Mnementh said:
No shame in not knowing Brexit party outside of the UK, as they were founded six months ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brexit_Party The leader Nigel Farage was before a member of UKIP. About the rise of nationalism… many speculate about the reasons for that. That was by the way happening before Trump already, I feel Trump is more like part of the phenomenon, not a special case. 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. EDIT: By the way, your sig shows this. Back then movies like They live showed the struggles of poor people. Remember the main characters being poor (and moreso a white and a black guy working together both being poor and both being in the same situation) and all the obey, consume stuff is symbolic for the situation. This movie wasn't alone, many movies back then showed poor people, also tv shows, remember Roseanne. But Hollywood elites stopped caring about poor people, this leading to todays movies practically never use poor people as heroes or even displaying the struggles of poor people. This is all part of the feeling of many, that all the "above", be it in politics or media, ignore the poor. This feeling of being outside is what helped the nationalists taking over. |
Interesting.. Yeah I certainly got the impression much of this rise in nationalism is a result of a backlash to Globalism which many attributes to the issues of the rising wage gap and increasing dissolution of the middle class. Some take it too far and take it out on immigrants but to me that's just a small and mostly insignificant piece.
It's just that right now it seems to be the ring wing that's capitalizing on this as the left seems to have forgotten about the working class and is favoring, like you said, identity politics for some bizarre reason.
This is part of the reason I'm drawn to Bernie (mainly in '16) and more recently to Yang, because they are getting back to the more oldschool brand of leftism that actually focuses on the poor and middle class rather than shouting about frivolous bs and a few mostly artificial social left wing views while seemingly supporting neolib/neocon policies.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident - all men and women created by the, go-you know.. you know the thing!" - Joe Biden
