The news media in the Western world remain dominated by newspapers, magazines and broadcasters still known as the mainstream. The most vivid proof of their continued reign over public opinion is in the figure of U.S. President Donald Trump, whose repeated attacks on “failing” publications like the New York Times and the Washington Post as “enemies of the people” is a backhanded tribute to their continued power. Still, the dominance of the old media is under threat from the new. Trump has more than 55 million followers on Twitter, which he uses as his personal channel to fire up Americans - a vastly sped-up version of FDR’s fireside chats during the Great Depression and World War Two.
The British prime minister and the leader of Her Majesty’s opposition gave speeches on the same day this week, outlining their vision for their country’s economy – and by implication, its society. They had little in common.
The largest question in democratic politics in Europe is: who’s in charge?
Two men of influence – the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and the politician Boris Johnson – face media bans and/or ridicule for what they saw as speaking their minds. Both, though quite different in background, manner and actions, are pioneers in the new politics.
Donald Trump cannot be, and perhaps never wished to be, the leader of the free world, the burden which has fallen on the shoulders of Oval Office occupants since World War Two. America First means America Withdrawn.
The Italian crisis is over, and has just begun. Its dimensions go far beyond Italy; they are now European, even global.
Who will rule the world? It’s a subject that more and more becomes the conversation among Western politicians and policy makers.The consensus, if there is one, is that the world sits uneasily in a gulch formed by the withdrawing roar of the United States, the flatlining or descent of Europe and the rise and rise of China.
In a revealing interview, the Chinese artist Qiu Zhijie, a dissident in his youth told the sinologist Ian Johnson that “this (Chinese) government… is not a traditional dictatorship.
The European political year, grinding back into gear for 2018, is full of doubt, even woe. In the continent’s major countries politics are stuck, or likely to stick, in cul-de-sacs from which exit is difficult.
