elites

Of Matteo Carnieletto
If even the left realizes it: “The people turn against the elites”
Source: The eyes of war
It is easy to say that populism is absolute evil. A sort of fascism of the new millennium to be eradicated. Right, in today's populist movements there are hints of extremism, sometimes even racism. But you cannot understand how these movements are succeeding around the world without understanding their causes. The deepest ones and those that have created discontent among the people who then go to the polls and decide who to reward (to punish).
In an interview with Il Manifesto, the well-known activist Noam Chomsky had his say, sparing no one, especially the American left: “In the USA many workers voted for Obama, believing in its message of hope and change, and when they were quickly disillusioned, they looked for something else. This is fertile ground for demagogues like Trump, what an end to being the voice of workers while undermining them time after time through his administration's anti-union policies, who represents the wildest wing of the Republican Party”. Here Chomsky is right about the first part, but wrong on the second, given that under Trump the lowest unemployment rate has been recorded since 2000. Read More

Of Carlo Freccero
The left reduced to the sole thought of the elites
THE SELF-CRITICISM OF A CERTAIN LEFT (N.D.R.)
Source: The Manifesto
The left is in crisis today and is wondering how it could speak to the new populisms to lead them back to the tracks of an elitist democracy that resembles an oligarchy more than a democracy in the strict sense.
Vice versa, even when he says he wants to listen to the malaise of which populism is an expression, the left entrenches itself in the clichés of political correctness. While, In my opinion, an objective self-analysis would be enough to understand things from another angle. The question is what the left is today and what the left once was? Because there has been such a radical change? I already know the answer. We were wrong. What if we are wrong now?
In any case, reflect on what the left was at its origins, already contains the answer to the problem of populism today.
Before, right-wing populism didn't exist because many of the instances of today's populism were on the left. And the growth of people's rights was not considered reactionary, but progressive.
The great fracture on the left begins with the so-called third way and the complete surrender of progressives to neoliberalism. Since then we have been immersed in the single thought to the point of having lost the memory of ourselves. Read More