The Rise of Populism

The Munk Debates

Stephen K. Bannon, David Frum, Rudyard Griffiths

• Publisher: House of Anansi Press
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781487006303
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Conservatism & Liberalism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The twenty-third semi-annual Munk Debate, held on November 2, 2018, pits Stephen Bannon, the CEO of the Donald Trump presidential campaign, against columnist and author David Frum to debate the future of liberalism against the rising tide of populism.

Throughout the Western world, politics is undergoing a sea-change. Long-held notions of the role of government, trade and economic policy, foreign policy, and immigration are being challenged by populist thinkers and movements. Does this surging populist agenda in Western nations signal a permanent shift in our politics? Or is it a passing phenomenon that will remain at the fringes of society and political power? Will our politics continue to be shaped by the post-war consensus on trade, inclusive national identity, and globalization, or by the agenda of insurgent populist politics, parties, and leaders?

The twenty-third semi-annual Munk Debate pits former Donald Trump advisor Stephen K. Bannon against columnist and public intellectual David Frum to debate the future of the liberal political order.

The Rise of Populism

Pro: Stephen K. Bannon

Con: David Frum

November 2, 2018

Toronto, Ontario

RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for being here for the Munk Debate on the Rise of Populism. My name is Rudyard Griffiths and it’s my privilege to organize this debate series and to once again to act as your moderator. I want to start tonight’s proceedings by welcoming the North American–wide television and radio audience tuning in to this debate, everywhere from CPAC, Canada’s public affairs channel, to C-SPAN across the continental United States, to CBC Radio’s Ideas. A warm hello also to our online audience watching this debate right now via our social media partner, Facebook, on Facebook Live, and on the Munk Debate website. And finally, hello to you, the over 2,800 people and counting — who braved some protests tonight to be here in this hall for this important debate on this vital subject. All of us at the Munk Debates thank you for standing 38up for substantive, serious conversation on the big issues changing our world. Thank you. Bravo.

Thank you also to the Aurea Foundation, which has had the courage to support this series year in and year out for over a decade. Let’s have a warm round of applause for the Munk family and the late, and great, Peter Munk.

Tonight’s debate is happening just days before the critical midterm elections in the United States, and it will tackle one of the most important issues facing the Western world: the rise of populist politics. Tonight, we’re going to ask these two debaters to answer some important questions. Is the West living through a populist sea change that will irrevocably transform our politics? Or can the long-standing liberal values — liberal values of trade, of society, of politics — push back against the populist surge and reassert their primacy in the twenty-first century? Let’s find out by getting this debate underway, and getting our debaters out here centre stage.

Arguing in favour of tonight’s resolution, “Be it resolved: the future of Western politics is populist not liberal,” is the former strategist to President Donald Trump and global populist campaigner Stephen K. Bannon.

Speaking against tonight’s motion is the bestselling author, the Atlantic magazine’s senior editor, and staunch critic of President Trump and populist politics, Toronto’s own David Frum.

For those of you watching online, we have a rolling poll and hashtag going tonight. That hashtag — and it’s trending already, trust me — is #MunkDebate. You can also go onto our website, www.munkdebates.com/vote, and be part of a rolling poll that will assess these debaters’ performance.

Finally, we have our countdown clock — and debaters pay attention, because this is important. In the final minute or so of each of the different segments of this debate, this audience will see a clock appear on the screen. When that clock reaches zero, join me in a loud round of applause, and that will keep our debaters on their toes, and our debate on time.

Now, this is going to be fun. Tonight, we’re going to experiment with some live voting on the resolution. All of you received a clicker when you came in. Please take it out now and we’re going to ask you to vote on the resolution.

If you are in favour of the motion, “Be it resolved: the future of Western politics is populist not liberal,” I want you to press A or the number one on your clicker. If you are opposed to the motion, you’re going to press B or the number two.

I’m going to remind the online audience that they can go to our website, www.munkdebates.com/vote. We’ve got a question live there right now that lets you vote on the resolution and also see how your fellow online watchers are gauging opinion at the start of this debate.

Okay, let’s close that question now that we’ve all had a chance to vote, and let’s see the results. What is this audience thinking as it goes into tonight’s debate? How is public opinion sectionided in this room? There we have it: 28 percent of you agree with the resolution; 72 percent of you disagree. An interesting start.

Now we’re going to ask a second question: Are you likely to change your opinion over the course of this debate? Might you hear something on stage that could cause you to switch your vote at the end of the evening? If you think you could change your vote, press the number one or the letter A. If your mind is set — if you’re fixed here; if you’re coming in with a view and you don’t think you’re going to get budged from it — press number two or the letter B. And again, to our online audience, you can do the same thing via our online poll.

Let’s get those results up now. We’re going to close that question and show our debaters how much opinion in this hall is in play — 57 percent of you. A majority could potentially change their vote. So this debate is very much in play. Let’s get it under way.

We’re going to start with opening statements: eight minutes each — a bit longer than usual to give these two debaters time to articulate their views. And as per convention, the person speaking in favour of the motion will go first. So Stephen Bannon, I hand the podium over to you.

---

STEPHEN BANNON: Thank you. I want to thank the people of Toronto, and the Munk family, for hosting this and having me here tonight; and the men and women outside who are exercising their freedom-of-speech rights to protest.

It’s not a question of whether populism is on the rise and going to be the political future. The only question before us is: Is it going to be populist nationalism or populist socialism? To understand the velocity, the intensity, the depth of the populist revolt on a global basis, we have to go back to the beginning, to what Hollywood would call the “inciting incident.” I want to take you back to September 18, 2008, Washington, D.C., the Oval Office. I think it’s ten or eleven o’clock in the morning, President Bush —

[shouts from the audience]

---

RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: We respect your right to free speech, but we have 2,800 people in this audience who want this debate to go on. Could I get a round of applause, please, for this debate to proceed? Thank you.

We’re going to follow a policy tonight: this person has been cautioned. If she does not stop, she will be asked to leave this debate. Madam, it is your decision: you can stay or you can go. What are we going to do?

Okay, sorry; you’re still engaging. Officers, we’re going to move forward with our plan. If we can remove the person from the hall, please. Thank you very much. A big round of applause for the Toronto Police Service this evening — fabulous job. Okay, Stephen, you’ve got the floor again.

---

STEPHEN BANNON: Thank you. We’re in the Oval Office. Head of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke and Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson walk in and tell the president of the United States, “By five o’clock this afternoon — by close of business — we need a $1 trillion cash infusion into the American financial system. If we don’t get it, the American financial system will implode in seventy-two hours, the world financial system three days after that, and we will have global anarchy and chaos.”

The greatest enemies to the United States — Mussolini, Hitler, Tojo, the Soviet Union, al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden — nobody’s ever brought the United States to its knees like that day. Who did that? Who’s responsible for that? The populists? Donald Trump? No. The elites: the financial, the corporate, the permanent political class that runs Washington, D.C. That’s who did it.

What was their solution? To create money and bail themselves out. On the day that happened, the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve was $880 billion. When Donald Trump took the oath of office on January 20, 2017, it was $4.5 trillion. We flooded the zone with liquidity, just like the Bank of Tokyo, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank. The “Party at Davos” — the elites — bailed themselves out, afraid of some sort of deflationary death spiral. That’s not a free bailout; there’s a corollary to that. Savings accounts are zero; pension funds have the biggest gap in history; you can’t underwrite a bond in the United States because you only get — for a public school or waterworks — you get 2 percent. The little guy would bear the burden of that. If you’ve owned assets, intellectual property, stocks, real estate, hedge funds — you name it — in the last ten years, you had the greatest run in history. For everybody else, it was a disaster.

Fifty percent of American families can’t put their hands on $400 in cash. Sixty percent of our jobs are subsistence jobs. The populist movement, the nationalist movement, is not a cause of that; it’s a product of that. Donald Trump’s presidency is not a cause of that; it’s a product of that. When I stepped into the campaign in mid-August, the central number was that 70 percent of the American people believed for the first time in our history that the country was in decline, and that the elites were okay with that. That “managed decline” was the wave of the future, whether it was education, the southern border, China, Korea, Iran, or our health system. It was Donald Trump who turned that around.

The “Party at Davos” — the scientific, managerial, engineering, financial, cultural elite who run the world — have left a financial wasteland, and have decoupled from the middle class and the working class throughout the world. That is why we have Matteo Salvini and Viktor Orbán, and Brexit, and now Jair Bolsonaro. It shouldn’t be lost on you: the day Captain Bolsonaro is elected is the day Angela Merkel will leave the stage.

Trump’s economic nationalism doesn’t care about your race, your religion, your ethnicity, your colour —

[laughter from the audience]

Okay, okay; I’ve got a whole night to convert you — I saw the 28 percent!

It doesn’t matter your gender, your sexual preference. Trump’s economic nationalism only cares if you’re a citizen. Look at the results: lowest black unemployment in history; lowest Hispanic unemployment in thirty years; wages rising across the board; manufacturing jobs coming back. The populist nationalist message and its policies are working in the United States. And it’s spreading: the revolt in Europe and now in Latin America — and I get contacted every day from Asia, from Africa, from the Middle East. We’re at the beginning of a new political revolution — and that is populism.

The only question before us is this: Is it going to be a populist nationalism that believes in capitalism, in deconstructing the administrative state, in giving the little guy a piece of the action, and in breaking up the “crony capitalism” of big corporations and big government? Or is it going to be a Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders type of populist socialism? Because the “Party at Davos” and the elites have blown too many calls — too many existential events: the rise of China; the $7 trillion spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; the deregulation that led to the financial crisis in 2008; the bailouts; where we are today in this overleveraged society — because as most of you in this room who work in finance know, we’re heading toward another financial crisis.

That is the question before us. What form of populism? And I hope tonight that the good people in Toronto will listen with open ears as we debate this topic. Thank you very much.

---

RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: Thank you, Stephen. David, we’re going to put eight minutes on the clock for your opening statement. You have the stage.

---

DAVID FRUM: Thank you. Well, I think we’re all here to welcome Steve Bannon to President Trump’s least favourite country. I worry that some of those protesters may have confirmed the idea that Canada does present a pillowcase national security threat.

I’d like to begin tonight by taking the protesters’ question very seriously: “Why are we here and what are we hoping to achieve?” We’re not here to mount an entertainment or to do a show. We are here to engage in the most important, most dangerous challenge that liberal democratic institutions have faced since the end of communism. Steve Bannon is a figure from history, a very important person. He advised the president of the United States at a time when that future president was on his way to losing, and Steve Bannon helped to turn the campaign around. He has been an advisor to parties all across Europe, many of which hold power, as in Italy. He has been an advisor to the new president of Brazil. His Breitbart.com became an urgent force in American politics, transforming conservatism into a new kind of political movement. All of that is his work.

So what do I hope to accomplish tonight by being here with him and engaging with him? I want to do three things.

Fir...

Table of contents

• A Letter from Peter Munk
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• Pre-Debate Interviews with Moderator Rudyard Griffiths
• STEPHEN K. BANNON IN CONVERSATION WITH RUDYARD GRIFFITHS
• DAVID FRUM IN CONVERSATION WITH RUDYARD GRIFFITHS
• The Rise of Populism
• Post-Debate Interviews with Moderator Rudyard Griffiths
• STEPHEN K. BANNON AND DAVID FRUM IN CONVERSATION WITH RUDYARD GRIFFITHS
• Acknowledgements
• About the Debaters
• About the Editor
• About the Munk Debates
• About the Interviews
• Read More from the Munk Debates — Canada’s Premier Debate Series