Are Charter Schools Innovative?

by Shawgi Tell / February 7th, 2026

Recognizing that some parents investigate charter schools before approaching them, while many others do not, charter school advocates have long sought to attract parents and students by aggressively promoting themselves as innovative and creative in curriculum, instruction, methods, and pedagogy.

Indeed, many deregulated charter schools claim to operate according to a distinctive pedagogy intended to appeal to those interested in it. Thus, there exist privately operated charter schools that focus primarily on music and art, science and technology, military training, agriculture and farming, college preparation, and more.

Charter school proponents claim that this educational innovation and experimentation are possible due to the “flexibility,” “autonomy,” and “independence” of privately operated charter schools. Interestingly, most charter schools must take the same educationally unsound corporate tests as traditional public schools.

However, most charter schools mimic much of what occurs in constantly demonized and underfunded traditional public schools, while also actively ignoring the innovation, creativity, and pedagogical diversity long embraced by traditional public schools.

Little educational innovation appears to be taking place in many charter schools. For example, The Network for Public Education (2017) notes that charter schools, “generally neither invent new teaching methods nor develop and spread new education practices. They’re businesses first, and schools second.” Privatization naturally prioritizes profiteering over the right to education. The NPE cites several studies showing that thousands of charter schools are not innovative, unlike traditional public schools. If anything, many charter schools stifle innovation. Here, it should also be asked: if charter schools really value new practices and teaching, would the teacher turnover rate be as consistently high as it is? Higher turnover is associated with lower educational quality, stability, and collegiality.

In Charter Schools: A Missed Opportunity to Improve Education Through Innovation (2023), Parisi says, “the charter school movement has not resulted in the change early advocates hoped for. Charter schools often recycle old practices instead of experimenting with new ones.”

A 2018 report from the pro-privatization corporation IBM claims that, while charter schools are supposedly well-positioned to adopt innovative practices, “many charter schools have only partly delivered on this mission. While there are many pockets of excellence in the sector, there appears to be less innovation than originally anticipated.”

A 2012 study, School innovation in district context: Comparing traditional public schools and charter schools, asserts, “We find that, on the whole, charter schools do not fulfill their promise of innovation.”

Innovation in education markets: Theory and evidence on the impact of competition and choice in charter schools (2003) by Lubienski contends that, “a comprehensive review of practices in charter schools indicates that, although some organizational innovations are evident, classroom strategies tend toward the familiar.”

The lack of innovation in deregulated charter schools is closely linked to their spending more on administration and consulting services than on instruction (see here, here, and here).

Furthermore, the chronic lack of oversight of charter schools means there is no incentive to implement innovative strategies effectively. Charter schools are notorious for a lack of transparency and accountability.

While additional studies and articles could be cited to substantiate the foregoing, it is important to acknowledge the broader problems associated with privatized education. Is the chaos, anarchy, and violence of the “free market” a good way to run mass universal education in a modern society based on 21st-century economic needs?

As people often say, “connect the dots” or “take a 50,000-foot view of things.” What is the point of trying to find “one or two good things” about charter schools when there are 50 other damning and indicting problems in the charter school sector—and even those “one or two good things” turn out to be diluted or non-scalable?

Last but not least, the problem has never been charter school teachers, students, or parents. The problem is privatized education arrangements and the problems that privatization guarantees. Do not target charter school teachers, students, or parents. Focus on the political economy of charter schools and develop new ways to defend the public interest while opposing narrow private interests that are encroaching on the public sphere at an accelerating pace.

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Shawgi Tell (PhD) is author of the book Charter School Report Card. He can be reached at stell5@naz.edu. Read other articles by Shawgi.

 

Our blindness to whiteness

by David Andersson / February 7th, 2026

During the COVID pandemic, I published a book titled The White-West: A Look in the Mirror. At the time, I did not imagine that only a few years later the dynamics I described would become so stark, so violent, and so openly visible.

Today, many struggle to understand what is happening in the United States—and what radicalized power looks like when it feels threatened. This moment is not fundamentally about immigration, security, or geopolitics. It is about the collapse of the White-West’s moral authority and its turn toward racialized domination as a means of survival.

The actions of ICE and the growing militarization of U.S. city streets are officially framed as responses to an “immigration problem.” In practice, they function as a bleaching of multicultural America’s major urban centers. Military personnel patrol neighborhoods, targeting Latino communities and people of color. Skilled immigrants are no longer exempt. The assault on H-1B visas has thrown thousands of Indian families into crisis, with jobs, legal status, and stability stripped away overnight. This is not a policy failure; it is ideological intent.

Few believed the United States would go this far. Yet the pattern is not new. Why Venezuela? As Craig Murray observed in “Trump, Pirate of the Caribbean,” Venezuelan politics are “basically racial.” The offense was not merely political defiance, but the fact that power was exercised by a government that was not white enough—and that its oil flowed toward non-white hegemonic powers such as China and Russia.

Europe, meanwhile, remains dangerously complacent. Many Europeans continue to view Russia or China as greater threats than the United States has become, while indirectly supporting the war in Ukraine and the assault on Gaza. In doing so, they enable the spread of white supremacist and far-right movements across the continent. The propaganda apparatus functions efficiently: Islamophobia, anti-immigrant panic, and anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-trans narratives circulate freely, normalizing exclusion and fear.

The United States is not at war with Europe, despite popular rhetoric. It is at war with the expansion of non-white political, economic, and cultural power wherever it emerges—including within European societies themselves. This creates friction with the European Union, whose legal framework requires member states to apply common law, much of which protects human rights and prohibits discrimination. These frameworks enforce social and cultural diversification—precisely what the White-West resists. The backlash is visible in Hungary, Poland, and Italy.

Trump’s hostility toward the United Nations is not primarily about institutional authority. The United States did not abandon the Security Council. Rather, the White-West has moved beyond its period of guilt—over colonialism, slavery, and genocide—and is now actively dismantling the humanitarian architecture constructed over the past eighty years.

Whiteness, understood here not as individual identity but as a global power structure rooted in racial hierarchy, no longer feels obliged to fund development in non-white countries, support global health systems, or sustain initiatives such as HIV treatment and disease prevention. In a recent Semafor article, Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman warned that philanthropists are “losing the argument” for foreign aid, even as budget cuts drive rising child mortality. The U.S. withdrawal from 46 UN agencies, including the World Health Organization, enables the redirection of resources away from multilateral cooperation toward economic, political, and military coercion against institutions, states, and populations that resist U.S. supremacy.

Equally striking is Europe’s silence. No major European power has stepped forward to compensate for the U.S. retreat or to assume leadership within the UN system. Instead, European governments deepen their investment in U.S. militarism even as the multilateral order erodes beneath them. And in South America, white elites continue to accept the role of “the United States’ backyard,” mobilizing right-wing movements to preserve power and social control. This alignment prevents broader populations from articulating autonomous political, cultural, and historical identities outside the shadow of the White-West.

None of this was unforeseeable. What is happening in Gaza and Palestine was predictable. What is happening in Ukraine was preventable. What is happening through ICE was foreseeable. The failure is not due to a lack of warning, but to a refusal to believe. We did not believe it could go this far.

Many Latinos who voted for Trump did not believe they would be deported. Skilled immigrants did not believe legal status would cease to offer protection. Europe did not believe the United States would dismantle the humanitarian order it once claimed to lead. We mistook stability for permanence and power for restraint.

Until we confront the belief system that normalizes domination, hierarchy, and racialized fear, movement forward will remain impossible.

History offers a brutal reminder. In 1940, France possessed a stronger army than Germany. Yet French military planners did not believe Hitler would take the “impossible” route—through the Ardennes, across forests, rivers, and mountains. They assumed rationality, precedent, and limits would hold.

They were wrong.

Within weeks, Germany occupied northern France and reached Dunkirk.

Today, the same disbelief paralyzes us. Whiteness, as a global power structure, no longer seeks consensus or legitimacy. It seeks survival through force. History does not collapse because warnings are absent, but because they are dismissed.

This article was first published on Pressenza and is also available in: Spanish

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David Andersson is a French-American journalist, photographer, and author who has lived in New York for over 30 years. He co-directs Pressenza International Press Agency and is the author of The White-West: A Look in the Mirror, a collection of op-eds examining the dynamics of Western identity and its impact on other cultures. Read other articles by David.

Purges and Regime Crisis in China

Xi Jinping completes the destruction of the CCP’s Central Military Commission

Monday 9 February 2026, by Pierre Rousset

The dismissal of General Zhang Youxia was officially announced on January 24. This is another step in the purges that have been taking place within the Chinese army’s general staff. Zhang was considered “untouchable” given his supposed closeness to Xi Jinping. As for the Central Military Commission (CMC), it is now a hollow shell, having lost five of its seven members. Xi continues to clear the field around him, contrary to any form of collegiality.

The only remaining member of the CMC, which Xi Jinping chairs, is Zhang Shengming, Secretary of the army’s CMC Commission for Discipline Inspection and Deputy Secretary of the party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, responsible for carrying out dirty work [1].

The profound opacity of the regime makes it difficult, if not impossible, to know why a particular person is targeted by the successive purges within the party apparatus, the army, the Administration, civil society, or the economic world—even if the reason sometimes seems obvious: the victim had become too powerful, at the head of a conglomerate or a municipality, for example, or had been too vocal in its criticism and needed to be made an example of. But otherwise, how can we know why a particular figure no longer appears in public, as if they had fallen into a black hole, or why another is denounced for corruption or even treason? This would seem to be the case for the five disgraced members of the Central Military Commission.

Accusations of corruption are routinely used by Xi Jinping to justify the conviction of real or supposed opponents in order to hide other issues. Corruption is certainly a major problem. Because of it, defective weapons sometimes leave military production factories, which says a lot! Unfortunately, it is not just a matter of corrupt individuals; corruption is endemic. It is rooted in a system of autocratic power and privilege to which Xi Jinping, his family, and his close associates belong. Even if Xi is aware of its harmful consequences, this system is his own, and making it increasingly opaque and paranoid, and less and less collegial, will not put an end to it.

Zhang Youxia was the highest-ranking active military officer. He and Xi Jinping are known to have been very close for a long time, as “second-generation red princes”, a term referring to the descendants of CCP leaders from the revolutionary era. However, their family lineages differ. Xi Jinping’s father, Xi Zongxun, was a high-ranking official in the People’s Republic before being purged by Mao Zedong in 1962 and then rehabilitated by Deng Xiaoping. A civilian lineage, therefore, for a man of the apparatus. Zhang Zhongxun, Zhang Youxia’s father, on the other hand, was one of the generals of the People’s Army during the revolution. A prestigious ancestry if ever there was one, and perhaps that is the problem, as the military leadership has been bled dry by successive purges and Xi imposes his sole (and lifelong) leadership in the party and the government (which he marginalizes).

This is not the first time Xi Jinping has attacked members of his inner circle. It is quite logical in such a personalized regime. As the domestic situation deteriorates (and with it his authority), opposition to him may come from external centers of power, but also from members of the party’s central organs. After all, they are well placed to assess Xi’s missteps and to maneuver. In many monarchies, it is customary to assassinate “blue-blooded” relatives, members of the royal family, as a preventive measure. Within the North Korean dynastic regime, Kim Jong-un has not shied away from doing so. In China, being a “prince of red blood” is a precious privilege, but it can also be a risk...

Beijingologists wonder whether these purges are a sign of Xi Jinping’s strength or weakness. Why not both? He has the power to carry them out, but not to stabilize his grip on power or calm his paranoia. His ambition comes up against a reality: China is far too vast (1.4 billion inhabitants), the party far too large (more than 100 million declared members) and the army (more than two million active soldiers) far too alien to his own social milieu to impose the dictatorship of a single man (instead of the dictatorship of a single party) on the country. Yet Xi’s entire policy is based on exclusions. By decreeing the primacy of the “princes of red blood,” he excludes from power the majority of cadres and elites who are not the children or grandchildren of the recognized central leaders of the Chinese revolution. By amending the Constitution to grant himself the right to rule for life, he is no longer involving representatives of the political generation that should have succeeded him during his lifetime, as was traditional, in the party leadership. By making the CCP the sole and central pillar of his control over the country—from the capital “to the most remote village”—he is devitalizing the government structure. In doing so, he broke the balance that allowed the population to address two centers of authority, thus ensuring a certain flexibility in the system, but which could also provide support for competing factions within the party.

Mao, Xi, and the Cultural Revolution

The purges currently underway are said to be the most significant since those that China experienced under Mao during the ill-named Cultural Revolution. However, to understand the nature of the purges under Xi, the analogy is more valid in terms of the differences between the two eras than in terms of their similarities (an authoritarian single-party regime, etc.). While Mao was the leader of the party, the CCP’s Politburo was composed of strong personalities whose legitimacy was based on their role in the revolutionary struggles that led to the historic victory of 1949. Mao’s strength lay in his ability to form with them a new leadership team, but this unity eventually shattered under the pressure of economic crises and social tensions. Faction struggles led to calls for mass mobilizations to settle internal party scores, opening a veritable Pandora’s box. All the contradictions at work in Chinese society in the 1960s came to light.

The history of this “moment” of historical crisis is very complex, made up of murderous shadows (the summary condemnation of supposed bourgeois counter-revolutionaries, an unbridled cult of personality, etc.) and rays of light (the questioning by large sectors of society of a bureaucratized regime, the freedom of movement and initiative of a youth crisscrossing the country, etc.). The shock was such that the party disintegrated. Mao had played the sorcerer’s apprentice. He finally had to call in the army to restore order, including against his own Red Guards and his supporters in the working class, thereby signing the political death warrant of early Maoism. The Cultural Revolution was the ultimate expression of a crisis of the regime. The crushing of social movements marked the completion of a bureaucratic counter-revolution, embodied by the rise to power of the Gang of Four [2] From this point of view, it is very confusing to extend the period of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1969, a major and well-defined crisis) to 1976 (the fall of the Gang of Four). Unfortunately, this is commonly done.

Throughout its long history, the CCP has obviously experienced more or less opaque factional struggles, paranoid slips, and discreet purges, but can we imagine Xi Jinping calling on mass mobilization to resolve internal conflicts within the regime?

The analogy between the current purges and the factional conflicts of the 1960s is all the less valid given that they took place in radically different historical contexts. The victory of 1949 initiated a double break: with imperialist domination, ensuring the independence and unity of the country, and with the pre-existing social order (a break accelerated by the Korean War, which the Maoist regime did not want, but for which it paid a very heavy price). The old ruling classes, both urban and rural, were disintegrated. Today’s China is a major imperialist power deeply integrated into the global capitalist order, of which it is one of the major players. Obviously, the historical context is essential to understanding a regime crisis—yesterday’s Maoist regime, today’s regime established by Xi Jinping.

International Great Leap Forward

The traumas of the Cultural Revolution and the caricatural reign of the Gang of Four discredited “leftism,” creating the political preconditions for bourgeois counterrevolution. This process was largely initiated by Deng Xiaoping, culminating in the massive repression of 1989, which was not confined to Tiananmen Square and its surroundings (in Beijing) or to students alone. It spread to the provinces and to many social milieus, and broke the independent workers’ organizations for a long time. As for China’s reintegration into the international order, it was largely led by Xi Jinping’s predecessors, including Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao.

The bulk of the transformation that enabled China’s Great Leap Forward on the world stage was accomplished by others than Xi Jinping. He was elected head of the party and the state in 2012 not because he was powerful, but because he represented an acceptable compromise between the main factions within the CCP leadership. He knew how to take advantage of his position. Thus, after his re-election in 2017, he was able to push through changes to the Constitution that allow him, among other things, to remain in power for as long as he wishes. This can be described as a genuine change of political regime. That said, although Xi has been able to acquire great powers, his legitimacy is weak. He is not a new Mao, despite the care he takes to cultivate his personality cult. Today, however, developments in China are not working in his favor, far from it.

Social Crisis, Regime Crisis

The profound effects of the real estate crisis that erupted five years ago are still being felt today – and go far beyond municipal debt and market sluggishness. It is traditional in China to invest a large portion of one’s savings in the purchase of a home to cover the costs of old age, as healthcare costs are prohibitively high. Many households have been ruined after investing in buildings under construction, buying plots of land in cities where construction has remained unfinished, or purchasing residences whose value has plummeted. Growth is sluggish. There are many signs of a regime crisis. China’s “Generation Z” refuses to obey Xi Jinping’s injunctions (work tirelessly, procreate without delay, etc.). Social struggles are regaining momentum.

What allows an authoritarian regime to gain support or neutrality among the population, beyond clientelism, is the belief that the economic situation of households will improve. However, parents no longer believe that their children will have a better life than they do. Social insecurity is growing, corruption is fuelling numerous scandals (building collapses, fires, defective medicines and baby milk, preventable deaths of children, etc.), and the ravages of the climate crisis are being felt ever more brutally. This explosive cocktail is not unique to China. On an international scale, it is fuelling a preventive and unilateral class war, from top to bottom, which aims to destroy long-standing popular solidarity and nip the formation of new solidarity in the bud at a time of “poly-crisis.” The so-called Western democracies are not kind today to their working and popular classes and resistance movements (see the criminalization of ecological struggles in France, even though they face the most urgent of the urgent emergencies)...

Xi Jinping calls for unity in the name of patriotism and the US threat, but this is great power nationalism, not anti-imperialism as in the days of the Chinese revolution. Could external war be the government’s response to the internal crisis? This seems unlikely at present. It would not be an easy undertaking. The military chain of command is disorganized by ongoing purges. It is riddled with corruption and has no significant military experience. The invasion of Taiwan is probably not on the agenda (with psychos like Trump and Xi, “probably” remains the order of the day), while remaining a totalitarian ambition.

A war in the Taiwan Strait would also jeopardize the political and diplomatic gains China is currently making on the international stage. Thanks to Washington’s blows to the Atlantic Alliance, China is in a pivotal position in representing a “front of refusal” that includes a country like India, with which it nevertheless has serious disputes. Leaders of “Western bloc” countries are visiting one after another, from Canada, Finland, France, Great Britain, Ireland, South Korea... and tomorrow from Germany. Xi Jinping must be enjoying this moment, but Beijing will not be giving any gifts. Faced with a cascade of overproduction crises, the Chinese economy is increasingly dependent on its foreign markets. This will be felt hard in Africa, of course, but not only there.

6 February 2026

Attached documentspurges-and-regime-crisis-in-china_a9406-2.pdf (PDF - 1000.8 KiB)
Extraction PDF [->article9406]

Footnotes


[1] No relation to Zhang Youxia and Zhang Zhongxun


[2] Namely Jiang Qing, Mao’s wife, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen.

China
What is left of the Chinese Left?
The Crisis of Social Reproduction, Women’s Agency, and Feminism in China
Trump’s strategy to reassert U.S. dominance
China’s labour movement under fire
The Four Critical Junctures of Taiwan DPP’s Transformation from Democratic Reformers to US Client

Pierre Rousset is a member of the leadership of the Fourth International particularly involved in solidarity with Asia. He is a member of the NPA in France.

Xi Jinping: A Destroyer of Corruption, Privilege, and Inequality

by Kim Petersen / February 7th, 2026

The title of the article at Foreign Affairs (FA) — “Xi the Destroyer” — speaks loudly of another Sinophobic piece by the US foreign policy magazine published by the Council on Foreign Relations.

FA opens the article by noting the “purge” of People’s Liberation Army general Zhang Youxia in what it termed a “Shakespearean moment in Chinese politics” — seemingly indicating a lighthearted mistake by chairman Xi Jinping.

Yet Xi’s decision is framed as “suggest[ing] a new level of intrigue.” This is based on the long time familiarity between Xi and Zhang and that their fathers were “comrades-in-arms during China’s ferocious civil war.” The authors postulate, “A relationship that long and deep is valuable in any setting, but especially in the vicious, low-trust world of Chinese politics.” Perhaps interesting, but also speculative and obviously intended to portray China and the Communist Party of China in an unflattering light.

One wonders about depicting Chinese politics as a “vicious, low-trust world” without providing any evidence to support such a vicious depiction.

The FA authors, Jonathan A. Czin and John Culver, had previously argued, “Xi wants to ensure he can employ violence with confidence, but Xi’s confidence seems to be the rarest and most precious commodity for an otherwise well-resourced military.” [Italics added] In other words, Xi wants the ability but lacks the confidence to employ violence.

The defamation of Xi is exemplified in the leading language of the FA authors:

But Zhang’s unceremonious dismissal also illustrates the depths of Xi’s ruthlessness in managing the PLA. It is one thing for a leader to show no mercy to his enemies; it is quite another for him to be so pitiless with his friends. [Italics added]

Given that the authors admit “what Zhang did—or didn’t do” is speculative and unclear, the authors segue and assert “what is clear now is Xi’s belief that power exists in its exercise.”

*****

In Xi’s words,

History has told us to stay on high alert against war, which, like a demon and nightmare, would bring disaster and pain to the people. History has also told us to preserve peace with great care, as peace, like air and sunshine, is hardly noticed when people are benefiting from it, but none of us can live without it.

This hardly sounds like a destroyer in the violent sense of the word. China has never been at war under Xi, and as a country not since the one-month conflict with Viet Nam in 1979.

The FA authors note that “PLA Daily declared that Zhang was removed for fueling ‘political and corruption problems that threaten the party’s absolute leadership over the armed forces and undermine the party’s governance foundation,’ and his actions ’caused immense damage to the construction of combat capabilities.’” Yet the FA authors brush that aside by assertion: “Given that corruption in the PLA is endemic, these claims are rightly seen by many outside observers as a pretext for removing Zhang rather than the true cause.”

Is it not preposterous to acknowledge that corruption is rife in the PLA and deny this might be a cause for Zhang’s dismissal — this despite the authors admitting their side can only speculate?

Xi has stated, “Building a fine Party culture and a corruption-free Party is a major political issue of great concern to the people. ‘Worms can only grow in something rotten.’” (Xi Jinping, On the Governance of China, [Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2014]: loc 350.)

And, “Facts prove that if corruption is allowed to spread, it will eventually lead to the destruction of a party and the fall of the government.” (Xi, On the Governance of China: loc 352.)

Under Xi’s tutelage the words have been put into action. Xi’s anti-corruption campaign, which began in 2012, had by 2025 investigated and found nearly five million officials guilty at all levels of government.

*****

As to what lies behind the removal of general Zhang and general Liu Chunli, writer Hua Bin sensibly cautioned, “My first advice is for folks to cool their jets and avoid reaching conclusions before more trustworthy information is available.”

He added, “The wise ones wait till the brain processes the data and exercises reason.”

Given the data and information forthcoming, Hua concludes:

If you put Zhang’s case in the context of the ongoing anti-corruption campaign within the military, a clear picture emerges.

…

Last year alone, 2 Defense Ministers (the incumbent and his immediate predecessor), 3 members of [Central Military Commission] CMC, and 9 generals from the Rocket Force were arrested for corruption.

The anti-corruption campaign goes beyond uniformed military. Several senior executives of major state-owned arms contractors were similarly charged and dismissed.

These investigations inevitably lead to confessions and more rotten apples exposed. When you pull the string of the corruption chain hard enough, you take out the root – which has led to the most senior uniformed officers. Zhang oversaw PLA procurement for years.

Conclusion

One wonders how Westerners would respond to a similar rooting out of corruption in their political circles. Xi has never been to Epstein Island or been photographed with young scantily-clad or unclad women/girls. Why then does FA criticize the Chinese Communist Party for its anti-corruption campaigns while adults are preying upon American youth?

Ask yourself how have you heard about the MSS (China’s Ministry of State Security), and if so, have you heard about the malevolent activities of the MSS? Yet, one hears often about the illicit machinations of the CIA, Mossad, and MI6.

China is not committing or abetting genocide (unless one listens uncritically to Western disinformation about the Uyghurs); it is not warring against other states; it is not claiming Greenland; it is not kidnapping the leaders of other nations; it is not bombing fishing boats in international waters; it is not engaging in economic warfare with others.

China looks to have hit upon a diplomacy that respects the sovereignty of other nations.

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Kim Petersen is an independent writer. He can be emailed at: kimohp at gmail.com. Read other articles by Kim.

 AUSTRALIA

Soothsaying and the Sampling Referendum: The Heralded Rise of One Nation

by Binoy Kampmark / February 9th, 2026

Nominal realities bedevil politics. They usually find form in polling statistics, airings in the land of pundits and those self-appointed wise people who think they have a measure of the electorate and its various wishes. Folly often follows, garlanded with errors of judgment and failed predictions: Brexit and Donald Trump’s election in 2016; Trump’s re-election in 2024. The list is wearisomely long, the electorate often inscrutable. Yet the pollsters always live another day, at large and unpunished.

In Australia, the cathedral of commentators and psephologists is expressing interest in the emergence of a new horse from the political stable. Not a thoroughbred, mind you. More of a nag, a persistent presence that took form when Pauline Hanson gave her unsteady if clear maiden speech in the House of Representatives on September 10, 1996.

The theme then, as now, was being alarmist with appeal, a ragbag of heartfelt concerns largely regarding immigration, the dangers of multiculturalism, the loss of local industries to foreign ownership, the gravy train of international organisations, and the supposed privileging of the Indigenous population. “Present governments are encouraging separatism in Australia by providing opportunities, land, moneys and facilities available to Aboriginals.” For the freshly elected Member for Oxley, a disadvantaged Aboriginal was a museum piece, an intrusive relic. As for immigrants, she felt no problem echoing the views of former Labor leader Arthur Calwell about keeping the swarthy and yellow races out. Multiculturalism as a policy needed to be abolished. “I believe,” she said with shrill conviction, “we are in danger of being swamped by Asians.”

Many of the views of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation were slyly and ruthlessly incorporated by the conservative government of John Howard. In the 1980s, he had himself played the anti-multicultural, anti-Asian immigration card as a failed opposition leader. His avenging successes from 1996 to 2006 turned Australia into a Hansonian simulacrum of suspicion and envy, softening her rough messages by adding sparkle to the prejudice. It was never the authentic Hanson, but it became appropriate, sensible, and necessary – at least for his political survival and belief in Comfortable Australia – to demonise undocumented boat arrivals, refugees, and asylum seekers, imprisoning them in mind-withering dungeons in the Pacific paid for by the Australian Treasury at enormous cost.

Despite this purloining of its sentiments (Hanson has views and little by way of programs), One Nation survived, a place to park votes of simmering grievance, and a forum for those who simply wanted to give Hanson what Australians call a “fair go”.  It also survived despite many of its elected representatives at both the state and federal levels failing to serve their full term without defecting to other parties or becoming rogue independents. Hanson is notoriously incapable of keeping the family together.

In 2026, survival is now becoming a burgeoning promise. The pollsters think they are on to something. A national Newspoll covering February 5-8, sampling 1,234, placed Labor at 33% of the primary vote, One Nation at 27%, the Coalition at 18%, the Greens at 12%, and other parties at 10%. For the Coalition, which previously held government from 2013 to 2022, this was particularly galling.

A poll by the Redbridge Group had similar results: One Nation at 26% and the Coalition at 19%. Among the “Gen X” cohort (46-61 year olds), One Nation was viewed “very favourably” or “most favourably” by 48%, while 30% of millennials (30-45 year olds) expressed the same view. In the week of January 26 – February 1, 2026, the Roy Morgan Poll, covering 1,401 electors, showed One Nation polling at 25%, with support for the Liberals dropping to 18% and the Nationals steady at 2.5% (a Coalition total of 20.5%).

While all the polls show that Albanese’s Labor government would be returned comfortably were an election to be held now, that very finding has been eclipsed by the excitable commentary on Hanson and her party. One could almost be forgiven for thinking a coup was in the works, heavily gestating.  Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, wrote veteran columnist Phillip Coorey for The Australian Financial Review, “has taken a sharp hit in his personal ratings, while Hanson is now the most popular political leader in Australia.” Redbridge poll director Tony Barry added that the Liberal and National parties could see their vote share plummet further, admitting that he could not be sure “how much One Nation’s vote is protest or power. But if the Liberal and National parties keep accumulating scar tissue and don’t change the story arc, it might be unsalvageable.”

There is hardly any surprise that a right-wing political force flavoured by the mantra of common sense, earthy feeling, and resentment should be doing better when the centre-right Coalition is nowhere to be seen. Acrimony is the unwanted offspring of a failing relationship, and the Liberals and Nationals have struggled to maintain their union since their calamitous defeat in May 2025. Two brief periods of acrimonious separation have followed, marked by testy disagreement over legislation on gun control and free speech. As they bicker, surveyed electors are unimpressed and bored.

Polls, with their unpardonably vague formulations of “most” or “very” favourable intention towards a party, are largely worthless as a measure of electoral grunt. It’s a cliché to point out that the only poll that matters is the one that involves ballots at the ballot box. Short of that, everything else is a drain of unnecessary oxygen. But fanning One Nation’s rise and assuming an oracular position on its prospects shows the dangers posed by the polling industry, itself never an entirely neutral force.

An argument can even be made that such an industry is itself a force for electoral interference, a meddling distortion that reduces the complexity of an electorate to a curating measure warped and framed by the questions asked. The late Christopher Hitchens, writing in Harper’s Magazine (April 1992), was firm on this point, taking issue with questions that put “a firm, no-exceptions, yes-or-no proposition to the interviewee.” Polling was a vehicle for pursuing a consensus to be exploited by the professional political class. “In alliance with the new breed of handlers, fundraisers, spin-specialists, and courtier journalists, it has become both a dangerous tranquiliser and artificial stimulant.”

Be wary, the lesson goes, of what that legendary huckster of polling, George Gallup, called the “sampling referendum”, a means of testing the electoral temperature and mood in a great room falsely resembling a town meeting.

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Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.

 

The Materialist Mind is Trying to Resolve an Existential Crisis.

by David Andersson / February 9th, 2026

We are at a crossroads of civilization, facing contradictions that cannot be solved by the same logic that created them. We are attempting to answer the future of humanity with a mindset inherited from the past.

“Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans.” — John Lennon

We live in the most materialistic epoch in history. Everything revolves around production—the making of objects. Factories, warehouses, housing developments, cars, films, videos, data centers. Even churches are increasingly objectified: they manufacture faith. Schools become factories for tomorrow’s workers and their bosses.

Political parties have become the marketing arm of these materialist structures. We only need to look at the most progressive program offered in the last mayoral race in New York City to see the problem of the contemporary “left” in a nutshell.

Zohran Mamdani was elected on a bold, affordability-focused platform. His campaign argued that New York City had become too expensive for ordinary residents. His program promised rent freezes for rent-stabilized apartments, the construction of 200,000 affordable homes, free city buses and city-owned grocery stores, expanded childcare, and a higher minimum wage – all funded through increased taxes on corporations and the wealthiest residents. Together, these proposals aimed to make life more affordable, equitable, and sustainable for working-class New Yorkers.

And yet—where are human beings in all this? Where is the space to grow, to flourish, to develop meaning?

There is no human planning in his proposals—only city planning. We design streets and housing, then push people to adapt to the environments we have built, rather than shaping those environments around the inner development of human life.

The reality is that people — from Los Angeles to Beijing — are being asked to adapt to a world shaped by a materialist mindset, one born of industrialization. But most of our suffering, confusion, and future challenges cannot be resolved by that mindset. Our future does not depend on producing more and better objects.

I have colleagues who are over 70 and continue working—not for economic reasons, but because they have nothing else to do with their lives. Suicide rates continue to rise, revealing a deeper problem. Experts cite “multiple converging factors” that lead to hopelessness. Existential distress is now framed as a mental-health issue: if you cannot adapt to the materialist world, then something is wrong with your mind.

This analysis is not only insufficient—it is wrong.

The issue is concrete and serious for humanity’s future. Imagine China after two or three generations of uninterrupted technological and economic development. What happens to human life once survival is no longer the central problem? The materialist mindset fears artificial intelligence because it threatens jobs, but it fails to see the opportunity: by freeing human beings from material alienation, we allow them to redirect their energy toward meaning, creativity, and transformation.

We love dogs—but humans are not dogs. When a dog looks into a mirror, it does not recognize itself. A human does. A human sees change, aging, loss, and continuity. A human asks, “What has happened to me?“ Countless thoughts emerge in front of a mirror because consciousness reflects on itself.

Now imagine a political movement that openly states that human beings are not born with a predefined essence or purpose—that we exist first and create meaning through our choices and actions. Imagine a candidate saying that the most important political question is the meaning of your life. Imagine schools where curricula are built around each student’s qualities, talents, and inner vocations, and how these can help transform the world.

Today, the opposite is true. Many of the most innovative businesses are created by people who drop out of institutions designed to standardize them.

The central weakness of the Left today is its inability to adapt. It remains framed by the categories of the past century: class struggle, worker unity, mass mobilization, working class, middle class. But the question people wake up with is not “Which class do I belong to?” It is “Why am I living this life, and how do I get through my day?”

When you are young, you work for money. After twenty years—and two divorces—that explanation collapses.

This is not anti-materialism, but post-material humanism.

Until we create new structures—political parties, social spaces, media, art, and forms of entertainment—that place existential meaning at the center, our era will continue to reproduce the wars and destruction of the previous one.

Perhaps this begins very simply: by spending less time watching news on television or endlessly browsing events happening a thousand miles away, and more time observing our own lives—our days passing, their repetitions and transformations—and asking what sense all of this has.

We will not resolve discrimination through laws alone, but by lived experience—by encountering the truth that I exist because you exist. The right to exist is not just a slogan; it is a fact of life.

This article was first published on Pressenza and is also available in Spanish

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David Andersson is a French-American journalist, photographer, and author who has lived in New York for over 30 years. He co-directs Pressenza International Press Agency and is the author of The White-West: A Look in the Mirror, a collection of op-eds examining the dynamics of Western identity and its impact on other cultures. Read other articles by David.