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Jordan Peterson: Why Globalism Fails and Nationalism is Relatable
PhilosophyInsights
Ben Shapiro Explains Globalism
Conservative Central
Donald Trump Names The Globalists
Pius
What Is a Globalist?
Rebel Media
Also See:
and
and
https://arcticcompass.blogspot.ca/2016/10/you-decide-globalism-or-not.html
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Jordan Peterson: Why Globalism Fails and Nationalism is Relatable
Published on Jul 27, 2017
*******Ben Shapiro Explains Globalism
Published on Apr 4, 2017
*******Donald Trump Names The Globalists
Published on Oct 14, 2016
*******What Is a Globalist?
Published on Sep 16, 2016
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Trump vs. the Globalists
At the first major international gathering of Trump’s
presidency, America’s new president topped the agenda even though he wasn't
there.
By Blake Hounshell
February 13, 2017
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates—Donald Trump was everywhere and
nowhere.
His name came up almost constantly—in side conversations, in
pointed questions to panelists, in broadsides from the main stage. And even
when the new American president wasn’t invoked by name, his putative threat to
world order was very much on people’s minds: Is trade dead? Is globalization
over? What does “America First” mean for the rest of us?
Here at the World Government Summit—a sort of Middle Eastern
Davos-in-the-making put on by the United Arab Emirates, and the first major
international confab since Trump took office—the mood among the 4,000 or so
attendees was one of confusion mixed with concern.
After all, this was a gathering of precisely the kind of
cosmopolitan elites Trump ran against on the campaign trail, and has vowed to
disempower as president. His chief strategist, Steve Bannon, blasted these
villains in a blunt post-election interview that previewed Trump’s inaugural
address weeks later: “The globalists gutted the American working class and
created a middle class in Asia. The issue now is about Americans looking to not
get fucked over.”
If there’s anyone who embodies the idea of globalism, it’s
Klaus Schwab, founder of the Switzerland-based World Economic Forum, who opened
the conference with a grim assessment of the populist wave led by Trump.
“People in some parts of the world are angry. Facts do not anymore count. Fake
news may become more important than reality,” he said.
Schwab, whose organization has come to symbolize the idea of
a borderless world that Trump rails against, also offered something of an
apology. “We should not go back to neoliberalism, and say we want to fix the
system by making it more inclusive,” he declared. “What we have seen is a
revolution against the system, so fixing the system is not enough.”
“We should not look at globalism and nationalism as enemies.
We are a global society with a shared future,” he said. “At the same time, we
need a national identity.”
But like others struggling to understand Trumpism, Schwab
offered more in the way of slogans than answers, and proceeded to plug his most
recent book—The Fourth Industrial Revolution, a techno-optimist look at
advances like artificial intelligence, genome editing and cryptography—when in
all likelihood the acceleration of existing technological trends is only going
to widen those divides and create more Trumps. (“We need to move out from this
negativism,” Schwab said, “and move to a place where we again have trust in the
future.”)
Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International
Monetary Fund, faced a barrage of questions about Trump, and while she
deflected them—the IMF is optimistic about his tax reform and infrastructure
plans, she revealed—she also grappled with elites’ failure to anticipate the
populist backlash that Trump represents.
“We’ve been saying internationalization is great, global
trade is great,” Lagarde acknowledged. “But we haven’t been so focused on
sharing the benefits.” Asked why she and others missed the Trump phenomenon,
she said: “Because it was insidious. Because it happened over time.”
How might globalization’s defenders retool? “I know it’s not
fashionable at the moment, but I think facts, figures,” she said, in another
unmistakable shot at Trump and his penchant for misrepresenting reality. (“We
are facing a real challenge,” the left-leaning economist Joseph Stiglitz added
during a later session, “undermining the common agreement of what is truth.”)
The hits on Trump kept coming, as did the mea culpas from
the globalists.
“Globalization has brought increasing wealth and improved
welfare in general, but it also had its losses,” said U.N. Secretary-General
António Guterres. “Many people feel that they have been left behind, and that
the political establishments of their countries have not taken care of them.”
As for Trump, who has threatened to slash the U.N.’s funding
and shown little appreciation for its value, Guterres said: “My position about
the way the United Nations needs to deal with the U.S. administration is
simple: Respect its principles.”
Guterres suffered his first black eye at the hands of the
Trump administration this week when U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley blocked the
appointment of former Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad as envoy to
Libya, but he held his rhetorical ground, at least. “I deeply regret this
opposition and I see no validity in it,” he said.
Using the kind of language usually applied to problems like
terrorism, Jim Yong Kim, the World Bank chief appointed by Barack Obama,
suggested that global institutions had a responsibility to address the anger
that led to Trump. “It’s not enough to condemn xenophobia and populism; we need
to engage with the root causes that make them fester.”
It was ironic to watch all this globalist soul-searching on
display in Dubai, a city that has benefited from globalization perhaps more
than any other—importing labor from all over the world and positioning itself
as a symbol of openness in the closed-off Middle East, and a gateway between
East and West.
Gulf Arab leaders openly cheered the departure of Obama,
whose dealings with Iran and embrace of the Arab Spring both infuriated and
alarmed them. Now, they’re trying to figure out what to make of Trump, whose
promises to get tough on Tehran and attacks on Islamist groups like the Muslim
Brotherhood have undeniable appeal here.
They may have to keep guessing for now. Last year, Obama
gave the WGS keynote address via video, but the Trump administration sent
nobody to this year’s conference to explain its positions—perhaps
understandable given all the chaos back at the White House, but an unmistakable
sign of its insularity nonetheless.
The UAE (which, through the U.N. Foundation, paid for my
travel and lodging here) was the only Arab country to defend Trump’s executive
order on immigration, rejecting the idea that it was a “Muslim ban,” and its
ambassador in Washington has cozied up to top White House officials including
Jared Kushner. But this is realpolitik, not love. When asked about dealing with
Trump, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, Dubai’s absolute ruler and the
UAE’s vice president, was characteristically unsentimental. “We have
relationships with governments and states, not individuals,” he said. “Our
relations are based on the interests of our country.”
Privately, some will admit to worrying that Trump will
unleash a global trade war that will make everyone worse off. An Emirati close
to the royal family told me that the official stiff upper lip masked real
concern: “If globalization dries up, Dubai is finished.”
For now, the world goes on—and much of the conference had
nothing to do with America or Trump whatsoever. There were booths on blockchain
technology and the UAE’s plans to visit Mars, and a “Museum of the Future”
showcasing sci-fi technologies like robotic gardens and a jellyfish-mangrove
hybrid that could generate fresh water. The prime minister of Bhutan flitted
from panel to panel, promoting the idea of “gross national happiness” as a
better barometer of a country’s well-being than GDP.
Parag Khanna, a Singapore-based author and proud globalist
who gave a talk here on “liquid borders,” laughed at the idea that Trump can
roll back globalization, as many here fear. Pointing to reams of statistics
showing the explosion of new trade ties with little or no involvement from the
United States, he told me that Trump would merely act as an “accelerant” of
existing trends. As for the U.S., “America First” or no, “people will care a
lot less about what we do,” he predicted.
Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, the head of DP World, a UAE-based
ports conglomerate that operates in 40 countries, also disputed the assumption
that Trump threatens global trade, noting that some 75 percent of the world’s
economic growth is in emerging markets. Sulayem has his business down to a
science—he rattled off statistics, such as how 1 percent growth in a country
means a 3 percent growth in shipping containers. His company is focused on
cracking open markets in hard-to-reach places like the interior of Africa, and
doesn’t much worry about what the United States is doing.
As for Trump and his populist allies in Europe and around
the world, “I think this is a phase,” he said. “This is something that will
pass.”
Blake Hounshell is the editor in chief of POLITICO Magazine.
*******Also See:
Wake Up, Lefties! Go Towards the Light!
19 February 2017and
Freedom of Speech Threatened! Harper Opposes the Internet!
08 February 2017and
You Decide. Globalism or Americanism?
20 October 2016https://arcticcompass.blogspot.ca/2016/10/you-decide-globalism-or-not.html
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