{"id":36269,"date":"2018-07-30T07:57:33","date_gmt":"2018-07-30T12:57:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=36269"},"modified":"2018-07-30T07:57:33","modified_gmt":"2018-07-30T12:57:33","slug":"western-collapse-scapegoating-trump-putin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=36269","title":{"rendered":"Western Collapse&#8230; Scapegoating Trump &#038; Putin"},"content":{"rendered":"<header><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"img-responsive\" title=\"Western Collapse... Scapegoating Trump &amp; Putin\" src=\"https:\/\/www.strategic-culture.org\/images\/news\/2018\/07\/29\/or-41146.jpg\" alt=\"Western Collapse... Scapegoating Trump &amp; Putin\" \/><\/p>\n<h3><a href=\"https:\/\/www.strategic-culture.org\/news\/2018\/07\/29\/western-collapse-scapegoating-trump-and-putin.html\">Western Collapse&#8230; Scapegoating Trump &amp; Putin<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<p>Former US President Barack Obama was in South Africa last week for the centennial anniversary marking the birth of the late Nelson Mandela. Obama delivered a speech warning about encroaching authoritarianism among nations and the \u201crise of strongman politics\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Coming on the heels of the summit in Helsinki between Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, media\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2018\/07\/17\/politics\/obama-mandela-day-address-intl\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-cke-saved-href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2018\/07\/17\/politics\/obama-mandela-day-address-intl\/index.html\">reports<\/a>\u00a0assumed that Obama was taking a swipe at these two leaders for supposed growing authoritarianism.<\/p>\n<p>Obama\u2019s casting of the \u201cstrongman\u201d as a foreboding enemy to democracy is a variant of the supposed threat of \u201cpopulism\u201d that Western political establishments also seem concerned about.<\/p>\n<p>Trump, Putin, Turkey\u2019s Erdogan, Italy\u2019s Salvini, Victor Orban in Hungary and Sebastian Kurz in Austria, among many others, are all lumped together as \u201cstrongman politics\u201d, \u201cpopulists\u201d or \u201cauthoritarians\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Here we are not trying to defend the above-mentioned political leaders or to make out that they are all virtuous democrats.<\/p>\n<p>The point rather is to debunk the false narrative that there is some kind of dichotomy in modern politics between those who, on one hand, are supposedly virtuous, liberal, democratic, multilateralists, and on the other hand, the supposedly sinister \u201cstrongman\u201d, \u201cauthoritarian\u201d, or \u201cpopulist\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>In Obama\u2019s pompous depiction of world political trends, people like him are supposedly the epitome of a civilized, democratic legacy that is now under threat from Neo-fascists who are darkly rising to destroy an otherwise happy world order. That world order, it is presumed, was up to now guided by the magnificence of American political leadership. In short, the \u201cPax Americana\u201d that prevailed for nearly seven decades following the Second World War.<\/p>\n<p>Following the Helsinki summit, the Western media went full-tilt in hysterics and hyperbole. Trump was assailed for \u201cembracing a dictator\u201d while repudiating Western democratic allies.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Western Collapse&#8230; Scapegoating Trump &amp; Putin Former US President Barack Obama was in South Africa last week for the centennial anniversary marking the birth of the late Nelson Mandela. Obama delivered a speech warning about encroaching authoritarianism among nations and the \u201crise of strongman politics\u201d. Coming on the heels of the summit in Helsinki between [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7844,16113,21021,512,694,8203,827,857,965,21020,5027],"class_list":["post-36269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-donald-trump","tag-finian-cunningham","tag-helsinki-summit","tag-media","tag-russia","tag-strategic-culture-foundation","tag-united-states","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-west","tag-western-collapse","tag-western-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36269"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36270,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36269\/revisions\/36270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}