| Mnementh said:
I personally think this has to do with economical differences created in part by globalization. In the last decades in the western world (europe, north america) the differences between rich and poor get bigger and bigger. This is a result of policies installed by Reagan and Thatcher and then followed by Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. We had similar things happen in many countries, in germany for instance Helmut Kohl (conservative) was followed by social democrat Gerhard Schröder. All of them realized economic reforms, that in the end helped the economy along the globalization, but at the cost that social securities were cut and some people fell through the cracks. At the start this were only a few, but over time more and more people felt lost economical, seeing the country flourishing and rich people get more rich, while these people had a hard time to come by. You can see it at the rise of people, that are unable to stem unexpected expenses, like if your car breaks suddenly down you don't have enough to repair it. And this development was slowly, at first only a few people were lost along the lines. Politics mostly ignored them, at first this was without repercussion as these were too few. For a long time then no one cared about them. Until nationalists realized their chance and blamed everything on migrants and globalization (although globalization itself would be fine as long economic policies would provide social security adapted to globalization). This is in my opinion the reason, nationalists targeting the poor and classic politicians ignoring them. This includes the left, which in the past was for the poor man, but mostly ignored the struggles in the past and focused more on identity politics and climate change. Without a doubt important topics, but they ignored the poor people.This feeling of being ignored by classic politics led more and more to anger, which is utilized by the nationalists. |
We need to stop viewing the differences between the poor and the rich getting bigger because that is only a temporary effect of globalization. In the end, the main participants of globalization are the nations themselves and not their people because the winners and losers in the long-term are going to be the nations themselves. Currently, the biggest winner of globalization has been China and so far the biggest loser of globalization has been the western world because the former just keeps encroaching on the west's monopoly of the higher value chain ...
The western world arrogantly thought that they could just keep countries like China constrained on low-end manufacturing indefinitely so they initially dismissed the threat of them being able to technologically compete. When that day comes so too will the fall of the liberal leaning metropolitan elites as they begin to face the future of deindustrialization just as small towns previously had ...
Lower end industries kept this "buffer zone" intact between the haves and the have-nots but as a certain nation comes to decapitate the high-end industries, soon there will only be have-nots as the rich will have to close their business as well if they can't compete. The knock on effect of deindustrialization towards the liberal leaning metropolitan elites means that they'll lose their main (jobs) social security and thus will more easily fall victim to nationalism ...
We can not have world of globalization where the livelihoods of nations (mainly western) are threatened in the process and where they have interests in defending (nationalism) against that happening. A specific nation (China) is only interested in globalism so that they can appropriate technology from other nations (west) for their own nationalistic purposes. As petty as it may seem the western world don't want competition at the highest end sectors because they want to profit all of it for themselves by not having to share it ... (as the peoples profits keep declining, they will come under more pressure to take extreme measures)
