The April 19 edition

Right-wing populist leaders and lobby groups have proved to be an unmitigated disaster for the West. The body-blow of Brexit will result in the UK having three million fewer jobs and 32 per cent lower investment by 2035, according to Cambridge Econometrics (even Mr Brexit himself, Nigel Farage, has admitted it’s been a failure). In just three months, Donald Trump has taken a sledgehammer to America’s most revered institutions, turned the US economy into a tariff circus and wantonly undermined its democracy (by attacking the judiciary, tearing down election security guardrails and appointing clueless cronies) to consolidate his power. The playbook of these groups trumpets “free speech” (but you must agree with their world view) and a discriminatory, “anti-woke” agenda. In our cover story this week, Tim Elliott rips the propaganda veneer from Australia’s Advance, a political lobby group which disingenuously claims to be a “grassroots” organisation with no links to US right-wing think-tanks. – Greg Callaghan, acting editor