Just over a month ago Mr Burrell I thought you had enjoyed a Damascene conversion, when you correctly castigated the CCP for it’s culpability in the atrocious C-19 scandal. Sadly, I see now, that I am mistaken.
This is yet another in a plethora of anti Trump rants, and as such unworthy of UnHerd. It may read well in the hovels of Islington and Hampstead, but you are just playing to the gallery. Come, come, you can do better.
The world seems to split into two camps over Trump, which can probably best be explained by the etymological origin of the word Trump.
Some, myself included, believe its origin goes back to Ancient Greece and the cult of Dionysius and thence to Ancient Rome and that moment of supreme glory, the Roman Triumph.
Others, yourself included I would postulate, would prefer a German, onomatopoeic origin where it means “to break wind loudly” (fart).
This dichotomy is unlikely to be solved by such inflammatory essays as yours. You have set yourself a low standard, and yet failed to achieve it. As said before you can, and must do better.

” In 1968, the Right drove out the liberals. Now they’re undermining democracy itself.”

Firstly, why should the right want liberals in their midst? Liberalism is the root problem, and too much of Conservative Inc. and the establishment pseudo-right too often want to make common cause with liberals.

The latter part is utterly inane, but typical. Whenever leftists lose a democratic election or referendum (USA 2016, Brexit, etc.) it’s always claimed to be because The other side is actually undermining “democracy.” Not that I really care about “democracy” either (perhaps the greatest shibboleth of modernism). What we really have is a degenerate hybrid system of plutocracy, oligarchy, and ochlocracy anyway, not democracy (which is itself a degenerate form of government – except in small, ethno-culturally homogenous city-states).

Lol at these comments. Just as blinkered and partisan as they claim the author to be. I’m not sure that any serious person can still deny that the GOP has been persistently trying to undermine the rules of the democratic game for some time, from systematic gerrymandering (most recently noted in Wisconsin), through McConnell undermining the ability of congress to function as it should. It’s not a game that will end well for anyone.

Look, UnHerd. You published a garbage essay – full of lies and fabrications – yesterday, by Christopher Rhodes. Today, you publish another dog’s breakfast of an essay, this one by Ian Birrell.

I attributed yesterday to being an anomaly. But then this one, today?

Do you not have editors capable of reading lies and deceit and recognizing them? Or do you just publish whatever gets sent your way? How is it that this kind of garbage finds its way into your daily emails?

Whatever the answer, you’ve got two strikes on you now, in my book.

One more essay as useless and as dishonest and as historically ignorant as this one and as Rhodes’ essay from yesterday, and I’m through with you. If you provide this kind of claptrap one more time, you are useless to me as a source of legitimate debate and discussion pieces, and I will unsubscribe.

Has Ian Birrell been trapped in some American airport these last months, disconnected from the real world and relying for his last trace of contact by lip-reading those television screens, doomed eternally to play CNN, with the sound switched off?

His piece is utter garbage. A man was wrongfully killed in Minneapolis by a policeman. George Floyd was black. The now ex-policeman is white. There is evidence that Chauvin was always bad at his job, but not that he was racist. Yet the permanently aggrieved class in the United States immediately took to the streets, not just in Minneapolis, but in New York, Richmond, Rochester, St Louis and places as far apart as Miami and Los Angeles – each of the last two, I’d guess, getting on for two thousand miles from Minneapolis.

While the initial protests were sincere in feeling, it’s a bit hard to see what they were protesting. Chauvin was dismissed immediately and was quickly charged. His colleagues on the spot have also been fired and may well face charges.

Heartfelt but meaningless protests were very quickly hijacked by terrorists. If you dispute that, how else do you explain attacks on churches, synagogues and courthouses? The American and British Left will blame Jews for everything, but rational people struggle to see a link between a death in Minnesota and a Jewish place of worship in Brooklyn.

To synthesize outrage, activists, Democrat politicians and the media have spouted nonsense about four hundred years of suffering, a reference to the “1619” campaign in the “New York Times” (it won a Pulitzer! – congratulations, so did Duranty, for the same rag). Nobody has suffered slavery in the United States since 1865 and the outrages of the Jim Crow era would have been stamped out, if the Republicans’ efforts had not been stymied by the Democrats, until fully a century after the end of the Civil War.

Let’s remember that every one of these burning cities – every one – is controlled by the Democrats and, with only the occasional exception, such as NY, has been for decades. If there is something wrong in the Minneapolis PD (and there probably is), how is that the fault of President Trump, or Republicans in general?

Where was Ian Birrell, when rioters were tearing apart American cities five years ago? Was Trump President then? Speak up, Ian, you pompous pipsqueak. I can’t hear you.

What’s the point of an obviously biased article?, who is going to take it on board let alone read it to the end?.

Has Ian Birrell been trapped in some American airport these last months, disconnected from the real world and relying for his last trace of contact by lip-reading those television screens, doomed eternally to play CNN, with the sound switched off?

His piece is utter garbage. A man was wrongfully killed in Minneapolis by a policeman. George Floyd was black. The now ex-policeman is white. There is evidence that Chauvin was always bad at his job, but not that he was racist. Yet the permanently aggrieved class in the United States immediately took to the streets, not just in Minneapolis, but in New York, Richmond, Rochester, St Louis and places as far apart as Miami and Los Angeles – each of the last two, I’d guess, getting on for two thousand miles from Minneapolis.

While the initial protests were sincere in feeling, it’s a bit hard to see what they were protesting. Chauvin was dismissed immediately and was quickly charged. His colleagues on the spot have also been fired and may well face charges.

Heartfelt but meaningless protests were very quickly hijacked by terrorists. If you dispute that, how else do you explain attacks on churches, synagogues and courthouses? The American and British Left will blame Jews for everything, but rational people struggle to see a link between a death in Minnesota and a Jewish place of worship in Brooklyn.

To synthesize outrage, activists, Democrat politicians and the media have spouted nonsense about four hundred years of suffering, a reference to the “1619” campaign in the “New York Times” (it won a Pulitzer! – congratulations, so did Duranty, for the same rag). Nobody has suffered slavery in the United States since 1865 and the outrages of the Jim Crow era would have been stamped out, if the Republicans’ efforts had not been stymied by the Democrats, until fully a century after the end of the Civil War.

Let’s remember that every one of these burning cities – every one – is controlled by the Democrats and, with only the occasional exception, such as NY, has been for decades. If there is something wrong in the Minneapolis PD (and there probably is), how is that the fault of President Trump, or Republicans in general?

Where was Ian Birrell, when rioters were tearing apart American cities five years ago? Was Trump President then? Speak up, Ian, you pompous pipsqueak. I can’t hear you.

Interesting and even more interesting comments. It would seem you need to get the dictionary out and look up the definition of populism with the Latin root populus (people).

Clearly this essay is an attempt to collapse the distinction between populism and conservatism and then high brow the moral excellence of liberalism without providing any definitions of the three.

What this ‘liberal’ analysis fails to understand is that democratic freedoms are a free pass for sociopaths/ideologues/demagogues. The Liberal camp it seems is positioning itself for Race Ideologues and the Conservative camp too if Trump is now the representative of Conservatism.

The way in which this works is through Liberalism.
First we have equality and the moral yearning for tolerance which is then bolstered by the rhetoric of diversity followed by another boost of tolerance. All of a sudden we have sociopaths in our midst who under the veil of equality, diversity and inclusion take advantage of the fact that we have no real means of differentiating between sociopaths and nonsociopaths until it is too late.

This is the fundamental flaw of Liberalism, in it idealisation of human good it provides no checks against human bad. This is perfectly exploited by the manipulative sociopath.

Therefore, all that you tell is the history of sociopaths coming to power and nonsociopaths murdered because they get in the way.

What is the solution. Clearly ‘equality, diversity and inclusion’ is part of the problem here since it is unable to differentiate between good and bad people. Similarly, part of the problem is not understanding that equality as a mental framework tool is also accompanied by inequality as a mental framework tool. When used in conjunction with one another, we have equity or common sense, in that equality is the tool we use to provide a meta level of dignity but inequality is used to discriminate/discern/differentiate between good and bad.

Liberals ostensibly reject the tool of inequality when it comes to meta policy making because they cannot comprehend that some people are just plain bad and instead idealise perfection in everyone. However Political (il)Liberals overuse it to provide a doorway for sociopaths to transmit their Race Ideology and Trans Ideology and as a means to castigate nonadherents.

Conservatives on the other hand are generally more comfortable and realistic about applying the tools of equality and inequality because they appreciate that all people are not good and most certainly not perfect. In this respect, Populists have more in common with Conservatives than they do with Liberals.

Therefore to claim that Liberalism and Conservatism are pretty much the same is in reality nonsense. Liberals have no real comprehension of inequality except as an aberration from equality whereas Conservatives perfectly understand that both equality and inequality are different mental tools to weigh up the pros and cons of a situation and then assess equity. Liberals don’t really do equity except as a derivative of equality. Conservatives on the other hand understand equity as a balance between equality and inequality.

Which brings me to Trump, the supposed arch enemy of Liberal equality. Yes he probably is a sociopath in disguise like most hard nosed businessmen, but he does at least try to measure a person by their deeds rather than by idealistic notions of perfect equality which cannot exist except in the fanciful imaginations of universalistic Liberals. Hence he does see population growth within a constrained economy as a problem. He does see the lack of national resilience as a problem, especially in terms of the extent to which American industry has been offshored to Asia. And yes he does see the imperfectability of the Liberal Establishment that purposely deploys media manipulation as a substitute for rational debate and policy making.

The fact of the matter is, Conservative governments the world over are under attack by the Liberal Establishment and this reduces overall social productivity because a government under siege is a government that needs to use much of its resources to defend against this Liberal Establishment attack.

This is why the UK’s and the US’s death toll are so high. Both countries are under siege by the Liberal Establishment which means national intelligence and national productivity are collectively wasted due to the need to divert mental and emotional capacity into political defence or political attack.

This essay is a pertinent reflection of that.

In 1968 the left committed electoral suicide. As it did in 2016 when it decided to nominate a strident harridan of a kleptocrat.