You're listening to the Philanthropisms podcast with Roderick Davis. Hello, you're listening to the Philanthropisms Podcast. This is the podcast where we try to put philanthropy in context. I'm your host, as ever, Rodri Davis, and it's great to be back. So, yeah, we're back after a bit of a break over the summer, which was largely for my own uh health and mental well-being, uh, and you'll be delighted to know that I did have a nice summer, uh, so it was all worth it. It's probably a little bit further into September than I'd intended to get back on with the podcast, um, and there's a whole mix of reasons for that. Partly I've had uh too much work on, so I've been very busy. Also, the interviews that I've got lined up, of which there are plenty, and some really good ones, haven't quite started yet, so um I don't have those ready to go out. And also at the same time, I've been uh having some issues with my voice, um, which might just be a cold, but I'm slightly concerned as something to do with vocal modes, uh, which I need to get looked at. So uh I haven't actually been that keen on spending ages uh yammering into my laptop. But I thought I'd put those concerns aside and try and get a new season of the podcast kicked off just with me uh talking for a little bit. Um, but I thought before we get into sort of interviews over the autumn, I would just give a bit of an update on what's been going on and then a few thoughts on a topic that is sort of feels very timely at the moment, which is the rise of political populism and the impact that that's having on philanthropan civil society. And so before we get into that, yeah, just to say um in terms of updates, obviously most of uh the summer I was uh either keeping my head down, working, or away on holiday. But a few things to share if you don't already know. One is that um I've got a new book out, so co-authored with Beth Brees and with uh help and advice from Theresa Lloyd. Um the book's called Rich Expectations, Why Rich People Give. So it's the third in the Why Rich People Give series of books, which looks at well, that question, why rich people give, but essentially based on interviews with high net worth donors here in the UK, sort of 88 of them. Um it looks at what it is that motivates those donors, how they go about doing their giving, what their views are about their own giving and about the kind of more broadly the role of philanthropy in society. And so there's some really interesting findings uh in there and lots of insights and really great quotes. So do check out that. Uh, you can find it at the Directory of Social Change website, and I'll put a link in the show notes. Um, the other thing to say, um, if there are any listeners out there who are Chinese speakers or readers or know anybody uh who is, there's just been a new Chinese translation of my last book, uh, What is Philanthropy for? that was originally with Bristol University Press. So you can get that now, which is very exciting. Um, it's a good short introduction to all the kinds of issues that we talk about on this podcast uh all the time about you know what philanthropy is, what role it plays in society and where it's going in the future. So, you know, do check that out if that sounds of interest. And so, yeah, to the the actual kind of crux of what I wanted to talk about today, as I say, it's really about the question of the moment that we stand in in terms of sort of populist politics and particularly the rise of right-wing populism. I'll talk in a minute about whether there are other forms of populism, but really that is the one that is kind of front and centre at the moment. It's something that I wanted to talk about anyway, because I've had quite a lot of conversations of one sort or another with people and been sort of asked to give thoughts on it. Um and I was going to record something last week, but then uh the news broke about the murder of Charlie Kirk in the US, and obviously that's kind of made things significantly more heated. Then on the weekend after that, we had the far-right rally in the UK with potentially sort of more than 100,000 people marching through London in scenes you know that looked like they should have been from the 1970s, and then helpfully uh Elon Musk decided to stick his oar in and come over via satellite link and you know suggest that people should violently uprise and overthrow the British government, which is obviously you know very much appreciated. And then also this week we've had news of one, the first sitting Conservative MP who's defecting to the Reform Party, the sort of new populist right-wing party here in the UK. And hot on the heels of that, an ex-Tory MP, Maria Caulfield, she also announced that uh she was uh going to be joining reform uh as well and standing as an MP. So there's a a lot going on at the moment, um, and it sort of centres around the this sense that there is a kind of real rise in kind of right wing sentiment and sort of uh right wing political populism. I'll want to come on in a minute to sort of look at what's been going on specifically in the US and kind of how that has affected philanthropy and civil society in the last six months or so, certainly since the start of the year. But I guess before we do that, I mean not quite definitions, but in terms of what we're talking about, because obviously the you know the word populism gets bandied around quite a lot, but what do we actually mean? I suppose it's an approach to politics and political debate that hard to capture in its entirety entirety, but it it has certain elements I think that have been identified by sort of political theorists and scholars that are useful to highlight because I think they very much kind of speak to some of the challenges. And the ones that I think are relevant are firstly a key element of populism is the denial of complexity. So the political theorist Ralph Darendorf once put it, he said, you know, populism is simple, democracy is complex, and often populist politicians cut through and get traction because they're often able to offer seemingly very straightforward and simple solutions to problems that you know other politicians, more mainstream politicians, are you know make sound very complex, often because they are. Another important element of populism is a sense that there is a kind of rebellion against elites, um, whether those are political elites, whether they're kind of uh social elites or kind of managerial or technocratic elites. Um, and obviously this will be quite important, I think, in the analysis of how philanthropy has been and will be affected by populism. Another element of populism that feels highly relevant is a certain distrust of pluralism, so you know the kind of idea that there are lots of different views and approaches and they're all you know equally valid and then everybody should be allowed to kind of have their own uh way of doing things and and peacefully get on uh with their lives. Essentially because populism at its core has to argue that there is one right view, one correct view, namely the view of the people, in whatever form you are kind of appealing to this notion of the people, and that anybody who goes against that can easily then be painted as you know doing something that is against the will of the people and you know therefore incorrect. And then the final thing, I guess, is that there's usually contained within populism some form of ethno-nationalism of some kind, because in order to define who the people uh are that you are appealing to, you need to kind of draw dividing lines, and that generally ends up being done either along kind of lines of nationhood or race or both, and so you kind of define the people as an in-group, and then there are kind of people who are not part of that race or nation who are the out-group and can then be kind of painted as um you know the enemy or the threat, and this is a very kind of common um approach that's taken within uh the presentation of ideas in populist form. As I said up front, I'm gonna be talking sort of primarily about right-wing populism, as that's definitely the form of populism that's been most successful in recent years and historically also generally tends to be. But I mean we should acknowledge populism does come in left-wing forms as well. This is not some sort of both sides thing. I think it's just sort of important to acknowledge that. And and arguably actually, I'm not sure that traditional left-right political distinctions are the best way to interpret politics in an age of populism in any case. So I think there are kind of different forms of populism espousing different things, whether they neatly fit into the baskets of left and right, I'm not entirely certain. So but anyway, I think that's just a few thoughts about what populism is and some of its key features. But let's kind of dive into the specifics of how this relates to philanthropy. I guess the first thing to get out of the way is the causation that runs from philanthropy to populism. So what, if anything, is philanthropy's role in creating the current situation that we find ourselves in with the rise of populism? And I guess there's a couple of things here, at least sort of two main things. One is the overt way in which philanthropy has funded the development of ideas and organizations that are inherently populist in nature or have kind of developed the the playing field on which populism has been able to flourish. And certainly when you look at the US, lots of people have now kind of traced the history of conservative philanthropy in the US since the middle of the 20th century, and the way in which that philanthropy overall has very successfully managed to kind of shift the Overton window around lots of issues and kind of redraw the lines of economic and political debate in quite radical ways. There's, you know, people are not just noticing this now. I think it should be said, there's a really interesting paper from a good few years ago now by Sally Covington called Moving Public Policy to the Right: The Strategic Philanthropy of Conservative Foundations, which I think is from about 2005 and is in a really good essay volume book. Uh it's called Foundations for Social Change. And she she notes in that, she said, you know, in a presentation at the Philanthropy Roundtable's 1995 annual conference, um, Richard Fink, who was president of the Charles G. Koch and Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundations, uh, made use of market metaphors to outline how foundations can exert the greatest impact on public policy. Um he argued that the translation of ideas into action requires the development of intellectual raw materials, their conversion into specific policy products, and the marketing and distribution of these products to citizen consumers. And he argued that grant makers who are interested in conservative issues would do well to invest in change along the whole of this continuum. So they should fund scholars and university programs, they should uh fund think tanks and implementation groups, and and largely that's what they went on to do. And Covington kind of rounds that out by saying, in a sense, the um the grantees of these conservative foundations overall formed a movement of kind, a sort of a solid core of movement actors that were united behind a larger vision for intellectual, social and public policy change. The difference being that organizations that were working sort of on the other side of the fence in kind of liberal public interest tradition tended to focus more narrowly and often in isolation on the specific interests they had or on particular communities. So, in terms of this overall kind of effort to fundamentally change the political landscape, the fact that there was this kind of loose sense that all of these conservative organisations were working towards shared goals, put them in a much stronger position. And there's been some really interesting kind of subsequent thinking about this. So some conservative philanthropy commentators in the US, so particularly people like Bill Schumbra and Michael Hartman at the Giving Review have have looked at this and done some really interesting analysis, I think, on the continued rise of conservative philanthropy and latterly of its relationship to populism. So they did a good essay for Histville about uh the new populist conservatism and its relationship to to civil society that's worth reading, and I'll put links in the show notes. I my own take on that is it's really interesting, and I think the narrative that they that they kind of th that they follow through that is is really worth paying attention to. I think they probably try too hard at times to kind of excuse the overt anti-civil society sentiments of the current Trump administration and the current kind of incarnation of right wing populism, which which seem to be pretty kind of antipathetic to all forms of civil society, particularly I mean certainly those that don't ideologically accord to them, but just more broadly they don't seem that fussed on lots of uh elements of civil society. Whereas I think previous kind of right wing populism in the time of Reagan or Bush would have been more accepting the kind of basic idea of civil society pluralism, and there would have been an attack on sort of big managerial progressive foundations, absolutely, but they would have been broadly okay with sort of more grassroots civil society organisations that were on different parts of the political spectrum, whereas I don't really think that's the case anymore, so it's much more difficult to argue that there's um you know it's kind of civil society should be broadly relaxed about what's going on. The other element of um philanthropy's role here, which I think is just worth highlighting, we'll come back to in a moment, is less about the sort of overt way in which philanthropic funding has sought to drive public populism and more about the extent to which philanthropy's kind of accidentally, perhaps or unknowingly helped to create the conditions for populism by becoming too formalised or technocratic and too sort of out of touch with communities. Um, and going back to the idea that you know a key part of populist narratives is a sort of distrust of elites, has philanthropy in particularly kind of institutional philanthropy in the form of foundations and and sort of formal non-profits and charities, have they allowed themselves to become too much of a a sector? And this, I guess, kind of ties into arguments from people like Federal Scotchpol about the sort of the shift from traditional associational life in the US to a more kind of managerial version of the voluntary sphere. But we'll come back to that in a little bit. I just want now in the next section just to talk a little bit about what has specifically been going on, certainly since the start of this year and the and the beginning of the second Trump administration in terms of challenges for philanthropy and civil society. Okay, so picking up on what we said in the last section, certainly since the start of this year there have been all kinds of challenges in the US for civil society organizations and philanthropy, and at times kind of specifically for foundations and for donors as well. And lots of those have had knock-on effects, immediate ones in some cases, on organisations elsewhere in the world, and others I think will have kind of uh reverberations that will be felt further down the line. But I think there's a few different things to kind of you know unpick here in terms of what's going on. So obviously, in terms of what the you know the second Trump administration is doing and all of the kind of infrastructure and ecosystem of organisations that have been built up around that, there are specific kind of attacks on rights and freedoms, or you know, you would view them as as attacks certainly if you're on the opposite side of the argument. You might view them as kind of you know efforts to return things to how they should be if uh if you're kind of minded to believe in them. But you know, the overturning of pieces of legislation like Roe versus Wade and you know the attempts to kind of roll back uh various forms of elements of civil rights freedoms, you know, very concerning for a lot of people, and obviously for philanthropy make the point that often the the kind of changes that move society forward in many people's view and certainly in my view are very hard won, but they're sort of frighteningly easy to lose, and that actually a big part of the role of philanthropy and and civil society since the start of the year and probably in an ongoing way is going to be kind of fighting to defend the uh the progress that's already been made rather than seeking to make more progress, so sort of shifting to this defensive role. At the same time as that, there have been kind of more direct attacks on uh non-profits and philanthropy, which I think has been a very distinct feature of this second Trump administration. I think in the first administration, obviously there were lots of foundations and donors and non-profits that kind of politically very strongly disagreed and and sort of you know saw themselves as forming some kind of resistance or having to kind of work in opposition to the government. But this time round that has been there hasn't really been a choice because it's very clear that they are kind of right in the crosshairs of the of the Trump administration in terms of you know it's its efforts to introduce legislation and executive orders and policies that are kind of designed to uh make life extremely difficult for certain kinds of organizations within civil society. So, first of all, a few months ago we had the announcement that USAID, the uh the American um aid and development uh government body was going to be essentially dismantled. And this obviously caused absolute uproar, not just in the US, but in many other places around the world where lots of organizations are very heavily reliant on funding for US aid. And you know, this obviously the immediate and obvious part of this story was that there were organizations and even more importantly, kind of individuals and communities who were going to suffer in a very real way in the short term, and you know, all of the evidence so far suggests that people have died who otherwise would not have died because they were unable to get help and support that was funded by USAID. So there's a real kind of tangible human cost to this already. For organizations working within the international development world or kind of funders that that fund within that, the there were various kinds of questions here. I mean, one big one for philanthropy that we saw, you know, uh in other forms as well, is if government funding is kind of radically withdrawn in this kind of way, what is the best response from philanthropic funders? I mean, do you step in and cover the gaps, or is there an argument that actually you should not do that for various reasons? Those reasons being, I mean, firstly, that the scale of the gaps that emerge if government funding is pulled back are so vast that any amount of philanthropic funding you provide is not going to cover them anyway. The second is that there's a sense that, well, do you kind of legitimise that decision on the part of government if you step in, they can essentially say, Oh, it's fine, you know, we can withdraw this money because actually, look, these philanthropic funders will step in and uh and kind of cover that and and therefore it's you know not gonna result in in any overall harm. And I think you know, often those arguments are valid. I think in terms of the question of whether philanthropy is a replacement for public spending, usually I would argue very strongly not, I think both because of that question of scale, but also because the nature of philanthropic funding, kind of how decisions are made about where and how to allocate it, is fundamentally different. It's you know, it's not democratic or accountable in the same way that money that's distributed by governmental organisations fundamentally should be. But I suppose the question is, you know, is is this so acute that it's a a special case? Particularly maybe on the assumption that it's a short-term challenge in that you sort of assume that the situation won't last forever. Actually, is the argument then for philanthropy well, you know, it's all very well kind of having these theoretical debates and naval gazing, but the reality is that you need to step in and provide funding now as a lifeline for these organizations and the communities that they are supporting. And, you know, you need to do that just so that as much of this infrastructure as possible. possible can survive and then hopefully when common sense prevails or a new government comes into power actually you've you've sort of preserved as m as much of it as possible. And there definitely I think you know is a reasonable amount of sense in that argument. I guess the the other bit, sort of more negatively, is the any argument for not stepping in to fill those gaps on the basis that you don't want to legitimise a government's decision to do that to some extent does that kind of rest on the assumption that those in power actually care and can be shamed. So I think in in a situation where you have a government that you know doesn't want to spend as much money on something, whether that's uh kind of domestic welfare services or whether it's international aid and cuts that on sort of purely economic grounds, you know, on the basis of oh well we don't have enough money and we need you know more money for defence spending or something like that. Can they still then be shamed in moral terms by pointing out you know the that this is a kind of abdication of moral responsibility and if there's you know public opinion behind that they will feel political pressure to to change that policy. But does that work in the case where they it's not purely an economic argument, it's actually a kind of moral argument that you know something like spending on international development is is a bad thing in itself because actually you know in the case of America for instance all of the arguments are f uh have been framed around the need to put America's interests first and to focus solely on you know using money in ways that kind of further America's global interest. I mean obviously I think that's a very particular framing of how America's interests in the world are furthered because there's a very strong argument that actually you know money spent on international aid and development is a is a key component of soft power and that in uh getting rid of US aid America has done more to kind of damage that soft power in a short space of time than it's done over the preceding 50 years. So you know I don't think that argument makes sense kind of even on its own terms but it it definitely is the kind of narrative that is put forward to justify cutting that money back. So if a funder or a foundation thinks that by not you know stepping in and funding gaps where USAID's been pulled back it will somehow shame the Trump administration into changing its mind I think it will be you know very sorely disappointed. I guess the other question and maybe this is where the the debate is at the moment is actually on the assumption that you need to do something, you can't just leave you know these vast yawning gaps that have been created by the withdrawal of USAID funding but you can't also then replace that money in a straightforward way what can philanthropy do that isn't just about covering gaps in you know in the same way that they were kind of uh covered before and what can it do in terms of sort of funding slightly differently? Can it fund more intelligently or in a way that kind of has you know less financial resource but is able to deliver just as good outcomes or even potentially better outcomes because some people also who have been critical of the sort of status quo in aid for a long time would argue that whilst you know they wouldn't necessarily want this to have happened the the crisis that has been created by the the destruction of USAID is also an opportunity in another sense to kind of radically rethink how aid is done. So there are all these kinds of conversations swirling around. So there's there's that bit which is about kind of actively just taking the money away and kind of dismantling some of the machinery that was there in order to kind of make it possible for government to give money directly there are also challenges for philanthropy in terms of attacks on the the very legitimacy of of kind of nonprofits and on particular parts of the nonprofit world so even before Trump came back in at the start of the year we saw pieces of legislation being put forward so there was a proposed bill HR 9495 and subsequently this big beautiful bill that that Trump pushed through both of which had provisions in them that would have given the Treasury Secretary power to to strip nonprofits of their tax status, their kind of tax exempt status if they were deemed to be quote unquote terrorist supporting organisations. Now so far those powers have not been passed in terms of legislation but clearly there is a desire to kind of empower the government to do that and to sort of use the withdrawal of tax exempt status as a as a threat to hold over nonprofits and I think there is a real concern given some of the rhetoric in the wake of Charlie Kirk's shooting last week that this will be pushed forward much quicker. And we we already saw earlier in the year in sort of specific instances, so Donald Trump got into a sort of spat with Harvard University which you know he dislikes again from a populist point of view a sort of large elite you know technocratic institution and in his mind one that is a sort of bastion of kind of progressive values and and probably kind of sitting in opposition to him and his government and you know desperately trying to kind of unseat them or to to kind of subvert them and the the will of the people who put them in power. So at first he threatened to kind of freeze all f direct federal support so in the grants that go to Harvard and then subsequently suggested that their tax status would be removed um which obviously didn't happen and the the kind of legal grounds for doing it were pretty much non existent. But this idea that is in the heads of people like Trump and JD Vance that you know there is an argument that the the privilege of tax exemption for foundations and other nonprofits is something that is kind of directly in the government's gift to to take away or to threaten to take away is very much there. And in the case of JD Vance in particular this is sort of tied into a broader longstanding critique that he has of foundations which he sees very much as kind of illegitimate bastions of of progressive power and has sort of criticised the Ford Foundation and others before and said that you know he would you know crush them and do away with them. And the the interesting bit about this to me or one of them is that whilst the place that they're coming from I think is very different. The the end result in terms of what is being argued in terms of the specifics of how you would limit foundation power so either kind of withdrawing tax exempt status or kind of introducing you know caveats on that status or mandating much higher payout rates, these kinds of things actually in some ways they sort of start to overlap with the ideas put forward by progressive critics of foundations in in the same way in a in a way as in the sphere of kind of international aid and development there are lots of sort of progressive critics of the way in which aid has been too technocratic and top down and you know kind of not paying enough attention to the needs to to localise and to shift power and all these sorts of things. And so you come to this this situation where you have sort of right wing populists and progressive critics as I say starting from very different beginning points but ending up potentially kind of agreeing to some extent on what needs to be done. And in the case of foundations I guess what I would wonder is you know would some of the more radical progressive critics see this as an opportunity to kind of team up with right wing populists or kind of work alongside them insofar as they kind of have common cause on their dislike of large foundations and and their kind of concerns about you know the power that they wield or you know is that extremely short-sighted on the part of those progressives and that actually what they should do instead is perhaps sort of dial down some of those concerns and critiques and focus more on seeing themselves as part of civil society and that their role is essentially to kind of defend it even if they have um uh kind of you know concerns about the way in which some parts of it operate. The other element of the attacks on civil society that I wanted to to flag up is the sort of specific culture war attacks on ideas of DEI and social justice, um which have been you know not just aimed towards foundations and non-profits, they've also been aimed towards the sort of corporate world. And you know the question then becomes what do you do about it? You know, do you with faced with the threat that if you kind of continue to use the language of of DI or to talk about racial social justice that you will you know be criticized or or publicly attacked or have you know some of your privileges withdrawn do you go along with that? Do you kind of acquiesce in order to maintain a quiet life or you know less cynically if you're a nonprofit so that you can continue your work particularly I guess if your work is not kind of core focused on any of those issues if they're slightly sort of separate to what you focus on but you you've kind of added those elements to it do you think well actually now's not the time to kind of go big on on DI or talking about you know social or racial injustice so we'll just just quietly sort of park that for a bit and come back to it later you know or is this essentially a version of um what uh Timothy Snyder talks about as uh obeying in advance and I guess the an interesting added bit of this is in those cases particularly with donors and with corporates where they have already kind of acquiesced so there are lots of examples so far of companies that have backtracked on DEI commitments or sort of stopped talking about climate and all these kinds of things and and clearly it's to do with the shifting political landscape and the sort of threat of censure or reprisal from the Trump administration in those cases is it because actually you know they're they're being emboldened in that they they never wanted to do that stuff in the first place but felt at one point kind of obliged to do it and now now that they don't have to do it anymore and actually you know there's kind of you know they can be more bullish about it they're delighted and so they're you know kind of shipping off these DI commitments and climate commitments as quickly as they can or is it something different? Is it that they they do actually believe in those things and would ideally like to keep going but you know they just feel uh that it's too risky at the moment. So you know is it essentially a form of moral weakness or is it kind of moral turpitude and that they you know were on the wrong side of these things anyway and this is you know in a philanthropy sense a question I think that's very much kind of come to the fore around Mark Zuckerberg and the Chan Zuckerberg initiative recently because it was reported over the summer that they are getting rid of all of their social justice work and their kind of commitments to social justice which were were a big part of what they did alongside the the funding for scientific research and they're now shifting towards only focusing on kind of scientific research and and there's a charitable version of that which is oh well you know maybe they've just decided that that is of more interest to them or that their funding in in that space is more effective but there's also a version which is you know they're doing this because it's politically expedient or again because actually Mark Zuckerberg has genuinely decided that he agrees with that and that now that he doesn't have to sort of tiresomely believe to care about inequality and social justice anymore he's not going to do that. And I you know I can't know which of those things it is but I think that is the question to be asked about all of these kind of instances where funders or companies or individuals are kind of giving up on commitments that they previously made around things like social justice and and and racial injustice. But I I also don't want to make it sound like this decision is too easy because I am also aware that even for organizations that do want to kind of maintain a commitment to things like diversity, equity and inclusion or to focusing on on social uh justice or kind of racial justice, the you know the the the question is do you sort of try and do that but in a kind of quieter way in order to be less confrontational and combative towards the the government of the moment or do you kind of you know accept what what is going to come and double down and sort of position yourself directly in opposition to to the Trump administration or to kind of right wing populists. The risk in doing that obviously is that well not only are you going to be kind of subject to those attacks and that might include kind of you know personal attacks on individual employees and that you know concerns about security and and safety but also that you know there is a danger that it actually plays into the narratives of populists and makes it even easier for them to paint nonprofits and philanthropic funders as as the enemy and to de delegitimise them and kind of mount further attacks in future. So certainly some funders seem to be trying to kind of get around those challenges by funding in opposition to the administration but not doing it very loudly. Or also I think what we're seeing quite a lot of is organisations trying to find a sort of a path where they are making statements where they're kind of overtly standing up for principles of you know civility or the rule of law or the the importance of the constitution or the freedom of the press or something but not you know positioning them as kind of defence of those principles rather than positioning themselves as taking the other side of an argument that is kind of directly in opposition to government. So as I said up front one of the kind of key features of populism is that it it is often kind of denies the legitimacy of pluralism because there is only one quote unquote right way of doing things and that is the the uh the way that is reflects the will of the people and this is a challenge for philanthropy because obviously historically sort of pluralism within philanthropy has been a very important element of it. The idea that kind of philanthropic funding is pluralistic and that civil society you know as a result is pluralistic has been a very important part of the argument about why it is legitimate and important within society. So you know the argument being you need to provide the conditions for as broad a range of possible of sort of views and values to coexist and to to kind of be developed and to and expressed and that this adds to the health of democracy because it allows marginalized views to be heard and it kind of overcomes the tyranny of the majority and it kind of allows for a battle of ideas in which you know new visions for how society could be are kind of put forward and then you know accepted or not accepted. And that's obviously sort of the the theory and as I say that kind of pluralist consensus is under attack from populists who very much don't think that the bits of civil society or philanthropy that they disagree with should be allowed to to exist because they don't really have any kind of inherent interest in philanthropy or civil society in and of itself. I guess the challenge here and and you know as I say this is something we've talked about before is that that pluralist consensus was already under some strain from kind of within philanthropy as well because I I think from both sides of the political spectrum or you know from various different points of view the idea that other people who have very different views and values to to those of your own should be allowed to you know continue doing philanthropy or to continue kind of existing within civil society was was far less agreed upon or seems to be far less agreed upon now than it has been in the past. And so there is a a challenge there about what philanthropy does. Does it try to kind of fight for pluralism as an ideal which is going to be quite difficult because there's not that much kind of consensus that it that it is an ideal anymore or does it sort of acknowledge that pluralism as an ideal within philanthropy for various reasons is you know difficult to maintain or or dead in some sense and kind of abandon it and then philanthropy itself risks becoming more polarized and I think that would create challenges of its own and maybe just at the end when we talk about what philanthropy and civil society can be doing we'll kind of touch on this again. I just in the next section want to talk a little bit sort of about what's going on in the UK and elsewhere outside of the US as well just to kind of broaden things out a little bit so I just want to talk a little bit about the context here in the UK and sort of you know elsewhere outside the US where a lot of the sort of discussion has quite understandably been focused when it comes to questions around populism certainly this year, but this is not a phenomenon by any means that is restricted to the US. So as I record this here in the UK over the weekend we've just seen very large demonstrations in London sort of far right marches and you know this has caused a lot of fear and consternation amongst you know minority communities in capital who felt unsafe and you know there were sort of warnings on social media telling people not to travel into London if they're kind of visibly not from a white British background which is a absolutely horrifying thing to see in 2025. And so this you know is obviously the kind of the most extreme manifestation of right wing populism so far here in the UK but this comes against the backdrop of there already being you know a strong sense within the wider political climate that there's a rise of right wing populism. We've seen in the last few years the formation of the Reform Party led by Nigel Farage a sort of career opportunist and populist uh uh politician and that seems to certainly have tapped into to something as I mentioned earlier on um they've just announced this week as well the defection of Danny Kruger who's a sitting Tory MP as well as other sort of former Tory MPs. So they are gaining ground in terms of credibility although they only at this point have a small number of MPs in parliament but they are having success in local elections and certainly when you look at the projections for what would happen in an upcoming or the next general election um you know it's not certainly at this point for the first time beyond the bounds of credibility that we would have a right wing populist government here in the UK. So you know lots of people are kind of deeply concerned about this charities and funders included. So I mean in terms of the impact it's a few things. I guess you know immediately what we already have seen and are seeing is significant challenges for charities that work on issues that are kind of contentious against the backdrop of populism. So particularly I'm thinking here around immigration and work with migrant communities and we've we've seen this lots of organizations that work with those uh migrant communities whether they are uh refugee and migrant charities or whether it's the Royal National Lifeboat institution rescuing people from the channel have been subject to attacks in the right Media and certainly online from sort of right wing populist commentators. I guess just to throw in a bit of long view historical perspective here, there is a very long historical pedigree of kind of ethno-nationalist uh attacks on philanthropy, particularly philanthropy that is focused across borders or sort of focuses on helping people from outside um one's own nation. Um in the Victorian era there was a whole uh sort of slew of critiques of what was called telescopic philanthropy, so sort of philanthropy that looked far overseas, often from a sort of Christian missionary point of view, um, but this was kind of criticized for being more concerned with the the suffering of uh kind of masses overseas than it was with what was admittedly you know very acute poverty in in London and in in Britain at the time. There's a a a poem by George Canning, who's a politician who went on to be Prime Minister and at one point was the uh shortest serving Prime Minister in the UK until we uh were treated to Liz Truss later on. And Canning wrote uh in this poem The New Morality about the difference between what he saw as kind of philanthropy, which was a the sort of bad universalist expression of uh the kind of desired you know drive to altruism and charity, which was sort of good British wholesome expression of of that uh impulse. So he wrote first stern philanthropy, not she who dries the orphans' tears and wipes the widow's eyes, not she whose sainted charity her guide of British bounty pours the annual tide, but French philanthropy, whose boundless mind glows with the general love of all mankind, philanthropy, beneath whose baneful sway each patriot passion sinks and dies away, taught in her school to imbibe thy mawkish strain, condorce filtered through the dregs of pain, each pert adept disowns a Britain's part and plucks the name of England from his heart. So that's some pretty florid language, but essentially the the argument there is that if you are, you know, a philanthropist and focusing some of that uh kind of care and concern on people living overseas, that's not only wrong headed, it makes you sort of a a traitor in some sense to to England or to Britain. And you know, I think this is perhaps not in as sophisticated a way it has to be said, but in very similar kind of arguments are levelled these days at um organisations working overseas in sort of international aid and development, uh organisations that are helping uh refugees and migrants, and indeed those who are funding them. And I think what we're seeing kind of even more so now in the modern context is that the attacks we're seeing are starting also to kind of recycle specific right wing attack lines from the US as well. So there's a lot of kind of elements of culture wars that have come over to the UK, and not just elements of culture wars, but the money as well. Um so increasingly it's apparent that sort of right wing um uh money to fund right wing populist causes is also kind of interested in doing the same here in the UK. And some of the methods of attack also. So one thing that we've seen, I think, for the first time in the last month or so, is specific attacks on foundations or trusts that fund work that is you know deemed to be uh bad, so work with migrant communities, and there are at least one instance that I'm aware of of a sort of right-wing blogger writing uh a piece which kind of outlines all of the funders that they've been able to identify who that work with migrant communities and and actually sort of naming them and and the work that they do, and even individual members of staff, which is extremely you know distasteful and dangerous potentially. Um so I think this is something that funders are going to have to kind of start to to think through in terms of what their defensive strategy is against this kind of criticism. I think the other thing to say about the wider context politically is it's not necessarily just about the rise of reform itself and the potential for reform taking over or kind of becoming the party of government. It's also about the extent to which the the right-wing populism that they've tapped into and you know that seems to be behind their success, is also shaping the approach of other parties. So clearly the Conservatives are in a sort of existential tussle to prove that they are sufficiently right wing as well, and currently I think failing on that score, uh, although you know opinions may vary on that. But even the Labour Party, the party of government at the moment, which is you know ostensibly on the left of the political spectrum, seemingly their approach to certain policy issues is being shaped very clearly by the need to respond to the rise of reform. So, you know, arguably, I would say certainly in terms of their approach to international aid and development, um, you know, not only did they not reverse the decision by Boris Johnson to downgrade the country's commitment from uh 0.7% of GDP to 0.5% of GDP going on aid, they they actually doubled down on that and reduced it even further down to 0.3%. And some of their rhetoric to explain why they were doing so, I think was much more bullish and clearly sort of designed to appeal to kind of populist scepticism about uh aid than than you might have thought. Similarly, I'd say, you know, it's not necessarily directly linked in that it's I think not necessarily reflective of populism so much as it is of kind of good old-fashioned authoritarianism, but the the kind of ongoing weakening of civil society freedoms and sort of negative attitudes towards things like protest and advocacy that we've seen in the uh the kind of declaring Palestine action illegal as an organization, which has uh caused a whole lot of kind of debate and reaction. But even before that, the sort of heavy-handed treatment of protesters, the raid on a Quaker meeting house a few months ago, and all these sorts of things I think show a very kind of confrontational approach from uh this Labour government towards protest and advocacy within civil society, which as I say isn't necessarily in itself reflective of a shift towards kind of right-wing populist approach, but if nothing else, I think it makes things easier for that right-wing populism to flourish. I guess the interesting thing is whether in trying to respond to that right-wing populism, Labour actually opens up ground on the left for a form of sort of left-wing populism, and an interesting development here in the last month or so has been the emergence of a you know potentially quite a vocal strain of left-wing populism, and particularly in the form of the new leader of the Green Party, Zach Polansky, who seems to have come in and be a kind of relatively charismatic political figure. Um and he describes himself as a self-avowed eco-populist. So it will be interesting to see to what extent the political climate gets kind of pulled in these two different directions. And of course, it's worth saying that the rise in populism is very much not just something that's confined to the US and the UK. Um, we've seen the rise of populism and particularly sort of right-wing populism and far-right populism uh in many countries across Europe in recent years, so sort of far-right populist parties have won seats in uh parliaments in in lots of different European countries and done well in various different elections. We've seen the worrying rise of kind of anti-rights funding. I mean, I guess you could call it philanthropy, but it's certainly funding. Um, so funding that is sort of right-wing populist in nature and specifically designed to kind of fund work that is undermining certain rights, particularly around things like kind of LGBTQ rights in lots of countries across uh Europe and uh in many cases sort of tied into kind of Christian ethno-nationalism movements. We've also seen kind of right-wing populist governments being big players in kind of authoritarian attempts to close down civic space. So uh again, going back to those kind of fundamental freedoms that make civil society possible, sort of freedom of association, freedom of um you know, assembly, freedom of protest, freedom of the press, this kind of thing. Those have been deliberately eroded in many places, and often the arguments that are used to justify that are populist ones that paint philanthropic funders and non-profits and NGOs as kind of enemies of the people, whether that is because they are argued to represent kind of elites of one kind or another, which you know, in some cases unfortunately is probably to some extent true, or whether they are kind of painted as enemies along nationalist lines by accusing them of being foreign agents, as been as has been the case in many places. You know, that that is a kind of common threat of attack, and we've seen it, as I say, across Europe, but also in places like India, again with a sort of populist uh right-wing movement and that has influenced the political sphere there very strongly in in recent years. So this phenomenon is not geographically limited by any stretch of the imagination. So, from the point of view of philanthropy, sort of funders and non-profits in all sorts of different places in Europe, the UK, the US, and elsewhere need to be thinking about this, and indeed are, and finding it difficult, I think, particularly this year, because the challenges are so acute and have sort of certainly not come out of nowhere, but I think the scale and severity of what has happened has, you know, certainly in the US taken the philanthropy world somewhat by surprise, and you know, some critics would say that that's perhaps reflects a slight naivety or complacency and that they should have been sort of aware of what was potentially coming, but I'm not sure that kind of critique is particularly helpful. I guess the interesting question, you know, we've talked a bit about what organizations in the US are doing to respond. A similar question in places like the UK is you know, how do we respond to what's already happened? But also the other aspect is how do we prepare for the potential that, you know, what has happened and what we've seen in the US is what is coming down the road for us. And this is certainly something that I'm seeing an increasing number of kind of organisations and and funders and and other others uh in the UK starting to question. I think there's a real sort of concern about the the the very real possibility of a reform government in in future and kind of further rise of of right wing populism and what this will mean both for the cause areas that some organisations work on that that are you know very likely to come under fire, but also whether we will see the sort of deliberate attacks on the very legitimacy of civil society and philanthropy that we have seen this year in in the US. And I don't know that I have any well, I do know actually that I don't have any easy answers for this because it's a very difficult uh set of questions. I guess the things that are worth saying, and there's a few of them. One is there's this kind of question, I guess, that you can see organisations in the US thinking through now, kind of after it's happened, and that you know, maybe organisations in the UK have the opportunity to get slightly ahead of it, but is to think, you know, what what should one do in the face of these challenges? Is it better to think defensively and prepare accordingly? So kind of how will we, you know, defend ourselves and the work that we do if this comes to pass? And that probably involves sort of hunkering down a little bit more and accepting division and kind of working out how you most effectively kind of you know oppose in future. Or do you kind of take the opposite tack and and lean into the needs to engage across political divides, um, you know, if it isn't already too late to do that? And I guess I say that because I I've been struck, you know, when talking to people in the US about this, that there's this real division certainly within the philanthropy world over there between those who think, actually, you know, don't engage and don't try and find common ground at this point in time, you know, just focus on fighting and kind of being adversarial, and those who sort of say, actually, you know, if part of the underlying problem is that we've kind of forgotten how to disagree well, then if if we're gonna have any chance of overcoming this and avoiding similar issues in future, we need to find ways of kind of repairing some of those bonds of civic space and the public sphere and associational life. And you know, there are I think some positive lessons that can be learned from the US experience about that. I mean, things like the fact that it's much easier to do that work at a local level often than it is at a national level, because that's the point at which people are often sort of forced to engage with other people as people, and so it's sort of it's much it's harder in a way to to kind of demonize people entirely when you're forced to kind of engage with the totality of of who they are, um, and also where you have to kind of coexist and uh and often kind of compromise and work with people than it is at a national level where everything is kind of conducted in more abstract terms or, you know, God help us on social media. Which which is not to say that there are not problems at a local level. I'm not remotely naive enough to think that, but I think the solutions can more easily sometimes be found at that local level. I think there's also uh things like you know the imperative to fund work that combats and addresses misinformation and disinformation, the need to sort of fund a healthy media ecosystem, again, particularly at a local level, and the the sort of vital role that that can play in combating division and the sort of deliberate propagation of you know falsehood and misinformation. So I think you know there are things that we can learn there. One of the kind of bigger challenges here, which there always is when you're trying to combat populism, is the sort of temptation is to try and actually kind of address the you know untruths directly, or to to try and kind of explain why people are being misled or that's kind of incorrect. The the difficulty with that, or there's a few of them, and one is people don't tend to like being told that they're stupid or have been misled. So going and telling, you know, someone who voted for Brexit or someone who has bought into kind of right-wing populist ideas that actually all they need to do is to have more information is not necessarily a very successful tactic. It's also, I think, just difficult because there tends to be this asymmetry, both in terms of the the kind of clarity and simplicity of messaging. So often, you know, populist messaging by its very nature is very simple and kind of espouses simple solutions and makes the world sound simpler, and you know, the the messy reality of what's you know how the world actually works, which is often uh much more complicated and nuanced and and broadly kind of difficult to get your head round and and unsatisfactory and involves kind of you know compromise and all of these sorts of messy things. And if you are, you know, on the the one hand, if you're the organization trying to sort of speak up and and make people understand that mess and nuance and complexity, and you're faced with uh an opponent who is able to kind of paint things in very clear terms, that is difficult. I think the other part of it, and this is a challenge, I guess, um that we've touched on a couple of times already, is that often you're in a situation where one side is putting forward a very clear argument about something being bad, and then the other side is putting forward a much less clear argument about something being, you know, not ideal, but probably better than the alternative. And what I mean by this, I guess the best example I can always think of is what happened in the Brexit campaign here in the UK, where on the one hand you had the the Leave campaign, which again you know involved Nigel Farage, who's now obviously uh very prominent again um in reform, but putting forward a very clear set of messages, often you know based on information that was untrue, it has to be said, but that that you know our membership of the EU was a bad thing, and it was very easy to explain that. On the other side, you had this kind of wide coalition of different people who thought that it was broadly better that we stayed in Europe, but often in a way that betrayed a certain lack of enthusiasm, and the kind of the general tenor of it was, well, it's not ideal, it could probably do with a lot of reform, but it's you know broadly better that we're you know inside the tent rather than outside the tent. And I feel like we see this a little bit again now in the case of something like you know, international aid and development, where those who are critical of it and want to kind of essentially destroy it have a very clear message about why it's bad and you know why we shouldn't give money to people overseas. And those who are defending it are often in the uncomfortable position where some of them are kind of also do think that the existing systems are problematic and need pretty fundamental reform. But do they kind of acknowledge that and try and put across a complicated message of again, aid's not perfect, but it's better than no aid, and at the same time we should try and reform it? Or do they try and kind of dampen down that complexity and just come up with a much simpler kind of message of aid is good, even if that that kind of doesn't express the complexity and nuance of their views. And I think lots of organisations find themselves struggling with a version of this challenge. I guess the um the other thing to point out here is that there's there's a couple of things that are very much related to why it is that philanthropy and charities and non-profits have found themselves so much at the kind of centre of criticism around this. And one of the things is that you know I think there was an existing concern that philanthropy had become the preserve of kind of technocrats and elites, uh, both in terms of who those the funders were and where the money was coming from, but but even more so in terms of institutional philanthropy being a place where you know a kind of managerial elite was able to exist and thrive. Now, obviously the additional element of that from a right wing populist view is it's a managerial progressive elite or kind of claimed progressive elite. But you know, there are those on the left as well who who'd made criticisms of things like you know the non-profit industrial complex, which again is very much you know part of that is that there's a kind of managerial technocratic elite that is uh that has kind of led philanthropy too far from from its kind of original intentions and thereby you know caused issues in terms of uh power dynamics and and and this sort of thing. So I guess both those right-wing populists and those progressive critics would agree that philanthropy had perhaps become too out of touch, but where they would disagree is on who they see it as being out of touch with and why. So on the progressive side you'd probably think it's more kind of marginalized communities, you know, and that uh whereas on the sort of right-wing populist side you would probably be talking in terms of losing touch with, you know, quote unquote the people. And I guess that speaks to one of the other issues that you see around um this whole area of populism, which is that the one of the challenges is that is where those dividing lines get drawn. So kind of whilst on left-wing populism uh or kind of left-wing politics more broadly, you would have traditionally had dividing lines drawn on the basis of class and kind of politics framed in those terms, right-wing populism tends to deliberately draw dividing lines on the basis of race or nationality and kind of appeal to those divisions. And one of the challenges potentially for left-wing or progressive politics in recent years that some people have identified, and it is contentious, I should say, is that the increasing focus on identity within politics, a sort of not traditional class identity, but a much broader spectrum of different identities, has arguably kind of contributed to some of this problem and sort of the rise of populism, both by splintering the kind of political world of on the more progressive side, and this is is the idea of sort of hyper pluralism that is uh of stone a problem for sort of progressive or social justice focused movements where so many different kind of competing subdivisions um emerge that it becomes very difficult to get any form of consensus. Um and certainly there's uh a really interesting paper from 2007 by Kristin Goss looking at the history of the feminist movement and saying uh which is called Foundations of Feminism How Philanthropic Patrons Shape Gender Politics but that kind of talks about this whole issue. And the argument you know some would put forward now, certainly on the progressive side is that actually the problem progressive politics has had is it has kind of leant too far into identity based politics and that this as I say has kind of fractured things but also made it easier for populists because they also want to draw dividing lines on the basis of identity of of different forms and so the the kind of debate is already kind of framed in the terms that they understand and it makes it easier to position their you know their views in opposition to those of progressives. There's I should say a kind of really interesting and relatively heated debate about this going on at the moment in the pages of Inside Philanthropy where uh David Callahan wrote uh a sort of op-ed very much along the lines that I've I've said there you know kind of talking about how you know in his view identity politics had perhaps become you know had slightly become part of the problem and uh in terms of the rise of populism. And then there was a response from Tinesha McHarris from the Black Feminist Fund uh kind of pushing back very much on this idea and saying you know absolutely not you know retreating on the idea of identity is not the thing to do. That's just kind of giving in to the the populists. I don't know quite what I make of you know on balance of both of those arguments but I do know that um nobody particularly wants to hear my hot take on it uh right at this particular moment so I'll keep my thoughts to myself. I guess the thing to say finally to m to me is just that it's important to bear in mind in all of this talk about what philanthropy and civil society in the nonprofit sector needs to do, that it's not necessarily just a case of combating populism. I think if that is the only way in which it's framed, it's never going to work. I think there does also have to be an element of reflection about why it is that populist attacks on nonprofits and philanthropy have stuck and why they kind of continue to do so. And in particular I think institutional philanthropy and non-profit organisations need to ask themselves some potentially uncomfortable questions about whether they have become too distant from the communities that they serve. And in part, you know that might be about the very idea of kind of formalisation and professionalisation and certainly you know to to bring it back again to the work of Thayda Scotchpol I mentioned at the start of the podcast you know she's written widely about the kind of professionalization of the nonprofit sphere and the the emergence of a managerial non-profit class and that that's come at the expense of a kind of a more informal associational life that is by its nature more kind of cross-class and cross-community. And you know there is also I think certainly was at one point up until until the 20th century a kind of a scepticism about formalised nonprofit models very much kind of baked into American society and that perhaps that slightly got lost maybe people want to kind of revisit and rediscover some of that that original Tocquillian spirit of associational life. I think it's also tied into some of the models that are used for things like fundraising which you know again there's a big debate about whether those have become too transactional and whether there needs to be more of a shift back towards making them more kind of based on participation and and engaging people to to kind of take part and associate within something. And again the interesting thing to me about those ideas is that they're you know they are things that you could hear from people on the progressive left as well. So it's not like thinking about these things or kind of acknowledging them is automatically kind of ceding the argument to the populist right. But the challenge there and this is my final final thought I think is that you do need to find a way of doing that that that doesn't just kind of cede the ground or or even worse lend weight to the attacks of the populist right. So if you know non-profits or philanth philanthropic funders if they go too hard on the the line you know along the lines of yes we are all too technocratic and managerial and aren't we awful then that does make it easier I think for the populist right to continue to to paint them as sort of evidence of a vast liberal machinery that's taken hold of institutions and power. Obviously despite the fact that you know in many places it's actually the political right that are the ones in power but you know don't let those facts get in the way. But I think that point of you know yes engage with these critical arguments and understand why you know perhaps there is a kernel of truth in them but make sure that in so doing you don't just kind of confirm all of the suspicions of populist critics and that is going to be a difficult balance to maintain and kind of how to do that in the right way is something that I think we all still need to figure out together but probably you know we need to do that fairly quickly. Okay well that brings to an end uh me rambling about political populism um so that was uh quite a reintroduction to the podcast wasn't it for everyone I'll put links in the show notes to places where you can find uh some of the things that I mentioned um and you can follow up on those. If you're interested more broadly around uh issues to do with philanthropy in civil society do check out the website whyphilanthropymatters dot com. Lots of articles there guides to all sorts of things to do with philanthropy all the back issues of this podcast are all of the back issues of the newsletter that I do every month and you can also sign up for that as well. Basically you can get more of me than you ever thought that you wanted quite possibly more than you did want. So you know fill your boots. If you uh haven't quite had enough already from all that you can follow me on social media as well. You can find me on LinkedIn and a little bit on Blue Sky although not especially uh uh kind of uh vocal on there at the moment because I'm still trying to work out how worthwhile it is uh spending time on engaging other than that uh just like uh subscribe follow uh leave us a nice review wherever you get your podcasts do tell some actual real world people that you might know about the podcast if you uh like it and think it's interesting and other than that I will see you next time bye