A numerically small populist movement led through social media and harnessed by anti-State politicians led to…

A numerically small populist movement led through social media and harnessed by anti-State politicians led to the collapse of public health in Australia. Other politicians could have designed a populist counter-movement, FOR public health. They still could. But…/1 https://t.co/ducL7ZkvLu

…this is why good people lose. They refuse to think and act strategically. They think facts and graphs will shift things. Populism by definition ignores all due process. Good people respect due process, and so refuse populism. Which is a sound instinct. /2

But societies will only ever change with massive disruption. Populism is a massive disruption. It’s how this numerically small group managed to shut down public health systems that were 150 years old, in only 2 years. /3

The delicate calculus here is that the changes populism is able to introduce never last. Only things that get institutionalised, embedded in society in an ongoing way, last. Mussolini ended up strung up dead by his feet in a public square, after his populist movement. /4

But if we want public health back today, it needs a massive disruption to the ‘living with Covid’ status quo. We could use populism to provide that disruption. Public health institutions could then work with the disruption, to embed itself again. /5

Alas progressive politics is clueless at doing that sort of strategic work, or even conceptualising it. Conservatives have had think tanks doing it for decades, which is why they keep winning. This stuff should be money for jam. ‘How dare we infect all of our children!’ Etc. /6

It needs brains, and courage, to strategise like that. Neither are available in politics. Popularity games. So the catastrophe that will bring change will sadly be the ongoing collapse of the health of populations. /end