The rapidly increasing popularity of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party in Australia mirrors Donald Trump’s success within the Republican Party in the USA and of Nigel Farage’s Reform Party in the UK.

The right wing political phenomenon is clearly a protest vote against failure of the longstanding political parties to address rising social unrest, and has been reported as such. However, rarely has it been sheeted home to the parties having rewarded extreme asset speculation at the expense of the general citizenry.

There’s a reason for pulling up short in the political commentary, of course. The American economist, Henry George wrote about it in “Progress and Poverty”, “Social Problems” and “The Science of Political Economy”: it offends powerful vested interests. The first-mentioned of these provides a hint in the sub-title: “An inquiry into the cause of industrial depressions and of increase of want with increase of wealth …. The Remedy“.

We’re not really into remedies for the many ills stemming from asset speculation, though. We prefer not to offend banking, real estate and mainstream media interests, such that we repeat these cycles of boom and bust every eighteen years, nominating them as “the natural business cycle“.

Napoleon and the French Revolution were products of the eventual finality of a repetitive series of these so-called business cycles; namely, a severe financial depression. Adolf Hitler rose to fame as a potential saviour in the wake of the Great Depression, in much the same way, if in a far more radical manner, than Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and Pauline Hanson’s response to the current preliminaries.

The famous Austrian foreign correspondent, Bruno Heilig, recounted Adolf Hitler’s failure to apply Henry George’s remedy to Germany’s issues aring from WWI and the Great Depression. As this also led to persecution of Jews and to WWII, we really do need to learn the lessons of history!