:00:00. > :00:00.improvement in US- Russian relations and will visit the US if he is
:00:00. > :00:00.invited to do so by Donald Trump. Those are the here on BBC News, in
:00:00. > :00:00.this special edition of the last year, and explore the new political
:00:07. > :00:08.landscape as we enter 2000 we examine the forces behind the
:00:09. > :00:09.momentous events of the last year, and explore the new political
:00:10. > :00:17.landscape as we enter 2017. The events of the last year have
:00:18. > :00:22.changed our world. Popular votes in the United States and United Kingdom
:00:23. > :00:30.have shaken the West. Both have been an angry backlash against
:00:31. > :00:33.decades-old policies. Who will pay for the the events of the last year
:00:34. > :00:35.have changed our world. Popular votes in the United States and
:00:36. > :00:37.United Kingdom have shaken the West. Both have been an angry backlash
:00:38. > :00:43.against decades-old policies. Who will pay for. The rising tide of
:00:44. > :00:47.antiestablishment feeling is found its voice in social media. As the
:00:48. > :00:52.new means of communicating propelled us into an age where fact no longer
:00:53. > :01:00.matters? Post-truce is the word of the year. What does it mean? What is
:01:01. > :01:03.new is the speed at which some of these false and get distributed, and
:01:04. > :01:11.the willingness of people to embrace them. And what does the future look
:01:12. > :01:13.like? Is Britain's vote to leave the EU the beginning of a wider European
:01:14. > :01:31.unravelling? In the pale winter dawn of Western
:01:32. > :01:45.Pennsylvania the Deer hunting season has begun. Chuck Eriksson has been
:01:46. > :01:50.shooting deer for 40 years. They start hunting here as early as eight
:01:51. > :01:59.years old. Over the years it has changed. We have gone from being
:02:00. > :02:05.meat seekers to trophy hunters. It was a bad day if we saw 100 deer.
:02:06. > :02:21.Now it is a good day if we see ten. That is a buck. Oh, yeah. Damn! They
:02:22. > :02:24.got spooked when they saw us. This is Donald Trump country now.
:02:25. > :02:32.Blue-collar, plain speaking, patriotic. It is a world that the
:02:33. > :02:39.other America, prosperous, big city, liberal, scarcely recognise us.
:02:40. > :02:45.How widespread is this? Is everybody in this part of the state involved
:02:46. > :02:53.in deer hunting? 25%-30% of the population probably. Chuck used to
:02:54. > :02:56.work in the coal industry. But coal and steel were swept away in the age
:02:57. > :03:04.of globalised trade and open borders. When Donald Trump promised
:03:05. > :03:08.to bring those industries back Chuck started encouraging people to
:03:09. > :03:15.register to vote, knowing they would support the man promising to make
:03:16. > :03:17.America great again. Our area is really dependent upon the natural
:03:18. > :03:21.resources that we are not hard to get out of the ground now, to be
:03:22. > :03:26.able to produce the steel were used to in our area. It has really
:03:27. > :03:31.declined and it is to do a lot with regulations that have been enacted
:03:32. > :03:36.over the last 40 years. How much of a part has competition from overseas
:03:37. > :03:41.plate? As far as the steel industry goes? The competition overseas has
:03:42. > :03:45.been tough, but it is not because we cannot do it for the price that they
:03:46. > :03:49.can do over there, we can. It is that we have extra add-ons with
:03:50. > :03:54.employee cost and so forth, that they do not have, that is the
:03:55. > :03:58.problem for the competition. So do you think Donald Trump can bring
:03:59. > :04:06.back coal and steel to this part of the state? I sure do. I have a lot
:04:07. > :04:09.of hope for the next four years. Everybody needs to sit back, take a
:04:10. > :04:12.deep breath, give him a chance to make things happen. Why is it that
:04:13. > :04:16.parties of the right, not just your butt on both sides of the Atlantic,
:04:17. > :04:29.have emerged as champions of the working class? The rust belt state
:04:30. > :04:31.of Pennsylvania, a four hour Drive from New York City, has
:04:32. > :04:42.traditionally voted Democrat. This year Donald Trump voiced the pent-up
:04:43. > :04:48.feelings from decades of decline, and he won. His promise to reverse
:04:49. > :04:51.this industrial dereliction is a retreat to economic nationalism. It
:04:52. > :05:03.turns the page on 40 years of Western orthodoxy. It challenges the
:05:04. > :05:08.decades long consensus established by the US president, Ronald Reagan,
:05:09. > :05:14.and UK Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. They radically reshaped
:05:15. > :05:26.the economy to embrace free markets, free trade, deregulation, and
:05:27. > :05:31.competition. The economic revolution that Britain and America went
:05:32. > :05:35.through in the 1980s did make both countries richer, in the sense that
:05:36. > :05:41.the overall, aggregate wealth grew. It was not to matter that the wealth
:05:42. > :05:46.is unevenly distributed. Greater wealth at the top trickle down and a
:05:47. > :05:51.rising tide would lift all boats. Well, not all boats were lifted.
:05:52. > :05:56.Places like this in Britain and America got left behind and places
:05:57. > :06:02.like this voted for Donald Trump and voted for Brexit. There is an irony.
:06:03. > :06:04.The countries that pursued the privatising, deregulating,
:06:05. > :06:08.globalisation agenda most vigorously, and now the countries
:06:09. > :06:15.that have suffered an angry, popular, electoral backlash.
:06:16. > :06:18.What do they think now, those reforms of the 1980s, and pushed
:06:19. > :06:24.with Margaret Thatcher for free markets? Did trickle down economics
:06:25. > :06:28.work? It was really a sort of transatlantic borrowing from Ronald
:06:29. > :06:35.Reagan. He believed the rising tide would lift all boats. It was
:06:36. > :06:45.overoptimistic. It failed to provide fresh jobs for voters in Michigan,
:06:46. > :06:50.West Virginia, Ohio, just as it has failed to provide jobs in Ayrshire,
:06:51. > :06:57.and other parts that have suffered from the decline of heavy industry.
:06:58. > :07:03.2016 has thrown the political left in both the US and the UK into
:07:04. > :07:07.crisis. For the US Democrats and the UK Labour Party were once the
:07:08. > :07:13.authentic voices of working class aspiration. Once the parties of
:07:14. > :07:16.social justice. The Franklin Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, DC
:07:17. > :07:23.recalls a Democratic president who used the power of the state to
:07:24. > :07:26.promote social equality. This was a president who presided over a huge
:07:27. > :07:30.expansion in the power and role of the federal government, of the
:07:31. > :07:36.state, in American society. In social of care, health care
:07:37. > :07:42.provision, job creation, rebuilding America's shattered industry. It was
:07:43. > :07:45.a time when they left in American politics, the Democratic party, was
:07:46. > :07:49.absolutely aligned with the interests of blue-collar America.
:07:50. > :07:59.What happened? How did the party becomes so detached from its
:08:00. > :08:03.working-class base? Things are going badly for the lower middle class and
:08:04. > :08:08.working class in America, there has been a huge migration of wealth to
:08:09. > :08:13.the 1% while everybody else is working two jobs, scrambling, barely
:08:14. > :08:16.getting by. Hillary was seen by many people, including myself, as a
:08:17. > :08:22.member of the new liberal, globalised establishment. I would
:08:23. > :08:26.have preferred her to be president. But there are things about
:08:27. > :08:31.globalisation, being wholly owned by Wall Street and Goldman Sachs, that
:08:32. > :08:39.scares me also. Given that reality, it is no surprise in that Donald
:08:40. > :08:42.Trump was elected. Two America has emerged from the bitter election
:08:43. > :08:49.campaign. Each listen to its own separate sources of news, believing
:08:50. > :08:54.its own separate truths. The American media landscape is now so
:08:55. > :08:57.fragmented that you can choose your news and never have to expose
:08:58. > :09:03.yourself to the views of people who disagree with you. This is something
:09:04. > :09:09.that appeared frequently on social media. And it is a quote attributed
:09:10. > :09:14.to Donald Trump, it says, people magazine, 1988, and the quote is, if
:09:15. > :09:17.I was to run I would run as a Republican, they are the dumbest
:09:18. > :09:23.people in the country, they will believe anything.
:09:24. > :09:28.It sounds authentic. It sounds like the real Donald Trump. But he never
:09:29. > :09:33.said it. It is a made up quote. This is a fake news website. The
:09:34. > :09:37.headline, Pope Francis shocks the world, endorses Donald Trump for
:09:38. > :09:42.president, releases a statement. That was shared a million times on
:09:43. > :09:46.social media. With a long quote from Pope Francis. But there was some
:09:47. > :09:52.fact checking, some debunking of this. What happened to that? The
:09:53. > :09:59.debunking of the fake piece was shared a 30,000 times. What is the
:10:00. > :10:02.value of fact checking now in this new environment in which we are
:10:03. > :10:06.working, is there a new urgency to this? Fact checking is essential to
:10:07. > :10:12.help people discern what is true or not. I remember when Jimmy Carter
:10:13. > :10:16.would give a speech, the tradition was, on the first daily newspaper
:10:17. > :10:21.wrote an article, here is what the president said in his speech. Then
:10:22. > :10:26.the next day, there would be an article, here is the reaction to the
:10:27. > :10:32.president's speech. And in today's media landscape, all those elements,
:10:33. > :10:36.the speech, the reaction, the analysis, it is happening in a
:10:37. > :10:41.tweet, the moment the speech is given. So there is no real Time for
:10:42. > :10:49.reflection. Just for reaction. And dismissal.
:10:50. > :10:55.Donald Trump's appeal to blue-collar America finds its British echo here,
:10:56. > :11:02.in the old industrial heartlands of England. These communities have been
:11:03. > :11:11.Labour voting for close to a century. But in June they voted to
:11:12. > :11:15.leave the EU. The right wing Ukip believes that it, and not labour, is
:11:16. > :11:22.the authentic voice of working-class experience. The lack of jobs, the
:11:23. > :11:26.lack of opportunities for our young ones, it is absolutely horrendous,
:11:27. > :11:31.and with the mass migration and of the Labour Party, under Tony Blair
:11:32. > :11:36.in particular, all of this was compressed. It is just a case that
:11:37. > :11:43.Ukip fills in the gap where Labour once was. For working class. During
:11:44. > :11:48.the Brexit a referendum on the official leave campaigners said that
:11:49. > :11:53.the UK sent ?350 million per week to Brussels and it would be better
:11:54. > :12:03.spent on the NHS. They painted it on the side of a campaign bus. Critics
:12:04. > :12:09.said it was a lie. This is what that boss looks like now. New livery, new
:12:10. > :12:20.colours. The pledge to fund health care is gone. Just as it has gone
:12:21. > :12:25.from the national discourse. Is this the UK version of so-called
:12:26. > :12:28.post-truth politics? We knew exactly who made the claim written on the
:12:29. > :12:33.side of the sparse, they were challenged every day on television,
:12:34. > :12:37.there is still a shared public reality in British politics, a
:12:38. > :12:41.common square where news is generated and consumed. But it has
:12:42. > :12:47.gone in America, and it could go here too. The dangers to democracy
:12:48. > :12:51.are obvious. If you want to have a vision of the future, look to
:12:52. > :12:55.Russia, were actually one of these things under Vladimir Putin has been
:12:56. > :13:00.about creating a regime where nobody can really know anything and keeping
:13:01. > :13:03.people in a fog of uncertainty, somebody trying to create an
:13:04. > :13:07.atmosphere in which there are no experts, nobody can know anything,
:13:08. > :13:12.so you better that a strong man take charge and governed. That is not
:13:13. > :13:17.great for democracy. Terrible for democracy and terrible for
:13:18. > :13:27.journalism. The combined victories of Brexit and Donald Trump are felt
:13:28. > :13:33.across Europe. The Christmas markets of Prague are a glittering symbol of
:13:34. > :13:36.a remarkable transformation. From decades of dictatorship and
:13:37. > :13:39.stagnation to one of the fastest-growing economies in Europe.
:13:40. > :13:51.The Czech Republic's wealth has more than quadrupled in a generation. It
:13:52. > :13:53.is only 27 years since the people who overthrew Soviet-backed
:13:54. > :14:00.communism in what came to be known as the Velvet Revolution. Somewhere
:14:01. > :14:06.in this crowd of 400,000 is a much younger than me. Reporting those
:14:07. > :14:10.tumultuous events. As news filtered out of the changes
:14:11. > :14:16.from the dark suburban building where the Central committee were
:14:17. > :14:19.meeting in crisis, we were with the crowd... There are clearly distinct
:14:20. > :14:23.crowds forming now in the Square, one in front of me, chanting slogans
:14:24. > :14:32.that have become familiar over the last week... Flags of the Czech
:14:33. > :14:35.Republic are being raised all round. And the grandeur of the National
:14:36. > :14:50.Museum in front of me, lit up in the night sky.
:14:51. > :14:55.It was a really thrilling thing to stand here beneath that balcony and
:14:56. > :15:00.watch an entire nation rise up to take back control of its own
:15:01. > :15:03.destiny. It was not just about democratic transitions, at the heart
:15:04. > :15:07.of the revolution lay the idea that they were returning the country to
:15:08. > :15:18.work properly belong to, to the heart of Europe. Has that
:15:19. > :15:26.pro-European sentiment survived the intervening years? Eastern Europe
:15:27. > :15:35.has its own rust belt. This factory outside Prague once employed 20,000
:15:36. > :15:41.people. Now it has 300. Scepticism about the European Union is on the
:15:42. > :15:46.rise across the continent. Anti-EU parties are emboldened by the Brexit
:15:47. > :15:53.victory in the UK. It extends to the very top of the ruling elites here.
:15:54. > :16:01.To speak about independence is a joke. We wanted to be integrated in
:16:02. > :16:05.the EU. But not unified. I think that the role of the national
:16:06. > :16:11.government is now rather limited, most of the decisions come from
:16:12. > :16:19.Brussels, not from Prague. So this is not independence. Despite the
:16:20. > :16:23.decline of its heavy industry the Czech Republic has one of the lowest
:16:24. > :16:28.unemployment rates in Europe. Trade with the single market has given in
:16:29. > :16:32.the country's economy far more than it has taken away. Public opinion,
:16:33. > :16:39.for now, seems committed to staying in the EU. This man has worked at
:16:40. > :16:42.this plant since the early 1970s. Do you think people have become
:16:43. > :16:44.disillusioned with the European Union since the very optimistic days
:16:45. > :17:14.of 27 years ago? If there was a referendum now, do
:17:15. > :17:16.you think that Czech people would vote to stay in the European Union,
:17:17. > :17:47.or to leave? Half a dozen EU countries have
:17:48. > :17:52.elections scheduled in the coming year. The contest will be dominated
:17:53. > :17:56.by the question of Europe, as far right-wing Eurosceptic parties ride
:17:57. > :18:00.the wave of popular discontent. Among them the National front in
:18:01. > :18:06.France, and the Freedom party in the Netherlands. One by one in 2016,
:18:07. > :18:11.four of the five leaders of the Western world depart the
:18:12. > :18:16.international stage. President Obama, Francois France, Matthew
:18:17. > :18:29.Renzi of Italy, and David Cameron of the UK. Leaving just one standing.
:18:30. > :18:34.For 70 years we thought that the leadership of the Western world was
:18:35. > :18:45.essentially English-speaking, rooted as it has been in the transatlantic
:18:46. > :18:50.partnership. That assumption has been challenged for the first time
:18:51. > :18:55.and it leaves leadership of the pre-Brexit interpretation of what
:18:56. > :18:59.the democratic West should be to Berlin, which is a new challenge and
:19:00. > :19:04.responsibility for Germany, how to lead in Europe, without appearing to
:19:05. > :19:08.dominate. Because the idea of German domination still brings up too many
:19:09. > :19:12.ghosts, for the Germans as much as anywhere else. Germans are
:19:13. > :19:17.incredibly neurotic about world or European leadership. They don't like
:19:18. > :19:22.to think of themselves as having a foreign policy. The idea that
:19:23. > :19:24.Germany would somehow lead is a very disturbing for many Germans. So I
:19:25. > :19:29.don't think they are prepared for this moment at all, although things
:19:30. > :19:38.in Germany are changing, and there is beginning to slowly be a sense
:19:39. > :19:42.that if we don't do it, nobody will. Germany remains in Europe's economic
:19:43. > :19:49.powerhouse. A manufacturing economy and an exporting one. This factory
:19:50. > :19:52.on the German - Czech border sells pianos around the world, because
:19:53. > :19:57.they are among the best in the world. This is German strength.
:19:58. > :20:08.High-tech, high quality, high end products. But Germany has drawn its
:20:09. > :20:12.European neighbours around itself, locking its own destiny into theirs.
:20:13. > :20:17.Building the EU has been the German way of separating itself from its
:20:18. > :20:23.own past. It has been Germany's act of contrition and redemption. The
:20:24. > :20:28.past, our history, it is something that really makes us ashamed. On the
:20:29. > :20:37.other hand, we have to look forward. Our generation, we are focusing on
:20:38. > :20:43.the pluralism. If you walk the streets of Berlin you will listen to
:20:44. > :20:50.many languages. You will see many people. And we all live together,
:20:51. > :20:55.very, you know, in harmony. I feel European. I don't feel like a
:20:56. > :21:00.German. There is so much that joins as an brings us together, more than
:21:01. > :21:04.what brings us apart. It seems that Germans want their country to be
:21:05. > :21:07.strong and successful. But they don't want their country to be too
:21:08. > :21:16.powerful in Europe, too dominant. Is that true? That is at least what we
:21:17. > :21:21.all try... Let's say, what our government tries to be. We all try
:21:22. > :21:24.to be moderate. We try to integrate. If you look at our government,
:21:25. > :21:29.currently, that is what they are going to do. That is what they are
:21:30. > :21:36.doing. Trying to integrate. And we are also try to integrate. Our
:21:37. > :21:41.history reflects on us. In our daily actions. So integration is important
:21:42. > :21:49.for us, European integration, it is a big achievement for us. This has
:21:50. > :21:54.been years since I was a child... But for the first time since the
:21:55. > :21:58.Second World War 2017 will see an American president who is actively
:21:59. > :22:06.hostile to the idea of European integration. Hostile to open
:22:07. > :22:09.borders. And at home, Donald Trump's victory has unleashed a huge
:22:10. > :22:12.expectations. You are excited about what you think
:22:13. > :22:17.you can achieve? For the first time in eight years I
:22:18. > :22:23.am very excited. I think we can really see an industrial revolution
:22:24. > :22:28.in our country again, and a building revolution, and I don't have to
:22:29. > :22:36.worry about inflation. This is the re-industrialisation of America, for
:22:37. > :22:41.you? I hope so, yes. 2016 has changed the shape of our world. It
:22:42. > :22:45.has ended decades old assumptions about the values of the liberal
:22:46. > :22:51.democratic West. We know what we are in transition from, not yet what we
:22:52. > :22:55.are in transition to.