It’s not populist politics. Let’s just call it fascism
The Guardian’s use of the word populism (The rise of the new populism, 30 November), a word used by the likes of Steve Bannon to con individuals into believing his brand of politics represents the interests of the working/disenfranchised classes, was extremely disappointing.
We should be calling the growing impact of “populist politics” what it is – a return to fascism. Be it in Hungary, Brazil, Russia or, dare I say it, the United States – so-called populist politicians are following a path well trod by Mussolini, Franco and Hitler. The marginalisation of minorities, the demonisation of foreigners, isolationism and authoritarian rule aren’t populist – they are fascist. We need to call it what it is or risk repeating its most heinous crimes.
Leanne Pooley
Auckland, New Zealand
• Paul Lewis’s profile of populism strategist Steve Bannon, and Matthijs Rooduijn’s analysis, The new populism, reminded me of Canadian journalist and historian Gwynne Dyer’s recent and wise maxim that “Populism is not an ideology. It’s just a technique.”
Such being the case, one can see clearly how Bannon, like Trump, far from being one of “the little guys” they are trying to win over from the “corrupt elites”, are, with cunning and very deep pockets, revamping the old show-biz and media-enhanced techniques of the wily newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst (aka Citizen Kane) who also sought a populist following while enjoying, like his modern-day copies, the pampered life of the moneyed, propertied and overpublicised.
Richard Orlando
Westmount, Quebec, Canada
Population increase must be part of the discussion
Robin McKie’s article on the global climate talks indicates that the world’s population may increase by 4 billion by 2100 (7 December). As a retired forest economist with over 30 years’ experience working in tropical countries, I can say that this is going to have a profoundly negative effect on the forest and woodlands in tropical regions. Over 1bn hectares of forests/woodlands may be converted to agriculture mainly by the subsistence sector, yet the IPPC report calls for an increase in wooded areas to capture CO2.
Nowhere at the UN climate conference is the tempering of population increase considered. Unless this is done, there will be increased starvation and massive migration from tropical areas. Tempering population increase seems to be a taboo topic, yet it is an essential part of the equation for mitigating global warming.
Keith Openshaw
Vienna, Virginia, US
Nothing about Bush Sr for progressives to like
In his article on the death of George HW Bush, father of war-making son George W Bush, who killed Iraqis for having no weapons of mass destruction, Michael H Fuchs concludes “as a progressive … I am proud he was my president”. George Bush Sr was anything but a progressive (7 December). He was the ideological continuation of Ronald Reagan.
Bush beat a true progressive by the now forgotten name of Michael Dukakis. He won by running an infamously racist campaign known as “the revolving door”. In 1988 as today, racism gets you elected. Once in office, he continued Reagan’s neoliberalism. It was this economic policy that devastated the manufacturing heartland of the US.
Donald Trump harvested the resentment that followed this Reagan-Bush policy by directing it against foreigners, migrants, China, Europe, globalisation, environmentalism, feminism, etc – anything that isn’t white, racist, stupid and male.
Thomas Klikauer
Sydney, Australia
• As for the elder George Bush’s legacy of “a Thousand Points of Light” – ie charities – witness the last 40 years since of unrelenting poverty. I remain of Upton Sinclair’s mind that only a (socialist) government can be relied upon to improve our lives – in more than an ad hoc fashion. Widows’ mites spread too thinly.
RM Fransson
Wheat Ridge, Colorado, US
Milk substitutes show we are cut off from our nature
The marketing of beverages with the tagline “like milk, but made for humans” could occur only in a society so disconnected from its mammalian nature as to associate “milk” with a grocery item, rather than something produced for our young by our own bodies (Dairy clash, 16 November). The primarily sexual conception of the female breast – the result, rather than the cause, of its habitual concealment – is a significant contributing factor.
Greg DePaco
New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada
