This article was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.
If an asset is outlandishly priced – say, gold was suddenly $10 an ounce – everyone would immediately know that something is seriously wrong. While some will try to take advantage of this, the market would rapidly reverse and the price would shoot upwards towards “normalcy”. That’s the nature of markets, which run in cycles.
Indeed, everything runs in cycles, including politics. And if something as outlandish as 10-dollar gold were to happen in the world of politics, it would be a definitive signal that the existing “ism” is either already or on the way to being changed.
The last turning point in the global political cycle was in 2008 when years of liberalism ended with an African-American man in the White House (in a patently racist country). That cycle began about 20 years earlier (in the late 1980s) when the Reagan/Thatcher juggernaut of conservatism was in full flow. And here we are already 16 years from 2008 with populism in full flow and something even more outlandish than 10-dollar gold shaking up the world of politics. [Drum roll] …I give you, the Pope of Populism, Donald Trump!
That someone as grotesque as Trump was actually president of the most powerful country on earth and has a reasonable chance of being re-elected is, to my mind, a signal that the wave of populism that has been plaguing the world for the nearly two decades or so has not disappeared but is peaking. It can’t get worse from now on and is perhaps on its last legs.
As evidence, there are many straws in the wind. Look, for instance, at the recent travails of Viktor Orban, Hungary’s populist prime minister and supreme leader since 2010. The proximate cause of his problem was the discovery that a former official convicted of covering up sexual crimes at a state-run children’s home had been granted clemency by the President, who, together with two senior figures in Orban’s ruling party, have been compelled to resign. Given Orban’s loud preaching of conservative values – same sex marriage is banned and civil rights of LGBTQ+ Hungarians are constrained – as part of his agenda, the hypocrisy stands out like a rotten egg on his sour face.
Tens of thousands of ordinary Hungarians gathered in Budapest in the largest protest against Orban in recent years. To be sure, with almost complete control of most media outlets, he remains popular despite high inflation, low growth, and severe rural poverty. However, corruption is pervasive and, while elections are still two years away, the mood appears to be changing. This is what Reuters reported:
“We have had enough. We need change, this government is full of lies and hypocrisy,” said Jozsef Molnar, 64, who added that his 19-year-old son was also out protesting. Molnar said the last time he went to a protest was in 1989 during the time when communism collapsed.
In addition to his domestic woes, Orban has steadily alienated most other members of the EU over his close relationship with Putin, another populist who is beginning to stagger under the weight of his expansionary ambitions. The fact that he (Putin) had to have his main political opponent, Navalny, allegedly killed in prison – as seems most likely – just a month before the presidential election speaks to his nervousness and/or irrationality. The “murder” has triggered the most serious protests in Russia since the start of the Ukraine war, confirming that Putin’s authoritarianism, too, is beginning to fray, although, horrifyingly, people are being killed every day because of him.
And then, of course, there’s Netanyahu. While most Israelis feel the war against Hamas is justified, even more of them realise that the moment the war is over (and perhaps sooner), Netanyahu is finished. In Israel, the families of hostages are rapidly losing patience as are Israel’s till-now staunchest ally, America. Chuck Schumer, the Majority Leader of the Senate and the first Jewish Majority Leader in the US, has called on Israel to hold new elections, saying he believes Netanyahu has lost his way and is an obstacle to peace. It couldn’t be more clear that Netanyahu’s number is up; it’s tragic that he is prolonging this genocide against Palestinians simply to cling to power.
These are pretty egregious examples – particularly, Putin and Netanyahu, who will each be awarded a vicious and bloody end – but a much wider spectrum of leaders, populist or otherwise, are already feeling the pressure. Farmers are protesting all over the EU, in India, and in several countries from the heretofore Soviet bloc; in some of these (Czech Republic, Poland), the protests have been the largest since the fall of communism. It is clear that people in most countries, particularly in the West, are hugely dissatisfied with the way things are going, even without considering the horrific wars that are burning the globe. Clearly, things are going to change.
Change takes time. But the good news is that more and more people are now able to see that populist leaders, who target outsiders (minorities, immigrants), control the media, and brandish authoritarianism, rapidly build a new elite once they come to power with ordinary people getting short shrift in terms of any real benefits.
Till very recently, India seemed to be an exception in that, even though Modi fits the populist definition to a T, there haven’t yet been any earth-shaking waves of dissent. However, the recent disclosure (as a result of the Supreme Court order on Electoral Bonds) that the BJP has been trying to institutionalise crony capitalism has put paid to Modi’s “na khaunga na khane dunga” credentials. This, together with the fact that ongoing price rises are steadily pushing living standards down for most people, suggests that despite the huge money/media/organisational power the BJP wields, the future of India as a “Hindu rashtra” is most definitely not assured.
Zooming out to the global picture, with Trump remaining loudly in the news, whether as the next President of the US or as a contentious revolutionary tilting at the windmills of the US political system, people across the globe (including India) will be continuously reminded, particularly when they feel the pressure on their wallets, of the foolishness of mistaking a media circus for genuine governance.
Clearly, populism is giving way. Hopefully, a new democratic socialist order will begin to gain ground. The leaders should not take their longevity for granted.
Jamal Mecklai is a leading consultant on Treasury and Forex risk management.
