Donald Trump has just won a second term. Many on the American left are scratching their heads, asking themselves "what went wrong"? However, every commentator I've seen seems to be focusing on small picture details. Attempting to analyse and dissect. Why did you many young men vote for Trump etc. IMHO, they are missing the wood for the trees. The American Democratic Party has been comprehensively out manoeuvred, and this is all part of a conspiracy that has been twenty years in the making.

Generally conspiracy theories have a bad name. There are lots of conspiracy theories out there. Most of them are complete bollocks. However, just because there are plenty of bullshit conspiracy theories out there, that doesn't mean that powerful and wealthy people never come together and decide our futures behind closed doors. Let me give you an example of exactly that.

In the 1950s both America and Britain enjoyed what has become known as "the post-war consensus". Taxes on the wealthy were high, but in return, there were high levels of government investment in society. This was based on the theories of the British economist Milton Keynes. Most people were generally supportive of this situation, although the wealthy bristled at the high levels of taxes they were forced to pay. This means that when a right wing economist, Milton Friedman, started preaching the opposite - calling for much lower taxation, and for a much smaller government, many of them listened. They came together, and funded a series of "think tanks", which would take in income from these wealthy people, hide the identity of their donors, and work full-time on turning out propaganda in favour of these ideas. Examples include the Heritage foundation (US, 1973) and the Adam Smith Institute (UK, 1977). Once created, these think tanks were also favoured by other large industries wishing to sell their agenda to the public, such as the tobacco lobby.

When Milton Friedman first started, his views were initially fairly obscure, and confined to debates between academic economists. However, in the 1970s, the world changed. Massive oil price rises caused economic shocks in both America and the UK. Much of the public saw their countries as being in serious trouble and started looking for a new approach to government. This allowed the views of the think tanks to go mainstream. Politicians that brought into this approach, such as Thatcher and Reagan, rose to power. The think tanks were with them every step of the way - providing consultation, policy advice, and even, on occasion, writing speeches for the politicians to perform, or providing drafts of new legislation. Their philosophy - neoliberalism, flourished, and still dominates our politics to this day.

I suggest to you that before the Heritage foundation was founded, in the early 1970s, groups of wealthy businesspeople would have met with each other, and discussed how to co-ordinate their activities and push their agendas. The Heritage foundation, and similar groups, were a result of these meetings. But would it be wrong to call such meetings a conspiracy? One that ended up reshaping the entire politics of the western world?

Fast-forward to the early 1990s. Big business faced a new challenge. Scientists were becoming increasingly concerned about climate change, and began warning the public of potential consequences in dire terms. Measures to combat climate change, were clearly a challenge to major industries, such as petrochemicals, and the automotive industry. However, many intellectuals saw that ultimately in order to properly combat climate change, we would need to move strongly away from unchecked capitalism. An economy based on mass-consumption, and international competition to exploit resources couldn't possibly restrain itself. This is why many of those most closely connected to the issue - such as climate campaigners, and green political parties, positioned themselves firmly on the left. However, I don't believe that right-wingers are stupid. They saw the same arguments, and realized that the logic of climate change threatened their entire political philosophy. So that's where my conspiracy theory comes in. I admit that I don't have evidence. I'm just trying to make sense of the world around me and adopt the simplest explanation that fits all the facts. I believe at a series of meetings in the 1990s, right wing intellectuals would have come together with representatives of major industries, such as the petrochemical and auto-motive industries, and workshopped a series of approaches to combatting the threat of climate change politics. As a holding action, they engaged in denialism. But that was never going to work long term, as the real world effects of climate change started to bite.

This was very analogous to the creation of neoliberalism, and has reshaped right wing politics to the same depth. This led to movements such as the alt-right, the tea party, and ultimately the messianic pro-Trump movement. Whereas liberals were happy to present an intellectual face, and at least attempt to debate with the left on equal terms, to the alt-right that is anathema. Because ultimately on any debate conducted on an intellectual level, they will lose, and they know it. So they don't. They indulge in a series of cheap tactics to disrupt intellectual debate. They condemn experts, and mock the educated. In this respect, their approach mimics that of 1930s fascists, such as Goebbels:

There was no point in seeking to convert the intellectuals. For intellectuals would never be converted and would anyway always yield to the stronger, and this will always be "the man in the street." Arguments must therefore be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect. Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology

Similarly today, we see the right selling itself as strong and masculine, and mocking liberals as weak and effeminate. They deliberately pick fights that allow them to display this image (e.g. immigration, trans rights). They mock the left as being culture warriors, and skip over the fact that the alt-right consists of nothing except culture war. There is no substance behind it - just emotions and image. The aim wasn't to win the debate on climate change, but to create a society where such a debate can't possibly take place in the mainstream. To this end, they have pushed their viewpoints via news channels such as Fox, by funding sympathetic and suave public speakers such as Ben Shapiro, and using money to heavily push their views on the web and via talk radio. This fed back on itself. As they gained converts, more people started echoing their message.

So that's where we are today. The right didn't really try to win as the left might by debating or campaigning for a candidate. They instead reshaped our society to the point where the election of Donald Trump became an increasingly likely result.