In Australia, we are starting to see this growing sense of social alienation. My colleagues and I recently found that disenchantment with politics and our democratic system is on the rise, part of a long-term trend of disillusionment in which individuals see governments as more of a threat than a benefit to their lives. Echoing the sentiment that helped elect Donald Trump and cement Brexit, many Australians are turning against their country’s elites.

At the same time, progressive politics itself has become more elitist. Elements of the left have adopted what the Australian writer Jeff Sparrow calls a “smug politics,” one that looks down upon the working class. “Rather than treating working people as an agency for change or a constituency to be served,” Sparrow writes, progressives have “publicly declared them a problem to be solved.” This paternalistic worldview scolds workers for their failures, and says that a strong state is needed to tell them how to live their lives.

This trend has become more prominent during the pandemic. After the initial success of Australia’s response in 2020—we suffered far fewer hospitalizations and deaths than the United States and Europe—multiple cities this year have been plunged into months-long lockdowns, many of which have been harsher than those of the year before. Today in Melbourne, more than 80 percent of the eligible population has had the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, yet a nighttime curfew is still in place, outdoor gatherings are limited, and city residents cannot travel more than 15 kilometers (about nine miles) from their homes. Drinking alcohol outdoors, which is legal in Australia, has also been banned. Although the state has eased some of these rules, other restrictions, such as the bans on outdoor drinking and workplace curbs such as those in the construction industry, are harsher than last year’s regulations.