---
author: Money & Macro
date: '2026-05-08'
guest: ''
layout: post.njk
source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx-s-yY5AnI
speaker: Money & Macro
tags:
  - right-wing-populism
  - economic-inequality
  - cultural-divide
  - social-media-polarization
  - political-elites
title: 右翼民粹主义为何总能卷土重来？
summary: 本视频探讨了右翼民粹主义为何在经历挫折后仍能持续回潮的现象。文章分析了经济落后、文化精英脱节、公众道德观退化以及社交媒体极化等四种主要叙事，并结合证据逐一评估。结论认为，右翼民粹主义的持续存在是经济不平等、政治代表性鸿沟以及社交媒体算法放大的综合作用结果，而非公众道德的普遍滑坡。
insight: ''
draft: true
series: ''
category: politics-society
area: society-thinking
project: []
people: []
companies_orgs:
  - The Economist
products_models: []
media_books: []
status: evergreen
---
### 右翼民粹主义的持久性与复杂根源

尽管唐纳德·特朗普的支持率下降，维克多·欧尔班遭遇惨败，英国普遍认为脱欧是错误，欧洲人更信任欧盟官僚而非本国政府，表面上看右翼民粹主义似乎正在衰落。然而，历史经验表明，民粹主义的兴衰并非一成不变。即使在曾经历“混乱”、“腐败暴露”等重大挫折后，右翼民粹主义政党往往能卷土重来。本文将探讨其原因，并分析“经济落后”、“政治精英脱节”、“公众道德观退化”及“社交媒体极化”这四种主流解释。

<details>
<summary>Original English</summary>

Donald Trump's approval ratings are lower than 
ever. Viktor Orban just suffered a landslide  
defeat. Most Brits now think Brexit was a massive 
mistake, and most Europeans trust EU bureaucrats  
more than their own elected governments. So, 
it kind of looks like right-wing populism is  
collapsing, right? It seems that people are 
finally realizing that random tariff barrages  
won't fix the American economy and that populists 
may promise to drain the swamp, but they really  
mean replace the swamp and that leaving the EU 
did not result in more money for healthcare. The  
populist surge in the west is over. This is the 
end. Or is it? Actually, the experience of early  
adopter populist countries shows us that this 
is extremely unlikely. For example, in Austria,  
populism collapsed in the early 2000s after Jörg 
Haider's freedom party government turned out to  
be a chaotic mess. But once again, although not 
in power, the Austrian Freedom Party got the most  
votes in the last election. Similarly, in Italy, 
the populist Berlusconi faced a crushing defeat  
after it became clear his billionaire who will 
rescue the economy narrative was not working. Yet,  
Berlusconi always came back. And even when he 
himself did not, Italy is now again ruled by a  
populist right-wing president. In fact, looking at 
these graphs, we can see that the dynamic is often  
the same. Once right-wing populism emerges, yes, 
it often suffers crushing setbacks due to chaotic  
infighting, no economic progress, and the exposure 
of massive corruption, but it never really goes  
away. So, right-wing populists may suffer 
crushing defeats and often embarrassing ones,  
but eventually they always bounce back, which 
raises the question, why does populism always keep  
bouncing back? Why is it not going away after all 
of those broken promises? As always on Money and  
Macro, we've emerged ourselves into the relevant 
scientific literature and selected the four most  
prevalent explanations. Narrative number one, it's 
the economy stupid? Ordinary people have been left  
behind. Narrative number two, right-wing populists 
have a point. Mainstream politicians themselves  
are the problem. They've become out of touch 
on cultural issues like immigration. Narrative  
number three, people have just become more racist/ 
authoritarian. And last but not least, narrative  
number four, it's actually social media that's 
to blame. That is pushing people to political  
extremes. In this video, we examine the evidence 
and counter evidence for each theory to determine  
which of them has the most convincing explanation 
for why right-wing populism keeps bouncing back.  
But before solving the puzzle, we first need to 
make sure we are all talking about the same thing.  
That is, what is right-wing populism actually? 
And how is it different from left-wing populism?  
Aren't these polar opposites? Why are we talking 
about them in the same breath? Well, yes and no.  
This is something people often get wrong. Populism 
is not at all like socialism or like conservatism.  
It's not an ideology. It's a way of talking about 
politics a lens through which political conflict  
is framed. At its core, both left and right-wing 
populism divides society into two opposing groups.  
On the one hand, the hardworking people and on 
the other, the corrupt elites. Populism is pretty  
easy to understand. Essentially, all problems in 
society are the fault of these corrupt elites. The  
difference between left and right-wing populism 
then is which elite group they frame as the  
problem. On the left, populists target economic 
elites such as rich and the corporations, the  
brolicharchy of tremendous wealth, a government 
of the billionaire class by the billionaire class.  
On the other hand, right-wing populists target 
a different kind of elite group, the cultural  
elites, such as "The Brussels bureaucrats, the 
Amercian bureaucrats, and the Soros network..." 
but also academics or mainstream politicians 
accused of ignoring ordinary people's concerns  
about immigration, crime, and cultural identity. 
Different enemies, same narrative. The system  
has been captured by elites which no longer 
represent the people and simple narratives  
often come with simple solutions. So if you 
believe that moneyed elites cause most problems,  
you should vote left-wing populists into power 
so that they can tax their wealth away. And  
if you believe immigration is damaging 
the economy and eroding local culture,  
you should back leaders who are not afraid to defy 
cultural elites and take massive actions to close  
the borders. Especially the right-wing populist 
story convinced a lot of people in the West in  
the last couple of decades. But okay, back to the 
present. Trump's remanufacturing America story is  
failing. Brexit is not making Britain rich and 
Orban just lost in a landslide. So why again do  
we say right-wing populism will bounce back soon 
enough? Well, let's start with the economic story  
that should in theory empower left-wing populists. 
But surprisingly in reality often empowers the  
right. Narrative number one, people vote populist 
because they are economically left behind. Okay,  
this map shows GDP per capita per German state. 
And this map shows where people mostly voted  
for the right-wing populist party AFD. This is 
not a coincidence. When we look at leaders like  
Marine Le Pen and Viktor Orban, we see that they 
often struggle to gain traction in thriving rich  
urban centers, but they dominate the vote 
in rural and declining areas. By now, it's  
pretty well known that the hyper globalization 
period from the late 1970s to early 2000s created  
winners and losers. Chinese workers were 
able to produce for the rest of the world,  
massively improving their own living standards. 
Meanwhile, in the west, highly educated people  
in big cities in rich countries were also able to 
export services to more and more people globally,  
which translated into higher wages for them. 
But take a look at this graph. The hourly wage  
corrected for inflation for a US worker without 
higher education is very similar today to what it  
was in 1965. So while during the period of hyper 
globalization the US economy kept growing only  
the well-educated cultural and moneyed elites have 
actually seen their purchasing power go up while  
many ordinary people were indeed left behind. 
It's not hard to see how this can translate  
into politics. If you feel the system no longer 
works for you and the same political elites keep  
defending it. Of course you will start looking for 
alternatives and that is exactly what we see in  
the data. Regions more exposed to Chinese import 
competition were more likely to support Brexit,  
Trump, and the AFD in Germany. Areas more exposed 
to automation tend to show stronger support for  
populist parties. However, while this evidence 
looks convincing, it has three big problems.  
First, if we look at people in countries that 
truly lost a lot of their income between 1985  
and 2015, we would expect right-wing 
populism to have surged in countries  
like Spain and Portugal. But actually, relatively 
fortunate and less unequal countries like Norway,  
Finland, Switzerland, and Austria have 
seen far bigger right-wing populist surges.  
The second problem with the explanation is 
once we move from regions to individuals,  
the story weakens. As research by political 
science professor Larry Bartles shows, economic  
disaection turns out to be a poor predictor 
of whether someone votes or identifies with  
right-wing populism. It is far less informative 
than attitudes towards immigration, trust in  
political institutions, or broader cultural 
values. In other words, yes, many people in left  
behind areas vote for the populist right. But if 
you want to actually predict whether someone will  
support the populist right, you get much closer 
by asking what they think about immigration or  
whether they trust politicians than by asking them 
about what they think about the economy. The third  
problem is if populism is about regular working 
folks wanting an equal share of the economic pie,  
wouldn't it make sense to vote for populists 
who want to redistribute wealth, so those on  
the left? However, if we look at the data, we 
see the opposite. It's especially right-wing  
populism that is surging in the West as inequality 
increased. So, could it be that people are fooled  
by the populist right to vote against their own 
interest? That's a story that we hear a lot and it  
could be true but actually and it may shock some 
of you hearing this from me in this case maybe  
economics is not everything. So it's time for this 
economist here to step outside of his comfort zone  
with narrative number two. Right-wing populism 
is actually about out of touch cultural elites.  
Okay. The argument goes a little bit like this. No 
voters are not confused. The real people who are  
confused are the cultural elites. I really believe 
that Westminster, the intellectuals, the liberal  
elites just don't get it. Take a simple question. 
Should immigrants adapt to the customs of the  
country that they move to? Large majorities of 
the public say yes. This holds all across Europe,  
Britain, Denmark, Germany, and Sweden. But among 
political elites, only those in Denmark agree with  
that view. On the other hand, in Germany, all 
politicians except for the populist right, and  
yes, that even includes conservative politicians, 
are more liberal on immigration than the average  
voter? Or take the question, should race be taken 
into account in college admissions? Only a third  
of Americans agree with this view. Yet mainstream 
Democrat leaders from Hillary Clinton to Joe Biden  
have consistently supported raceconscious policies 
and criticized court rulings against them. This  
disconnect between what the public wants and 
what politicians want on the other hand is what  
political scientists call a representation 
gap. As you can see here in this FT graph,  
politicians and voters are roughly aligned when 
it comes to economic issues like redistribution  
and capitalism. Left-wing politicians are close 
to leftwing voters and right-wing politicians  
are close to right-wing voters. But when it 
comes to topics like immigration and crime,  
politicians are on average far more to the left 
than the average voter. So when the political  
debate is dominated by economic issues like 
taxes and redistribution, well in those cases,  
mainstream parties are relatively safe because 
they champion what voters actually want. But  
when cultural issues move to the center of the 
debate, the dynamics change. If voters feel that  
their basic cultural preferences are ignored 
or even worse, dismissed or talked down upon,  
that gap becomes a big opportunity for right-wing 
populists to emerge. The clearest example of this  
is the 2015 European refugee crisis. As images 
of large numbers of asylum seekers and irregular  
border crossings dominated the news, immigrations 
shot up the list of public concerns. People did  
not necessarily purely react to immigration 
itself, but they did react strongly to the  
perception of chaos and loss of control. And when 
that perception takes hold and politicians are not  
reacting to it, then right-wing populists gain a 
big advantage. Research by James Denison and Andre  
Fer Gues shows that as immigration becomes more 
salient, support for populist right-wing parties  
rises right along with it. Not perfectly, not 
everywhere, but consistently enough to matter.  
At the same time, as citizens, we're like, "Oh 
my goodness, look at what's going on here. Our  
societies are changing dramatically. We're in the 
midst of this economic stagnation where, you know,  
I feel like I have to compete for jobs. I have to 
compete for public goods." And at the same time,  
traditional establishment parties are inviting in 
tons of immigrants, allowing huge asylum flows,  
telling me that if I worry about this or I'm 
concerned about this, I'm a racist or a xenophobe.  
So, interestingly, when populist right-wingers say 
that cultural elites like mainstream politicians  
are out of touch, data shows us that they are 
correct. Not when it comes to economics, but when  
it comes to social issues like immigration and 
crime. Yes, the general public is significantly to  
the right of most politicians. But as we've seen, 
there's only one exception. In Denmark, the Social  
Democrats adopted stricter immigration policies 
themselves, which coincided with a decline in  
support for the populist right from over 20% to 
just below 10%. But okay, that's still 10%. So,  
there must be more going on. But this was still a 
crucial story. In many leftwing circles, though,  
the diagnosis is very different. The problem they 
argue goes far beyond out of touch elites. No,  
it points to the people. Narrative number 
three, people are simply becoming more  
racist. And honestly, this is not super popular in 
academic circles. This explanation, it's actually  
an argument that I often hear from friends, so 
I thought it was important to address it here.  
Nonetheless, many of them watch extreme takes 
from populist right-wingers and their supporters.  
They scroll through online comment sections and 
come away thinking something genuinely dark is  
happening. People are becoming evil. People are 
stigmatizing entire Muslim communities as violent.  
Politicians are showing authoritarian tendencies. 
There are conspiracies about Brussels bureaucrates  
or George Soros erasing Western civilization. It 
can feel like people are forgetting the lessons  
of the past, growing tired of democracy and 
becoming more xenophobic and conspiratorial. But  
is it actually true? Are people really becoming 
less satisfied with democracy and more hostile to  
immigrants? Well, according to political scientist 
Larry Bartles, the answer to that question is  
clear. No. Absolutely not. Based on survey 
responses from more than 300,000 Europeans, he  
finds that they have not become significantly more 
illiberal or more hostile to immigration over the  
past two decades. In fact, support for European 
integration has remained fairly stable throughout  
the 21st century. Level of trust in parliament and 
politicians, satisfaction with democracy and even  
attitudes towards immigration. They have remained 
broadly stable over time and have even improved a  
little. Of course, there are some exceptions. For 
example, Spanish citizens became much more hostile  
to democracy after the massive economic crisis 
in 2008. However, satisfaction with democracy  
has been rising in Finland, Sweden, and Denmark 
at a time when the populist right became a major  
player in those countries. So overall, no, it does 
not appear that people are becoming more racist or  
authoritarian, but I do understand why more and 
more people feel this way. The YouTube shorts  
algorithm sometimes recommends me these nice 
videos of how US presidents used to interact with  
one each other. I think Mr. Nixon is an effective 
leader of his party. The question before us is  
which point of view and which party do we want to 
leave the United States? I agree with Senator K.  
And if we compare that to some of the stuff that 
Trump says these days, sleepy, crooked Joe Biden,  
where I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue 
and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters.  
Okay, it's like incredible. Then it's clear that 
something has changed. The public is willing  
to accept far more uncivilized language. And 
actually, this is not just an American phenomena.  
Right-wing populist leaders everywhere use 
increasingly inflammatory language. So why  
does the public increasingly accept that type of 
behavior if they themselves did not become more  
authoritarian? Well, this brings us to narrative 
number four. Blame social media. Social media is  
polarizing us. And there's really good evidence 
that this is actually happening in two ways.  
First, as you can see here, traditional media like 
newspapers and radio, well, they gave a voice to  
everyone, the hard left, the moderates, and the 
hard right. However, as you can see here, cable  
TV is already quite a bit more biased towards 
both extremes. And on social media, well, oh boy,  
the algorithms really love to serve us both hard 
left and hard right content, while the moderate,  
nuanced, more boring voices are buried in the 
algorithms. To explain this, psychologist J.  
Vanbo describes four dark laws that drive online 
engagement. Negativity, extremism, us versus  
them thinking, and moral emotional language. In 
other words, content that is more negative, more  
extreme, more tribal, and more emotionally charged 
is more likely to grab attention and spread. This  
means that expressing outrage, attacking the other 
side, or using words like disgusting or unjust  
or just super simple narratives will consistently 
outperform more balanced or nuanced views. So, if  
you are on social media a lot, it makes sense that 
you will start believing that people are angrier,  
more polarized, and more extreme than that they 
actually are. But it gets worse. The second way  
that social media is polarizing us other than 
amplifying extreme voices is by connecting extreme  
voices. You see, views that were once socially 
taboo like I could have done things to her that  
would have made your head spin used to remain on 
the fringes. But nowadays, people holding these  
views can find each other instantly. When they 
realize that they're not alone, then they become  
more confident to express those views in public. 
So the internet did not necessarily create these  
attitudes, but it did make them more visible, more 
organized, and more politically relevant. And this  
can explain why many of my friends that spend a 
lot of time online feel that people on average  
have become more extreme, even though research 
shows us that they did not. However, again,  
this is not the full story. You see, cable TV and 
social media spread pretty evenly worldwide. Yet,  
right-wing populism patterns vary drastically 
across countries. Not every country has ended  
up with Americanstyle media polarization. 
So this brings us to our conclusion. Which  
narrative is the most convincing? Well, one 
thing it's clear, it's not narrative number  
three. People are not becoming more racist 
or authoritarian over time. Anti-democratic  
and anti-immigration sentiment did not just 
appear out of nowhere in the last decades.  
There's always been a slice of a population that 
feels this way, which means there's always been  
some baseline demand for right-wing populism. 
But for the other narratives, given that country  
trajectories are so different, the different 
right-wing populist surges can probably best  
be explained by combining these three other 
narratives. First, there was rising inequality,  
austerity, the fallout from the financial crisis. 
All of that shook people's trust in institutions.  
This could explain populist surges in the American 
Midwest or Eastern Europe. On the other hand,  
populist surges in relatively equal countries like 
Norway and Denmark probably have more to do with  
a political disconnect on cultural issues. And 
finally, the rise of social media and cable TV  
probably acted like an amplifier, giving populist 
parties that represent 10 to 30% of the population  
the power to take over several countries. So yeah, 
all of these three explanations are supported by  
the evidence. On their own though, there are 
too many contradictions to believe them. But  
taken together, it becomes clear that right-wing 
populism will likely surge back again and again  
as long as inequality remains high. Politicians 
do not listen to voter preferences on culture and  
immigration. And number three, as long as social 
media gives populist an algorithmic edge. But  
yeah, that's my take. What do you think? Let me 
know in the comments below. And if you find this  
topic as fascinating as I do, I highly recommend 
that you check out the excellent analysis by our  
advertising sponsor, The Economists, which I 
always check out for the research process of  
my videos. For this episode in particular, 
I learned a lot from their analysis on how  
the Danish social democrats have shifted 
right on immigration to counter the far  
right. Or if you also care about macroeconomic 
stability, I encourage you to take a look at  
this article where they explore how efforts 
to be fiscally responsible and reduce budget  
deficits can sometimes end up benefiting populist 
parties. And finally, for a broader overview, I'd  
strongly strongly recommend this article on what 
populism actually means. As these examples show,  
The Economist delivers insights that help you 
see the bigger picture and think for yourself.  
This is why I almost always rely on their analysis 
for my research and it's why I highly recommend  
that you subscribe and that's actually now 
more interesting than ever given that they  
are offering a special 35% discount for money and 
macro viewers. Now, whether you prefer their daily  
journalism in the Economist app, or you are like 
me and enjoy catching up on the global economy  
over the weekend with a nice cup of coffee and the 
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latest global developments and support journalism 
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an independent point of view. So, don't miss out. 
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</details>

### 定义民粹主义：人民 vs. 腐败精英

民粹主义并非一种意识形态，而是一种政治话语模式，它将社会划分为“勤劳的人民”和“腐败的精英”两大对立阵营。左翼民粹主义主要针对经济精英（富人、大公司），而右翼民粹主义则指向文化精英（官僚、学者、主流政客），指责他们忽视人民在移民、安全和文化认同等方面的关切。尽管攻击目标不同，但其核心叙事——现有体制被精英俘获，不再代表人民——是相同的。这种叙事简单化了社会问题，并常伴随简化的解决方案。

<details>
<summary>Original English</summary>

The populist surge in the west is over. This is the 
end. Or is it? Actually, the experience of early  
adopter populist countries shows us that this 
is extremely unlikely. For example, in Austria,  
populism collapsed in the early 2000s after Jörg 
Haider's freedom party government turned out to  
be a chaotic mess. But once again, although not 
in power, the Austrian Freedom Party got the most  
votes in the last election. Similarly, in Italy, 
the populist Berlusconi faced a crushing defeat  
after it became clear his billionaire who will 
rescue the economy narrative was not working. Yet,  
Berlusconi always came back. And even when he 
himself did not, Italy is now again ruled by a  
populist right-wing president. In fact, looking at 
these graphs, we can see that the dynamic is often  
the same. Once right-wing populism emerges, yes, 
it often suffers crushing setbacks due to chaotic  
infighting, no economic progress, and the exposure 
of massive corruption, but it never really goes  
away. So, right-wing populists may suffer 
crushing defeats and often embarrassing ones,  
but eventually they always bounce back, which 
raises the question, why does populism always keep  
bouncing back? Why is it not going away after all 
of those broken promises? As always on Money and  
Macro, we've emerged ourselves into the relevant 
scientific literature and selected the four most  
prevalent explanations. Narrative number one, it's 
the economy stupid? Ordinary people have been left  
behind. Narrative number two, right-wing populists 
have a point. Mainstream politicians themselves  
are the problem. They've become out of touch 
on cultural issues like immigration. Narrative  
number three, people have just become more racist/ 
authoritarian. And last but not least, narrative  
number four, it's actually social media that's 
to blame. That is pushing people to political  
extremes. In this video, we examine the evidence 
and counter evidence for each theory to determine  
which of them has the most convincing explanation 
for why right-wing populism keeps bouncing back.  
But before solving the puzzle, we first need to 
make sure we are all talking about the same thing.  
That is, what is right-wing populism actually? 
And how is it different from left-wing populism?  
Aren't these polar opposites? Why are we talking 
about them in the same breath? Well, yes and no.  
This is something people often get wrong. Populism 
is not at all like socialism or like conservatism.  
It's not an ideology. It's a way of talking about 
politics a lens through which political conflict  
is framed. At its core, both left and right-wing 
populism divides society into two opposing groups.  
On the one hand, the hardworking people and on 
the other, the corrupt elites. Populism is pretty  
easy to understand. Essentially, all problems in 
society are the fault of these corrupt elites. The  
difference between left and right-wing populism 
then is which elite group they frame as the  
problem. On the left, populists target economic 
elites such as rich and the corporations, the  
brolicharchy of tremendous wealth, a government 
of the billionaire class by the billionaire class.  
On the other hand, right-wing populists target 
a different kind of elite group, the cultural  
elites, such as "The Brussels bureaucrats, the 
Amercian bureaucrats, and the Soros network..." 
but also academics or mainstream politicians 
accused of ignoring ordinary people's concerns  
about immigration, crime, and cultural identity. 
Different enemies, same narrative. The system  
has been captured by elites which no longer 
represent the people and simple narratives  
often come with simple solutions. So if you 
believe that moneyed elites cause most problems,  
you should vote left-wing populists into power 
so that they can tax their wealth away. And  
if you believe immigration is damaging 
the economy and eroding local culture,  
you should back leaders who are not afraid to defy 
cultural elites and take massive actions to close  
the borders. Especially the right-wing populist 
story convinced a lot of people in the West in  
the last couple of decades. But okay, back to the 
present. Trump's remanufacturing America story is  
failing. Brexit is not making Britain rich and 
Orban just lost in a landslide. So why again do  
we say right-wing populism will bounce back soon 
enough? Well, let's start with the economic story  
that should in theory empower left-wing populists. 
But surprisingly in reality often empowers the  
right. Narrative number one, people vote populist 
because they are economically left behind. Okay,  
this map shows GDP per capita per German state. 
And this map shows where people mostly voted  
for the right-wing populist party AFD. This is 
not a coincidence. When we look at leaders like  
Marine Le Pen and Viktor Orban, we see that they 
often struggle to gain traction in thriving rich  
urban centers, but they dominate the vote 
in rural and declining areas. By now, it's  
pretty well known that the hyper globalization 
period from the late 1970s to early 2000s created  
winners and losers. Chinese workers were 
able to produce for the rest of the world,  
massively improving their own living standards. 
Meanwhile, in the west, highly educated people  
in big cities in rich countries were also able to 
export services to more and more people globally,  
which translated into higher wages for them. 
But take a look at this graph. The hourly wage  
corrected for inflation for a US worker without 
higher education is very similar today to what it  
was in 1965. So while during the period of hyper 
globalization the US economy kept growing only  
the well-educated cultural and moneyed elites have 
actually seen their purchasing power go up while  
many ordinary people were indeed left behind. 
It's not hard to see how this can translate  
into politics. If you feel the system no longer 
works for you and the same political elites keep  
defending it. Of course you will start looking for 
alternatives and that is exactly what we see in  
the data. Regions more exposed to Chinese import 
competition were more likely to support Brexit,  
Trump, and the AFD in Germany. Areas more exposed 
to automation tend to show stronger support for  
populist parties. However, while this evidence 
looks convincing, it has three big problems.  
First, if we look at people in countries that 
truly lost a lot of their income between 1985  
and 2015, we would expect right-wing 
populism to have surged in countries  
like Spain and Portugal. But actually, relatively 
fortunate and less unequal countries like Norway,  
Finland, Switzerland, and Austria have 
seen far bigger right-wing populist surges.  
The second problem with the explanation is 
once we move from regions to individuals,  
the story weakens. As research by political 
science professor Larry Bartles shows, economic  
disaection turns out to be a poor predictor 
of whether someone votes or identifies with  
right-wing populism. It is far less informative 
than attitudes towards immigration, trust in  
political institutions, or broader cultural 
values. In other words, yes, many people in left  
behind areas vote for the populist right. But if 
you want to actually predict whether someone will  
support the populist right, you get much closer 
by asking what they think about immigration or  
whether they trust politicians than by asking them 
about what they think about the economy. The third  
problem is if populism is about regular working 
folks wanting an equal share of the economic pie,  
wouldn't it make sense to vote for populists 
who want to redistribute wealth, so those on  
the left? However, if we look at the data, we 
see the opposite. It's especially right-wing  
populism that is surging in the West as inequality 
increased. So, could it be that people are fooled  
by the populist right to vote against their own 
interest? That's a story that we hear a lot and it  
could be true but actually and it may shock some 
of you hearing this from me in this case maybe  
economics is not everything. So it's time for this 
economist here to step outside of his comfort zone  
with narrative number two. Right-wing populism 
is actually about out of touch cultural elites.  
Okay. The argument goes a little bit like this. No 
voters are not confused. The real people who are  
confused are the cultural elites. I really believe 
that Westminster, the intellectuals, the liberal  
elites just don't get it. Take a simple question. 
Should immigrants adapt to the customs of the  
country that they move to? Large majorities of 
the public say yes. This holds all across Europe,  
Britain, Denmark, Germany, and Sweden. But among 
political elites, only those in Denmark agree with  
that view. On the other hand, in Germany, all 
politicians except for the populist right, and  
yes, that even includes conservative politicians, 
are more liberal on immigration than the average  
voter? Or take the question, should race be taken 
into account in college admissions? Only a third  
of Americans agree with this view. Yet mainstream 
Democrat leaders from Hillary Clinton to Joe Biden  
have consistently supported raceconscious policies 
and criticized court rulings against them. This  
disconnect between what the public wants and 
what politicians want on the other hand is what  
political scientists call a representation 
gap. As you can see here in this FT graph,  
politicians and voters are roughly aligned when 
it comes to economic issues like redistribution  
and capitalism. Left-wing politicians are close 
to leftwing voters and right-wing politicians  
are close to right-wing voters. But when it 
comes to topics like immigration and crime,  
politicians are on average far more to the left 
than the average voter. So when the political  
debate is dominated by economic issues like 
taxes and redistribution, well in those cases,  
mainstream parties are relatively safe because 
they champion what voters actually want. But  
when cultural issues move to the center of the 
debate, the dynamics change. If voters feel that  
their basic cultural preferences are ignored 
or even worse, dismissed or talked down upon,  
that gap becomes a big opportunity for right-wing 
populists to emerge. The clearest example of this  
is the 2015 European refugee crisis. As images 
of large numbers of asylum seekers and irregular  
border crossings dominated the news, immigrations 
shot up the list of public concerns. People did  
not necessarily purely react to immigration 
itself, but they did react strongly to the  
perception of chaos and loss of control. And when 
that perception takes hold and politicians are not  
reacting to it, then right-wing populists gain a 
big advantage. Research by James Denison and Andre  
Fer Gues shows that as immigration becomes more 
salient, support for populist right-wing parties  
rises right along with it. Not perfectly, not 
everywhere, but consistently enough to matter.  
At the same time, as citizens, we're like, "Oh 
my goodness, look at what's going on here. Our  
societies are changing dramatically. We're in the 
midst of this economic stagnation where, you know,  
I feel like I have to compete for jobs. I have to 
compete for public goods." And at the same time,  
traditional establishment parties are inviting in 
tons of immigrants, allowing huge asylum flows,  
telling me that if I worry about this or I'm 
concerned about this, I'm a racist or a xenophobe.  
So, interestingly, when populist right-wingers say 
that cultural elites like mainstream politicians  
are out of touch, data shows us that they are 
correct. Not when it comes to economics, but when  
it comes to social issues like immigration and 
crime. Yes, the general public is significantly to  
the right of most politicians. But as we've seen, 
there's only one exception. In Denmark, the Social  
Democrats adopted stricter immigration policies 
themselves, which coincided with a decline in  
support for the populist right from over 20% to 
just below 10%. But okay, that's still 10%. So,  
there must be more going on. But this was still a 
crucial story. In many leftwing circles, though,  
the diagnosis is very different. The problem they 
argue goes far beyond out of touch elites. No,  
it points to the people. Narrative number 
three, people are simply becoming more  
racist. And honestly, this is not super popular in 
academic circles. This explanation, it's actually  
an argument that I often hear from friends, so 
I thought it was important to address it here.  
Nonetheless, many of them watch extreme takes 
from populist right-wingers and their supporters.  
They scroll through online comment sections and 
come away thinking something genuinely dark is  
happening. People are becoming evil. People are 
stigmatizing entire Muslim communities as violent.  
Politicians are showing authoritarian tendencies. 
There are conspiracies about Brussels bureaucrates  
or George Soros erasing Western civilization. It 
can feel like people are forgetting the lessons  
of the past, growing tired of democracy and 
becoming more xenophobic and conspiratorial. But  
is it actually true? Are people really becoming 
less satisfied with democracy and more hostile to  
immigrants? Well, according to political scientist 
Larry Bartles, the answer to that question is  
clear. No. Absolutely not. Based on survey 
responses from more than 300,000 Europeans, he  
finds that they have not become significantly more 
illiberal or more hostile to immigration over the  
past two decades. In fact, support for European 
integration has remained fairly stable throughout  
the 21st century. Level of trust in parliament and 
politicians, satisfaction with democracy and even  
attitudes towards immigration. They have remained 
broadly stable over time and have even improved a  
little. Of course, there are some exceptions. For 
example, Spanish citizens became much more hostile  
to democracy after the massive economic crisis 
in 2008. However, satisfaction with democracy  
has been rising in Finland, Sweden, and Denmark 
at a time when the populist right became a major  
player in those countries. So overall, no, it does 
not appear that people are becoming more racist or  
authoritarian, but I do understand why more and 
more people feel this way. The YouTube shorts  
algorithm sometimes recommends me these nice 
videos of how US presidents used to interact with  
one each other. I think Mr. Nixon is an effective 
leader of his party. The question before us is  
which point of view and which party do we want to 
leave the United States? I agree with Senator K.  
And if we compare that to some of the stuff that 
Trump says these days, sleepy, crooked Joe Biden,  
where I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue 
and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters.  
Okay, it's like incredible. Then it's clear that 
something has changed. The public is willing  
to accept far more uncivilized language. And 
actually, this is not just an American phenomena.  
Right-wing populist leaders everywhere use 
increasingly inflammatory language. So why  
does the public increasingly accept that type of 
behavior if they themselves did not become more  
authoritarian? Well, this brings us to narrative 
number four. Blame social media. Social media is  
polarizing us. And there's really good evidence 
that this is actually happening in two ways.  
First, as you can see here, traditional media like 
newspapers and radio, well, they gave a voice to  
everyone, the hard left, the moderates, and the 
hard right. However, as you can see here, cable  
TV is already quite a bit more biased towards 
both extremes. And on social media, well, oh boy,  
the algorithms really love to serve us both hard 
left and hard right content, while the moderate,  
nuanced, more boring voices are buried in the 
algorithms. To explain this, psychologist J.  
Vanbo describes four dark laws that drive online 
engagement. Negativity, extremism, us versus  
them thinking, and moral emotional language. In 
other words, content that is more negative, more  
extreme, more tribal, and more emotionally charged 
is more likely to grab attention and spread. This  
means that expressing outrage, attacking the other 
side, or using words like disgusting or unjust  
or just super simple narratives will consistently 
outperform more balanced or nuanced views. So, if  
you are on social media a lot, it makes sense that 
you will start believing that people are angrier,  
more polarized, and more extreme than that they 
actually are. But it gets worse. The second way  
that social media is polarizing us other than 
amplifying extreme voices is by connecting extreme  
voices. You see, views that were once socially 
taboo like I could have done things to her that  
would have made your head spin used to remain on 
the fringes. But nowadays, people holding these  
views can find each other instantly. When they 
realize that they're not alone, then they become  
more confident to express those views in public. 
So the internet did not necessarily create these  
attitudes, but it did make them more visible, more 
organized, and more politically relevant. And this  
can explain why many of my friends that spend a 
lot of time online feel that people on average  
have become more extreme, even though research 
shows us that they did not. However, again,  
this is not the full story. You see, cable TV and 
social media spread pretty evenly worldwide. Yet,  
right-wing populism patterns vary drastically 
across countries. Not every country has ended  
up with Americanstyle media polarization. 
So this brings us to our conclusion. Which  
narrative is the most convincing? Well, one 
thing it's clear, it's not narrative number  
three. People are not becoming more racist 
or authoritarian over time. Anti-democratic  
and anti-immigration sentiment did not just 
appear out of nowhere in the last decades.  
There's always been a slice of a population that 
feels this way, which means there's always been  
some baseline demand for right-wing populism. 
But for the other narratives, given that country  
trajectories are so different, the different 
right-wing populist surges can probably best  
be explained by combining these three other 
narratives. First, there was rising inequality,  
austerity, the fallout from the financial crisis. 
All of that shook people's trust in institutions.  
This could explain populist surges in the American 
Midwest or Eastern Europe. On the other hand,  
populist surges in relatively equal countries like 
Norway and Denmark probably have more to do with  
a political disconnect on cultural issues. And 
finally, the rise of social media and cable TV  
probably acted like an amplifier, giving populist 
parties that represent 10 to 30% of the population  
the power to take over several countries. So yeah, 
all of these three explanations are supported by  
the evidence. On their own though, there are 
too many contradictions to believe them. But  
taken together, it becomes clear that right-wing 
populism will likely surge back again and again  
as long as inequality remains high. Politicians 
do not listen to voter preferences on culture and  
immigration. And number three, as long as social 
media gives populist an algorithmic edge. But  
yeah, that's my take. What do you think? Let me 
know in the comments below. And if you find this  
topic as fascinating as I do, I highly recommend 
that you check out the excellent analysis by our  
advertising sponsor, The Economists, which I 
always check out for the research process of  
my videos. For this episode in particular, 
I learned a lot from their analysis on how  
the Danish social democrats have shifted 
right on immigration to counter the far  
right. Or if you also care about macroeconomic 
stability, I encourage you to take a look at  
this article where they explore how efforts 
to be fiscally responsible and reduce budget  
deficits can sometimes end up benefiting populist 
parties. And finally, for a broader overview, I'd  
strongly strongly recommend this article on what 
populism actually means. As these examples show,  
The Economist delivers insights that help you 
see the bigger picture and think for yourself.  
This is why I almost always rely on their analysis 
for my research and it's why I highly recommend  
that you subscribe and that's actually now 
more interesting than ever given that they  
are offering a special 35% discount for money and 
macro viewers. Now, whether you prefer their daily  
journalism in the Economist app, or you are like 
me and enjoy catching up on the global economy  
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print edition, you'll always stay on top of the  
latest global developments and support journalism 
that values factual information, integrity, and  
an independent point of view. So, don't miss out. 
Click the link in the description or top comment  
below or head over to ecomus.com/moneymackro 
to claim your exclusive 35% discount today.
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### 经济落后是根本原因？（叙事一）

一种流行的解释是，经济不平等和全球化后果导致一部分普通民众被“甩下”。例如，德国内部分析显示，GDP较低或自动化程度较高的地区更倾向于支持右翼民粹党派。全球化时期，西方受教育程度高的精英群体受益，而低教育水平的工人阶级工资停滞。这种经济上的“被落下”感，加之对现有政治精英的失望，促使人们寻求替代方案。然而，该叙事存在三大问题：首先，真正经济损失惨重的国家（如西班牙、葡萄牙）民粹主义 surge 并不如相对富裕的北欧国家明显；其次，个体层面的经济不满是投票倾向的较弱预测因子，不如对移民、信任度或文化价值观的态度重要；最后，若为经济公平，人们应支持左翼民粹主义，但现实是右翼民粹主义在抬头。

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<summary>Original English</summary>

The populist surge in the west is over. This is the 
end. Or is it? Actually, the experience of early  
adopter populist countries shows us that this 
is extremely unlikely. For example, in Austria,  
populism collapsed in the early 2000s after Jörg 
Haider's freedom party government turned out to  
be a chaotic mess. But once again, although not 
in power, the Austrian Freedom Party got the most  
votes in the last election. Similarly, in Italy, 
the populist Berlusconi faced a crushing defeat  
after it became clear his billionaire who will 
rescue the economy narrative was not working. Yet,  
Berlusconi always came back. And even when he 
himself did not, Italy is now again ruled by a  
populist right-wing president. In fact, looking at 
these graphs, we can see that the dynamic is often  
the same. Once right-wing populism emerges, yes, 
it often suffers crushing setbacks due to chaotic  
infighting, no economic progress, and the exposure 
of massive corruption, but it never really goes  
away. So, right-wing populists may suffer 
crushing defeats and often embarrassing ones,  
but eventually they always bounce back, which 
raises the question, why does populism always keep  
bouncing back? Why is it not going away after all 
of those broken promises? As always on Money and  
Macro, we've emerged ourselves into the relevant 
scientific literature and selected the four most  
prevalent explanations. Narrative number one, it's 
the economy stupid? Ordinary people have been left  
behind. Narrative number two, right-wing populists 
have a point. Mainstream politicians themselves  
are the problem. They've become out of touch 
on cultural issues like immigration. Narrative  
number three, people have just become more racist/ 
authoritarian. And last but not least, narrative  
number four, it's actually social media that's 
to blame. That is pushing people to political  
extremes. In this video, we examine the evidence 
and counter evidence for each theory to determine  
which of them has the most convincing explanation 
for why right-wing populism keeps bouncing back.  
But before solving the puzzle, we first need to 
make sure we are all talking about the same thing.  
That is, what is right-wing populism actually? 
And how is it different from left-wing populism?  
Aren't these polar opposites? Why are we talking 
about them in the same breath? Well, yes and no.  
This is something people often get wrong. Populism 
is not at all like socialism or like conservatism.  
It's not an ideology. It's a way of talking about 
politics a lens through which political conflict  
is framed. At its core, both left and right-wing 
populism divides society into two opposing groups.  
On the one hand, the hardworking people and on 
the other, the corrupt elites. Populism is pretty  
easy to understand. Essentially, all problems in 
society are the fault of these corrupt elites. The  
difference between left and right-wing populism 
then is which elite group they frame as the  
problem. On the left, populists target economic 
elites such as rich and the corporations, the  
brolicharchy of tremendous wealth, a government 
of the billionaire class by the billionaire class.  
On the other hand, right-wing populists target 
a different kind of elite group, the cultural  
elites, such as "The Brussels bureaucrats, the 
Amercian bureaucrats, and the Soros network..." 
but also academics or mainstream politicians 
accused of ignoring ordinary people's concerns  
about immigration, crime, and cultural identity. 
Different enemies, same narrative. The system  
has been captured by elites which no longer 
represent the people and simple narratives  
often come with simple solutions. So if you 
believe that moneyed elites cause most problems,  
you should vote left-wing populists into power 
so that they can tax their wealth away. And  
if you believe immigration is damaging 
the economy and eroding local culture,  
you should back leaders who are not afraid to defy 
cultural elites and take massive actions to close  
the borders. Especially the right-wing populist 
story convinced a lot of people in the West in  
the last couple of decades. But okay, back to the 
present. Trump's remanufacturing America story is  
failing. Brexit is not making Britain rich and 
Orban just lost in a landslide. So why again do  
we say right-wing populism will bounce back soon 
enough? Well, let's start with the economic story  
that should in theory empower left-wing populists. 
But surprisingly in reality often empowers the  
right. Narrative number one, people vote populist 
because they are economically left behind. Okay,  
this map shows GDP per capita per German state. 
And this map shows where people mostly voted  
for the right-wing populist party AFD. This is 
not a coincidence. When we look at leaders like  
Marine Le Pen and Viktor Orban, we see that they 
often struggle to gain traction in thriving rich  
urban centers, but they dominate the vote 
in rural and declining areas. By now, it's  
pretty well known that the hyper globalization 
period from the late 1970s to early 2000s created  
winners and losers. Chinese workers were 
able to produce for the rest of the world,  
massively improving their own living standards. 
Meanwhile, in the west, highly educated people  
in big cities in rich countries were also able to 
export services to more and more people globally,  
which translated into higher wages for them. 
But take a look at this graph. The hourly wage  
corrected for inflation for a US worker without 
higher education is very similar today to what it  
was in 1965. So while during the period of hyper 
globalization the US economy kept growing only  
the well-educated cultural and moneyed elites have 
actually seen their purchasing power go up while  
many ordinary people were indeed left behind. 
It's not hard to see how this can translate  
into politics. If you feel the system no longer 
works for you and the same political elites keep  
defending it. Of course you will start looking for 
alternatives and that is exactly what we see in  
the data. Regions more exposed to Chinese import 
competition were more likely to support Brexit,  
Trump, and the AFD in Germany. Areas more exposed 
to automation tend to show stronger support for  
populist parties. However, while this evidence 
looks convincing, it has three big problems.  
First, if we look at people in countries that 
truly lost a lot of their income between 1985  
and 2015, we would expect right-wing 
populism to have surged in countries  
like Spain and Portugal. But actually, relatively 
fortunate and less unequal countries like Norway,  
Finland, Switzerland, and Austria have 
seen far bigger right-wing populist surges.  
The second problem with the explanation is 
once we move from regions to individuals,  
the story weakens. As research by political 
science professor Larry Bartles shows, economic  
disaection turns out to be a poor predictor 
of whether someone votes or identifies with  
right-wing populism. It is far less informative 
than attitudes towards immigration, trust in  
political institutions, or broader cultural 
values. In other words, yes, many people in left  
behind areas vote for the populist right. But if 
you want to actually predict whether someone will  
support the populist right, you get much closer 
by asking what they think about immigration or  
whether they trust politicians than by asking them 
about what they think about the economy. The third  
problem is if populism is about regular working 
folks wanting an equal share of the economic pie,  
wouldn't it make sense to vote for populists 
who want to redistribute wealth, so those on  
the left? However, if we look at the data, we 
see the opposite. It's especially right-wing  
populism that is surging in the West as inequality 
increased. So, could it be that people are fooled  
by the populist right to vote against their own 
interest? That's a story that we hear a lot and it  
could be true but actually and it may shock some 
of you hearing this from me in this case maybe  
economics is not everything. So it's time for this 
economist here to step outside of his comfort zone  
with narrative number two. Right-wing populism 
is actually about out of touch cultural elites.  
Okay. The argument goes a little bit like this. No 
voters are not confused. The real people who are  
confused are the cultural elites. I really believe 
that Westminster, the intellectuals, the liberal  
elites just don't get it. Take a simple question. 
Should immigrants adapt to the customs of the  
country that they move to? Large majorities of 
the public say yes. This holds all across Europe,  
Britain, Denmark, Germany, and Sweden. But among 
political elites, only those in Denmark agree with  
that view. On the other hand, in Germany, all 
politicians except for the populist right, and  
yes, that even includes conservative politicians, 
are more liberal on immigration than the average  
voter? Or take the question, should race be taken 
into account in college admissions? Only a third  
of Americans agree with this view. Yet mainstream 
Democrat leaders from Hillary Clinton to Joe Biden  
have consistently supported raceconscious policies 
and criticized court rulings against them. This  
disconnect between what the public wants and 
what politicians want on the other hand is what  
political scientists call a representation 
gap. As you can see here in this FT graph,  
politicians and voters are roughly aligned when 
it comes to economic issues like redistribution  
and capitalism. Left-wing politicians are close 
to leftwing voters and right-wing politicians  
are close to right-wing voters. But when it 
comes to topics like immigration and crime,  
politicians are on average far more to the left 
than the average voter. So when the political  
debate is dominated by economic issues like 
taxes and redistribution, well in those cases,  
mainstream parties are relatively safe because 
they champion what voters actually want. But  
when cultural issues move to the center of the 
debate, the dynamics change. If voters feel that  
their basic cultural preferences are ignored 
or even worse, dismissed or talked down upon,  
that gap becomes a big opportunity for right-wing 
populists to emerge. The clearest example of this  
is the 2015 European refugee crisis. As images 
of large numbers of asylum seekers and irregular  
border crossings dominated the news, immigrations 
shot up the list of public concerns. People did  
not necessarily purely react to immigration 
itself, but they did react strongly to the  
perception of chaos and loss of control. And when 
that perception takes hold and politicians are not  
reacting to it, then right-wing populists gain a 
big advantage. Research by James Denison and Andre  
Fer Gues shows that as immigration becomes more 
salient, support for populist right-wing parties  
rises right along with it. Not perfectly, not 
everywhere, but consistently enough to matter.  
At the same time, as citizens, we're like, "Oh 
my goodness, look at what's going on here. Our  
societies are changing dramatically. We're in the 
midst of this economic stagnation where, you know,  
I feel like I have to compete for jobs. I have to 
compete for public goods." And at the same time,  
traditional establishment parties are inviting in 
tons of immigrants, allowing huge asylum flows,  
telling me that if I worry about this or I'm 
concerned about this, I'm a racist or a xenophobe.  
So, interestingly, when populist right-wingers say 
that cultural elites like mainstream politicians  
are out of touch, data shows us that they are 
correct. Not when it comes to economics, but when  
it comes to social issues like immigration and 
crime. Yes, the general public is significantly to  
the right of most politicians. But as we've seen, 
there's only one exception. In Denmark, the Social  
Democrats adopted stricter immigration policies 
themselves, which coincided with a decline in  
support for the populist right from over 20% to 
just below 10%. But okay, that's still 10%. So,  
there must be more going on. But this was still a 
crucial story. In many leftwing circles, though,  
the diagnosis is very different. The problem they 
argue goes far beyond out of touch elites. No,  
it points to the people. Narrative number 
three, people are simply becoming more  
racist. And honestly, this is not super popular in 
academic circles. This explanation, it's actually  
an argument that I often hear from friends, so 
I thought it was important to address it here.  
Nonetheless, many of them watch extreme takes 
from populist right-wingers and their supporters.  
They scroll through online comment sections and 
come away thinking something genuinely dark is  
happening. People are becoming evil. People are 
stigmatizing entire Muslim communities as violent.  
Politicians are showing authoritarian tendencies. 
There are conspiracies about Brussels bureaucrates  
or George Soros erasing Western civilization. It 
can feel like people are forgetting the lessons  
of the past, growing tired of democracy and 
becoming more xenophobic and conspiratorial. But  
is it actually true? Are people really becoming 
less satisfied with democracy and more hostile to  
immigrants? Well, according to political scientist 
Larry Bartles, the answer to that question is  
clear. No. Absolutely not. Based on survey 
responses from more than 300,000 Europeans, he  
finds that they have not become significantly more 
illiberal or more hostile to immigration over the  
past two decades. In fact, support for European 
integration has remained fairly stable throughout  
the 21st century. Level of trust in parliament and 
politicians, satisfaction with democracy and even  
attitudes towards immigration. They have remained 
broadly stable over time and have even improved a  
little. Of course, there are some exceptions. For 
example, Spanish citizens became much more hostile  
to democracy after the massive economic crisis 
in 2008. However, satisfaction with democracy  
has been rising in Finland, Sweden, and Denmark 
at a time when the populist right became a major  
player in those countries. So overall, no, it does 
not appear that people are becoming more racist or  
authoritarian, but I do understand why more and 
more people feel this way. The YouTube shorts  
algorithm sometimes recommends me these nice 
videos of how US presidents used to interact with  
one each other. I think Mr. Nixon is an effective 
leader of his party. The question before us is  
which point of view and which party do we want to 
leave the United States? I agree with Senator K.  
And if we compare that to some of the stuff that 
Trump says these days, sleepy, crooked Joe Biden,  
where I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue 
and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters.  
Okay, it's like incredible. Then it's clear that 
something has changed. The public is willing  
to accept far more uncivilized language. And 
actually, this is not just an American phenomena.  
Right-wing populist leaders everywhere use 
increasingly inflammatory language. So why  
does the public increasingly accept that type of 
behavior if they themselves did not become more  
authoritarian? Well, this brings us to narrative 
number four. Blame social media. Social media is  
polarizing us. And there's really good evidence 
that this is actually happening in two ways.  
First, as you can see here, traditional media like 
newspapers and radio, well, they gave a voice to  
everyone, the hard left, the moderates, and the 
hard right. However, as you can see here, cable  
TV is already quite a bit more biased towards 
both extremes. And on social media, well, oh boy,  
the algorithms really love to serve us both hard 
left and hard right content, while the moderate,  
nuanced, more boring voices are buried in the 
algorithms. To explain this, psychologist J.  
Vanbo describes four dark laws that drive online 
engagement. Negativity, extremism, us versus  
them thinking, and moral emotional language. In 
other words, content that is more negative, more  
extreme, more tribal, and more emotionally charged 
is more likely to grab attention and spread. This  
means that expressing outrage, attacking the other 
side, or using words like disgusting or unjust  
or just super simple narratives will consistently 
outperform more balanced or nuanced views. So, if  
you are on social media a lot, it makes sense that 
you will start believing that people are angrier,  
more polarized, and more extreme than that they 
actually are. But it gets worse. The second way  
that social media is polarizing us other than 
amplifying extreme voices is by connecting extreme  
voices. You see, views that were once socially 
taboo like I could have done things to her that  
would have made your head spin used to remain on 
the fringes. But nowadays, people holding these  
views can find each other instantly. When they 
realize that they're not alone, then they become  
more confident to express those views in public. 
So the internet did not necessarily create these  
attitudes, but it did make them more visible, more 
organized, and more politically relevant. And this  
can explain why many of my friends that spend a 
lot of time online feel that people on average  
have become more extreme, even though research 
shows us that they did not. However, again,  
this is not the full story. You see, cable TV and 
social media spread pretty evenly worldwide. Yet,  
right-wing populism patterns vary drastically 
across countries. Not every country has ended  
up with Americanstyle media polarization. 
So this brings us to our conclusion. Which  
narrative is the most convincing? Well, one 
thing it's clear, it's not narrative number  
three. People are not becoming more racist 
or authoritarian over time. Anti-democratic  
and anti-immigration sentiment did not just 
appear out of nowhere in the last decades.  
There's always been a slice of a population that 
feels this way, which means there's always been  
some baseline demand for right-wing populism. 
But for the other narratives, given that country  
trajectories are so different, the different 
right-wing populist surges can probably best  
be explained by combining these three other 
narratives. First, there was rising inequality,  
austerity, the fallout from the financial crisis. 
All of that shook people's trust in institutions.  
This could explain populist surges in the American 
Midwest or Eastern Europe. On the other hand,  
populist surges in relatively equal countries like 
Norway and Denmark probably have more to do with  
a political disconnect on cultural issues. And 
finally, the rise of social media and cable TV  
probably acted like an amplifier, giving populist 
parties that represent 10 to 30% of the population  
the power to take over several countries. So yeah, 
all of these three explanations are supported by  
the evidence. On their own though, there are 
too many contradictions to believe them. But  
taken together, it becomes clear that right-wing 
populism will likely surge back again and again  
as long as inequality remains high. Politicians 
do not listen to voter preferences on culture and  
immigration. And number three, as long as social 
media gives populist an algorithmic edge. But  
yeah, that's my take. What do you think? Let me 
know in the comments below. And if you find this  
topic as fascinating as I do, I highly recommend 
that you check out the excellent analysis by our  
advertising sponsor, The Economists, which I 
always check out for the research process of  
my videos. For this episode in particular, 
I learned a lot from their analysis on how  
the Danish social democrats have shifted 
right on immigration to counter the far  
right. Or if you also care about macroeconomic 
stability, I encourage you to take a look at  
this article where they explore how efforts 
to be fiscally responsible and reduce budget  
deficits can sometimes end up benefiting populist 
parties. And finally, for a broader overview, I'd  
strongly strongly recommend this article on what 
populism actually means. As these examples show,  
The Economist delivers insights that help you 
see the bigger picture and think for yourself.  
This is why I almost always rely on their analysis 
for my research and it's why I highly recommend  
that you subscribe and that's actually now 
more interesting than ever given that they  
are offering a special 35% discount for money and 
macro viewers. Now, whether you prefer their daily  
journalism in the Economist app, or you are like 
me and enjoy catching up on the global economy  
over the weekend with a nice cup of coffee and the 
print edition, you'll always stay on top of the  
latest global developments and support journalism 
that values factual information, integrity, and  
an independent point of view. So, don't miss out. 
Click the link in the description or top comment  
below or head over to ecomus.com/moneymackro 
to claim your exclusive 35% discount today.
</details>

### 脱节的文化精英与政治真空（叙事二）

另一个重要论点是，当政治精英在文化议题（如移民、犯罪、文化身份）上与普通民众的看法存在显著差距时，右翼民粹主义者便找到了可乘之机。研究表明，在经济议题上，主流政党与选民立场大体一致；但在移民和犯罪等社会文化议题上，政治精英普遍比普通选民更“左”。当选民认为其基本文化偏好被忽视、甚至被贬低时，这种“代表性鸿沟”就为右翼民粹主义的崛起提供了机会。2015年欧洲难民危机期间，公众对混乱局面的担忧与政治精英的回应脱节，便是右翼民粹主义者获益的典型案例。

<details>
<summary>Original English</summary>

The populist surge in the west is over. This is the 
end. Or is it? Actually, the experience of early  
adopter populist countries shows us that this 
is extremely unlikely. For example, in Austria,  
populism collapsed in the early 2000s after Jörg 
Haider's freedom party government turned out to  
be a chaotic mess. But once again, although not 
in power, the Austrian Freedom Party got the most  
votes in the last election. Similarly, in Italy, 
the populist Berlusconi faced a crushing defeat  
after it became clear his billionaire who will 
rescue the economy narrative was not working. Yet,  
Berlusconi always came back. And even when he 
himself did not, Italy is now again ruled by a  
populist right-wing president. In fact, looking at 
these graphs, we can see that the dynamic is often  
the same. Once right-wing populism emerges, yes, 
it often suffers crushing setbacks due to chaotic  
infighting, no economic progress, and the exposure 
of massive corruption, but it never really goes  
away. So, right-wing populists may suffer 
crushing defeats and often embarrassing ones,  
but eventually they always bounce back, which 
raises the question, why does populism always keep  
bouncing back? Why is it not going away after all 
of those broken promises? As always on Money and  
Macro, we've emerged ourselves into the relevant 
scientific literature and selected the four most  
prevalent explanations. Narrative number one, it's 
the economy stupid? Ordinary people have been left  
behind. Narrative number two, right-wing populists 
have a point. Mainstream politicians themselves  
are the problem. They've become out of touch 
on cultural issues like immigration. Narrative  
number three, people have just become more racist/ 
authoritarian. And last but not least, narrative  
number four, it's actually social media that's 
to blame. That is pushing people to political  
extremes. In this video, we examine the evidence 
and counter evidence for each theory to determine  
which of them has the most convincing explanation 
for why right-wing populism keeps bouncing back.  
But before solving the puzzle, we first need to 
make sure we are all talking about the same thing.  
That is, what is right-wing populism actually? 
And how is it different from left-wing populism?  
Aren't these polar opposites? Why are we talking 
about them in the same breath? Well, yes and no.  
This is something people often get wrong. Populism 
is not at all like socialism or like conservatism.  
It's not an ideology. It's a way of talking about 
politics a lens through which political conflict  
is framed. At its core, both left and right-wing 
populism divides society into two opposing groups.  
On the one hand, the hardworking people and on 
the other, the corrupt elites. Populism is pretty  
easy to understand. Essentially, all problems in 
society are the fault of these corrupt elites. The  
difference between left and right-wing populism 
then is which elite group they frame as the  
problem. On the left, populists target economic 
elites such as rich and the corporations, the  
brolicharchy of tremendous wealth, a government 
of the billionaire class by the billionaire class.  
On the other hand, right-wing populists target 
a different kind of elite group, the cultural  
elites, such as "The Brussels bureaucrats, the 
Amercian bureaucrats, and the Soros network..." 
but also academics or mainstream politicians 
accused of ignoring ordinary people's concerns  
about immigration, crime, and cultural identity. 
Different enemies, same narrative. The system  
has been captured by elites which no longer 
represent the people and simple narratives  
often come with simple solutions. So if you 
believe that moneyed elites cause most problems,  
you should vote left-wing populists into power 
so that they can tax their wealth away. And  
if you believe immigration is damaging 
the economy and eroding local culture,  
you should back leaders who are not afraid to defy 
cultural elites and take massive actions to close  
the borders. Especially the right-wing populist 
story convinced a lot of people in the West in  
the last couple of decades. But okay, back to the 
present. Trump's remanufacturing America story is  
failing. Brexit is not making Britain rich and 
Orban just lost in a landslide. So why again do  
we say right-wing populism will bounce back soon 
enough? Well, let's start with the economic story  
that should in theory empower left-wing populists. 
But surprisingly in reality often empowers the  
right. Narrative number one, people vote populist 
because they are economically left behind. Okay,  
this map shows GDP per capita per German state. 
And this map shows where people mostly voted  
for the right-wing populist party AFD. This is 
not a coincidence. When we look at leaders like  
Marine Le Pen and Viktor Orban, we see that they 
often struggle to gain traction in thriving rich  
urban centers, but they dominate the vote 
in rural and declining areas. By now, it's  
pretty well known that the hyper globalization 
period from the late 1970s to early 2000s created  
winners and losers. Chinese workers were 
able to produce for the rest of the world,  
massively improving their own living standards. 
Meanwhile, in the west, highly educated people  
in big cities in rich countries were also able to 
export services to more and more people globally,  
which translated into higher wages for them. 
But take a look at this graph. The hourly wage  
corrected for inflation for a US worker without 
higher education is very similar today to what it  
was in 1965. So while during the period of hyper 
globalization the US economy kept growing only  
the well-educated cultural and moneyed elites have 
actually seen their purchasing power go up while  
many ordinary people were indeed left behind. 
It's not hard to see how this can translate  
into politics. If you feel the system no longer 
works for you and the same political elites keep  
defending it. Of course you will start looking for 
alternatives and that is exactly what we see in  
the data. Regions more exposed to Chinese import 
competition were more likely to support Brexit,  
Trump, and the AFD in Germany. Areas more exposed 
to automation tend to show stronger support for  
populist parties. However, while this evidence 
looks convincing, it has three big problems.  
First, if we look at people in countries that 
truly lost a lot of their income between 1985  
and 2015, we would expect right-wing 
populism to have surged in countries  
like Spain and Portugal. But actually, relatively 
fortunate and less unequal countries like Norway,  
Finland, Switzerland, and Austria have 
seen far bigger right-wing populist surges.  
The second problem with the explanation is 
once we move from regions to individuals,  
the story weakens. As research by political 
science professor Larry Bartles shows, economic  
disaection turns out to be a poor predictor 
of whether someone votes or identifies with  
right-wing populism. It is far less informative 
than attitudes towards immigration, trust in  
political institutions, or broader cultural 
values. In other words, yes, many people in left  
behind areas vote for the populist right. But if 
you want to actually predict whether someone will  
support the populist right, you get much closer 
by asking what they think about immigration or  
whether they trust politicians than by asking them 
about what they think about the economy. The third  
problem is if populism is about regular working 
folks wanting an equal share of the economic pie,  
wouldn't it make sense to vote for populists 
who want to redistribute wealth, so those on  
the left? However, if we look at the data, we 
see the opposite. It's especially right-wing  
populism that is surging in the West as inequality 
increased. So, could it be that people are fooled  
by the populist right to vote against their own 
interest? That's a story that we hear a lot and it  
could be true but actually and it may shock some 
of you hearing this from me in this case maybe  
economics is not everything. So it's time for this 
economist here to step outside of his comfort zone  
with narrative number two. Right-wing populism 
is actually about out of touch cultural elites.  
Okay. The argument goes a little bit like this. No 
voters are not confused. The real people who are  
confused are the cultural elites. I really believe 
that Westminster, the intellectuals, the liberal  
elites just don't get it. Take a simple question. 
Should immigrants adapt to the customs of the  
country that they move to? Large majorities of 
the public say yes. This holds all across Europe,  
Britain, Denmark, Germany, and Sweden. But among 
political elites, only those in Denmark agree with  
that view. On the other hand, in Germany, all 
politicians except for the populist right, and  
yes, that even includes conservative politicians, 
are more liberal on immigration than the average  
voter? Or take the question, should race be taken 
into account in college admissions? Only a third  
of Americans agree with this view. Yet mainstream 
Democrat leaders from Hillary Clinton to Joe Biden  
have consistently supported raceconscious policies 
and criticized court rulings against them. This  
disconnect between what the public wants and 
what politicians want on the other hand is what  
political scientists call a representation 
gap. As you can see here in this FT graph,  
politicians and voters are roughly aligned when 
it comes to economic issues like redistribution  
and capitalism. Left-wing politicians are close 
to leftwing voters and right-wing politicians  
are close to right-wing voters. But when it 
comes to topics like immigration and crime,  
politicians are on average far more to the left 
than the average voter. So when the political  
debate is dominated by economic issues like 
taxes and redistribution, well in those cases,  
mainstream parties are relatively safe because 
they champion what voters actually want. But  
when cultural issues move to the center of the 
debate, the dynamics change. If voters feel that  
their basic cultural preferences are ignored 
or even worse, dismissed or talked down upon,  
that gap becomes a big opportunity for right-wing 
populists to emerge. The clearest example of this  
is the 2015 European refugee crisis. As images 
of large numbers of asylum seekers and irregular  
border crossings dominated the news, immigrations 
shot up the list of public concerns. People did  
not necessarily purely react to immigration 
itself, but they did react strongly to the  
perception of chaos and loss of control. And when 
that perception takes hold and politicians are not  
reacting to it, then right-wing populists gain a 
big advantage. Research by James Denison and Andre  
Fer Gues shows that as immigration becomes more 
salient, support for populist right-wing parties  
rises right along with it. Not perfectly, not 
everywhere, but consistently enough to matter.  
At the same time, as citizens, we're like, "Oh 
my goodness, look at what's going on here. Our  
societies are changing dramatically. We're in the 
midst of this economic stagnation where, you know,  
I feel like I have to compete for jobs. I have to 
compete for public goods." And at the same time,  
traditional establishment parties are inviting in 
tons of immigrants, allowing huge asylum flows,  
telling me that if I worry about this or I'm 
concerned about this, I'm a racist or a xenophobe.  
So, interestingly, when populist right-wingers say 
that cultural elites like mainstream politicians  
are out of touch, data shows us that they are 
correct. Not when it comes to economics, but when  
it comes to social issues like immigration and 
crime. Yes, the general public is significantly to  
the right of most politicians. But as we've seen, 
there's only one exception. In Denmark, the Social  
Democrats adopted stricter immigration policies 
themselves, which coincided with a decline in  
support for the populist right from over 20% to 
just below 10%. But okay, that's still 10%. So,  
there must be more going on. But this was still a 
crucial story. In many leftwing circles, though,  
the diagnosis is very different. The problem they 
argue goes far beyond out of touch elites. No,  
it points to the people. Narrative number 
three, people are simply becoming more  
racist. And honestly, this is not super popular in 
academic circles. This explanation, it's actually  
an argument that I often hear from friends, so 
I thought it was important to address it here.  
Nonetheless, many of them watch extreme takes 
from populist right-wingers and their supporters.  
They scroll through online comment sections and 
come away thinking something genuinely dark is  
happening. People are becoming evil. People are 
stigmatizing entire Muslim communities as violent.  
Politicians are showing authoritarian tendencies. 
There are conspiracies about Brussels bureaucrates  
or George Soros erasing Western civilization. It 
can feel like people are forgetting the lessons  
of the past, growing tired of democracy and 
becoming more xenophobic and conspiratorial. But  
is it actually true? Are people really becoming 
less satisfied with democracy and more hostile to  
immigrants? Well, according to political scientist 
Larry Bartles, the answer to that question is  
clear. No. Absolutely not. Based on survey 
responses from more than 300,000 Europeans, he  
finds that they have not become significantly more 
illiberal or more hostile to immigration over the  
past two decades. In fact, support for European 
integration has remained fairly stable throughout  
the 21st century. Level of trust in parliament and 
politicians, satisfaction with democracy and even  
attitudes towards immigration. They have remained 
broadly stable over time and have even improved a  
little. Of course, there are some exceptions. For 
example, Spanish citizens became much more hostile  
to democracy after the massive economic crisis 
in 2008. However, satisfaction with democracy  
has been rising in Finland, Sweden, and Denmark 
at a time when the populist right became a major  
player in those countries. So overall, no, it does 
not appear that people are becoming more racist or  
authoritarian, but I do understand why more and 
more people feel this way. The YouTube shorts  
algorithm sometimes recommends me these nice 
videos of how US presidents used to interact with  
one each other. I think Mr. Nixon is an effective 
leader of his party. The question before us is  
which point of view and which party do we want to 
leave the United States? I agree with Senator K.  
And if we compare that to some of the stuff that 
Trump says these days, sleepy, crooked Joe Biden,  
where I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue 
and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters.  
Okay, it's like incredible. Then it's clear that 
something has changed. The public is willing  
to accept far more uncivilized language. And 
actually, this is not just an American phenomena.  
Right-wing populist leaders everywhere use 
increasingly inflammatory language. So why  
does the public increasingly accept that type of 
behavior if they themselves did not become more  
authoritarian? Well, this brings us to narrative 
number four. Blame social media. Social media is  
polarizing us. And there's really good evidence 
that this is actually happening in two ways.  
First, as you can see here, traditional media like 
newspapers and radio, well, they gave a voice to  
everyone, the hard left, the moderates, and the 
hard right. However, as you can see here, cable  
TV is already quite a bit more biased towards 
both extremes. And on social media, well, oh boy,  
the algorithms really love to serve us both hard 
left and hard right content, while the moderate,  
nuanced, more boring voices are buried in the 
algorithms. To explain this, psychologist J.  
Vanbo describes four dark laws that drive online 
engagement. Negativity, extremism, us versus  
them thinking, and moral emotional language. In 
other words, content that is more negative, more  
extreme, more tribal, and more emotionally charged 
is more likely to grab attention and spread. This  
means that expressing outrage, attacking the other 
side, or using words like disgusting or unjust  
or just super simple narratives will consistently 
outperform more balanced or nuanced views. So, if  
you are on social media a lot, it makes sense that 
you will start believing that people are angrier,  
more polarized, and more extreme than that they 
actually are. But it gets worse. The second way  
that social media is polarizing us other than 
amplifying extreme voices is by connecting extreme  
voices. You see, views that were once socially 
taboo like I could have done things to her that  
would have made your head spin used to remain on 
the fringes. But nowadays, people holding these  
views can find each other instantly. When they 
realize that they're not alone, then they become  
more confident to express those views in public. 
So the internet did not necessarily create these  
attitudes, but it did make them more visible, more 
organized, and more politically relevant. And this  
can explain why many of my friends that spend a 
lot of time online feel that people on average  
have become more extreme, even though research 
shows us that they did not. However, again,  
this is not the full story. You see, cable TV and 
social media spread pretty evenly worldwide. Yet,  
right-wing populism patterns vary drastically 
across countries. Not every country has ended  
up with Americanstyle media polarization. 
So this brings us to our conclusion. Which  
narrative is the most convincing? Well, one 
thing it's clear, it's not narrative number  
three. People are not becoming more racist 
or authoritarian over time. Anti-democratic  
and anti-immigration sentiment did not just 
appear out of nowhere in the last decades.  
There's always been a slice of a population that 
feels this way, which means there's always been  
some baseline demand for right-wing populism. 
But for the other narratives, given that country  
trajectories are so different, the different 
right-wing populist surges can probably best  
be explained by combining these three other 
narratives. First, there was rising inequality,  
austerity, the fallout from the financial crisis. 
All of that shook people's trust in institutions.  
This could explain populist surges in the American 
Midwest or Eastern Europe. On the other hand,  
populist surges in relatively equal countries like 
Norway and Denmark probably have more to do with  
a political disconnect on cultural issues. And 
finally, the rise of social media and cable TV  
probably acted like an amplifier, giving populist 
parties that represent 10 to 30% of the population  
the power to take over several countries. So yeah, 
all of these three explanations are supported by  
the evidence. On their own though, there are 
too many contradictions to believe them. But  
taken together, it becomes clear that right-wing 
populism will likely surge back again and again  
as long as inequality remains high. Politicians 
do not listen to voter preferences on culture and  
immigration. And number three, as long as social 
media gives populist an algorithmic edge. But  
yeah, that's my take. What do you think? Let me 
know in the comments below. And if you find this  
topic as fascinating as I do, I highly recommend 
that you check out the excellent analysis by our  
advertising sponsor, The Economists, which I 
always check out for the research process of  
my videos. For this episode in particular, 
I learned a lot from their analysis on how  
the Danish social democrats have shifted 
right on immigration to counter the far  
right. Or if you also care about macroeconomic 
stability, I encourage you to take a look at  
this article where they explore how efforts 
to be fiscally responsible and reduce budget  
deficits can sometimes end up benefiting populist 
parties. And finally, for a broader overview, I'd  
strongly strongly recommend this article on what 
populism actually means. As these examples show,  
The Economist delivers insights that help you 
see the bigger picture and think for yourself.  
This is why I almost always rely on their analysis 
for my research and it's why I highly recommend  
that you subscribe and that's actually now 
more interesting than ever given that they  
are offering a special 35% discount for money and 
macro viewers. Now, whether you prefer their daily  
journalism in the Economist app, or you are like 
me and enjoy catching up on the global economy  
over the weekend with a nice cup of coffee and the 
print edition, you'll always stay on top of the  
latest global developments and support journalism 
that values factual information, integrity, and  
an independent point of view. So, don't miss out. 
Click the link in the description or top comment  
below or head over to ecomus.com/moneymackro 
to claim your exclusive 35% discount today.
</details>

### 公众的道德观和权威性是否下降？（叙事三）

关于公众是否变得更具种族主义或威权主义倾向的观点，调查数据显示并非如此。研究发现，过去二十年里，欧洲人在民主满意度、对移民的态度等方面并未显著变得更“非自由”或更具敌意。尽管有例外情况（如西班牙在2008年经济危机后），但整体而言，公众对民主和欧洲一体化的支持相对稳定。然而，近年来政治话语的粗俗化和煽动性增强，可能导致人们产生公众行为已变得更极端的错觉。

<details>
<summary>Original English</summary>

The populist surge in the west is over. This is the 
end. Or is it? Actually, the experience of early  
adopter populist countries shows us that this 
is extremely unlikely. For example, in Austria,  
populism collapsed in the early 2000s after Jörg 
Haider's freedom party government turned out to  
be a chaotic mess. But once again, although not 
in power, the Austrian Freedom Party got the most  
votes in the last election. Similarly, in Italy, 
the populist Berlusconi faced a crushing defeat  
after it became clear his billionaire who will 
rescue the economy narrative was not working. Yet,  
Berlusconi always came back. And even when he 
himself did not, Italy is now again ruled by a  
populist right-wing president. In fact, looking at 
these graphs, we can see that the dynamic is often  
the same. Once right-wing populism emerges, yes, 
it often suffers crushing setbacks due to chaotic  
infighting, no economic progress, and the exposure 
of massive corruption, but it never really goes  
away. So, right-wing populists may suffer 
crushing defeats and often embarrassing ones,  
but eventually they always bounce back, which 
raises the question, why does populism always keep  
bouncing back? Why is it not going away after all 
of those broken promises? As always on Money and  
Macro, we've emerged ourselves into the relevant 
scientific literature and selected the four most  
prevalent explanations. Narrative number one, it's 
the economy stupid? Ordinary people have been left  
behind. Narrative number two, right-wing populists 
have a point. Mainstream politicians themselves  
are the problem. They've become out of touch 
on cultural issues like immigration. Narrative  
number three, people have just become more racist/ 
authoritarian. And last but not least, narrative  
number four, it's actually social media that's 
to blame. That is pushing people to political  
extremes. In this video, we examine the evidence 
and counter evidence for each theory to determine  
which of them has the most convincing explanation 
for why right-wing populism keeps bouncing back.  
But before solving the puzzle, we first need to 
make sure we are all talking about the same thing.  
That is, what is right-wing populism actually? 
And how is it different from left-wing populism?  
Aren't these polar opposites? Why are we talking 
about them in the same breath? Well, yes and no.  
This is something people often get wrong. Populism 
is not at all like socialism or like conservatism.  
It's not an ideology. It's a way of talking about 
politics a lens through which political conflict  
is framed. At its core, both left and right-wing 
populism divides society into two opposing groups.  
On the one hand, the hardworking people and on 
the other, the corrupt elites. Populism is pretty  
easy to understand. Essentially, all problems in 
society are the fault of these corrupt elites. The  
difference between left and right-wing populism 
then is which elite group they frame as the  
problem. On the left, populists target economic 
elites such as rich and the corporations, the  
brolicharchy of tremendous wealth, a government 
of the billionaire class by the billionaire class.  
On the other hand, right-wing populists target 
a different kind of elite group, the cultural  
elites, such as "The Brussels bureaucrats, the 
Amercian bureaucrats, and the Soros network..." 
but also academics or mainstream politicians 
accused of ignoring ordinary people's concerns  
about immigration, crime, and cultural identity. 
Different enemies, same narrative. The system  
has been captured by elites which no longer 
represent the people and simple narratives  
often come with simple solutions. So if you 
believe that moneyed elites cause most problems,  
you should vote left-wing populists into power 
so that they can tax their wealth away. And  
if you believe immigration is damaging 
the economy and eroding local culture,  
you should back leaders who are not afraid to defy 
cultural elites and take massive actions to close  
the borders. Especially the right-wing populist 
story convinced a lot of people in the West in  
the last couple of decades. But okay, back to the 
present. Trump's remanufacturing America story is  
failing. Brexit is not making Britain rich and 
Orban just lost in a landslide. So why again do  
we say right-wing populism will bounce back soon 
enough? Well, let's start with the economic story  
that should in theory empower left-wing populists. 
But surprisingly in reality often empowers the  
right. Narrative number one, people vote populist 
because they are economically left behind. Okay,  
this map shows GDP per capita per German state. 
And this map shows where people mostly voted  
for the right-wing populist party AFD. This is 
not a coincidence. When we look at leaders like  
Marine Le Pen and Viktor Orban, we see that they 
often struggle to gain traction in thriving rich  
urban centers, but they dominate the vote 
in rural and declining areas. By now, it's  
pretty well known that the hyper globalization 
period from the late 1970s to early 2000s created  
winners and losers. Chinese workers were 
able to produce for the rest of the world,  
massively improving their own living standards. 
Meanwhile, in the west, highly educated people  
in big cities in rich countries were also able to 
export services to more and more people globally,  
which translated into higher wages for them. 
But take a look at this graph. The hourly wage  
corrected for inflation for a US worker without 
higher education is very similar today to what it  
was in 1965. So while during the period of hyper 
globalization the US economy kept growing only  
the well-educated cultural and moneyed elites have 
actually seen their purchasing power go up while  
many ordinary people were indeed left behind. 
It's not hard to see how this can translate  
into politics. If you feel the system no longer 
works for you and the same political elites keep  
defending it. Of course you will start looking for 
alternatives and that is exactly what we see in  
the data. Regions more exposed to Chinese import 
competition were more likely to support Brexit,  
Trump, and the AFD in Germany. Areas more exposed 
to automation tend to show stronger support for  
populist parties. However, while this evidence 
looks convincing, it has three big problems.  
First, if we look at people in countries that 
truly lost a lot of their income between 1985  
and 2015, we would expect right-wing 
populism to have surged in countries  
like Spain and Portugal. But actually, relatively 
fortunate and less unequal countries like Norway,  
Finland, Switzerland, and Austria have 
seen far bigger right-wing populist surges.  
The second problem with the explanation is 
once we move from regions to individuals,  
the story weakens. As research by political 
science professor Larry Bartles shows, economic  
disaection turns out to be a poor predictor 
of whether someone votes or identifies with  
right-wing populism. It is far less informative 
than attitudes towards immigration, trust in  
political institutions, or broader cultural 
values. In other words, yes, many people in left  
behind areas vote for the populist right. But if 
you want to actually predict whether someone will  
support the populist right, you get much closer 
by asking what they think about immigration or  
whether they trust politicians than by asking them 
about what they think about the economy. The third  
problem is if populism is about regular working 
folks wanting an equal share of the economic pie,  
wouldn't it make sense to vote for populists 
who want to redistribute wealth, so those on  
the left? However, if we look at the data, we 
see the opposite. It's especially right-wing  
populism that is surging in the West as inequality 
increased. So, could it be that people are fooled  
by the populist right to vote against their own 
interest? That's a story that we hear a lot and it  
could be true but actually and it may shock some 
of you hearing this from me in this case maybe  
economics is not everything. So it's time for this 
economist here to step outside of his comfort zone  
with narrative number two. Right-wing populism 
is actually about out of touch cultural elites.  
Okay. The argument goes a little bit like this. No 
voters are not confused. The real people who are  
confused are the cultural elites. I really believe 
that Westminster, the intellectuals, the liberal  
elites just don't get it. Take a simple question. 
Should immigrants adapt to the customs of the  
country that they move to? Large majorities of 
the public say yes. This holds all across Europe,  
Britain, Denmark, Germany, and Sweden. But among 
political elites, only those in Denmark agree with  
that view. On the other hand, in Germany, all 
politicians except for the populist right, and  
yes, that even includes conservative politicians, 
are more liberal on immigration than the average  
voter? Or take the question, should race be taken 
into account in college admissions? Only a third  
of Americans agree with this view. Yet mainstream 
Democrat leaders from Hillary Clinton to Joe Biden  
have consistently supported raceconscious policies 
and criticized court rulings against them. This  
disconnect between what the public wants and 
what politicians want on the other hand is what  
political scientists call a representation 
gap. As you can see here in this FT graph,  
politicians and voters are roughly aligned when 
it comes to economic issues like redistribution  
and capitalism. Left-wing politicians are close 
to leftwing voters and right-wing politicians  
are close to right-wing voters. But when it 
comes to topics like immigration and crime,  
politicians are on average far more to the left 
than the average voter. So when the political  
debate is dominated by economic issues like 
taxes and redistribution, well in those cases,  
mainstream parties are relatively safe because 
they champion what voters actually want. But  
when cultural issues move to the center of the 
debate, the dynamics change. If voters feel that  
their basic cultural preferences are ignored 
or even worse, dismissed or talked down upon,  
that gap becomes a big opportunity for right-wing 
populists to emerge. The clearest example of this  
is the 2015 European refugee crisis. As images 
of large numbers of asylum seekers and irregular  
border crossings dominated the news, immigrations 
shot up the list of public concerns. People did  
not necessarily purely react to immigration 
itself, but they did react strongly to the  
perception of chaos and loss of control. And when 
that perception takes hold and politicians are not  
reacting to it, then right-wing populists gain a 
big advantage. Research by James Denison and Andre  
Fer Gues shows that as immigration becomes more 
salient, support for populist right-wing parties  
rises right along with it. Not perfectly, not 
everywhere, but consistently enough to matter.  
At the same time, as citizens, we're like, "Oh 
my goodness, look at what's going on here. Our  
societies are changing dramatically. We're in the 
midst of this economic stagnation where, you know,  
I feel like I have to compete for jobs. I have to 
compete for public goods." And at the same time,  
traditional establishment parties are inviting in 
tons of immigrants, allowing huge asylum flows,  
telling me that if I worry about this or I'm 
concerned about this, I'm a racist or a xenophobe.  
So, interestingly, when populist right-wingers say 
that cultural elites like mainstream politicians  
are out of touch, data shows us that they are 
correct. Not when it comes to economics, but when  
it comes to social issues like immigration and 
crime. Yes, the general public is significantly to  
the right of most politicians. But as we've seen, 
there's only one exception. In Denmark, the Social  
Democrats adopted stricter immigration policies 
themselves, which coincided with a decline in  
support for the populist right from over 20% to 
just below 10%. But okay, that's still 10%. So,  
there must be more going on. But this was still a 
crucial story. In many leftwing circles, though,  
the diagnosis is very different. The problem they 
argue goes far beyond out of touch elites. No,  
it points to the people. Narrative number 
three, people are simply becoming more  
racist. And honestly, this is not super popular in 
academic circles. This explanation, it's actually  
an argument that I often hear from friends, so 
I thought it was important to address it here.  
Nonetheless, many of them watch extreme takes 
from populist right-wingers and their supporters.  
They scroll through online comment sections and 
come away thinking something genuinely dark is  
happening. People are becoming evil. People are 
stigmatizing entire Muslim communities as violent.  
Politicians are showing authoritarian tendencies. 
There are conspiracies about Brussels bureaucrates  
or George Soros erasing Western civilization. It 
can feel like people are forgetting the lessons  
of the past, growing tired of democracy and 
becoming more xenophobic and conspiratorial. But  
is it actually true? Are people really becoming 
less satisfied with democracy and more hostile to  
immigrants? Well, according to political scientist 
Larry Bartles, the answer to that question is  
clear. No. Absolutely not. Based on survey 
responses from more than 300,000 Europeans, he  
finds that they have not become significantly more 
illiberal or more hostile to immigration over the  
past two decades. In fact, support for European 
integration has remained fairly stable throughout  
the 21st century. Level of trust in parliament and 
politicians, satisfaction with democracy and even  
attitudes towards immigration. They have remained 
broadly stable over time and have even improved a  
little. Of course, there are some exceptions. For 
example, Spanish citizens became much more hostile  
to democracy after the massive economic crisis 
in 2008. However, satisfaction with democracy  
has been rising in Finland, Sweden, and Denmark 
at a time when the populist right became a major  
player in those countries. So overall, no, it does 
not appear that people are becoming more racist or  
authoritarian, but I do understand why more and 
more people feel this way. The YouTube shorts  
algorithm sometimes recommends me these nice 
videos of how US presidents used to interact with  
one each other. I think Mr. Nixon is an effective 
leader of his party. The question before us is  
which point of view and which party do we want to 
leave the United States? I agree with Senator K.  
And if we compare that to some of the stuff that 
Trump says these days, sleepy, crooked Joe Biden,  
where I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue 
and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters.  
Okay, it's like incredible. Then it's clear that 
something has changed. The public is willing  
to accept far more uncivilized language. And 
actually, this is not just an American phenomena.  
Right-wing populist leaders everywhere use 
increasingly inflammatory language. So why  
does the public increasingly accept that type of 
behavior if they themselves did not become more  
authoritarian? Well, this brings us to narrative 
number four. Blame social media. Social media is  
polarizing us. And there's really good evidence 
that this is actually happening in two ways.  
First, as you can see here, traditional media like 
newspapers and radio, well, they gave a voice to  
everyone, the hard left, the moderates, and the 
hard right. However, as you can see here, cable  
TV is already quite a bit more biased towards 
both extremes. And on social media, well, oh boy,  
the algorithms really love to serve us both hard 
left and hard right content, while the moderate,  
nuanced, more boring voices are buried in the 
algorithms. To explain this, psychologist J.  
Vanbo describes four dark laws that drive online 
engagement. Negativity, extremism, us versus  
them thinking, and moral emotional language. In 
other words, content that is more negative, more  
extreme, more tribal, and more emotionally charged 
is more likely to grab attention and spread. This  
means that expressing outrage, attacking the other 
side, or using words like disgusting or unjust  
or just super simple narratives will consistently 
outperform more balanced or nuanced views. So, if  
you are on social media a lot, it makes sense that 
you will start believing that people are angrier,  
more polarized, and more extreme than that they 
actually are. But it gets worse. The second way  
that social media is polarizing us other than 
amplifying extreme voices is by connecting extreme  
voices. You see, views that were once socially 
taboo like I could have done things to her that  
would have made your head spin used to remain on 
the fringes. But nowadays, people holding these  
views can find each other instantly. When they 
realize that they're not alone, then they become  
more confident to express those views in public. 
So the internet did not necessarily create these  
attitudes, but it did make them more visible, more 
organized, and more politically relevant. And this  
can explain why many of my friends that spend a 
lot of time online feel that people on average  
have become more extreme, even though research 
shows us that they did not. However, again,  
this is not the full story. You see, cable TV and 
social media spread pretty evenly worldwide. Yet,  
right-wing populism patterns vary drastically 
across countries. Not every country has ended  
up with Americanstyle media polarization. 
So this brings us to our conclusion. Which  
narrative is the most convincing? Well, one 
thing it's clear, it's not narrative number  
three. People are not becoming more racist 
or authoritarian over time. Anti-democratic  
and anti-immigration sentiment did not just 
appear out of nowhere in the last decades.  
There's always been a slice of a population that 
feels this way, which means there's always been  
some baseline demand for right-wing populism. 
But for the other narratives, given that country  
trajectories are so different, the different 
right-wing populist surges can probably best  
be explained by combining these three other 
narratives. First, there was rising inequality,  
austerity, the fallout from the financial crisis. 
All of that shook people's trust in institutions.  
This could explain populist surges in the American 
Midwest or Eastern Europe. On the other hand,  
populist surges in relatively equal countries like 
Norway and Denmark probably have more to do with  
a political disconnect on cultural issues. And 
finally, the rise of social media and cable TV  
probably acted like an amplifier, giving populist 
parties that represent 10 to 30% of the population  
the power to take over several countries. So yeah, 
all of these three explanations are supported by  
the evidence. On their own though, there are 
too many contradictions to believe them. But  
taken together, it becomes clear that right-wing 
populism will likely surge back again and again  
as long as inequality remains high. Politicians 
do not listen to voter preferences on culture and  
immigration. And number three, as long as social 
media gives populist an algorithmic edge. But  
yeah, that's my take. What do you think? Let me 
know in the comments below. And if you find this  
topic as fascinating as I do, I highly recommend 
that you check out the excellent analysis by our  
advertising sponsor, The Economists, which I 
always check out for the research process of  
my videos. For this episode in particular, 
I learned a lot from their analysis on how  
the Danish social democrats have shifted 
right on immigration to counter the far  
right. Or if you also care about macroeconomic 
stability, I encourage you to take a look at  
this article where they explore how efforts 
to be fiscally responsible and reduce budget  
deficits can sometimes end up benefiting populist 
parties. And finally, for a broader overview, I'd  
strongly strongly recommend this article on what 
populism actually means. As these examples show,  
The Economist delivers insights that help you 
see the bigger picture and think for yourself.  
This is why I almost always rely on their analysis 
for my research and it's why I highly recommend  
that you subscribe and that's actually now 
more interesting than ever given that they  
are offering a special 35% discount for money and 
macro viewers. Now, whether you prefer their daily  
journalism in the Economist app, or you are like 
me and enjoy catching up on the global economy  
over the weekend with a nice cup of coffee and the 
print edition, you'll always stay on top of the  
latest global developments and support journalism 
that values factual information, integrity, and  
an independent point of view. So, don't miss out. 
Click the link in the description or top comment  
below or head over to ecomus.com/moneymackro 
to claim your exclusive 35% discount today.
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### 社交媒体的放大效应（叙事四）

社交媒体被认为是加剧政治极化的重要推手。传统媒体相对平衡，而电视和社交媒体算法更倾向于推送极端、负面、情绪化或“非我族类”的内容，使得温和的声音被埋没。心理学家 J. Vanbo 提出的“四大致命法则”（负面性、极端性、对立思维、道德情感语言）解释了为何此类内容更容易吸引注意和传播。这导致用户可能认为现实社会比实际更愤怒、更极端。此外，社交媒体还连接了原本分散的边缘群体，让他们找到同伴，增强表达极端观点的信心，从而使这些态度变得更可见、更有组织且更具政治影响力。然而，由于社交媒体和有线电视的传播范围是全球性的，而右翼民粹主义的模式却在各国差异巨大，这表明社交媒体更多是作为一种“放大器”而非唯一根源。

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<summary>Original English</summary>

The populist surge in the west is over. This is the 
end. Or is it? Actually, the experience of early  
adopter populist countries shows us that this 
is extremely unlikely. For example, in Austria,  
populism collapsed in the early 2000s after Jörg 
Haider's freedom party government turned out to  
be a chaotic mess. But once again, although not 
in power, the Austrian Freedom Party got the most  
votes in the last election. Similarly, in Italy, 
the populist Berlusconi faced a crushing defeat  
after it became clear his billionaire who will 
rescue the economy narrative was not working. Yet,  
Berlusconi always came back. And even when he 
himself did not, Italy is now again ruled by a  
populist right-wing president. In fact, looking at 
these graphs, we can see that the dynamic is often  
the same. Once right-wing populism emerges, yes, 
it often suffers crushing setbacks due to chaotic  
infighting, no economic progress, and the exposure 
of massive corruption, but it never really goes  
away. So, right-wing populists may suffer 
crushing defeats and often embarrassing ones,  
but eventually they always bounce back, which 
raises the question, why does populism always keep  
bouncing back? Why is it not going away after all 
of those broken promises? As always on Money and  
Macro, we've emerged ourselves into the relevant 
scientific literature and selected the four most  
prevalent explanations. Narrative number one, it's 
the economy stupid? Ordinary people have been left  
behind. Narrative number two, right-wing populists 
have a point. Mainstream politicians themselves  
are the problem. They've become out of touch 
on cultural issues like immigration. Narrative  
number three, people have just become more racist/ 
authoritarian. And last but not least, narrative  
number four, it's actually social media that's 
to blame. That is pushing people to political  
extremes. In this video, we examine the evidence 
and counter evidence for each theory to determine  
which of them has the most convincing explanation 
for why right-wing populism keeps bouncing back.  
But before solving the puzzle, we first need to 
make sure we are all talking about the same thing.  
That is, what is right-wing populism actually? 
And how is it different from left-wing populism?  
Aren't these polar opposites? Why are we talking 
about them in the same breath? Well, yes and no.  
This is something people often get wrong. Populism 
is not at all like socialism or like conservatism.  
It's not an ideology. It's a way of talking about 
politics a lens through which political conflict  
is framed. At its core, both left and right-wing 
populism divides society into two opposing groups.  
On the one hand, the hardworking people and on 
the other, the corrupt elites. Populism is pretty  
easy to understand. Essentially, all problems in 
society are the fault of these corrupt elites. The  
difference between left and right-wing populism 
then is which elite group they frame as the  
problem. On the left, populists target economic 
elites such as rich and the corporations, the  
brolicharchy of tremendous wealth, a government 
of the billionaire class by the billionaire class.  
On the other hand, right-wing populists target 
a different kind of elite group, the cultural  
elites, such as "The Brussels bureaucrats, the 
Amercian bureaucrats, and the Soros network..." 
but also academics or mainstream politicians 
accused of ignoring ordinary people's concerns  
about immigration, crime, and cultural identity. 
Different enemies, same narrative. The system  
has been captured by elites which no longer 
represent the people and simple narratives  
often come with simple solutions. So if you 
believe that moneyed elites cause most problems,  
you should vote left-wing populists into power 
so that they can tax their wealth away. And  
if you believe immigration is damaging 
the economy and eroding local culture,  
you should back leaders who are not afraid to defy 
cultural elites and take massive actions to close  
the borders. Especially the right-wing populist 
story convinced a lot of people in the West in  
the last couple of decades. But okay, back to the 
present. Trump's remanufacturing America story is  
failing. Brexit is not making Britain rich and 
Orban just lost in a landslide. So why again do  
we say right-wing populism will bounce back soon 
enough? Well, let's start with the economic story  
that should in theory empower left-wing populists. 
But surprisingly in reality often empowers the  
right. Narrative number one, people vote populist 
because they are economically left behind. Okay,  
this map shows GDP per capita per German state. 
And this map shows where people mostly voted  
for the right-wing populist party AFD. This is 
not a coincidence. When we look at leaders like  
Marine Le Pen and Viktor Orban, we see that they 
often struggle to gain traction in thriving rich  
urban centers, but they dominate the vote 
in rural and declining areas. By now, it's  
pretty well known that the hyper globalization 
period from the late 1970s to early 2000s created  
winners and losers. Chinese workers were 
able to produce for the rest of the world,  
massively improving their own living standards. 
Meanwhile, in the west, highly educated people  
in big cities in rich countries were also able to 
export services to more and more people globally,  
which translated into higher wages for them. 
But take a look at this graph. The hourly wage  
corrected for inflation for a US worker without 
higher education is very similar today to what it  
was in 1965. So while during the period of hyper 
globalization the US economy kept growing only  
the well-educated cultural and moneyed elites have 
actually seen their purchasing power go up while  
many ordinary people were indeed left behind. 
It's not hard to see how this can translate  
into politics. If you feel the system no longer 
works for you and the same political elites keep  
defending it. Of course you will start looking for 
alternatives and that is exactly what we see in  
the data. Regions more exposed to Chinese import 
competition were more likely to support Brexit,  
Trump, and the AFD in Germany. Areas more exposed 
to automation tend to show stronger support for  
populist parties. However, while this evidence 
looks convincing, it has three big problems.  
First, if we look at people in countries that 
truly lost a lot of their income between 1985  
and 2015, we would expect right-wing 
populism to have surged in countries  
like Spain and Portugal. But actually, relatively 
fortunate and less unequal countries like Norway,  
Finland, Switzerland, and Austria have 
seen far bigger right-wing populist surges.  
The second problem with the explanation is 
once we move from regions to individuals,  
the story weakens. As research by political 
science professor Larry Bartles shows, economic  
disaection turns out to be a poor predictor 
of whether someone votes or identifies with  
right-wing populism. It is far less informative 
than attitudes towards immigration, trust in  
political institutions, or broader cultural 
values. In other words, yes, many people in left  
behind areas vote for the populist right. But if 
you want to actually predict whether someone will  
support the populist right, you get much closer 
by asking what they think about immigration or  
whether they trust politicians than by asking them 
about what they think about the economy. The third  
problem is if populism is about regular working 
folks wanting an equal share of the economic pie,  
wouldn't it make sense to vote for populists 
who want to redistribute wealth, so those on  
the left? However, if we look at the data, we 
see the opposite. It's especially right-wing  
populism that is surging in the West as inequality 
increased. So, could it be that people are fooled  
by the populist right to vote against their own 
interest? That's a story that we hear a lot and it  
could be true but actually and it may shock some 
of you hearing this from me in this case maybe  
economics is not everything. So it's time for this 
economist here to step outside of his comfort zone  
with narrative number two. Right-wing populism 
is actually about out of touch cultural elites.  
Okay. The argument goes a little bit like this. No 
voters are not confused. The real people who are  
confused are the cultural elites. I really believe 
that Westminster, the intellectuals, the liberal  
elites just don't get it. Take a simple question. 
Should immigrants adapt to the customs of the  
country that they move to? Large majorities of 
the public say yes. This holds all across Europe,  
Britain, Denmark, Germany, and Sweden. But among 
political elites, only those in Denmark agree with  
that view. On the other hand, in Germany, all 
politicians except for the populist right, and  
yes, that even includes conservative politicians, 
are more liberal on immigration than the average  
voter? Or take the question, should race be taken 
into account in college admissions? Only a third  
of Americans agree with this view. Yet mainstream 
Democrat leaders from Hillary Clinton to Joe Biden  
have consistently supported raceconscious policies 
and criticized court rulings against them. This  
disconnect between what the public wants and 
what politicians want on the other hand is what  
political scientists call a representation 
gap. As you can see here in this FT graph,  
politicians and voters are roughly aligned when 
it comes to economic issues like redistribution  
and capitalism. Left-wing politicians are close 
to leftwing voters and right-wing politicians  
are close to right-wing voters. But when it 
comes to topics like immigration and crime,  
politicians are on average far more to the left 
than the average voter. So when the political  
debate is dominated by economic issues like 
taxes and redistribution, well in those cases,  
mainstream parties are relatively safe because 
they champion what voters actually want. But  
when cultural issues move to the center of the 
debate, the dynamics change. If voters feel that  
their basic cultural preferences are ignored 
or even worse, dismissed or talked down upon,  
that gap becomes a big opportunity for right-wing 
populists to emerge. The clearest example of this  
is the 2015 European refugee crisis. As images 
of large numbers of asylum seekers and irregular  
border crossings dominated the news, immigrations 
shot up the list of public concerns. People did  
not necessarily purely react to immigration 
itself, but they did react strongly to the  
perception of chaos and loss of control. And when 
that perception takes hold and politicians are not  
reacting to it, then right-wing populists gain a 
big advantage. Research by James Denison and Andre  
Fer Gues shows that as immigration becomes more 
salient, support for populist right-wing parties  
rises right along with it. Not perfectly, not 
everywhere, but consistently enough to matter.  
At the same time, as citizens, we're like, "Oh 
my goodness, look at what's going on here. Our  
societies are changing dramatically. We're in the 
midst of this economic stagnation where, you know,  
I feel like I have to compete for jobs. I have to 
compete for public goods." And at the same time,  
traditional establishment parties are inviting in 
tons of immigrants, allowing huge asylum flows,  
telling me that if I worry about this or I'm 
concerned about this, I'm a racist or a xenophobe.  
So, interestingly, when populist right-wingers say 
that cultural elites like mainstream politicians  
are out of touch, data shows us that they are 
correct. Not when it comes to economics, but when  
it comes to social issues like immigration and 
crime. Yes, the general public is significantly to  
the right of most politicians. But as we've seen, 
there's only one exception. In Denmark, the Social  
Democrats adopted stricter immigration policies 
themselves, which coincided with a decline in  
support for the populist right from over 20% to 
just below 10%. But okay, that's still 10%. So,  
there must be more going on. But this was still a 
crucial story. In many leftwing circles, though,  
the diagnosis is very different. The problem they 
argue goes far beyond out of touch elites. No,  
it points to the people. Narrative number 
three, people are simply becoming more  
racist. And honestly, this is not super popular in 
academic circles. This explanation, it's actually  
an argument that I often hear from friends, so 
I thought it was important to address it here.  
Nonetheless, many of them watch extreme takes 
from populist right-wingers and their supporters.  
They scroll through online comment sections and 
come away thinking something genuinely dark is  
happening. People are becoming evil. People are 
stigmatizing entire Muslim communities as violent.  
Politicians are showing authoritarian tendencies. 
There are conspiracies about Brussels bureaucrates  
or George Soros erasing Western civilization. It 
can feel like people are forgetting the lessons  
of the past, growing tired of democracy and 
becoming more xenophobic and conspiratorial. But  
is it actually true? Are people really becoming 
less satisfied with democracy and more hostile to  
immigrants? Well, according to political scientist 
Larry Bartles, the answer to that question is  
clear. No. Absolutely not. Based on survey 
responses from more than 300,000 Europeans, he  
finds that they have not become significantly more 
illiberal or more hostile to immigration over the  
past two decades. In fact, support for European 
integration has remained fairly stable throughout  
the 21st century. Level of trust in parliament and 
politicians, satisfaction with democracy and even  
attitudes towards immigration. They have remained 
broadly stable over time and have even improved a  
little. Of course, there are some exceptions. For 
example, Spanish citizens became much more hostile  
to democracy after the massive economic crisis 
in 2008. However, satisfaction with democracy  
has been rising in Finland, Sweden, and Denmark 
at a time when the populist right became a major  
player in those countries. So overall, no, it does 
not appear that people are becoming more racist or  
authoritarian, but I do understand why more and 
more people feel this way. The YouTube shorts  
algorithm sometimes recommends me these nice 
videos of how US presidents used to interact with  
one each other. I think Mr. Nixon is an effective 
leader of his party. The question before us is  
which point of view and which party do we want to 
leave the United States? I agree with Senator K.  
And if we compare that to some of the stuff that 
Trump says these days, sleepy, crooked Joe Biden,  
where I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue 
and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters.  
Okay, it's like incredible. Then it's clear that 
something has changed. The public is willing  
to accept far more uncivilized language. And 
actually, this is not just an American phenomena.  
Right-wing populist leaders everywhere use 
increasingly inflammatory language. So why  
does the public increasingly accept that type of 
behavior if they themselves did not become more  
authoritarian? Well, this brings us to narrative 
number four. Blame social media. Social media is  
polarizing us. And there's really good evidence 
that this is actually happening in two ways.  
First, as you can see here, traditional media like 
newspapers and radio, well, they gave a voice to  
everyone, the hard left, the moderates, and the 
hard right. However, as you can see here, cable  
TV is already quite a bit more biased towards 
both extremes. And on social media, well, oh boy,  
the algorithms really love to serve us both hard 
left and hard right content, while the moderate,  
nuanced, more boring voices are buried in the 
algorithms. To explain this, psychologist J.  
Vanbo describes four dark laws that drive online 
engagement. Negativity, extremism, us versus  
them thinking, and moral emotional language. In 
other words, content that is more negative, more  
extreme, more tribal, and more emotionally charged 
is more likely to grab attention and spread. This  
means that expressing outrage, attacking the other 
side, or using words like disgusting or unjust  
or just super simple narratives will consistently 
outperform more balanced or nuanced views. So, if  
you are on social media a lot, it makes sense that 
you will start believing that people are angrier,  
more polarized, and more extreme than that they 
actually are. But it gets worse. The second way  
that social media is polarizing us other than 
amplifying extreme voices is by connecting extreme  
voices. You see, views that were once socially 
taboo like I could have done things to her that  
would have made your head spin used to remain on 
the fringes. But nowadays, people holding these  
views can find each other instantly. When they 
realize that they're not alone, then they become  
more confident to express those views in public. 
So the internet did not necessarily create these  
attitudes, but it did make them more visible, more 
organized, and more politically relevant. And this  
can explain why many of my friends that spend a 
lot of time online feel that people on average  
have become more extreme, even though research 
shows us that they did not. However, again,  
this is not the full story. You see, cable TV and 
social media spread pretty evenly worldwide. Yet,  
right-wing populism patterns vary drastically 
across countries. Not every country has ended  
up with Americanstyle media polarization. 
So this brings us to our conclusion. Which  
narrative is the most convincing? Well, one 
thing it's clear, it's not narrative number  
three. People are not becoming more racist 
or authoritarian over time. Anti-democratic  
and anti-immigration sentiment did not just 
appear out of nowhere in the last decades.  
There's always been a slice of a population that 
feels this way, which means there's always been  
some baseline demand for right-wing populism. 
But for the other narratives, given that country  
trajectories are so different, the different 
right-wing populist surges can probably best  
be explained by combining these three other 
narratives. First, there was rising inequality,  
austerity, the fallout from the financial crisis. 
All of that shook people's trust in institutions.  
This could explain populist surges in the American 
Midwest or Eastern Europe. On the other hand,  
populist surges in relatively equal countries like 
Norway and Denmark probably have more to do with  
a political disconnect on cultural issues. And 
finally, the rise of social media and cable TV  
probably acted like an amplifier, giving populist 
parties that represent 10 to 30% of the population  
the power to take over several countries. So yeah, 
all of these three explanations are supported by  
the evidence. On their own though, there are 
too many contradictions to believe them. But  
taken together, it becomes clear that right-wing 
populism will likely surge back again and again  
as long as inequality remains high. Politicians 
do not listen to voter preferences on culture and  
immigration. And number three, as long as social 
media gives populist an algorithmic edge. But  
yeah, that's my take. What do you think? Let me 
know in the comments below. And if you find this  
topic as fascinating as I do, I highly recommend 
that you check out the excellent analysis by our  
advertising sponsor, The Economists, which I 
always check out for the research process of  
my videos. For this episode in particular, 
I learned a lot from their analysis on how  
the Danish social democrats have shifted 
right on immigration to counter the far  
right. Or if you also care about macroeconomic 
stability, I encourage you to take a look at  
this article where they explore how efforts 
to be fiscally responsible and reduce budget  
deficits can sometimes end up benefiting populist 
parties. And finally, for a broader overview, I'd  
strongly strongly recommend this article on what 
populism actually means. As these examples show,  
The Economist delivers insights that help you 
see the bigger picture and think for yourself.  
This is why I almost always rely on their analysis 
for my research and it's why I highly recommend  
that you subscribe and that's actually now 
more interesting than ever given that they  
are offering a special 35% discount for money and 
macro viewers. Now, whether you prefer their daily  
journalism in the Economist app, or you are like 
me and enjoy catching up on the global economy  
over the weekend with a nice cup of coffee and the 
print edition, you'll always stay on top of the  
latest global developments and support journalism 
that values factual information, integrity, and  
an independent point of view. So, don't miss out. 
Click the link in the description or top comment  
below or head over to ecomus.com/moneymackro 
to claim your exclusive 35% discount today.
</details>

### 综合分析与结论：多因素共振

对上述四种叙事的综合分析表明，右翼民粹主义的持续回潮并非单一因素所致。首先，**经济不平等**、**金融危机**等因素动摇了民众对机构的信任，为民粹主义提供了土壤，这在部分贫困地区尤为明显。其次，在**文化议题**（如移民、身份认同）上，政治精英与民众的脱节制造了“代表性鸿沟”，为右翼民粹主义者提供了机会，这在相对平等的国家更为突出。最后，**社交媒体和有线电视**等新兴媒体则扮演了“放大器”的角色，它们加速了极端观点的传播，并连接了潜在支持者群体。虽然公众的**基本道德观或威权倾向**并未显著改变，但话语环境的恶化不容忽视。因此，只要贫富差距依然严峻、政治代表性持续存在问题，且社交媒体算法提供算法优势，右翼民粹主义就可能反复出现。

<details>
<summary>Original English</summary>

The populist surge in the west is over. This is the 
end. Or is it? Actually, the experience of early  
adopter populist countries shows us that this 
is extremely unlikely. For example, in Austria,  
populism collapsed in the early 2000s after Jörg 
Haider's freedom party government turned out to  
be a chaotic mess. But once again, although not 
in power, the Austrian Freedom Party got the most  
votes in the last election. Similarly, in Italy, 
the populist Berlusconi faced a crushing defeat  
after it became clear his billionaire who will 
rescue the economy narrative was not working. Yet,  
Berlusconi always came back. And even when he 
himself did not, Italy is now again ruled by a  
populist right-wing president. In fact, looking at 
these graphs, we can see that the dynamic is often  
the same. Once right-wing populism emerges, yes, 
it often suffers crushing setbacks due to chaotic  
infighting, no economic progress, and the exposure 
of massive corruption, but it never really goes  
away. So, right-wing populists may suffer 
crushing defeats and often embarrassing ones,  
but eventually they always bounce back, which 
raises the question, why does populism always keep  
bouncing back? Why is it not going away after all 
of those broken promises? As always on Money and  
Macro, we've emerged ourselves into the relevant 
scientific literature and selected the four most  
prevalent explanations. Narrative number one, it's 
the economy stupid? Ordinary people have been left  
behind. Narrative number two, right-wing populists 
have a point. Mainstream politicians themselves  
are the problem. They've become out of touch 
on cultural issues like immigration. Narrative  
number three, people have just become more racist/ 
authoritarian. And last but not least, narrative  
number four, it's actually social media that's 
to blame. That is pushing people to political  
extremes. In this video, we examine the evidence 
and counter evidence for each theory to determine  
which of them has the most convincing explanation 
for why right-wing populism keeps bouncing back.  
But before solving the puzzle, we first need to 
make sure we are all talking about the same thing.  
That is, what is right-wing populism actually? 
And how is it different from left-wing populism?  
Aren't these polar opposites? Why are we talking 
about them in the same breath? Well, yes and no.  
This is something people often get wrong. Populism 
is not at all like socialism or like conservatism.  
It's not an ideology. It's a way of talking about 
politics a lens through which political conflict  
is framed. At its core, both left and right-wing 
populism divides society into two opposing groups.  
On the one hand, the hardworking people and on 
the other, the corrupt elites. Populism is pretty  
easy to understand. Essentially, all problems in 
society are the fault of these corrupt elites. The  
difference between left and right-wing populism 
then is which elite group they frame as the  
problem. On the left, populists target economic 
elites such as rich and the corporations, the  
brolicharchy of tremendous wealth, a government 
of the billionaire class by the billionaire class.  
On the other hand, right-wing populists target 
a different kind of elite group, the cultural  
elites, such as "The Brussels bureaucrats, the 
Amercian bureaucrats, and the Soros network..." 
but also academics or mainstream politicians 
accused of ignoring ordinary people's concerns  
about immigration, crime, and cultural identity. 
Different enemies, same narrative. The system  
has been captured by elites which no longer 
represent the people and simple narratives  
often come with simple solutions. So if you 
believe that moneyed elites cause most problems,  
you should vote left-wing populists into power 
so that they can tax their wealth away. And  
if you believe immigration is damaging 
the economy and eroding local culture,  
you should back leaders who are not afraid to defy 
cultural elites and take massive actions to close  
the borders. Especially the right-wing populist 
story convinced a lot of people in the West in  
the last couple of decades. But okay, back to the 
present. Trump's remanufacturing America story is  
failing. Brexit is not making Britain rich and 
Orban just lost in a landslide. So why again do  
we say right-wing populism will bounce back soon 
enough? Well, let's start with the economic story  
that should in theory empower left-wing populists. 
But surprisingly in reality often empowers the  
right. Narrative number one, people vote populist 
because they are economically left behind. Okay,  
this map shows GDP per capita per German state. 
And this map shows where people mostly voted  
for the right-wing populist party AFD. This is 
not a coincidence. When we look at leaders like  
Marine Le Pen and Viktor Orban, we see that they 
often struggle to gain traction in thriving rich  
urban centers, but they dominate the vote 
in rural and declining areas. By now, it's  
pretty well known that the hyper globalization 
period from the late 1970s to early 2000s created  
winners and losers. Chinese workers were 
able to produce for the rest of the world,  
massively improving their own living standards. 
Meanwhile, in the west, highly educated people  
in big cities in rich countries were also able to 
export services to more and more people globally,  
which translated into higher wages for them. 
But take a look at this graph. The hourly wage  
corrected for inflation for a US worker without 
higher education is very similar today to what it  
was in 1965. So while during the period of hyper 
globalization the US economy kept growing only  
the well-educated cultural and moneyed elites have 
actually seen their purchasing power go up while  
many ordinary people were indeed left behind. 
It's not hard to see how this can translate  
into politics. If you feel the system no longer 
works for you and the same political elites keep  
defending it. Of course you will start looking for 
alternatives and that is exactly what we see in  
the data. Regions more exposed to Chinese import 
competition were more likely to support Brexit,  
Trump, and the AFD in Germany. Areas more exposed 
to automation tend to show stronger support for  
populist parties. However, while this evidence 
looks convincing, it has three big problems.  
First, if we look at people in countries that 
truly lost a lot of their income between 1985  
and 2015, we would expect right-wing 
populism to have surged in countries  
like Spain and Portugal. But actually, relatively 
fortunate and less unequal countries like Norway,  
Finland, Switzerland, and Austria have 
seen far bigger right-wing populist surges.  
The second problem with the explanation is 
once we move from regions to individuals,  
the story weakens. As research by political 
science professor Larry Bartles shows, economic  
disaection turns out to be a poor predictor 
of whether someone votes or identifies with  
right-wing populism. It is far less informative 
than attitudes towards immigration, trust in  
political institutions, or broader cultural 
values. In other words, yes, many people in left  
behind areas vote for the populist right. But if 
you want to actually predict whether someone will  
support the populist right, you get much closer 
by asking what they think about immigration or  
whether they trust politicians than by asking them 
about what they think about the economy. The third  
problem is if populism is about regular working 
folks wanting an equal share of the economic pie,  
wouldn't it make sense to vote for populists 
who want to redistribute wealth, so those on  
the left? However, if we look at the data, we 
see the opposite. It's especially right-wing  
populism that is surging in the West as inequality 
increased. So, could it be that people are fooled  
by the populist right to vote against their own 
interest? That's a story that we hear a lot and it  
could be true but actually and it may shock some 
of you hearing this from me in this case maybe  
economics is not everything. So it's time for this 
economist here to step outside of his comfort zone  
with narrative number two. Right-wing populism 
is actually about out of touch cultural elites.  
Okay. The argument goes a little bit like this. No 
voters are not confused. The real people who are  
confused are the cultural elites. I really believe 
that Westminster, the intellectuals, the liberal  
elites just don't get it. Take a simple question. 
Should immigrants adapt to the customs of the  
country that they move to? Large majorities of 
the public say yes. This holds all across Europe,  
Britain, Denmark, Germany, and Sweden. But among 
political elites, only those in Denmark agree with  
that view. On the other hand, in Germany, all 
politicians except for the populist right, and  
yes, that even includes conservative politicians, 
are more liberal on immigration than the average  
voter? Or take the question, should race be taken 
into account in college admissions? Only a third  
of Americans agree with this view. Yet mainstream 
Democrat leaders from Hillary Clinton to Joe Biden  
have consistently supported raceconscious policies 
and criticized court rulings against them. This  
disconnect between what the public wants and 
what politicians want on the other hand is what  
political scientists call a representation 
gap. As you can see here in this FT graph,  
politicians and voters are roughly aligned when 
it comes to economic issues like redistribution  
and capitalism. Left-wing politicians are close 
to leftwing voters and right-wing politicians  
are close to right-wing voters. But when it 
comes to topics like immigration and crime,  
politicians are on average far more to the left 
than the average voter. So when the political  
debate is dominated by economic issues like 
taxes and redistribution, well in those cases,  
mainstream parties are relatively safe because 
they champion what voters actually want. But  
when cultural issues move to the center of the 
debate, the dynamics change. If voters feel that  
their basic cultural preferences are ignored 
or even worse, dismissed or talked down upon,  
that gap becomes a big opportunity for right-wing 
populists to emerge. The clearest example of this  
is the 2015 European refugee crisis. As images 
of large numbers of asylum seekers and irregular  
border crossings dominated the news, immigrations 
shot up the list of public concerns. People did  
not necessarily purely react to immigration 
itself, but they did react strongly to the  
perception of chaos and loss of control. And when 
that perception takes hold and politicians are not  
reacting to it, then right-wing populists gain a 
big advantage. Research by James Denison and Andre  
Fer Gues shows that as immigration becomes more 
salient, support for populist right-wing parties  
rises right along with it. Not perfectly, not 
everywhere, but consistently enough to matter.  
At the same time, as citizens, we're like, "Oh 
my goodness, look at what's going on here. Our  
societies are changing dramatically. We're in the 
midst of this economic stagnation where, you know,  
I feel like I have to compete for jobs. I have to 
compete for public goods." And at the same time,  
traditional establishment parties are inviting in 
tons of immigrants, allowing huge asylum flows,  
telling me that if I worry about this or I'm 
concerned about this, I'm a racist or a xenophobe.  
So, interestingly, when populist right-wingers say 
that cultural elites like mainstream politicians  
are out of touch, data shows us that they are 
correct. Not when it comes to economics, but when  
it comes to social issues like immigration and 
crime. Yes, the general public is significantly to  
the right of most politicians. But as we've seen, 
there's only one exception. In Denmark, the Social  
Democrats adopted stricter immigration policies 
themselves, which coincided with a decline in  
support for the populist right from over 20% to 
just below 10%. But okay, that's still 10%. So,  
there must be more going on. But this was still a 
crucial story. In many leftwing circles, though,  
the diagnosis is very different. The problem they 
argue goes far beyond out of touch elites. No,  
it points to the people. Narrative number 
three, people are simply becoming more  
racist. And honestly, this is not super popular in 
academic circles. This explanation, it's actually  
an argument that I often hear from friends, so 
I thought it was important to address it here.  
Nonetheless, many of them watch extreme takes 
from populist right-wingers and their supporters.  
They scroll through online comment sections and 
come away thinking something genuinely dark is  
happening. People are becoming evil. People are 
stigmatizing entire Muslim communities as violent.  
Politicians are showing authoritarian tendencies. 
There are conspiracies about Brussels bureaucrates  
or George Soros erasing Western civilization. It 
can feel like people are forgetting the lessons  
of the past, growing tired of democracy and 
becoming more xenophobic and conspiratorial. But  
is it actually true? Are people really becoming 
less satisfied with democracy and more hostile to  
immigrants? Well, according to political scientist 
Larry Bartles, the answer to that question is  
clear. No. Absolutely not. Based on survey 
responses from more than 300,000 Europeans, he  
finds that they have not become significantly more 
illiberal or more hostile to immigration over the  
past two decades. In fact, support for European 
integration has remained fairly stable throughout  
the 21st century. Level of trust in parliament and 
politicians, satisfaction with democracy and even  
attitudes towards immigration. They have remained 
broadly stable over time and have even improved a  
little. Of course, there are some exceptions. For 
example, Spanish citizens became much more hostile  
to democracy after the massive economic crisis 
in 2008. However, satisfaction with democracy  
has been rising in Finland, Sweden, and Denmark 
at a time when the populist right became a major  
player in those countries. So overall, no, it does 
not appear that people are becoming more racist or  
authoritarian, but I do understand why more and 
more people feel this way. The YouTube shorts  
algorithm sometimes recommends me these nice 
videos of how US presidents used to interact with  
one each other. I think Mr. Nixon is an effective 
leader of his party. The question before us is  
which point of view and which party do we want to 
leave the United States? I agree with Senator K.  
And if we compare that to some of the stuff that 
Trump says these days, sleepy, crooked Joe Biden,  
where I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue 
and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters.  
Okay, it's like incredible. Then it's clear that 
something has changed. The public is willing  
to accept far more uncivilized language. And 
actually, this is not just an American phenomena.  
Right-wing populist leaders everywhere use 
increasingly inflammatory language. So why  
does the public increasingly accept that type of 
behavior if they themselves did not become more  
authoritarian? Well, this brings us to narrative 
number four. Blame social media. Social media is  
polarizing us. And there's really good evidence 
that this is actually happening in two ways.  
First, as you can see here, traditional media like 
newspapers and radio, well, they gave a voice to  
everyone, the hard left, the moderates, and the 
hard right. However, as you can see here, cable  
TV is already quite a bit more biased towards 
both extremes. And on social media, well, oh boy,  
the algorithms really love to serve us both hard 
left and hard right content, while the moderate,  
nuanced, more boring voices are buried in the 
algorithms. To explain this, psychologist J.  
Vanbo describes four dark laws that drive online 
engagement. Negativity, extremism, us versus  
them thinking, and moral emotional language. In 
other words, content that is more negative, more  
extreme, more tribal, and more emotionally charged 
is more likely to grab attention and spread. This  
means that expressing outrage, attacking the other 
side, or using words like disgusting or unjust  
or just super simple narratives will consistently 
outperform more balanced or nuanced views. So, if  
you are on social media a lot, it makes sense that 
you will start believing that people are angrier,  
more polarized, and more extreme than that they 
actually are. But it gets worse. The second way  
that social media is polarizing us other than 
amplifying extreme voices is by connecting extreme  
voices. You see, views that were once socially 
taboo like I could have done things to her that  
would have made your head spin used to remain on 
the fringes. But nowadays, people holding these  
views can find each other instantly. When they 
realize that they're not alone, then they become  
more confident to express those views in public. 
So the internet did not necessarily create these  
attitudes, but it did make them more visible, more 
organized, and more politically relevant. And this  
can explain why many of my friends that spend a 
lot of time online feel that people on average  
have become more extreme, even though research 
shows us that they did not. However, again,  
this is not the full story. You see, cable TV and 
social media spread pretty evenly worldwide. Yet,  
right-wing populism patterns vary drastically 
across countries. Not every country has ended  
up with Americanstyle media polarization. 
So this brings us to our conclusion. Which  
narrative is the most convincing? Well, one 
thing it's clear, it's not narrative number  
three. People are not becoming more racist 
or authoritarian over time. Anti-democratic  
and anti-immigration sentiment did not just 
appear out of nowhere in the last decades.  
There's always been a slice of a population that 
feels this way, which means there's always been  
some baseline demand for right-wing populism. 
But for the other narratives, given that country  
trajectories are so different, the different 
right-wing populist surges can probably best  
be explained by combining these three other 
narratives. First, there was rising inequality,  
austerity, the fallout from the financial crisis. 
All of that shook people's trust in institutions.  
This could explain populist surges in the American 
Midwest or Eastern Europe. On the other hand,  
populist surges in relatively equal countries like 
Norway and Denmark probably have more to do with  
a political disconnect on cultural issues. And 
finally, the rise of social media and cable TV  
probably acted like an amplifier, giving populist 
parties that represent 10 to 30% of the population  
the power to take over several countries. So yeah, 
all of these three explanations are supported by  
the evidence. On their own though, there are 
too many contradictions to believe them. But  
taken together, it becomes clear that right-wing 
populism will likely surge back again and again  
as long as inequality remains high. Politicians 
do not listen to voter preferences on culture and  
immigration. And number three, as long as social 
media gives populist an algorithmic edge. But  
yeah, that's my take. What do you think? Let me 
know in the comments below. And if you find this  
topic as fascinating as I do, I highly recommend 
that you check out the excellent analysis by our  
advertising sponsor, The Economists, which I 
always check out for the research process of  
my videos. For this episode in particular, 
I learned a lot from their analysis on how  
the Danish social democrats have shifted 
right on immigration to counter the far  
right. Or if you also care about macroeconomic 
stability, I encourage you to take a look at  
this article where they explore how efforts 
to be fiscally responsible and reduce budget  
deficits can sometimes end up benefiting populist 
parties. And finally, for a broader overview, I'd  
strongly strongly recommend this article on what 
populism actually means. As these examples show,  
The Economist delivers insights that help you 
see the bigger picture and think for yourself.  
This is why I almost always rely on their analysis 
for my research and it's why I highly recommend  
that you subscribe and that's actually now 
more interesting than ever given that they  
are offering a special 35% discount for money and 
macro viewers. Now, whether you prefer their daily  
journalism in the Economist app, or you are like 
me and enjoy catching up on the global economy  
over the weekend with a nice cup of coffee and the 
print edition, you'll always stay on top of the  
latest global developments and support journalism 
that values factual information, integrity, and  
an independent point of view. So, don't miss out. 
Click the link in the description or top comment  
below or head over to ecomus.com/moneymackro 
to claim your exclusive 35% discount today.
</details>

### 赞助商推荐与深入阅读

视频最后，作者推荐了《经济学人》（The Economist）的文章，并提供了35%的折扣链接。这些文章深入探讨了丹麦社会民主党在移民政策上的右转、财政责任与民粹主义政党受益的关系，以及民粹主义的本质含义，旨在帮助读者更宏观地思考问题，并做出独立判断。

<details>
<summary>Original English</summary>

The populist surge in the west is over. This is the 
end. Or is it? Actually, the experience of early  
adopter populist countries shows us that this 
is extremely unlikely. For example, in Austria,  
populism collapsed in the early 2000s after Jörg 
Haider's freedom party government turned out to  
be a chaotic mess. But once again, although not 
in power, the Austrian Freedom Party got the most  
votes in the last election. Similarly, in Italy, 
the populist Berlusconi faced a crushing defeat  
after it became clear his billionaire who will 
rescue the economy narrative was not working. Yet,  
Berlusconi always came back. And even when he 
himself did not, Italy is now again ruled by a  
populist right-wing president. In fact, looking at 
these graphs, we can see that the dynamic is often  
the same. Once right-wing populism emerges, yes, 
it often suffers crushing setbacks due to chaotic  
infighting, no economic progress, and the exposure 
of massive corruption, but it never really goes  
away. So, right-wing populists may suffer 
crushing defeats and often embarrassing ones,  
but eventually they always bounce back, which 
raises the question, why does populism always keep  
bouncing back? Why is it not going away after all 
of those broken promises? As always on Money and  
Macro, we've emerged ourselves into the relevant 
scientific literature and selected the four most  
prevalent explanations. Narrative number one, it's 
the economy stupid? Ordinary people have been left  
behind. Narrative number two, right-wing populists 
have a point. Mainstream politicians themselves  
are the problem. They've become out of touch 
on cultural issues like immigration. Narrative  
number three, people have just become more racist/ 
authoritarian. And last but not least, narrative  
number four, it's actually social media that's 
to blame. That is pushing people to political  
extremes. In this video, we examine the evidence 
and counter evidence for each theory to determine  
which of them has the most convincing explanation 
for why right-wing populism keeps bouncing back.  
But before solving the puzzle, we first need to 
make sure we are all talking about the same thing.  
That is, what is right-wing populism actually? 
And how is it different from left-wing populism?  
Aren't these polar opposites? Why are we talking 
about them in the same breath? Well, yes and no.  
This is something people often get wrong. Populism 
is not at all like socialism or like conservatism.  
It's not an ideology. It's a way of talking about 
politics a lens through which political conflict  
is framed. At its core, both left and right-wing 
populism divides society into two opposing groups.  
On the one hand, the hardworking people and on 
the other, the corrupt elites. Populism is pretty  
easy to understand. Essentially, all problems in 
society are the fault of these corrupt elites. The  
difference between left and right-wing populism 
then is which elite group they frame as the  
problem. On the left, populists target economic 
elites such as rich and the corporations, the  
brolicharchy of tremendous wealth, a government 
of the billionaire class by the billionaire class.  
On the other hand, right-wing populists target 
a different kind of elite group, the cultural  
elites, such as "The Brussels bureaucrats, the 
Amercian bureaucrats, and the Soros network..." 
but also academics or mainstream politicians 
accused of ignoring ordinary people's concerns  
about immigration, crime, and cultural identity. 
Different enemies, same narrative. The system  
has been captured by elites which no longer 
represent the people and simple narratives  
often come with simple solutions. So if you 
believe that moneyed elites cause most problems,  
you should vote left-wing populists into power 
so that they can tax their wealth away. And  
if you believe immigration is damaging 
the economy and eroding local culture,  
you should back leaders who are not afraid to defy 
cultural elites and take massive actions to close  
the borders. Especially the right-wing populist 
story convinced a lot of people in the West in  
the last couple of decades. But okay, back to the 
present. Trump's remanufacturing America story is  
failing. Brexit is not making Britain rich and 
Orban just lost in a landslide. So why again do  
we say right-wing populism will bounce back soon 
enough? Well, let's start with the economic story  
that should in theory empower left-wing populists. 
But surprisingly in reality often empowers the  
right. Narrative number one, people vote populist 
because they are economically left behind. Okay,  
this map shows GDP per capita per German state. 
And this map shows where people mostly voted  
for the right-wing populist party AFD. This is 
not a coincidence. When we look at leaders like  
Marine Le Pen and Viktor Orban, we see that they 
often struggle to gain traction in thriving rich  
urban centers, but they dominate the vote 
in rural and declining areas. By now, it's  
pretty well known that the hyper globalization 
period from the late 1970s to early 2000s created  
winners and losers. Chinese workers were 
able to produce for the rest of the world,  
massively improving their own living standards. 
Meanwhile, in the west, highly educated people  
in big cities in rich countries were also able to 
export services to more and more people globally,  
which translated into higher wages for them. 
But take a look at this graph. The hourly wage  
corrected for inflation for a US worker without 
higher education is very similar today to what it  
was in 1965. So while during the period of hyper 
globalization the US economy kept growing only  
the well-educated cultural and moneyed elites have 
actually seen their purchasing power go up while  
many ordinary people were indeed left behind. 
It's not hard to see how this can translate  
into politics. If you feel the system no longer 
works for you and the same political elites keep  
defending it. Of course you will start looking for 
alternatives and that is exactly what we see in  
the data. Regions more exposed to Chinese import 
competition were more likely to support Brexit,  
Trump, and the AFD in Germany. Areas more exposed 
to automation tend to show stronger support for  
populist parties. However, while this evidence 
looks convincing, it has three big problems.  
First, if we look at people in countries that 
truly lost a lot of their income between 1985  
and 2015, we would expect right-wing 
populism to have surged in countries  
like Spain and Portugal. But actually, relatively 
fortunate and less unequal countries like Norway,  
Finland, Switzerland, and Austria have 
seen far bigger right-wing populist surges.  
The second problem with the explanation is 
once we move from regions to individuals,  
the story weakens. As research by political 
science professor Larry Bartles shows, economic  
disaection turns out to be a poor predictor 
of whether someone votes or identifies with  
right-wing populism. It is far less informative 
than attitudes towards immigration, trust in  
political institutions, or broader cultural 
values. In other words, yes, many people in left  
behind areas vote for the populist right. But if 
you want to actually predict whether someone will  
support the populist right, you get much closer 
by asking what they think about immigration or  
whether they trust politicians than by asking them 
about what they think about the economy. The third  
problem is if populism is about regular working 
folks wanting an equal share of the economic pie,  
wouldn't it make sense to vote for populists 
who want to redistribute wealth, so those on  
the left? However, if we look at the data, we 
see the opposite. It's especially right-wing  
populism that is surging in the West as inequality 
increased. So, could it be that people are fooled  
by the populist right to vote against their own 
interest? That's a story that we hear a lot and it  
could be true but actually and it may shock some 
of you hearing this from me in this case maybe  
economics is not everything. So it's time for this 
economist here to step outside of his comfort zone  
with narrative number two. Right-wing populism 
is actually about out of touch cultural elites.  
Okay. The argument goes a little bit like this. No 
voters are not confused. The real people who are  
confused are the cultural elites. I really believe 
that Westminster, the intellectuals, the liberal  
elites just don't get it. Take a simple question. 
Should immigrants adapt to the customs of the  
country that they move to? Large majorities of 
the public say yes. This holds all across Europe,  
Britain, Denmark, Germany, and Sweden. But among 
political elites, only those in Denmark agree with  
that view. On the other hand, in Germany, all 
politicians except for the populist right, and  
yes, that even includes conservative politicians, 
are more liberal on immigration than the average  
voter? Or take the question, should race be taken 
into account in college admissions? Only a third  
of Americans agree with this view. Yet mainstream 
Democrat leaders from Hillary Clinton to Joe Biden  
have consistently supported raceconscious policies 
and criticized court rulings against them. This  
disconnect between what the public wants and 
what politicians want on the other hand is what  
political scientists call a representation 
gap. As you can see here in this FT graph,  
politicians and voters are roughly aligned when 
it comes to economic issues like redistribution  
and capitalism. Left-wing politicians are close 
to leftwing voters and right-wing politicians  
are close to right-wing voters. But when it 
comes to topics like immigration and crime,  
politicians are on average far more to the left 
than the average voter. So when the political  
debate is dominated by economic issues like 
taxes and redistribution, well in those cases,  
mainstream parties are relatively safe because 
they champion what voters actually want. But  
when cultural issues move to the center of the 
debate, the dynamics change. If voters feel that  
their basic cultural preferences are ignored 
or even worse, dismissed or talked down upon,  
that gap becomes a big opportunity for right-wing 
populists to emerge. The clearest example of this  
is the 2015 European refugee crisis. As images 
of large numbers of asylum seekers and irregular  
border crossings dominated the news, immigrations 
shot up the list of public concerns. People did  
not necessarily purely react to immigration 
itself, but they did react strongly to the  
perception of chaos and loss of control. And when 
that perception takes hold and politicians are not  
reacting to it, then right-wing populists gain a 
big advantage. Research by James Denison and Andre  
Fer Gues shows that as immigration becomes more 
salient, support for populist right-wing parties  
rises right along with it. Not perfectly, not 
everywhere, but consistently enough to matter.  
At the same time, as citizens, we're like, "Oh 
my goodness, look at what's going on here. Our  
societies are changing dramatically. We're in the 
midst of this economic stagnation where, you know,  
I feel like I have to compete for jobs. I have to 
compete for public goods." And at the same time,  
traditional establishment parties are inviting in 
tons of immigrants, allowing huge asylum flows,  
telling me that if I worry about this or I'm 
concerned about this, I'm a racist or a xenophobe.  
So, interestingly, when populist right-wingers say 
that cultural elites like mainstream politicians  
are out of touch, data shows us that they are 
correct. Not when it comes to economics, but when  
it comes to social issues like immigration and 
crime. Yes, the general public is significantly to  
the right of most politicians. But as we've seen, 
there's only one exception. In Denmark, the Social  
Democrats adopted stricter immigration policies 
themselves, which coincided with a decline in  
support for the populist right from over 20% to 
just below 10%. But okay, that's still 10%. So,  
there must be more going on. But this was still a 
crucial story. In many leftwing circles, though,  
the diagnosis is very different. The problem they 
argue goes far beyond out of touch elites. No,  
it points to the people. Narrative number 
three, people are simply becoming more  
racist. And honestly, this is not super popular in 
academic circles. This explanation, it's actually  
an argument that I often hear from friends, so 
I thought it was important to address it here.  
Nonetheless, many of them watch extreme takes 
from populist right-wingers and their supporters.  
They scroll through online comment sections and 
come away thinking something genuinely dark is  
happening. People are becoming evil. People are 
stigmatizing entire Muslim communities as violent.  
Politicians are showing authoritarian tendencies. 
There are conspiracies about Brussels bureaucrates  
or George Soros erasing Western civilization. It 
can feel like people are forgetting the lessons  
of the past, growing tired of democracy and 
becoming more xenophobic and conspiratorial. But  
is it actually true? Are people really becoming 
less satisfied with democracy and more hostile to  
immigrants? Well, according to political scientist 
Larry Bartles, the answer to that question is  
clear. No. Absolutely not. Based on survey 
responses from more than 300,000 Europeans, he  
finds that they have not become significantly more 
illiberal or more hostile to immigration over the  
past two decades. In fact, support for European 
integration has remained fairly stable throughout  
the 21st century. Level of trust in parliament and 
politicians, satisfaction with democracy and even  
attitudes towards immigration. They have remained 
broadly stable over time and have even improved a  
little. Of course, there are some exceptions. For 
example, Spanish citizens became much more hostile  
to democracy after the massive economic crisis 
in 2008. However, satisfaction with democracy  
has been rising in Finland, Sweden, and Denmark 
at a time when the populist right became a major  
player in those countries. So overall, no, it does 
not appear that people are becoming more racist or  
authoritarian, but I do understand why more and 
more people feel this way. The YouTube shorts  
algorithm sometimes recommends me these nice 
videos of how US presidents used to interact with  
one each other. I think Mr. Nixon is an effective 
leader of his party. The question before us is  
which point of view and which party do we want to 
leave the United States? I agree with Senator K.  
And if we compare that to some of the stuff that 
Trump says these days, sleepy, crooked Joe Biden,  
where I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue 
and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters.  
Okay, it's like incredible. Then it's clear that 
something has changed. The public is willing  
to accept far more uncivilized language. And 
actually, this is not just an American phenomena.  
Right-wing populist leaders everywhere use 
increasingly inflammatory language. So why  
does the public increasingly accept that type of 
behavior if they themselves did not become more  
authoritarian? Well, this brings us to narrative 
number four. Blame social media. Social media is  
polarizing us. And there's really good evidence 
that this is actually happening in two ways.  
First, as you can see here, traditional media like 
newspapers and radio, well, they gave a voice to  
everyone, the hard left, the moderates, and the 
hard right. However, as you can see here, cable  
TV is already quite a bit more biased towards 
both extremes. And on social media, well, oh boy,  
the algorithms really love to serve us both hard 
left and hard right content, while the moderate,  
nuanced, more boring voices are buried in the 
algorithms. To explain this, psychologist J.  
Vanbo describes four dark laws that drive online 
engagement. Negativity, extremism, us versus  
them thinking, and moral emotional language. In 
other words, content that is more negative, more  
extreme, more tribal, and more emotionally charged 
is more likely to grab attention and spread. This  
means that expressing outrage, attacking the other 
side, or using words like disgusting or unjust  
or just super simple narratives will consistently 
outperform more balanced or nuanced views. So, if  
you are on social media a lot, it makes sense that 
you will start believing that people are angrier,  
more polarized, and more extreme than that they 
actually are. But it gets worse. The second way  
that social media is polarizing us other than 
amplifying extreme voices is by connecting extreme  
voices. You see, views that were once socially 
taboo like I could have done things to her that  
would have made your head spin used to remain on 
the fringes. But nowadays, people holding these  
views can find each other instantly. When they 
realize that they're not alone, then they become  
more confident to express those views in public. 
So the internet did not necessarily create these  
attitudes, but it did make them more visible, more 
organized, and more politically relevant. And this  
can explain why many of my friends that spend a 
lot of time online feel that people on average  
have become more extreme, even though research 
shows us that they did not. However, again,  
this is not the full story. You see, cable TV and 
social media spread pretty evenly worldwide. Yet,  
right-wing populism patterns vary drastically 
across countries. Not every country has ended  
up with Americanstyle media polarization. 
So this brings us to our conclusion. Which  
narrative is the most convincing? Well, one 
thing it's clear, it's not narrative number  
three. People are not becoming more racist 
or authoritarian over time. Anti-democratic  
and anti-immigration sentiment did not just 
appear out of nowhere in the last decades.  
There's always been a slice of a population that 
feels this way, which means there's always been  
some baseline demand for right-wing populism. 
But for the other narratives, given that country  
trajectories are so different, the different 
right-wing populist surges can probably best  
be explained by combining these three other 
narratives. First, there was rising inequality,  
austerity, the fallout from the financial crisis. 
All of that shook people's trust in institutions.  
This could explain populist surges in the American 
Midwest or Eastern Europe. On the other hand,  
populist surges in relatively equal countries like 
Norway and Denmark probably have more to do with  
a political disconnect on cultural issues. And 
finally, the rise of social media and cable TV  
probably acted like an amplifier, giving populist 
parties that represent 10 to 30% of the population  
the power to take over several countries. So yeah, 
all of these three explanations are supported by  
the evidence. On their own though, there are 
too many contradictions to believe them. But  
taken together, it becomes clear that right-wing 
populism will likely surge back again and again  
as long as inequality remains high. Politicians 
do not listen to voter preferences on culture and  
immigration. And number three, as long as social 
media gives populist an algorithmic edge. But  
yeah, that's my take. What do you think? Let me 
know in the comments below. And if you find this  
topic as fascinating as I do, I highly recommend 
that you check out the excellent analysis by our  
advertising sponsor, The Economists, which I 
always check out for the research process of  
my videos. For this episode in particular, 
I learned a lot from their analysis on how  
the Danish social democrats have shifted 
right on immigration to counter the far  
right. Or if you also care about macroeconomic 
stability, I encourage you to take a look at  
this article where they explore how efforts 
to be fiscally responsible and reduce budget  
deficits can sometimes end up benefiting populist 
parties. And finally, for a broader overview, I'd  
strongly strongly recommend this article on what 
populism actually means. As these examples show,  
The Economist delivers insights that help you 
see the bigger picture and think for yourself.  
This is why I almost always rely on their analysis 
for my research and it's why I highly recommend  
that you subscribe and that's actually now 
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