US Needs to Take History More Seriously

US Needs to Take History More Seriously

YouTube video by Niall Ferguson

Why The United States Needs to Take History More Seriously
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmdxYTyrI-E

Could you put your hand up if you are an American citizen; now keep your hand up
if you intend to vote for Donald Trump; he must still be a coffee now put your
hand up. if you think that what we're seeing in American politics this year is
unprecedented all right. I'm here to tell you that you're wrong it's um in fact
eminently precedented that there should be a populist backlash against globalization it's happened before but you have to take a deep breath and stop worrying about the 1930s. my dear old friend Andrew Sullivan wrote a scintillating piece for New York
magazine warning that Donald Trump represented tyranny and many people including myself have been prompted by the events of the past 12 months to
reread Philip Roth's extraordinary book
the plot against America which if you
haven't read you should read Roth
imagines an isolationist presidency
Charles Lindbergh are taking the United
States into fascism the slogan of the
isolationists in the 1930s was of course
America first but I want to try and
persuade you that this is not the right
analogy and indeed that the more Donald
Trump is compared with Hitler the more
likely paradoxically he is to win
because his supporters simply aren't
convinced by that analogy I'm going to
be like a celebrity chef now I'm going
to give you a recipe Gordon Ramsay style
but my recipe is for populism
and if you come into my historical
kitchen I'll show you that it takes just
five ingredients and that Americans have
cooked this meal before so the first
ingredient for a populist backlash is an
increase in immigration and if one looks
at measures like this one which shows
you the percentage of the u.s.
population that is foreign-born you'll
see that in a remarkably short space of
time since the 1980s we've returned very
close to the peak in the late 19th
century that's to say the foreign-born
share of the u.s. population is now
close to that 40 percent peak that we
saw in what I'm going to call the first
age of globalization the period before
1914 when the United States or enormous
our inflows of migrants predominantly
but not exclusively from Europe so
ingredient number one is is a big surge
in emigration ingredient number two is
an increase in inequality we don't have
good inequality data for the late 19th
century the partly because we don't have
income tax a data from that period but
we can see and the work of Emmanuel Saez
and Thomas Piketty has shown this that
in the last decade or so we have nearly
returned in terms of income inequality
to the levels of the pre frost World War
and 1920s periods so that's the second
ingredient the third ingredient if you
want to have a populist backlash is an
increasing perception of corruption a
sense that the political system is bent
crooked and we can see in surveys of
American attitudes just how far major
institutions of American life that most
obviously Congress have suffered
dramatic declines
in their reputations so the the
popularity or favorability of Congress
and the public eye is down into single
digits the fourth ingredient which is a
little bit like turning up the heat
under the pot is a major financial
crisis there have only really been three
financial crises comparable in size to
the one that we experienced in the
aftermath of 2008 one is very famous the
1929 stock market crash in the
subsequent depression one is much less
well known the earliest of the three and
that was the 1873 financial panic which
was followed by a period of stagnation
in economic growth that lasted right
into the 1890s in fact contemporaries
call that the Great Depression you now
have four key ingredients for a populist
backlash all that you need is to add one
secret sauce in order to achieve peak
populism you need a demagogue you need
someone who can connect with the voters
who are aggrieved about all the things
I've just described you the increased
immigration their increased inequality
the financial crisis the sense that the
system is rigged is corrupt and that is
what has happened in this election and
all the experts all the pundits have
been completely blindsided by this
phenomenon the only people who could
possibly have seen it coming I think
were historians who certainly in my case
saw that after the financial crisis and
all it's matter economic turbulence
there would be a backlash the only
question would be really who the
demagogue would be
now many of you think this is
unprecedented but I would guess that
many of you have never heard of this man
and indeed don't recognize him even the
Californians probably have no idea who
this is let me tell you the story of
Denis Kearney Denis Kearney was the
Donald Trump of the 1870s and Denis
Kearney came on the scene after the 1873
crisis with a very straightforward and
to us familiar message the message was
that our problems the problems of the
working man of California are due to
immigration and a corrupt political
establishment it's amazing to me really
that Kearney is so completely forgotten
because he was one of the most
successful populist s-- of the era so
successful that his slogan the Chinese
must go that was his campaign slogan was
in fact translated into legislation it
became policy now the kind of arguments
that keone made about the Chinese in the
1870s were very similar to the arguments
that we've heard Donald Trump make about
a whole range of different immigrant
populations since he began his campaign
last year from Mexicans to Muslims they
were partly economic but they were
partly cultural and the solution in both
cases was the same get them out stop
them coming do not underestimate the
power of this populist message in 1882
the United States Congress passed the
exclusion act which ended Chinese
immigration to the United States it was
the first of a succession of legislative
measures designed to stop immigration
and it began with the Chinese and by the
1930s it had excluded a whole range of
other groups from immigration and indeed
had effectively ended him
into the United States by the time of
World War two metaphorically tyranny was
calling for a wall and in this wonderful
cartoon you can see the Curie i'ts
literally building a wall at the San
Francisco Harbor to stop the Chinese
coming in we underestimate this kind of
populist message at our peril because
the lesson of history is that it can
translate not just into votes it can
translate into a backlash against
globalization itself mandated by the
legislature the fascinating thing about
populism is that although it loves to
use the language of nationalism it is
itself a global phenomenon then as now
there was populism happening all over
the place tyranny was just part of a
worldwide backlash against globalization
in the 1870s and 1880s there were
populist in Germany there were populist
in France there were populist in Britain
some were anti-semitic the British
populous were anti Irish but the
characteristic features of populism were
the same in all cases and the recipe the
Gordon Ramsay paetynn recipe for
populism was essentially the same - I've
been arguing that the United States of
amnesia needs to take history more
seriously in fact I recently proposed
with my old friend Graham Allison that
the next president of the United States
needs a council of historical advisors
because frankly the economic advisors
haven't done that well maybe we could
try learning from history instead of
defunct macro models let me give you
some lessons of history to reflect on i
think the first important lesson is the
one i've already sketched for you
populist s' all over the world
in the late 19th century achieved a
significant roll back of globalization
it wasn't just the United States that
restricted immigration the Australians
did the same and sometimes it was quite
explicitly designed to achieve a racial
purpose to have white only Australia not
only that but in other countries
including the United States the backlash
against globalization led to tariffs
reduced free trade and attacks on free
capital movement to bankers were a
favorite target of late 19th century
populist just as they're a favorite
target today so I think one obvious
lesson of history is that globalization
is politically reversible if it doesn't
have majority support it can be undone
and that's why we should take not only
Trump's proposals for migration
restriction seriously but also the
proposals that he's made repeatedly on
the campaign trail to engage in a trade
war with China and potentially to
restrict the freedom of us corporations
to invest overseas something he's been
very explicit about let's underestimate
this at our peril another less obvious
lesson of history however is that the
last populist wave the last backlash
against globalization didn't achieve as
much as its proponents had hoped in the
political realm populist did not form
many national governments they got into
legislatures they scared political
establishments but populist candidates
didn't become president William Jennings
Bryan was the most famous populist
leader you probably have heard of him
but he never became president despite
three runs at the White House Denis
tyranny vanished from the political
scene so completely after he'd achieved
his great victory in 1882 to the point
that nobody today has heard of him and
perhaps
one day it will be possible to ask a
roomful of people have you heard of
Donald Trump and nobody will have just
consider that blissful possibility so
populist don't necessarily get power it
may indeed elude Trump we'll see another
thing that people often must
misunderstand about populism is that
it's not especially belligerent the
great category error that we keep
encountering is the conflation of
populism and fascism fascism is about
men in uniforms with armaments engaging
in warfare the central goal of the Nazi
regime in the 1930s was war its goal of
economic recovery was its tool of
economic recovery Wars rearmament
there's a fundamental difference in that
sense between the populism we see today
and the fascism of the 1930s the
low-level violence the crass incitements
to violence of this campaign are quite
different in kind from the major plans
for war that the fascist leaders engaged
in in the 1930s so I think it's a
mistake to worry too much about that as
a potential consequence of this election
that's to misunderstand the nature of
populism apart from saying he'll
annihilate Islamic state in ways too
mysterious to reveal to us Trump has it
seems to me very little of the
neoconservative legacy of
interventionism in fact on the whole he
would like to get the United States out
of the Middle East after he has
annihilated Islamic state in a
mysterious way and the sorts of war that
Trump promises are trade wars not war
Wars a fourth important lesson of
history to grasp is that populism is a
very finite political phenomenon in the
case of the period that I'm interested
in the late 19th century it's sort of
peaked in the 1880s and by the eighteen
twenties was beginning to fade there's a
good reason for that when you think
about it the populist remedies for the
problems of America then and now are
snake oil
they don't actually work it doesn't
improve the living standards of
aggrieved working class or lower middle
class white Americans to end
globalization it won't improve their
lives to halt immigration or to engage
in a trade war with China quite the
opposite
a fascinating lesson of recent Latin
American history is the reminder that
populism doesn't work and after you've
tried it for a decade or so you get
disgusted and turn away from it that
happened in Argentina last year it's
sort of happening slowly and painfully
in Brazil and it will happen I think in
Venezuela so the good news is that
populism will run out of road because
it's solutions to our problems are
inherently bogus what came after the
populism of Dennis Pyrenees generation
this all cheer up er Google crowd
progressivism you probably already feel
progressive it's just that you're not
terribly well organized progressive at
least not politically unfortunately in
this election campaign Hillary Clinton
has emerged as the candidate of the
status quo this is what I call the the
snafu scenario I don't know if you know
the military acronym snafu from world
war ii world war ii it stands for
situation normal all effed up and that's
essentially what the Clinton campaign is
offering more of the same this is not an
impressive and compelling narrative for
the electorate today the trouble is that
the alternative that Trump is offering
is best summed up in the acronym fubar
another world war two acronym which
stands up for effed up beyond all
recognition
it seems to me is the choice that
Americans are being confronted with and
that's a very bad choice indeed was said
earlier today I think rightly that for
young people this choice just seems like
a choice between evils it's an enormous
turnoff the lesson of history is that
the left liberalism has to reinvent
itself in order to defeat populism it
needs to come up with more compelling
answers to our contemporary problems
than the ones that the current
Democratic Party establishment offers
that was what happened in the late 19th
and early 20th century in the United
States and elsewhere to the great
antidotes of populism was progressivism
there's only one catch paradoxically it
was the progressives not the populist
who ender ended up giving the world
world war one the great conflagration of
1914 happened with populist sfrom
Woodrow Wilson to Lloyd George in power
and that teaches us two important things
with which I'm going to conclude the
first is that while populist Tsar band
to F up things beyond all recognition
domestically they're unlikely to produce
the kind of class Cataclysm that arose
in 1914
it's the progressives who have the worst
track record in American history when it
comes to getting involved in really big
conflicts there's another lesson of
history there for American liberals stop
pretending that it was conservatives who
got the United States into the world
wars into Korea into Vietnam Iraq in
this sense is the outlier and so let me
conclude with your worst nightmare
your worst nightmare is not a trump
presidency my progressive friends your
worst nightmare is a successful trump
presidency which begins with the
ultimate bromance Donald Trump in Moscow
making peace in Syria think about that
scenario it could be happening in just a
few months thank you very much indeed