GOP FRONTRUNNER DONALD Trump has built much of his 2016 presidential campaign on speaking his mind, and he’s had quite a lot to say during the current election cycle. At some events, he’s garnered support. During others, he’s sparked backlash.

But with all the theatrics and showmanship that go along with The Donald, it’s easy for non-supporters to dismiss much of what he says as white noise – even when he happens to say something particularly thought-provoking. Such was the case last month when Trump sprinkled a medieval reference into an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday morning program.

“All I know is this: We’re living in Medieval times,” Trump said. “We’re living in an unbelievably dangerous and horrible world.”

Granted, this was the same show during which Trump speculated that the world would be a better place if ousted leaders Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gadhafi were still in charge of Iraq and Libya, respectively. So it was easy to miss the medieval reference. But it was an interesting point nonetheless. Is the violence and economic inequality that pervades the world today analogous to the peasant uprisings and rampant warfare many associate with the Middle Ages?

Gini Graham Scott, an author, Huffington Post columnist, film producer and chief executive of Changemakers Publishing and Writing, explores this question in her recently published book, “The New Middle Ages.” Scott compares today’s widespread economic inequality to what was seen in Europe hundreds of years ago, drawing parallels between 2015’s top 1 percent of earners and medieval aristocracies. She says everything from the Fight for $15 movement to the rise in non-career politicians running for president to the formation of the Islamic State group are movements rooted in unresolved inequality not entirely dissimilar to what was seen during the Middle Ages.

U.S. News recently spoke with Scott to hear more about her book and how her thesis applies to current events. Excerpts:

You’ve drawn parallels between the political and economic polarization of the Middle Ages and what’s going on today. What’s your thesis? How did you end up on this topic?

I had been watching a number of these series on television that dealt with the Middle Ages and the Tudors and the monarchies. And I just started seeing the lifestyles of the very wealthy compared to the peasants, and it occurred to me that there were parallels. It was right around the time the Occupy Wall Street movement was very active, and since then other protests have built up.

But it just inspired me to think about how it was so much like what’s going on today with people who have these very rich lifestyles like the Kardashians. That seemed to be driving the conversation. You look at the news, and the lifestyles of the rich and famous are everywhere.

There were such stark differences in the lifestyles of the very wealthy then, as you see now. Their recreations were different. You had the jousting tournaments for the wealthy, and if the knights died, it didn’t really matter to them. They got really famous when they did well, but otherwise, it was like an animal playing for them.

In what ways are you seeing this play out economically? How does the global marketplace today compare to medieval times?

One of my chapters deals with comparing the fights of the nobles to the software battles, where you had these kings that are just battling for territory, a lot like the battles in the software industry.

It’s a little bit like in feudal times where you had these smaller kingdoms, and the nobles would fight among each other. They’d take on more and more territory, and there would be battles until you end up consolidating these small nations that ended up becoming France, Germany and England.

There are these shakeouts now going on in the startup and the tech community. There are predictions now that in six months or a year there’s going to be a bubble. And you’ve seen that shakiness in the stock market.

But the people who are ending up without the jobs as these companies close down are the low-income people who suddenly can’t find jobs. And if their support is pulled out by government policies, you’ll have more and more people pushed into the peasantry. And a lot of people who are wealthy have these golden parachutes. When Hewlett-Packard was having its problems and Carly Fiorina left, she had this golden parachute.

The gradual erosion of the middle class and the sharp divide between the lifestyles of the rich and the poor have been key platforms for a handful of 2016 presidential hopefuls. They’re also key tenets of your book. What’s your take on wage inequality?

The disparity between what the CEOs get now is much different than it was 10 years ago. You see that increasing disparity. And I see that as equivalent to what was happening in the Middle Ages when you had these kings becoming wealthier and wealthier and fighting these wars and taking over more territory. I just see that as something that’s happening today.

There have always been some people who don’t do as well as others, ever since 10,000 or so years ago when we had the agricultural revolution. But then you had the development of these kingdoms and then wars about kingdoms.

I didn’t go back to Roman times or before that, but you increasingly have these divergences between royalty and the lower classes. You see it in Latin America and the rise of the Inca and with the Aztec. I just happened to pick the Middle Ages, but you could find this same kind of pattern in other societies.

It just seems like more and more you have the wage differentials. The people wanting the $15 dollar an hour wage increase is a little bit like the peasants wanting to have less taxes so they could earn more money.

In your book, you compare the role of the media today to the role religious institutions like the Catholic Church played in medieval times. What connections did you make there?

People believed in what the church was saying, and the church would provide its support to one leader or another in some of these battles. And the church had thousands or millions of followers. So the Inquisitions, which were led by the nobility, would have the support of the church behind them.

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And today, you have the media in a sense picking on certain people that they’re going to play up. In a way, the media has given Trump its platform. He’s paid very little for advertising. He’s just started to do some radio ads now. You almost wonder whether some of these outrageous comments were made to get media attention. But it worked, and he has appealed to the anti-immigration campaign, and he’s gotten a lot of followers, though he’s antagonized the Latin American community.

Speaking of Donald Trump, what’s your take on how this historical inequality is playing out in the 2016 presidential race? You have candidates like Bernie Sanders who have vowed to revitalize the middle class. Is he appealing to a desire for equality that’s been around since the Middle Ages?

Sanders does seem to come up from that ‘Let’s help the people.’ On the Republican side, you have some very wealthy people leading this rebellion. It’s almost like choosing which king is going to lead the rebellion of the peasants.

You read about them making really crazy statements or insulting people, and people seem to follow that. You have these non-politicians as the two leading candidates, Trump and [retired neurosurgeon Ben] Carson. People follow them because of some of the principles that they’re espousing. It doesn’t really matter what they say.

It seems politics is just not working. You had these peasant revolts that would throw up a charismatic leader, and the other powers that be would go after whoever that is to try to destroy them.

I think there’s this power struggle going on, which you could also compare to the fights between the royalty for dominance and power in their era.

So how do you see this struggle playing out? Is history repeating itself? Should we expect to see the modern-day equivalent of a full-scale peasant revolt?

It’s hard to predict, and you can evaluate things in hindsight. But I see the rebellions gathering more force. I see more and more things like [the Islamic State group] happening, where people are out of power and are fighting to get power. I see more and more of that happening, and I see us pulling out of some of these places because you can only fight so many wars.

If history repeats itself, you’ll just have these patterns of rebellions and the wealthy starting to consolidate their power. Maybe another wealthy person will take over. Maybe [Syrian President Bashar] Assad will be thrown out of office. But you have these patterns repeating themselves again and again.
Andrew Soergel, Senior Reporter