The Year the World Changed Our World

improvement in US- Russian relations and will visit the US if he is

invited to do so by Donald Trump. Those are the here on BBC News, in

this special edition of the last year, and explore the new political

landscape as we enter 2000 we examine the forces behind the

momentous events of the last year, and explore the new political

landscape as we enter 2017. The events of the last year have

changed our world. Popular votes in the United States and United Kingdom

have shaken the West. Both have been an angry backlash against

decades-old policies. Who will pay for the the events of the last year

have changed our world. Popular votes in the United States and

United Kingdom have shaken the West. Both have been an angry backlash

against decades-old policies. Who will pay for. The rising tide of

antiestablishment feeling is found its voice in social media. As the

new means of communicating propelled us into an age where fact no longer

matters? Post-truce is the word of the year. What does it mean? What is

new is the speed at which some of these false and get distributed, and

the willingness of people to embrace them. And what does the future look

like? Is Britain's vote to leave the EU the beginning of a wider European

unravelling? In the pale winter dawn of Western

Pennsylvania the Deer hunting season has begun. Chuck Eriksson has been

shooting deer for 40 years. They start hunting here as early as eight

years old. Over the years it has changed. We have gone from being

meat seekers to trophy hunters. It was a bad day if we saw 100 deer.

Now it is a good day if we see ten. That is a buck. Oh, yeah. Damn! They

got spooked when they saw us. This is Donald Trump country now.

Blue-collar, plain speaking, patriotic. It is a world that the

other America, prosperous, big city, liberal, scarcely recognise us.

How widespread is this? Is everybody in this part of the state involved

in deer hunting? 25%-30% of the population probably. Chuck used to

work in the coal industry. But coal and steel were swept away in the age

of globalised trade and open borders. When Donald Trump promised

to bring those industries back Chuck started encouraging people to

register to vote, knowing they would support the man promising to make

America great again. Our area is really dependent upon the natural

resources that we are not hard to get out of the ground now, to be

able to produce the steel were used to in our area. It has really

declined and it is to do a lot with regulations that have been enacted

over the last 40 years. How much of a part has competition from overseas

plate? As far as the steel industry goes? The competition overseas has

been tough, but it is not because we cannot do it for the price that they

can do over there, we can. It is that we have extra add-ons with

employee cost and so forth, that they do not have, that is the

problem for the competition. So do you think Donald Trump can bring

back coal and steel to this part of the state? I sure do. I have a lot

of hope for the next four years. Everybody needs to sit back, take a

deep breath, give him a chance to make things happen. Why is it that

parties of the right, not just your butt on both sides of the Atlantic,

have emerged as champions of the working class? The rust belt state

of Pennsylvania, a four hour Drive from New York City, has

traditionally voted Democrat. This year Donald Trump voiced the pent-up

feelings from decades of decline, and he won. His promise to reverse

this industrial dereliction is a retreat to economic nationalism. It

turns the page on 40 years of Western orthodoxy. It challenges the

decades long consensus established by the US president, Ronald Reagan,

and UK Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. They radically reshaped

the economy to embrace free markets, free trade, deregulation, and

competition. The economic revolution that Britain and America went

through in the 1980s did make both countries richer, in the sense that

the overall, aggregate wealth grew. It was not to matter that the wealth

is unevenly distributed. Greater wealth at the top trickle down and a

rising tide would lift all boats. Well, not all boats were lifted.

Places like this in Britain and America got left behind and places

like this voted for Donald Trump and voted for Brexit. There is an irony.

The countries that pursued the privatising, deregulating,

globalisation agenda most vigorously, and now the countries

that have suffered an angry, popular, electoral backlash.

What do they think now, those reforms of the 1980s, and pushed

with Margaret Thatcher for free markets? Did trickle down economics

work? It was really a sort of transatlantic borrowing from Ronald

Reagan. He believed the rising tide would lift all boats. It was

overoptimistic. It failed to provide fresh jobs for voters in Michigan,

West Virginia, Ohio, just as it has failed to provide jobs in Ayrshire,

and other parts that have suffered from the decline of heavy industry.

2016 has thrown the political left in both the US and the UK into

crisis. For the US Democrats and the UK Labour Party were once the

authentic voices of working class aspiration. Once the parties of

social justice. The Franklin Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, DC

recalls a Democratic president who used the power of the state to

promote social equality. This was a president who presided over a huge

expansion in the power and role of the federal government, of the

state, in American society. In social of care, health care

provision, job creation, rebuilding America's shattered industry. It was

a time when they left in American politics, the Democratic party, was

absolutely aligned with the interests of blue-collar America.

What happened? How did the party becomes so detached from its

working-class base? Things are going badly for the lower middle class and

working class in America, there has been a huge migration of wealth to

the 1% while everybody else is working two jobs, scrambling, barely

getting by. Hillary was seen by many people, including myself, as a

member of the new liberal, globalised establishment. I would

have preferred her to be president. But there are things about

globalisation, being wholly owned by Wall Street and Goldman Sachs, that

scares me also. Given that reality, it is no surprise in that Donald

Trump was elected. Two America has emerged from the bitter election

campaign. Each listen to its own separate sources of news, believing

its own separate truths. The American media landscape is now so

fragmented that you can choose your news and never have to expose

yourself to the views of people who disagree with you. This is something

that appeared frequently on social media. And it is a quote attributed

to Donald Trump, it says, people magazine, 1988, and the quote is, if

I was to run I would run as a Republican, they are the dumbest

people in the country, they will believe anything.

It sounds authentic. It sounds like the real Donald Trump. But he never

said it. It is a made up quote. This is a fake news website. The

headline, Pope Francis shocks the world, endorses Donald Trump for

president, releases a statement. That was shared a million times on

social media. With a long quote from Pope Francis. But there was some

fact checking, some debunking of this. What happened to that? The

debunking of the fake piece was shared a 30,000 times. What is the

value of fact checking now in this new environment in which we are

working, is there a new urgency to this? Fact checking is essential to

help people discern what is true or not. I remember when Jimmy Carter

would give a speech, the tradition was, on the first daily newspaper

wrote an article, here is what the president said in his speech. Then

the next day, there would be an article, here is the reaction to the

president's speech. And in today's media landscape, all those elements,

the speech, the reaction, the analysis, it is happening in a

tweet, the moment the speech is given. So there is no real Time for

reflection. Just for reaction. And dismissal.

Donald Trump's appeal to blue-collar America finds its British echo here,

in the old industrial heartlands of England. These communities have been

Labour voting for close to a century. But in June they voted to

leave the EU. The right wing Ukip believes that it, and not labour, is

the authentic voice of working-class experience. The lack of jobs, the

lack of opportunities for our young ones, it is absolutely horrendous,

and with the mass migration and of the Labour Party, under Tony Blair

in particular, all of this was compressed. It is just a case that

Ukip fills in the gap where Labour once was. For working class. During

the Brexit a referendum on the official leave campaigners said that

the UK sent ?350 million per week to Brussels and it would be better

spent on the NHS. They painted it on the side of a campaign bus. Critics

said it was a lie. This is what that boss looks like now. New livery, new

colours. The pledge to fund health care is gone. Just as it has gone

from the national discourse. Is this the UK version of so-called

post-truth politics? We knew exactly who made the claim written on the

side of the sparse, they were challenged every day on television,

there is still a shared public reality in British politics, a

common square where news is generated and consumed. But it has

gone in America, and it could go here too. The dangers to democracy

are obvious. If you want to have a vision of the future, look to

Russia, were actually one of these things under Vladimir Putin has been

about creating a regime where nobody can really know anything and keeping

people in a fog of uncertainty, somebody trying to create an

atmosphere in which there are no experts, nobody can know anything,

so you better that a strong man take charge and governed. That is not

great for democracy. Terrible for democracy and terrible for

journalism. The combined victories of Brexit and Donald Trump are felt

across Europe. The Christmas markets of Prague are a glittering symbol of

a remarkable transformation. From decades of dictatorship and

stagnation to one of the fastest-growing economies in Europe.

The Czech Republic's wealth has more than quadrupled in a generation. It

is only 27 years since the people who overthrew Soviet-backed

communism in what came to be known as the Velvet Revolution. Somewhere

in this crowd of 400,000 is a much younger than me. Reporting those

tumultuous events. As news filtered out of the changes

from the dark suburban building where the Central committee were

meeting in crisis, we were with the crowd... There are clearly distinct

crowds forming now in the Square, one in front of me, chanting slogans

that have become familiar over the last week... Flags of the Czech

Republic are being raised all round. And the grandeur of the National

Museum in front of me, lit up in the night sky.

It was a really thrilling thing to stand here beneath that balcony and

watch an entire nation rise up to take back control of its own

destiny. It was not just about democratic transitions, at the heart

of the revolution lay the idea that they were returning the country to

work properly belong to, to the heart of Europe. Has that

pro-European sentiment survived the intervening years? Eastern Europe

has its own rust belt. This factory outside Prague once employed 20,000

people. Now it has 300. Scepticism about the European Union is on the

rise across the continent. Anti-EU parties are emboldened by the Brexit

victory in the UK. It extends to the very top of the ruling elites here.

To speak about independence is a joke. We wanted to be integrated in

the EU. But not unified. I think that the role of the national

government is now rather limited, most of the decisions come from

Brussels, not from Prague. So this is not independence. Despite the

decline of its heavy industry the Czech Republic has one of the lowest

unemployment rates in Europe. Trade with the single market has given in

the country's economy far more than it has taken away. Public opinion,

for now, seems committed to staying in the EU. This man has worked at

this plant since the early 1970s. Do you think people have become

disillusioned with the European Union since the very optimistic days

of 27 years ago? If there was a referendum now, do

you think that Czech people would vote to stay in the European Union,

or to leave? Half a dozen EU countries have

elections scheduled in the coming year. The contest will be dominated

by the question of Europe, as far right-wing Eurosceptic parties ride

the wave of popular discontent. Among them the National front in

France, and the Freedom party in the Netherlands. One by one in 2016,

four of the five leaders of the Western world depart the

international stage. President Obama, Francois France, Matthew

Renzi of Italy, and David Cameron of the UK. Leaving just one standing.

For 70 years we thought that the leadership of the Western world was

essentially English-speaking, rooted as it has been in the transatlantic

partnership. That assumption has been challenged for the first time

and it leaves leadership of the pre-Brexit interpretation of what

the democratic West should be to Berlin, which is a new challenge and

responsibility for Germany, how to lead in Europe, without appearing to

dominate. Because the idea of German domination still brings up too many

ghosts, for the Germans as much as anywhere else. Germans are

incredibly neurotic about world or European leadership. They don't like

to think of themselves as having a foreign policy. The idea that

Germany would somehow lead is a very disturbing for many Germans. So I

don't think they are prepared for this moment at all, although things

in Germany are changing, and there is beginning to slowly be a sense

that if we don't do it, nobody will. Germany remains in Europe's economic

powerhouse. A manufacturing economy and an exporting one. This factory

on the German - Czech border sells pianos around the world, because

they are among the best in the world. This is German strength.

High-tech, high quality, high end products. But Germany has drawn its

European neighbours around itself, locking its own destiny into theirs.

Building the EU has been the German way of separating itself from its

own past. It has been Germany's act of contrition and redemption. The

past, our history, it is something that really makes us ashamed. On the

other hand, we have to look forward. Our generation, we are focusing on

the pluralism. If you walk the streets of Berlin you will listen to

many languages. You will see many people. And we all live together,

very, you know, in harmony. I feel European. I don't feel like a

German. There is so much that joins as an brings us together, more than

what brings us apart. It seems that Germans want their country to be

strong and successful. But they don't want their country to be too

powerful in Europe, too dominant. Is that true? That is at least what we

all try... Let's say, what our government tries to be. We all try

to be moderate. We try to integrate. If you look at our government,

currently, that is what they are going to do. That is what they are

doing. Trying to integrate. And we are also try to integrate. Our

history reflects on us. In our daily actions. So integration is important

for us, European integration, it is a big achievement for us. This has

been years since I was a child... But for the first time since the

Second World War 2017 will see an American president who is actively

hostile to the idea of European integration. Hostile to open

borders. And at home, Donald Trump's victory has unleashed a huge

expectations. You are excited about what you think

you can achieve? For the first time in eight years I

am very excited. I think we can really see an industrial revolution

in our country again, and a building revolution, and I don't have to

worry about inflation. This is the re-industrialisation of America, for

you? I hope so, yes. 2016 has changed the shape of our world. It

has ended decades old assumptions about the values of the liberal

democratic West. We know what we are in transition from, not yet what we

are in transition to.