keep people relatively comfortable...relatively stable society
undoubtedly the ruling class (assuming "liberal" in the sense of global neoliberal consensus) deserves a large share of the blame
asleep at the wheel, dreaming sweet dreams of an end of history Pax Davos
but there are forces here beyond even their hubris
it already wasn't possible - from a resources/policy standpoint, globally speaking - to keep most people "relatively comfortable"
and now the true bill for the last 250+ years of progress is only starting to come due, which is far beyond the scope of any policymaker
add to that total ongoing installments of the bill for the sins of the Cold War, and more broadly the age of colonialism as it shaped the modern world
not to reduce everything to climate-change exacerbated competition for resources but that fact and the resultant anxiety underlies everything
further narrowing capitalism's already narrow disaster margins, laying bare implicit social discontent, etc
in general - and this is also a response to vimothy's question - nearly all the bullshit that has been papering over the cracks in global order is unraveling
upheaval was inevitable at some point - from the system's inherent instabilities, and the simple fact that no global order lasts forever - and given underlying conditions I'd guess RW blut und boden populism was always a reasonably likely response, but the specific iteration of those conditions - financial crisis, refugee-migration crisis, ongoing mass shift to greater labor precarity - has ensured/intensified it. for the West/Global North (and outside allied entities, as Bolsonaro represents) it's comparable to the collective psychic trauma and disillusionment of the inter-war period, and we're getting a similar result. that's my basic .02 anyway.