Nothing strikes as much fear through the establishment’s fact-checkers and hate-vanquishers as the rise of ‘populism’. Democratic backlashes against dominant ideologies and policy agendas are the natural and inevitable reaction to the intransigence of those who advance them. These reactions, which look likely to sweep many populist parties to power in elections this year, are seen by incumbents as the re-emergence of ‘dark historical forces’, but our leaders have no other words for the challenges to their authority than ‘far-Right’. The reason they cannot grasp what’s really going on – indeed, one of the causes of their unpopularity – is that they’ve placed too much faith in what has turned out to be really bad science.
According to the narrative of anointed pundits, tractors on their way to Europe’s capital cities and the EU Parliament are like so many Nazi tanks rolling across the continent. The EU Parliamentary election is at risk of a ‘far-Right takeover’ as polling shows voters beginning to reject the liberal consensus. This paranoid fantasy is not wholly without a basis in fact – the benighted really are changing the political landscape. Following Giorgia Meloni’s 2022 victory in Italy, Geert Wilders’s PVV became the largest party in the Netherlands last year but has been unable to form a Government. Since 2020, AfD has doubled its polling to around 20%, pushing Germany’s SPD and Greens into third and fourth places. The German Government is now contemplating banning the party, so bereft of ideas is it about how to counter its criticisms in the public square. France’s longstanding spectre haunting global blobists, Marine Le Pen’s party, would, according to recent polling, win a majority of seats in the National Assembly if an election were held tomorrow.
According to the establishment view, science is at loggerheads with the populism now sweeping across Europe. But to pit science against ideology in this way is false. Science has been used to legitimise numerous contemporary political agendas, invoked in the same way that God used to be to legitimise a particular political platform. Most notably, ‘climate science’, which is invoked by increasingly remote elites struggling to overcome yawning democratic deficits claim that ‘saving the planet’ is in the best interests of their electorates. Yet, to those being forced to pay the price for these economically ruinous policies, it’s obvious that the Net Zero agenda is, at root, an ideological crusade designed to advance the interests of wealthy elites. And many are now wondering if the ‘climate change’ we’re constantly being warned about will be as devastating as the policies designed to mitigate its effect, which seem to require the suspension of democracy, the transformation of society and the draconian regulation of lifestyles insofar as they require energy.
As politicians and others have met resistance to their agendas based on ‘unimpeachable science’, they have sought an explanation. The answer they found is epitomised by a 2011 article by liberal science warrior Chris Mooney, who helpfully set out ‘The Science of Why We Don’t Believe Science’. Neuroscientists and social psychologists, explained Mooney, had identified differences in the structure of brains owned by liberals and conservatives, which made the latter more prone to ‘motivated reasoning’ and therefore to ideology, whereas liberals were biased only towards truth. This explained why Republicans were more sceptical of climate change then their Democrat counterparts who obediently recognised the authority of ‘the scientific consensus’. Mooney’s essay, which followed his 2005 book, The Republican War on Science, was itself worked into a book in 2012, The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science – and Reality.
Mooney’s work, born in the pre-Obama era of ‘muscular atheism’ and a regrouping of Left-of-centre ideas around scientism, though largely inconsequential, marked the completion of cognitive and behavioural scientists’ entry into the political sphere. Only somebody with insufficiently developed neural circuits – a.k.a. Republicans – could disagree with climate propaganda, or they were funded by Big Oil, or both. It didn’t really matter, because Science had spoken.
But Mooney’s confidence was misplaced. Whereas the scientific consensus on climate change had been broadly (and falsely) reported as being as indubitable as ‘basic physics’, the new lab-coated recruits of this political, and increasingly cultural war, could not claim anything so tangible. First, studies confirmed that academic psychology was experiencing a ‘replication crisis’ – barely a third of published science in the field could be reproduced experimentally. Second, psychological science was revealed to be dominated by Left-wing scientists, with measurable impacts on peer-review. Conservative scientists were less likely to be published. A soft science – and perhaps the softest science – was now being used to supposedly explain why more people didn’t believe in hard science, although, to complicate things, the hard science wasn’t that hard after all.
In Britain, where politics was less polarised under a suffocating Blairism, this naked scientism had a much easier ride into the establishment. A consensus on climate change – and pretty much everything else – had formed in Westminster, excluding any inconvenient influences from politics. In a 2010 report, jointly produced by the Cabinet Office and the Institute for Government, Cabinet Secretary, then Sir, now Lord Gus O’Donnell, who had commissioned it, wrote in the foreword:
Many of the biggest policy challenges we are now facing… will only be resolved if we are successful in persuading people to change their behaviour, their lifestyles or their existing habits.
The report, citing “major advances in understanding the influences on our behaviours” argued that “influencing behaviour is central to public policy”, and that in tackling “crime, obesity or environmental sustainability, behavioural approaches offer a potentially powerful new set of tools”.
But there had been no development in the behavioural sciences – they remained mired in the depths of the replication crises and obvious ideological bias. The only change that occurred was a dim view of individuals’ competences had developed and become fashionable within policy circles, displacing a view that had hitherto constrained technocratic paternalism. Barely a year following its publication, Cass Sunstein’s 2008 book, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness had become the British Establishment’s operating manual. The Nudge Unit, properly known as the Behavioural Insights Team, was born.
After all, something had been lacking in public life since before even Blair’s triumphant arrival at Downing Street and politicians struggled to put their finger on it. In the early days of New Labour, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott declared that the state’s performance would now be measured by a ‘quality of life barometer’. Even the amount of birdsong – a metric of ecological sustainability and subjective wellbeing – would be measured. Sadly for Prescott, the plans for happiness were shelved in favour of a ‘War on Terror’, and so it was a touchy-feely David ‘hug-a-husky’ Cameron who finally seized the therapeutic initiative. He had convened a Quality of Life policy group in 2007 to investigate the policies required to make us adjust our behaviour to make life better for everyone, e.g. use less fossil fuels. And having taken office in 2010, the nudgers were the very group to help him make the ‘difficult’ choices required to save the planet.
The coalition ‘greenest Government ever’ brought together the two opposition parties that had convinced themselves they were planet savers. But the strongest constituency in Britain (ever) had a very different idea about what was lacking in politics. Worse, the Leave vote having won, no less an earthquake in the form of Donald Trump sent a second panic through the anointed classes. How could the nudgers, either side of the Atlantic, have got it so wrong? In the wake of these catastrophes, psychologists set to work developing new hypotheses to explain the public’s lack of gratitude.
Then, the most curious intervention from psychologists in the years between the Referendum and the Covid pandemic came from the green quarters. In 2018, an obscure 2016 paper by clinical psychologist Margaret Klein Salamon came to the attention of climate protesters. The paper called for the creation of a “climate emergency movement”, which would “lead the public into emergency mode”. This “mode is the mode of human psychological functioning that occurs when individuals or groups respond optimally to existential or moral emergencies”, claimed the psychologist. Thus, having had the ‘truth’ of the ‘climate emergency’ explained to them, the public would rise up and force governments to act to save the planet. Klein-Salamon’s hypothesis spawned Extinction Rebellion and its franchises, and Greta Thunberg’s Schools Strike movement. But the public, in their millions, stayed at home. Rather than rising up, they became impatient with the failure to clear the mere dozens of protesters from the streets.
A more successful intervention by social psychologists was the infamous survey which claimed that 97% of academic papers on climate change supported the consensus position. Cook et al.’s 2013 study was routinely cited by Obama as representing the “overwhelming judgement of science”. It’s authors believed, like Klein-Salamon, that the public would be more receptive to the ‘climate emergency’ scaremongering if they knew it had the backing of most climate scientists – a contentious hypothesis of science communication known as the Gateway Belief Model. “An accurate perception of the degree of scientific consensus is an essential element to public support for climate policy,” explains the paper’s introduction. The paper was not accurate, but it created an article of faith around which its adherents could organise their arguments. It was political communication, not science communication.
But how effective has this psychological ‘science’ been?
Across the Atlantic, polls suggest that voters will return Donald Trump to the Whitehouse and terminate Justin Trudeau’s hyper-woke regime. Further to the south, the chainsaw-wielding libertarian Javier Milei won 56% of the popular vote in last year’s presidential election in Argentina. One in three Europeans now vote for anti-establishment parties, bleats the Guardian. Its sister paper nervously awaits the results of 40 elections around the planet that threaten to undermine the global order and all life on Earth. The Guardian, again, uncritically reported the words of John Kerry: “The populist backlash against Net Zero around the world is imperilling the fight against climate breakdown and must be countered urgently or we face planetary destruction ‘beyond comprehension’.”
It’s beginning to look like the advice of behavioural ‘scientists’ about how to engage the public on Net Zero and other policies is a bit duff. Big promises are made by these academics about their ability to influence the public. But what are they really capable of achieving?
Extremely limited evidence underpins behavioural scientists’ claims. The classic example of ‘nudge’, for example, is the discovery that the image of a fly painted onto a urinal helps men to take better aim, thereby leaving conveniences in better condition. Away from the toilet, psychologists discoveries are difficult to quantify in wider society. Some psychologists, observe their critics, have used exotic and inappropriate statistical methods to report greater effects than can realistically be detected and expressed in conventional terms. Even in the lab, an attempt to quantify the Gateway Belief Model found that consensus messaging yielded just a +1.7% change in support for climate policies. This result was later disputed by other researchers in the field, who conversely found ‘reactance’ in studies of consensus messaging – an awareness of being manipulated, which increased rather than overcame polarisation.
It is a peculiar debate between academics on the green-Left about how best to manipulate climate-sceptic conservatives, rather than have it out with their enemy in the democratic open. And this cod-science’s hostility to democracy and the hoi polloi, which is conceived of as an unthinking, malleable mass, is reproduced in countless governments’ policies and communications. Perhaps then, they have not merely failed to manufacture consent but have actually helped to turn electorates against their would-be masters.
It would be too much to say that the global ‘populist backlash’ is wholly caused by green blob head-shrinking. But behaviourists’ work seems more intended to legitimise intransigence and to justify draconian policy to politicians than to win over the public, whose reaction to it does not require a PhD to understand. Many millions are poured by governments into research which hasn’t merely produced some ‘reactance’ but ultimately looks set to be near-terminal for the green cause, if progressive governments and politicians suffer the catastrophic defeats at the ballot box that many predict. If the intention was to win over the public, then the psychologists are even more out of touch than their clients. Academic psychology epitomises, rather than rescues, elite intransigence.
People can be hectored and punished into lockdowns and forced by high prices to reduce their energy usage, and democracy can be slowly eroded. But academic psychologists have been unable to turn insight about men peeing on flies into preventing a pissed off public reciprocating official sentiments.
When presented with actual choice, rather than one dictated by ‘choice architects’, the public do not choose either heat pumps or EVs, nor green technocratic globalists. Britain, for the moment, looks set to buck the trend sweeping the rest of the planet. But that’s partly because successive Conservative governments have placed far too much faith in propaganda informed by behavioural science, just like their progressive counterparts abroad. There’s a lesson here for Keir Starmer – but you can bet your bottom dollar he’ll ignore it.
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The guy is just an imbecile totally out of his depth. You’d get more sensible advice from the drunk down yr local boozer than you’d get from our Paddy.
Totally disagree. He is a big fat liar. As Yeadon points out, these guys knew exactly what Yeadon knew, they just chose to take a different position, for reasons we may never be fully informed about, none of them honourable.
I dunno commies are pretty delusional. Most will believe it right until the system comes to kill their own fam.
Maybe so, though for senior commies communism works pretty well – until you are purged…
With you tof. The so-called advisers are lying. Dr Mike Yeadon knows the level of these people and when he says they knew what they were up to it’s because he’s right.
At some point the likes of Witless and Unbalanced were given their orders by a Davos Deviant minion and all of a sudden their stories changed. The facts haven’t changed though and they are still despicable liars as they are proving in the Hallett pantomime.
He is bought and paid for.
He’s not incompetent and neither is Witty they’ve known the truth all along as tof say’s they’re both disgusting liars. I think the change of direction is due to them being either weak or more likely got at and brought.
I’ve always wondered what the compromat is on Witty he always looked nervous about the nonsense he was spouting.
Remember that youth….Witty you are a liar!
I hope yr right but in the case of unbalanced I believe he’s a crack pot commie.
Something changed big time around mid March, globally.
Jeffrey Tucker has looked into this area quite deeply in case of Trump/USA
Most have come to the conclusion that the military&co must have taken charge then.
So much for cockups, that’s for sure.
Yep.
See the Snowden papers.
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/edward-snowden-citizenfour-cola/?utm_source=luminate&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=defender&utm_id=20231120
Believe it or not, the Guardian actually was a paragon of investigative journalism – until this….
Spot on. I can also remember his earlier output via the BBC News channel back in early 2020 (I don’t watch it now). It may be that he changed his mind later on, but appears to have been “economical with the truth” at the Inquiry, perhaps just answering the questions that the barrister has asked; legal skills on display.
Anyway, the same barrister is interviewing his mate today, so we’ll see what the outcome is. An hour or so ago, GBN was reporting in it (split with the Korean visit to Buckingham Palace – so a bit disjointed).
“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”
In good King Charles’s golden days,
When loyalty no harm meant,
A zealous High-Churchman I was,
And so I got preferment;
Unto my flock I daily preached
Kings were by God appointed,
And damned was he that durst resist
Or touch the Lord’s anointed.
And this is law, I will maintain,
Until my dying day, Sir,
That whatsoever king shall reign,
I’ll be the Vicar of Bray, Sir.
When royal James obtained the crown,
And Popery came in fashion,
The penal laws I hooted down,
And read the declaration:
The Church of Rome I found would fit
Full well my constitution,
And had become a Jesuit,
But for the Revolution.
And this is law, I will maintain,
Until my dying day, Sir,
That whatsoever king shall reign,
I’ll be the Vicar of Bray, Sir.
Seems simple to me. In March 2020 it became (for whatever reason) good for one’s career and pocket to promote lockdowns.
Whatever is steering the inquiry that way, it is clear to the same people that preaching earlier and harder lockdowns is the key to preferment now.
The Vicar of Bray analogy is sound – outside of fiction, one can see the prelates doing such repeated back flips throughout the troubled times of the Tudor Reformation, as I often remembered during COVID itself.
One bonus from this nonsense. Millions of us now completely distrust the PTB in both government and “public health”. Next time this all comes round again, lockdown etc. , we will just say – “fuck that, no way”.
Wishful thinking. If my friends are representative of the population then tens of millions need only to be given the nod and they will all dig out their Karen uniforms and insignia and shut their churches, pubs and gatherings, while banging saucepans, flaunting their masked faces on social media and refusing to mingle with the unvaxxed.
Sadly and reluctantly I think you’re correct.
Snowdon was one of the covidiots!
We operate under the assumption that people with good jobs where their opinions have value – that they must have the cohones to hold to these views. If you’re surprised by the stupidity in our society then you will be more more surprised by the cowardice. Not to mention the venality and whorishness of such people, The fact is that we grew up convincing ourselves that the people in charge had at least some integrity. In a sense it was a compulsion because to admit otherwise would undermine the very framework of our own existence. As horrible as all of this is at least it shows things up in the cold light of day.
They wanted to segregate society. That is bad enough in itself. But the badge of being acceptable was to get yourself shot up full of poison. It is like a ‘think of the most evil plan in the world’ exercise. And that’s before you even mention infertility etc. This is no joke. This is the biggest assault that we will ever face even if we come face to face with a nuke in the future.This was cold and calculated and nasty and designed to injure or kill.
You had old men who had let flawlessly conscientious lives who had abstained from the drink all their lives being found in a pool of their own urine and vomit and dead from despair and dejection. The spririt which they pushed forth destroyed the mental health of countless millions from pensioners to small children. And it wasn’t even given a mention as it was happening. A remarkable acceleration in terms of the deterioration of dementia patients. That tells me a lot and all I need to know.
Watching Sir Patrick Valance this morning made me unhealthy angry. I don’t like to think I have it in me to hate anyone, but these people make me sick to the stomach even writing this is making my blood fucking boil.
They have to be hated because anything less is moral failure. You should never carry around hatred in your heart because it is bad for your health. But in termns of awarenss of the situation, you can’t really pretend that this hasn’t happened. And it is an ongong very nasty situation.I am still dealing with the attack of the bioweapon. I don’t think it has permanently reduced me. I don’t care it has done immense damage and I don’t forget.We shouldn’t allow any diminution.