How White-Collar Workers Could Fuel a New Populist Movement [View all]

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/10/30/populist-left-ai-anxiety-00628379

In the same way that blue-collar workers turned in the 2010s to populists on the right ... the threat of being replaced by AI increasingly become a factor propelling voters toward a new cadre of populist politicians. But this time it will be white-collar workers driving the charge, and many will turn not to the right but to the left.

Far-left populists are clearly onto this. Taking a leaf out of their far-right counterparts’ playbooks, they have begun to shape an economic narrative that overtly taps into the anxieties of white-collar workers. A narrative which positions the architects and beneficiaries of the AI revolution as the enemy rather than immigrants; and pits the middle class against not the “mainstream media,” the “government” or the so-called “deep state,” but a demonised tech elite: Silicon Valley billionaires and the faceless corporations that replace human labor with algorithms.

In the same way that immigration has become a lightning rod for contemporary politics ... expect AI to become one over the next few years, especially around the issue of jobs.

A white-collar uprising is looming, and mainstream politicians had better be ready for it, armed with both concrete plans and compassion if they want to remain in office. If they are not, those on the more extreme ends of the political spectrum — particularly on the left — are likely to displace them.