The New Authoritarianism of the Left By James Reed

     The progressives, especially the US Democrats are proclaiming that there is a “new authoritarian,” which they see embodied in Donald Trump and populism. The writers here, especially Chris (US expiate) and Charles our American correspondence, and Richard Miller in London, have sought to counter this by articles based on news sources showing the real authoritarians are the Left. This theme, that the Left are the new technocratic authoritarians, has been argued for in scholarly detail in a fantastic, and highly significance book by Australian academic Salvatore Babones in The New Authoritarianism: Trump, Populism, and the Tyranny of Experts, (Polity Press, Cambridge, 2018):
  https://www.amazon.com/New-Authoritarianism-Populism-Tyranny-Experts/dp/1509533095
  https://salvatorebabones.com/
  https://sydney.edu.au/arts/staff/profiles/salvatore.babones.php

Here is part of the blurb for the book:
“Salvatore Babones argues that democracy has been undermined by a quiet but devastating power grab conducted by a class of liberal experts. They have advanced a global rights-based agenda which has tilted the balance away from the lively and vibrant unpredictability of democratic decision-making toward the creeping technocratic authority of liberal consensus. Populism represents, contends Babones, an imperfect but reinvigorating political flood that has the potential to sweep away decades of institutional detritus and rejuvenate democracy across the West.”

     There is a spirited review done by Aussie film maker and Dissent Right intellectual, Richard Wolstencroft, who is always earthy and entertaining, so gentle souls who have never been to an Aussie pub or football match (especially against Hawthorn), be warned!
  https://affirmativeright.blogspot.com/2019/07/report-from-tiger-mountain-14-new.html

     Babones’ book has many great quotes such as: “the teaching of “Western civilization” has come to be stigmatised as code for institutionalised sexism and racism.” (p. 4) Being in the thick of the university system, he would know. And, what is interesting about the book is that it is published by a moderate Left publisher, one of the very better-quality ones too. I think leading British sociologist from the Left, Sir Anthony Giddens helped set up this press, and anyway, the point is that Polity Press is not some gutter socialist print shop but the highest quality scholarly press, which publishes the best books deserving of serious consideration. That they have published Babones book shows that they embrace still the qualities of scholarship, and also that the serious intellectual Left – and no doubt it still exists - are thinking about the same issues as us, namely that our fates are being controlled by a globalist technocratic elite, who will, if ultimately successful, dispose of us all.

     Perhaps it is getting a bit excited to dare to hope that we could at some point unite against a common enemy. That would just be too smart a thing to do.