After the 2008 GFC there was a great deal of resentment against bankers and other global elites. However, this anger got channeled into identity politics and wokeness and in the end never led to any meaningful changes.
American Economics Thread
- Thread starter Bernard
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This is a very common line of causality on the Internet but it's not really what happened. At least in my opinion. These are two separate ideological lines.
1. Post 08' anger was mostly ignored in United States as Democrats were too busy trying to recover the economy (to mixed success) and Republicans were very busy trying to stop them. Particularly post 2010', the sort-of "mainstream" Republican establishment adopted the Tea Party's rhetoric and tactics much more openly. If I had to make an analogy non-Americans might be familiar with, think of the contrast between Obama's JCPOA Nuclear Deal with Iran vs Trump's "maximum pressure" campaign. Fact is, Obamacare, while nice, was very much hated when it first came out and Republicans successfully villanized it. We know from the data now that people quite like it and it's very much a net-good, but that's not how it was at the time. Famously, the ACA website crashed in the first day (or something like that). Obama's economic record never really got the plaudits it deserved until roughly 2015-2016 when people finally had to admit that unemployment was very low and the economy has mostly recovered.
2. The actual "woke" ideological line you're looking for is really the election of Barack Obama, which was the "unipolar" moment for Progressive politics. Particularly because of just how hard Obama won. Yes, it's because Obama was black and somebody who adopted a very pro-diversity message, this did awaken a sort of "nativist" reaction, which was fairly minute and marginal at the time, but now forms the core MAGA base.
The roots of BLM can be found pre-2008, but in my opinion, the real start of the sort of very polarizing-based BLM style activism started with the shooting of Treyvon Martin by ZImmerman in 2012. This drew a lot of attention to shootings of Black Men in America, becoming a Leftist obsession. Now look, I do agree that BLM has a point, but it's also a very toxic movement that has polarized conservatives with their rhetoric. Violence begets violence.
The alliance between BLM and LGBTQ also has roots in this era IMO. Particularly with legalization of Gay Marriage in SCOTUS roughly around 2015. The Progressive Momentum durign Obama's two terms seemed unstoppable, with articles being written about whether the GOP was doomed due to demographics and Democrats' very broad-based and popular messaging (Hollywood is filled with Woke messaging for instance). This sort of inertia was of course absolutely crushed in 2016... tempered in 2020, and destroyed yet again in 2024, which is where we are now.
I just want to add on a couple things, because I think they're fairly significant if somebody wants to... understand some of the recent political context of USA and want to know what happened to that post 2008 anti-banker, anti-elite energy.
Progressive "Lions" of today, AOC and Bernie Sanders, really became the big players they are today on the back of that 08' Anger. Both Democratic and Republican Elites ignored this anger, which manifested itself into movements like Occupy Wall Street. In stark contrast to identity politics, AOC and Bernie Sanders actually represent the very much broad-tent populist Left which ahs historically represented working-class interests.
Because both politicians defined themselves as "Progressive" and because woke-ism has largely fallen under that tent as well, by default, both AOC and Sanders also adopted BLM and LGBTQ+ positions, even if they don't necessarily agree with the toxicity, zeal, and some of the more extreme end-points that those ideologies lead to.
Which is also what lets Republicans get away with calling "identity politics" even when referring to Sanders and AOC, despite both of them being, well really just being the mainstream Left-wing of the Democratic Party (that the establishment Democratic Party hates). What really killed a lot of the anti-elite 08' energy was essentially just that. The mainstream Democratic party sucked all the energy out of the room and ignored the Democratic Left in both 2016 and 2024 (Sanders was fucked twice here, against Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden), despite, or really because that wing represented the last vestiges of that anti-establishment anti-corporate spirit.
It's important to understand here that in 2016 the Democratic Party was not keen on woke-ism either. Hillary Clinton made specific attempts to distance herself from BLM without denouncing them, while at the same time, famously (for me anyway), reaching out the Olive Branch of "All Lives Matter". This was a very centrist, very-corporate Democratic Party that wanted as little to do with identity politics as possible.
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By contrast, Donald Trump recognized, very early either instinctually or maybe he just ran with whatever came into his head, but he really did tap into that nativist anger. This was Trump who was anti-free trade, hard-on-crime, anti-war, anti-muslim, anti-interventionism, anti-establishment, anti-immigration, anti-multilateralism, and just very anti-mainstream. This is how Obama voters became Trump voters because Trump took that anti-establishment energy and channeled it against a number of mainstream positions.
Remember the steel tarriffs? The border wall? The Soleimani assassination? So on and so forth, he talked about these things in his campaign, it didn't just appear out of nowhere.
In 2016, both the Democratic and Republican party was trying to kill these anti-establishment powers like economic populism and identity politics. Donald Trump took a megaphone and took it to the forefront of political strategy. This is why post-2016 both sides actively engage in this ridiculous cultural, race-baiting war.
Now the alternative that could've been is that Sanders wins the 2016 primary and counters Trump's economic populism and anti-establishment credentials with ihs own economic populism and anti-establishment credentials minus the nativism. Would this have taken America into a better direction politically? I personally think so.
Progressive "Lions" of today, AOC and Bernie Sanders, really became the big players they are today on the back of that 08' Anger. Both Democratic and Republican Elites ignored this anger, which manifested itself into movements like Occupy Wall Street. In stark contrast to identity politics, AOC and Bernie Sanders actually represent the very much broad-tent populist Left which ahs historically represented working-class interests.
Because both politicians defined themselves as "Progressive" and because woke-ism has largely fallen under that tent as well, by default, both AOC and Sanders also adopted BLM and LGBTQ+ positions, even if they don't necessarily agree with the toxicity, zeal, and some of the more extreme end-points that those ideologies lead to.
Which is also what lets Republicans get away with calling "identity politics" even when referring to Sanders and AOC, despite both of them being, well really just being the mainstream Left-wing of the Democratic Party (that the establishment Democratic Party hates). What really killed a lot of the anti-elite 08' energy was essentially just that. The mainstream Democratic party sucked all the energy out of the room and ignored the Democratic Left in both 2016 and 2024 (Sanders was fucked twice here, against Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden), despite, or really because that wing represented the last vestiges of that anti-establishment anti-corporate spirit.
It's important to understand here that in 2016 the Democratic Party was not keen on woke-ism either. Hillary Clinton made specific attempts to distance herself from BLM without denouncing them, while at the same time, famously (for me anyway), reaching out the Olive Branch of "All Lives Matter". This was a very centrist, very-corporate Democratic Party that wanted as little to do with identity politics as possible.
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By contrast, Donald Trump recognized, very early either instinctually or maybe he just ran with whatever came into his head, but he really did tap into that nativist anger. This was Trump who was anti-free trade, hard-on-crime, anti-war, anti-muslim, anti-interventionism, anti-establishment, anti-immigration, anti-multilateralism, and just very anti-mainstream. This is how Obama voters became Trump voters because Trump took that anti-establishment energy and channeled it against a number of mainstream positions.
Remember the steel tarriffs? The border wall? The Soleimani assassination? So on and so forth, he talked about these things in his campaign, it didn't just appear out of nowhere.
In 2016, both the Democratic and Republican party was trying to kill these anti-establishment powers like economic populism and identity politics. Donald Trump took a megaphone and took it to the forefront of political strategy. This is why post-2016 both sides actively engage in this ridiculous cultural, race-baiting war.
Now the alternative that could've been is that Sanders wins the 2016 primary and counters Trump's economic populism and anti-establishment credentials with ihs own economic populism and anti-establishment credentials minus the nativism. Would this have taken America into a better direction politically? I personally think so.