Demagoguery and soot
2016. The year of the demagogue. The year of pied piper-ing politicians promising the world to those who have been cast aside by the single minded machine of globalisation.
For those living a comfortable metropolitan lifestyle with the customary trappings of chia seed salads and poached eggs on Sunday – it is easy to cast aside those who voted for Brexit, for Trump and will vote for Le Pen as misguided individuals who pass the blame of their misfortune onto even more powerless groups like refugees and migrants.
We should not pretend that there is no credit to this argument. Equally, we should not treat those who voted against the interests of a comfortable elite as a monolithic bigoted block.
Let me outline where I empathise with the forgotten class who channelled their frustration into supporting seriously questionable individuals and ideas.
They are right to be angry.
They are right to be angry at politicians who manufactured trade deals such as NAFTA, which placed corporate interests above the lot of a significant portion of the population. American jobs were lost, wages were suppressed and workers were exploited.
What made this betrayal all the worse was that it was signed into law by a politician, Bill Clinton, who had won so many votes from the swathes of blue collar workers that would lose their jobs in the coming years. Of course, in a cruel irony, the internet bubble would mask the devastation and elevate Clinton to be remembered as a President who propelled the US economy to unprecedented growth.
Nevertheless, Clinton is just one of a mosaic of Presidents, Prime Ministers, Senators and MPs who have used the aspirations of the working class as a political currency and subsequently ignored them once it was more expedient to play out the interests of the corporate class whose donations, after all, are more valuable under the current US election system.
It may seem odd to the reader that I have singled out a Democrat. The Democrats; the party which has historically, not by a significant margin, been more sympathetic to the plight of lower income households.
But this is very much deliberate.
The betrayal from those supposedly on your side is sourer than that of a party which still heralds trickle-down economics as a coherent economic argument (e.g. the havoc caused by the Bush Tax cuts).
This story is one that has played out across many countries. In fact, the current exodus of Labour voters to UKIP can be attributed to the dissatisfaction with the offering of a supposedly socialist party in upholding the best interests of the working class. The biggest decline in support for Blair during his tenure came from lower income households, falling from a lofty 58% in 1997 to just a third a decade later.
When Trump strode out in front of a Ford Factory in Michigan and said that he would levy a 35% tariff on Ford imports if they were to relocate to Mexico I knew he would win the election. As a man who was willing to inflict pain on the same corporations that had decimated communities with their strategic decisions, Trump was playing a melody that the rust belt hadn't heard from a politician and this elixir was too intoxicating to resist.
So yes. It is true. This disenfranchised mass of people has a right to be angry. A right to be furious. But to somehow believe the fallacy that migrants, refugees or even people on welfare have any role to play in the demise of their standing is utterly the wrong destination for their anger.
Of course, they have not come to this incorrect conclusion solely by themselves. They have been ushered by populists like Trump and Farage who provide comfort to this class of people by pointing to "the other" and laying the blame at their doorstep. Equally certain segments of the media have helped fuel this distrust with overtly racialist and xenophobic headlines. But to simply place the blame on politicians and media is not sufficient. In fact it is quite patronising.
Are we really making the argument that large segments of both the UK and US populations were only misled, somehow they did not have any cognitive reasoning to retort these claims? No. Do not underestimate their intelligence.
Some concluded what Trump, Farage and the like have been trumpeting on their own accord. They believed it well before even Trump believed it. The President-Elect just provided a megaphone for these distasteful beliefs like no one in recent American history. They found a voice just as they thought that their ideas were dead amongst the American political class.
So to those who say that people who voted for Brexit, who voted for Trump are not racist or xenophobic - just frustrated at the status quo. Spare me the incoherence of that statement. Yes they are, rightly, frustrated at their situation. But please give them the due courtesy of believing their intelligence is adequate to make a decision on whether Ahmed the taxi driver, or Roxanne the Polish cleaner – people who have very similar aspirations to themselves – are or aren't to blame for the systemic demise of the working class's financial situation.
Xenophobia is the easy answer. It is the wrong answer.
Those who have created the system in which inequality perpetuates and people's interests are forsaken. That is where the blame lies. Not at the feet of those who are members of the few groups that live in an even worse state of affairs than those who complain of being left behind by globalisation.
I am yet to see evidence of the diabolical plot of Syrian refugees, West Indian migrants and people on welfare to ruin the lives of white working class people. Until this scheme is foiled, I will not be treating Brexit or Trump supporters as a monolithic block. However, I will be exposing the vitriolic beliefs that some members of these movements hold.
Beliefs that are now more main stream than I could have conceived merely a year ago.
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