One year before Donald Trump even declared his first White House run, Martin Gurri predicted the rise of populism with his seminal book, The Revolt of the Public. The former CIA analyst also foresaw Brexit, BLM, and MAGA before those movements were in the national consciousness. Now, a decade after Martin’s book came out, we are ushering in a second Trump term. In his latest column for The Free Press, reprinted from Discourse, Martin imagines what the next four years will look like now that the public has revolted—and their candidate has a true mandate to lead. —The Editors
There is a radical dissatisfaction with the social and political status quo across the democratic world. The people in charge are distrusted and despised by the public: They are thought to be in business for themselves and indifferent to the concerns of ordinary people. From government agencies to the scientific establishment, the institutions that buttress modern society have been tainted by the corruption and poor performance of the ruling elites. The public has come to view these institutions as cash cows for the haves—and an oppressive machinery for bleeding the have-nots.
I analyzed the causes of this upheaval in my 2014 book, The Revolt of the Public. In brief, I argued that institutional elites have failed to adapt to the vast flows of information of the digital age. They reside at the top of great hierarchies that tower uneasily over a flattened socioeconomic landscape—and they want nothing to change. They crave the eternal preservation of the twentieth-century regime, in which they wielded unquestioned authority and had the power to conceal their dirty secrets. In pursuit of this ideal—fondly labeled “our democracy”—they have grown ever more reactionary and antidemocratic over the decades.
In Britain and Brazil today, you can land in jail for voicing antiestablishment opinions on social media. Here in the U.S., the Biden administration erected a censorship apparatus to mute online dissidence—and, we recently learned, “debanked,” or cast out of the financial system without right of appeal, those engaged in disfavored operations.