In his forward to a new book that will be published by the Vatican in September, Pope Francis reaffirmed his opposition to populism such as that represented by President Trump in America and Matteo Salvini in Italy, declaring that organized citizens in action are the “antidote to populism.”
“The fear today is a fear of manipulation of civilizations, the creating agent of xenophobia and racism,” the socialist Pope wrote in The Eruption of Popular Movements: The Rerum Novarum of Our Time. He denounced “the politics of the false prophets who exploit fear and desperation and who preach a selfish well-being and a false security.”
“The antidote to populism and political showmanship lies in the efforts of organized citizens,” Francis added, “particularly those who… fight to survive the darkness of exclusion.”
Of course, it isn’t the populists exploiting fear and desperation and the darkness of exclusion, but the identity-politics, open-borders globalists of the Left.