interesting video by Peter Navarro who has a PhD in Economics but no citations. Now Navarro is responsible for U.S trade. NAFTA was only prevented from being destroyed, but nothing good came out of it. The world is interconnected, the only way to prevail is work together. Trump negotiates by bullying people, not by win-win deals. Even if NAFTA is more beneficial to Canada and Mexico than the U.S, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work together.

The central question is: should human beings compete or cooperate?

Steve Bannon

I’m not behind these movements, I’m only the interconnective tissue. None of these populist leaders want to destroy the E.U, they just want to have sovereign nations. They want to make the EU into a collection of sovereign nations working together. Why, suddenly, is the nation state and nationalism scorned and demonized? People want to have control as citizens and that’s through nation states. Trump gave that back to the American people, even if you ridicule him. The economic recovery did not come from Obama. Obama bailed the elite – socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor.

The millennials are like 18th century Russian serfs. They’re not going to own anything, they live in the gig economy, no pension plans or careers. But they’re better fed and in better health. The millennials will see the logic of the populist movement. David, you’re angry because traditional republicans can’t win elections.

David Frum

The markets have just had the worst month since 09. Since the bottom of the recession, 1.2 million manufacturing jobs have been creating. 2/3rds by Obama, and 1/3rd Trump. Trump is a continuation of Obama but with more tariffs and more inflation and higher interest rates. The new financial crisis will come, not because of Bernanke, but because Populism is appealing to emotions and not results or the future. Trump accuses the democrats of wanting to turn the U.S into Venezuela but his policies are like those of Juan Peron’s Argentina. With high tariffs, and high inflation. The U.S is running a trillion-dollar deficit in the coming fiscal year. That’s a bigger deficit than Bush’s in the first Gulf War. The populists feign being the guardians of the future, but the future is on our side. The populists only know how to hate, and hate doesn’t build.

Steve Bannon

This whole thing about hate. Trump supposedly hates Muslims. Where is the first place he went (Saudi)?

(Jeers)

The Islamic world reached out to us. The Obama administration was engaged with Iran not the Arab world. The summit in Saudi Arabia wanted to address three question. How do you stop terrorism by cutting off the financing? How does the Arab world come together as one with Israel to stop the expansion of Iran? We must come to some semblance of modernity; how can we do this?

Trump went there, how is he accused of hate?

In 2014, ISIS had 8 million people under slavery. Trump came together with the Muslim world to destroy it. It was the start of a partnership, to stop the expansion of Hezbollah and Iran. Yet Trump is smeared as Islamophobic. It’s the actions that matter. Listen to the signal, not the noise