Vigorous protests marked the Munk Centre debate in Toronto pitting Steve Bannon, the high priest of populism, against David Frum, the defender of good-old-fashioned liberal democracy.

As much as I detest what Bannon stands for, I think he has a point. Reading the book Fascist Voice: An Intimate History of Mussolini’s Italy, by the late British historian Christopher Duggan, I couldn’t help noticing the parallels.

Bannon’s argument: liberal democracy has failed to deliver for the little guys. The financial crisis in 2008 ended with a bailout for bankers. Power is held by the Davos class. Governments have ignored the “deplorables,” the poor, the ethnic, the working class, using them as fodder to fight unnecessary U.S. wars in Iraq and elsewhere. In Bannon’s view, millennials are in some ways like Russian serfs: powerless, working in precarious jobs, owning nothing.

During the debate, Bannon said populism seeks justice for these forgotten people. He sees two options: populist nationalism, which would destroy the administrative state, “unburdening” the little guy, or populist socialism, led by the likes of Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, which would tighten state control. The ingredients of populist capitalism, in his view, are national sovereignty, defence of national economic interests and erosion of the administrative state.

In response, David Frum defended the economic and social status quo, calling for cooperation between nations, open markets and opposition to hate.
But Bannon is, at least partially, right.

His diagnosis of the fallings of liberal democracy bears some resemblance to that of the Occupy movement several years back. A major difference is that Bannon’s class of people are socially and politically engaged in getting rid of the government policies that serve as a great equalizer for marginalized people and workers.

Another difference is the use of hatred and violence, something Bannon refuses to recognize but that is prevalent among Donald Trump’s supporters and among leaders of the populist right abroad, whether Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s incitement of violence against Muslims (which he denies), Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban’s stoking of anti-Semitism or Brazilian President-elect Jair Bolsonaro’s anti-gay rhetoric.

Scapegoating reinforces national identity and national sovereignty. It should be noted that while many nation-states provide the setting for democracy, the global economy is not a democracy. It is intensely plutocratic. And it steamrolls and homogenizes national and regional identities.

Bannon has succeeded in taking economic and political analysis from the left and channelling discontent into a politically dangerous program running counter to the interests of the very people it seduces. In so doing, he has taken a page out of the traditional fascist playbook.

After being expelled from the Socialist Party in 1914, at a time of great social agitation in Italy, Benito Mussolini founded his own newspaper, arguing for Italian intervention in World War I.

After that brutal war, Italian soldiers, mostly peasant conscripts, were promised the beginning of the “Third Rome,” a kind of Make Italy Great Again movement, and land for themselves. But even though they were on the winning side, they got the short end of the stick.

They returned to a deeply divided and unsettled country, Duggan noted. “Emboldened by the success of the Bolshevik revolution, and with a rapidly declining economic situation, with manufacturing scaling down production from wartime levels, unemployment mounting and inflation soaring, socialist leaders urged Italian workers to militancy.”

In 1919, Mussolini founded the Fasci di Combattimento, a ragtag movement to defend returning soldiers and the country. Using messianic and Christian iconography, he assembled various currents ranging from anarchists to conservatives – anyone not liberal. The movement turned to organized violence by squadristi, gangs who fought socialists on the street. Violence was glorious, gorgeous in the fascist gaze.

After rising to power, Mussolini channelled the discontent of the time by giving people what they needed: jobs. But unlike Bannon and Trump, he did this by creating giant public works that employed large numbers of people. He delivered for the “deplorables” of his time, stealing the progressive narrative from the very popular socialists.

What followed was the crushing of free speech and democratic institutions, war and genocide, and an intense repression that served corporate interests.
The Munk Centre debate offered only two options: right-wing populism, with its resemblance to fascism, or more of the same corporate-led, elite-run liberal democracy that has brought us grave levels of global inequality, with weak environmental and societal regulation and governments competing to lower corporate tax rates, giving global multinationals a free pass.

Maybe a more suitable antidote to fascism is to address the extreme world we are living in, tilted towards the interests of the few. We need to address the concerns of “deplorables,” millennials and anyone else who didn’t get bailed out in the financial crisis.

Perhaps the answer is a different kind of populism, a progressive populism. We need a vision that goes beyond national sovereignty, with a global sovereignty of peoples. Wielding global power to challenge global capital. Democratizing the global economy. Celebrating cultural differences, identity and diversity. And addressing the most critical issues of our time: economic inequality and the environmental crisis.