Those rootless cosmopolitans
When you read the history of interwar Europe, particularly the “alt-right”, one theme shows up over and over again. On one side is the authentic, patriotic working class, with a strong attachment to the home country. But they are continually being “stabbed in the back” by a class of “smelly, rootless cosmopolitans”, who have no national loyalty. Oddly this latter group is linked to both socialism and global capitalism. (How is that even possible?)
Of course today we are far past that sort of crude rhetoric, as shown in a recent Financial Times story:
The White House’s top trade adviser has accused “globalist billionaires” of trying to pressure President Donald Trump into ending his tariff brinkmanship with China, saying their “shuttle diplomacy” to Beijing meant that any truce would have a “stench around it”.
Peter Navarro, the most prominent China hawk in Mr Trump’s inner circle of economic advisers, called on Wall Street to “get out of the negotiations” and warned that if a deal is reached when the president meets with Xi Jinping at a G20 summit in Argentina this month, it would have “imprimatur of Goldman Sachs”. . . .
Mr Navarro’s comments came as he mounted a robust defence of Mr Trump’s protectionist trade policies, saying the president had the “courage and wisdom to stand up to the globalist elite” that was using the US as the “bank of the world”. . . .
“He didn’t need the help of Wall Street, he didn’t need the help of Goldman Sachs, and he doesn’t need it now,” Mr Navarro said. “When these unpaid foreign agents engage in this kind of diplomacy, so-called diplomacy, all they do is weaken this president and his negotiating position. No good can come of this.”
The good news is that Trump is himself a billionaire, who cares a great deal about how the stock market is doing. Navarro sounds like a desperate man, who attached himself to the wrong sort of demagogue. He doesn’t understand that the 1930s are over. Look for “globalist billionaires” to eventually win this battle.
PS. When is that trade deficit going to begin shrinking? And if Trump is right that the economy is doing spectacularly well, does that mean that our previous problems had nothing to do with the trade deficit? Just asking.
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10. November 2018 at 11:52
Ask them. Limousine radicalism is a strange thing.
10. November 2018 at 13:49
Does Sumner believe in democracy? Totally unironically, I am sure, he is starting to sound like he is part of the alt-right, angry that democracy never delivers the correct results. He should read some Mencius Moldbug. Of course, instead of blaming Jews, Liberals, Blacks and Hispanics for everything he doesn’t like about the US, he blames everything on Trump and Trump supporters.
10. November 2018 at 17:29
The propaganda we have been fed about the entire 20th century is so spectacular as to be … spectacular. We are simply never given a good explanation of Germany’s concerns in the pre-WWII period. They were particularly horrified by the execution via deliberate starvation of 6 million Ukrainians in the 1920s. (The Holodomor.) They knew what the risks were in letting their society drift too far to the left.
Why are we not taught about the Holodomor in school? Six million is a lot of people to die.
10. November 2018 at 21:52
Yes, but…
I also sense the US foreign, trade and military policy is made by multi-nationals, not by the citizens. It is a variation of regulatory capture.
I want nothing to do with the Khashoggi-killers who financed 9/11. Financial-business elites and so my government does.
I take a dim view of the Communist Party of China and President Xi. I bear no hostility, but think caution is the best byword, and distance. The multi-nationals want only stability as a backdrop in their ever-expanding relations with China. They have invested heavily. They make Neville Chamberlain look earnest.
Multi-nationals only have fiduciary obligations to shareholders, none to any other group of people, city, state or nation. But they seem to be running US foreign, trade and military policy. Multi-nationals can fund think tanks, trade groups (US Chamber of Commerce), academia, media and even pour unlimited amounts into political campaigns.
Is the US military a global guard service for multi-nationals? It looks like it.
It may be a little glib and facile to dismiss those who harbor skepticism regarding the globalist mindset.
11. November 2018 at 00:01
Scott,
I know you’re being sarcastic, yet as your comments section proves, no logic is required to believe stuff. In the case of Trump, you make it up as a whole, for the rest it’s enough to just have a selective perception.
I am getting more and more interested in the meta aspects of the phenomenon. How come that in the 1930s and in the post-2008 world people worldwide fell for closely related sets of memes, when pretty much everything else has changed in the world – from geopolitics to economic systems employed. Instead of a mostly poor planet with vast repressive colonial empires, and an exhausted Europe from WWI, we now have mass gentrification of pretty much the entire planet, mass wealth, excruciatingly rich media landscapes, and, re: rising anti semitism, as far as Europe is concerned, vastly lower Jewish population. And yet people fall for the same set of fake news, demonisation of “the media” (= media other than where the al right gets their fake news from), demonisation of foreigners, nationalism (economic and otherwise), anti semitism, anti capitalism (replaced by nationalist mercantilism) and general rise of proto-fascist world views.
The one large difference is the absence of a strong socialist camp – in the 1930s, fascist parties world wide usually competed with socialist ones, for good reason because fascism is kind of a nationalist socialism (even though only the Nazi party called it that outright).
It’s as if the whole thing was caused both times by an outbreak of some kind of contagious virus that causes mass hysteria.
11. November 2018 at 08:09
Navarro is a closet socialist and central economic planner. Few years ago in an interview around time of Black Friday, he was exasperated that Americans were buying so much goods on Black Friday and by implication how much money the Chinese were making on Black Friday alone. This further confirms his biases by bringing up the Globalist elite. He would fit right in among the Stalin Politburo sprouting ideas to force radical economic change at expense of personal choice and freedom.
11. November 2018 at 08:48
Burgos, You asked: Does Sumner believe in democracy?
You mean the system where the candidate that gets the most votes becomes president? You mean the system used by all other “democracies” except the US?
mbka, Those are good questions. Here’s my take. There’s the psychological aspect and the policy aspect. Because human nature doesn’t change, at a psychological level it’s a lot like the 1930s. Because circumstances change a lot, at the policy level it’s radically different (thank God.)
As far as my comment sections, yes they sort of do prove my point. They are out there, it’s not just my overheated imagination.
11. November 2018 at 08:53
MBKA … Really one cannot properly understand the 30s without reading Solzhenitsyn’s book, “200 years together,” parts of which have been translated into English. The notion that it was all some mass hysteria with no root cause … that doesn’t make any sense. People are rational. Germans were terrified that what occurred in 1917-1930s in Russia would happen in Germany too.
Why shouldn’t Americans be concerned that what is happening in El Salvador, Venezuela and South Africa will happen here? Wouldn’t it be a bit crazy not to be concerned?
11. November 2018 at 09:12
“re: rising anti semitism, as far as Europe is concerned, vastly lower Jewish population”
In Eastern Europe, antisemitism is much lower than in the 1930s, and so is the Jewish population. In the US, antisemitism is slightly lower than in the 1930s, while the Jewish population is substantially higher.
@Kgaard, Southern Soviet famine of 1932-3 was not deliberate and was at least partly due to natural causes interacting with fear of speculators.
But, yes, the Germans were indeed horrified by the mass internal repression in the USSR and the Southern Soviet famine. Which is why the Nazis generally committed mass slaughter abroad and not at home. It’s important to note, though, that until the Reichstag fire, support for the Nazis was capped at roughly 38% of the German electorate.
11. November 2018 at 09:37
Harding … My understanding is that it was deliberate — that the food was requisitioned and moved to other parts of the Soviet Union.
But yes, you are correct about German horror of what was occurring in the Soviet Union.
Where are all the movies about this? Where are the movies about Soviet horrors and the 6 million Ukrainian deaths?
Communists killed for more people than fascists but we don’t hear much about that. So all we get is this nonsense about the Germans being whipped up into a frenzy about nothing.
11. November 2018 at 09:41
How would Americans feel if 6 million people starved to death in Canada? I think we would be concerned and look very closely into the causes.
11. November 2018 at 12:25
So does Sumner favor a different electoral system than that used by the US? I don’t think a parliamentary system or one in which third parties could credibly compete in elections would get the US less populism. Is it possible to have democracy without demagogues? Unless you have Singapore’s version of democracy (which I suspect is really underpinned by Han supremacism), it doesn’t seem like any form of democracy is totally resistant to demagoguery. Which is why the bill of rights and an independent judiciary are very good things (and why Kavanaugh such a bad pick for the Supreme Court, as he appears to be a toady, not an independent legal mind like Scalia or Thomas). Which country has the best form of government according to Sumner?
11. November 2018 at 17:34
> You mean the system where the candidate that gets the most votes becomes president? You mean the system used by all other “democracies” except the US?
Scott, not quite so fast. Eg Germany, which seems to manage to elect non-Trump leadership, has an even more indirect system than the US.
(Nobody cares for the German president, but he or she is elected by upper and lower house together.)
In Germany you vote for your party in the federal elections (and a candidate as well, who might be from a different party). At the end, usually no one gets a 50%+ majority, so even after the votes are in, the real result is then determined by horse trading, is coalition talks.
The system works in practice. But it’s not because it’s direct. It’s not.
11. November 2018 at 20:12
Harding,
“Which is why the Nazis generally committed mass slaughter abroad and not at home. ”
That’s right, no German ever went into a concentration camp, except if they were Jewish, gay, catholic refusing to serve in the military, social democrat, intellectual, Roma, a pesky journalist, opposition politician, labour leader, people who dissented in private and were denounced by their own children, epileptic, had mental disabilities, and I am sure I am forgetting entire categories of people here.
And yes, those camps were also located in Germany and Austria, and yes, the furnaces were burning and yes, people knew it, I only had to ask my own grandmother. If that’s not good enough for you, how about posters publicised within Germany, and that’s before WWII even started, advertising euthanasia of people with hereditary conditions with the tagline “It’s your money too”.
11. November 2018 at 20:12
re: “It’s your money too”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aktion_T4#/media/File:EuthanasiePropaganda.jpg
11. November 2018 at 20:46
Kgaard,
“Why shouldn’t Americans be concerned that what is happening in El Salvador, Venezuela and South Africa will happen here? Wouldn’t it be a bit crazy not to be concerned?”
seriously? South America is way better now than it was in the 60s and 70s, and NOW (US-)Americans are getting … concerned? That what exactly may be happening in the US because of the poor Latin American example? Populist governments because, Peron? Police abuse, because El Salvador? This doesn’t pass the laugh test.
“Communists killed for more people than fascists but we don’t hear much about that. So all we get is this nonsense about the Germans being whipped up into a frenzy about nothing.”
Right. So the Italians went for Mussolini in 1922 because of, err, Russia’s famines in the 1930s. And all the other fascisms everywhere, small and large, going by that name or not, e.g. Dollfuss in Austria, Franco in Spain, Hungary and Croatia had theirs, as had half of Europe, and you could throw in Japan on the other side of the planet with similar patterns of thought as well. That’s my point – it was not just the Germans. It was the Zeitgeist, with Germany as the most extreme and destructive example, probably because it was the most advanced country falling for the disease, so it could do maximum damage there.
Fear of communism was exploited by fascist parties but let’s not forget that Mussolini was a socialist first, the NSDAP was the German National Socialist Worker’s Party (that was its full name), and that all in all, fascism was a nationalist variant, sibling and competitor to socialism, not its diametral opposite. That’s why they fought socialism so bitterly: because they were the closest competitor.
Again, Mussolini: Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato: Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, none against the state: that doesn’t sound socialist to you? As someone else once said (can’t locate the original, quoting from memory), fascism is a socialism where small shop owners get to keep their shops.
12. November 2018 at 05:37
MBKA … Yes parts of South America are better: Peru, Colombia, perhaps Uruguay. Argentina is worse. Venezuela is worse. Brazil … eh … maybe a wash.
But I wasn’t referring to South America in general anyway. Nor to Costa Rica. if you bring El Salvadorans to the US you get El Salvador’s problems.
You didn’t address South Africa which is the most obvious risk. There is an economic concept called “Persecution of the productive minority.” That is happening in South Africa in spades … and in a complete Dem takeover of the US would happen here as well.
12. November 2018 at 08:41
@Kgaard:
Dems on the coasts are the most productive people in the US and it isn’t even close. Orders of magnitude more productive than flyover Reps (who are the actual minority).
12. November 2018 at 10:06
Good post Scott.
12. November 2018 at 14:19
@msgkings
Your post (re coastal productivity) seems to show a certain prejudice, which is consistent with the idea that the stereotypical republican voter is a West Virginian, missing some teeth, and with an ATV on a trailer towed behind his carburetor engine polluting pickup truck.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-working-class-support/
https://www.debt.org/faqs/americans-in-debt/economic-demographics-democrats/
https://www.debt.org/faqs/americans-in-debt/economic-demographics-republicans/
These taxes that are collected in blue states and sent to red states will still have a majority coming from republican (disenfranchised?) voters in the blue states.
For individuals with incomes above 200K, there is almost 2 republicans per democrat. This income is still not enough to be in the 1 percent exclusive club, where you (jokingly?) claimed to be.
https://www.cnbc.com/2015/04/13/top-1-pay-nearly-half-of-federal-income-taxes.html
It is convenient to say blue states are subsidizing red states, which is true, but if you insinuate the average democrat is subsidizing the average republican, it couldn’t be farther from the truth.
12. November 2018 at 14:27
@ssumner
“PS. When is that trade deficit going to begin shrinking?”
You know when that will happen. It will happen when we stop increasing the debt ceiling, or we default on the debt.
PS: Am I banned? My last post seemed to disappear.
12. November 2018 at 15:19
@Viking: Why would I joke about that? I’m a highly taxed, high income earner on the coast. And Dems outnumber Reps, so I was just responding to a mention of abuse of the ‘productive minority’. Are Reps more productive than Dems? On average I would say no.
12. November 2018 at 16:22
MS Kings — Ah … now I understand why you were talking about about east coast productivity. The productive-minority abuse. I was referring to the racial persecution that occurs against the most productive minority in a society: Arabs in Zanzibar, Chinese in Malaysia, whites in South Africa and, soon, perhaps, whites in America. It’s the fate of the productive in multi-cultural societies when they are outnumbered.
12. November 2018 at 17:39
@Kgaard: are whites more productive than Asians in America? Asians are probably the most productive minority and they are outnumbered significantly. Sorry, not everyone sees the world as a racial Hobbesian nightmare. Especially in the US.
12. November 2018 at 21:49
Kgaard,
so why isn’t the alt-right pitying the Jewish population which by the alt-right’s own account fits the same pattern of a highly productive ultra-minority and is definitely getting abuse?
In the wider scheme of things: “persecution that occurs against the most productive minority in a society” – progressive taxation, anyone? (tongue in cheek)
msgkings
nah, I think you got this all wrong, only white people can apply for endangered species status 🙂 (also see above reply to Kgaard)
13. November 2018 at 11:43
MSG Kings and MBKA …
Well all you have to do is look at the demographic breakdown of the voting: It already breaks down perfectly by race: Whites vote right, everybody else votes left, including Jews (who view themselves as a race rather than a religion). The reason Jews and Asian vote left is that their primary concern is whites attempting to secede, or “secede in place.” That’s pretty obvious. This is why the big issue in the US (and now in Europe) is always states rights.
Of course it’s never a perfect breakdown by race: Single white women are very left wing, married white men are very right wing. Some jews vote Republican, some Asian and Hispanic men vote Republican.
13. November 2018 at 12:35
Kgaard, give it a rest. In the exact same post you said:
“It already breaks down perfectly by race” and “Of course it’s never a perfect breakdown by race”
Racists have their theories, and we get to hear them a lot more these days, but they do not constitute a coherent worldview. It’s the purview of the fearful and the forgotten, those who need someone to blame for their failures. People are people and have far more in common than they are different. Those of us who are successful in life have no fear from the ‘other’, I hope someday you find success and peace, and stop being so afraid.
13. November 2018 at 14:52
White men sure get nervous around brown people. White women aren’t nearly cowards to the same extent as their male counterparts. That’s my only takeaway.
The rest is rationalization after the fact. The smarter the person, the more logical it sounds. But it’s still post hoc nonsense.
Insecurity writ large on the political stage. White male tears sells to a certain segment I guess. Hard to square that with supremacy though. Projects weakness. Almost a coopting of the victim complex that the left is enthralled with.
Sad!
13. November 2018 at 16:46
MSG Kings … I meant on balance. The ratios are 60-40 to 95-5 for all non-white groups in their support of Democrats. But there are no non-white groups that support republicans on balance. Thus it is logical for whites to resist non-white immigration.
Hmm: White men get nervous around people who they know are going to vote to raise their taxes.
Also, MSG Kings: You are being anti-semitic. If you apply your recommendations to Israel it would be gone in 5 minutes.
13. November 2018 at 17:13
@Kgaard: what recommendations are those, for racists like you to stop being afraid? That’s not the same as advocating open borders, which I never have. I only recommend you stop being so scared, and stop blaming others for your own problems. Especially because the color of others’ skin is not why you are a loser. Put it another way, if you are paying a lot of taxes you are earning a lot of money and your life is fine (I know this personally). I would be surprised if you pay a lot of taxes.
And why do racists always bring up edge cases like Israel and Singapore and Iceland to discuss how the United States should act or legislate? Those places couldn’t be more different from the US.
13. November 2018 at 17:42
msgkings, Hmmm,
great comments and I should give it a rest too 🙂
BTW I live in Singapore as an “ultra minority” white person and thanks, so far I’ve been doing fine for nearly 2 decades. Ironically and contra Kgaard, my lifelong immigrant experience here and in many other countries, makes me much more sympathetic to any and all immigrants. I know how hard it is even under the best conditions. And quite frankly I am well aware that I still have it easier than the average non white person in almost any international context.
13. November 2018 at 19:31
MBKA — Singapore is not a democracy, and that is why it works. As Lee Kuan Yew said, you can’t have multiculturalism and a free press, because then you just get a race war. (South Africa as exhibit A.)
MSG — if somebody votes to tax away my income at a higher rate than he himself is paying, that is theft. Why should I stand for it? Why should an immigrant come to the US, pay no taxes, receive social services and then vote to raise my taxes? Where is the justice in that?
13. November 2018 at 19:40
Kgaard, what are you talking about? Only citizens vote, and immigrants pay taxes just like everyone else who works. What social services are you referring to? Taxes are not theft by the way, grow up.
Man what a scared little snowflake you are.
13. November 2018 at 20:00
Kgaard,
Singapore is a democracy, and yes, in a meaningful way, and yes, members of parliament do take the electorate seriously and the possibility of losing their seats. Why do I know this, because they walk around, knock on every door, and talk to their voters. They even politely talk to me, even after I inform them that I am not a citizen, and therefore can’t vote! I have talked to my voting district’s MP several times this way. Have you ever talked to YOUR congress(wo)man? In person? Did they ever knock on your door to have your opinion? If not so, then I reserve the right to claim that the US is less of a democracy than Singapore.
I don’t know where you source your memes from but the endless flaunting of half baked assumptions and internet boilerplate as universal truths is getting tiresome.
And as msgkings pointed out, you are terminally confused about who even gets to vote in a country (any country). And why should a tax paying immigrant not get social services paid for by said taxes?
13. November 2018 at 20:47
MSG … Do you realize how many times you’ve insulted me in this exchange? Remember — an insult is not an argument. It simply reveals the weakness of your arguments. I am continuing this exchange in part to see how many insults you will come up with.
On balance, immigrants are net consumers of government — they take out more than they put in. The lower the average IQ of the source country, the worse the imbalance.
MBKA — Singapore is not really a democracy. 83 of 89 seats are held by the PAP, which has held power since 1959.
From Wikipedia:
“The Economist Intelligence Unit has rated Singapore as “flawed democracy” in 2016.[7] Freedom House deemed the press “not free” in 2015.”
The reason it is such a nice place is because it is not a democracy. Singapore is a mix of Chinese, Malays and Indians. Can you imagine if they had a free press? People would be at each other’s throats. I have been to Singapore several times and it is very nice, but has a sort of Disneyland feel about it.
More from Wiki:
“One commonly cited reason for a lack of opposition in Singapore is the use defamation lawsuits by the PAP to bankrupt political opponents and disqualify them from running for office.[11][12] Cases include former leader of the WP J. B. Jeyaretnam and leader of the SDP Chee Soon Juan, who were bankrupted in 2001 and 2011.[13][14][15]
Another reason given is the pursuit of legal action against journalists and bloggers critical of the PAP and its policies.[8][16] Reporters Without Borders cites such lawsuits, along with attempts at making critical journalists unemployable, among its concerns when ranking the country 151st in the world for press freedom in 2017.[17]
The PAP has in the past threatened voters by saying that constituencies voting for opposition MPs would be put at the bottom of the list for public housing programs.[18][19][20] In 1998, then PAP secretary-general, Goh Chok Tong said, “By linking the priority of upgrading to electoral support, we focus the minds of voters on the link between upgrading and the people whose policies make it possible. This has the desired result.”[21]”
13. November 2018 at 21:44
Kgaard,
re: Singapore. I cite you personal and lived experiences, you cite me Wikipedia, and on top of that, mostly quoting from the 1990s. I rest my case on that one.
“The lower the average IQ of the source country, the worse the imbalance.”
Vintage racism. “Them dumb foreigners.” Do you realize that similar things were said about all sorts of white immigrants into the US in the past (the Irish, the Italians, what have you), to restrict immigration. And the Chinese, which people like you probably consider dangerously successful these days (and high IQ!) were held in particularly low regard in the US just 100 years ago. And before you know it, they’re crazy rich Asians who have to be restricted entry into the Ivys lest they take over the place completely. Sic transit gloria…
13. November 2018 at 22:28
@Kgaard au contraire you insult us every time you post as if we were f**king idiots.
14. November 2018 at 08:23
MSG — You are an example of why the left is losing in so many places. I give you reasoned arguments, you respond with insults. There is no arguing with the left, because the left’s evolutionary strategy does not revolve around reason but rather emotional manipulation and parasitism. That is why you get guys like Trump, Orban and Bolsonaro coming on the scene. They are sick of being polite with people whose only mode of debate is the insult.
14. November 2018 at 08:26
MBKA … I didn’t mention specific countries. I said simply: The lower the IQ of the source country, the greater the imbalance between contribution (tax payments) and social service usage.
Are you saying people from lower-IQ countries are more productive and use fewer services than people from higher-IQ source countries?
Or are you rejecting the notion that IQ differs between countries?
14. November 2018 at 10:01
@Kgaard: actually I have been both insulting you and giving reasoned arguments. For example in the 13 Nov 19:40 post above, I quickly dismissed your nonsense about immigrants and taxes = theft. Then I insulted you. So I’m winning on both fronts, just like ‘the left’ won the most recent election in the US.
14. November 2018 at 17:25
Kgaard,
in your original wording you posited a blanket assumption that immigrants have IQ issues of varying degree and that these IQ issues somehow make them into a burden for the host country. In saying as much, you automatically make it sound as if the host country’s population were superior in quality and merit. You reworded statement sounds more to the point now but we’re still left with the uneasy suspicion that the less productive native members of the host country might be creating the same imbalance in the use of social services vs taxes they pay as would immigrants, and it still sounds as if the immigrants on average were worse in that respect than the natives. Truth is, in many cases, an immigrant of adult age has already had their economically unproductive youth and possibly expensive education paid for by their country of origin, and now productively pays taxes in their new host country. And yes, there ARE studies, NBER and otherwise, on that. The gist of those studies is, on average, immigrants coming as babies are very close in taxes paid vs services consumed to the natives. Immigrants coming as young adults are large net positives for the host country, for the reason given above. Only elderly immigrants are a net negative for the host country.
This is why, in countries governed by reason, immigrants of adult age are generally welcomed, and their educational achievements matter less than you would think.
On “…the left’s evolutionary strategy does not revolve around reason but rather emotional manipulation and parasitism. That is why you get guys like Trump, Orban and Bolsonaro coming on the scene. ”
This is hilarious. Parasitical emotional manipulators like Trump, Orban and Bolsonaro have done a great job on you. You are now a whimpering, fearful heap of ashes trembling in your corner, waiting to be saved. Classic conversion strategy of an emotional manipulator: first make the mark feel as bad as possible. Then tell them it’s not their fault, that there is still time to turn the ship around. Then finally, elevate them through salvation. Works for sects just as well as for business systems or political ideologies (right or left).
And, btw, what makes you think that those cosmopolitans are all of the left? I for once am a bleeding heart ultra-neoliberal. And don’t be fooled by the word “liberal”, in this context it means something closer to “libertarian” in US parlance.