ArcaMax

VANCOUVER, British Columbia – If you had told anti-globalist protesters from 25 years ago that their ideological heirs would be MAGA fans rallying behind a billionaire with gold-plated toilets, they would’ve shot their organic carrot juice out their nose in disbelief.

Back then, anti-globalism was all granola, gas masks and “Down with the IMF” signs. Nobody would have expected Donald Trump – the guy gracing tabloids for yacht parties and messy divorces – to ever, in a million years, become the face of the movement. But fast-forward a few decades, and the revolution’s wearing a red baseball cap and yelling at the ruling class on social media.

I got my own start right here in Vancouver, where being an activist was practically a rite of passage. One highlight: the “Riot at the Hyatt” in December 1998, where then-prime minister of Canada, Jean Chrétien, was speaking inside while protesters outside were making noise and getting arrested. The rally was sparked by the police deploying pepper spray like it was champagne at a Formula One victory celebration a year earlier during the APEC summit at the nearby University of British Columbia – an incident that earned cops a judicial wrist slap for excessive force.

All this took place at the height of anti-globalist fervor, with the Pacific Northwest arguably its epicenter. The anti-WTO “Battle of Seattle” dominated headlines in 1999. The West was cozying up to Southeast Asia with free trade agreements and WTO access, while exploiting the 1997 Asian financial collapse. The IMF swooped in with bailout packages, but to many of us, it looked more like an economic smash-and-grab wrapped in bureaucratese.

One of the big flashpoints was the West’s snugglefest with Indonesian President Suharto, who was busy putting down domestic unrest at home while smiling politely at foreign dignitaries during trips abroad. Protesters were outraged that Western democracies were cozying up for the sake of market access and bargain-basement labor. And soon after, China got in on the action too, joining the WTO in 2001 and fully integrating into the global trade system like a kid finally allowed at the adult table – who would later proceed to totally dominate the manufacturing of every other table.

The results were exactly what we had warned about. Cheap labor was in, manufacturing jobs were out. Western economies got flooded with bargain electronics, plastic stuff and fast fashion, while our working-class communities became hollowed-out husks of their former selves.

Not all of us in the anti-globalist crowd were pot-smoking anarchists. Some were conservatives. Real ones. The “limited government, hands off my wallet” types, who saw globalism as the antithesis of self-determination, at both the national and personal level. But, admittedly, most of the movement’s foot soldiers were proudly leftist.

Then came Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on American soil, and everything changed. The U.S. under President George W. Bush launched its Global War on Terror, and suddenly, “radical” was the new four-letter word. The daylight between a bomb-planting jihadist and a tree-hugging anti-globalist grew increasingly negligible, and if you questioned the government, you might as well be building a cave in Tora Bora.

The anti-globalist movement didn’t just lose momentum, it got rebranded as suspect. Suddenly, being anti-globalism meant you were a tall weed that needed monitoring, lest you ideologically infect your surroundings. Especially if you weren’t on board with global surveillance systems and the endless military spending that this era ushered in. And who wouldn’t be? The government was keeping everyone safe. Who could argue with that? Some tried, but with great difficulty.

So the movement fizzled. But apparently history loves irony.

Flash- forward to today, and the same folks who went on to elite left-leaning institutions of establishment formatting, like Harvard, Oxford and Sciences Po Paris, many of whom once railed against the system, are now the system themselves. They sit comfortably in the globalist cockpit, steering the ship while lecturing the rest of us about climate guilt and pronouns.

In this new orthodoxy, globalism isn’t just policy, it’s morality. If you’re not into open borders, open wallets for the climate or open to a new gender every fiscal quarter, then you’re the enemy.

Take Mark Carney, Canada’s Liberal Party-appointed prime minister who’s currently running for election. He went to Harvard and Oxford, ran the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, and now champions radical climate policies. In 2021, he co-founded a UN-backed initiative with renowned establishment Democratic globalist, John Kerry. Coined the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), it aimed to “mobilize the trillions of dollars necessary to build a global zero emissions economy and deliver the goals of the Paris agreement.” Or in plain English: “We’re gonna spend a boatload of your money and hope the weather notices.”

And guess what? The planet didn’t notice. The goal of keeping any increase of the earth’s temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius flopped like a wet tofu burger.

So now, even the bankers are wriggling out of Carney’s globalist climate straitjacket. Canada’s big six banks? Out. Wall Street? Also out.

Turns out that climate virtue signaling is expensive, especially when the returns are mostly just feel good vibes and backslaps. And underneath it all, these climate initiatives are just another Trojan horse for deeper Western-led economic integration, wrapped up for the public in a shiny ribbon of morality.

So you’d think the left would be screaming bloody murder about this globalist scam, right? Nope. Because their ideological ilk is in charge now and singing their leftist climate tune. Apparently, when you’re the establishment, suddenly globalization doesn’t look so bad, especially when you’re the one writing the rules and enjoying the power and profits of the system.

That’s why the real opposition today isn’t coming from the quinoa-muncher-turned-banker crowd, but from the freedom-loving anti-establishment right. They’re the ones pushing back against international elite collusion and corruption, and unelected technocrats deciding how hot your shower should be.

Turns out that globalism didn’t really quash its opponents – it just managed to hire them.