How neoliberalism fuels the racist xenophobia behind Brexit and Donald Trump
While the public sector is being gutted, wage growth in the U.K. is sluggish, and poverty — especially child poverty — is on the rise. As*The Guardian put it, “Poverty in the UK is increasing after two years of heavy welfare cuts have helped to push hundreds of thousands of people below the breadline.”
It’s no coincidence that the Brexit vote comes in the same week that newspaper headlines read “UK poverty levels rise for first time in nearly a decade.” Things are getting worse, not better, and everyone recognizes it. They want change, but have few options to choose from.
Right-wing proponents of the Leave campaign, like the far-right throughout the world, have taken advantage of the widespread anger at these growing economic problems and directed that rage at migrants, outsiders and multiculturalism, instead of at the neoliberal policies that have fueled them.
Meanwhile, for years, both mainstream parties in the U.K., the Conservative Party and the Labour Party, have adopted neoliberal economics — that is to say, hyper-capitalist policies like privatization, deregulation and cuts in public spending, policies that shrink the state and give more power to corporations in its place.
Even the U.S. government, which has been implementing its own neoliberal policies for years, urged the E.U. this week to “ease off on austerity.”
“It would be wise from the perspective of job growth and economic growth more generally to ease off on austerity,” a U.S. official said, indirectly admitting that E.U.-imposed neoliberalism has fueled support for Brexit..........
We live in an incredibly dangerous moment. It is not hyperbolic to say Europe is going through political changes similar to those of the post-Depression 1930s, when fascism was on the rise for the first time.
Brexit is a big victory for neo-fascist forces throughout the West — actual neo-fascist parties and politicians. And there is no sign that the far-right will decline anytime soon.
Demagogues like Trump in the U.S., or Marine Le Pen in France, or Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, may lose the upcoming election, but there will be many more elections after that, and the far-right will only continue to gain strength — unless it faces a real challenge.
A leftist resistance must assert itself in opposition to these growing forces of reaction. The enormous popularity of Corbyn, Sanders and others shows how millions of average people recognize that the system is not working for them, and they want a socialist alternative.
Yet a critical obstacle is in place: Mainstream, centrist parties like the Labour Party in the U.K. or the Democratic Party in the U.S. are actively cannibalizing themselves, viciously attacking any leftists who criticize their neoliberal leadership.
In the process, they are only pouring more fuel onto the fascist fire — a fire that will burn all of us, and the world.
How neoliberalism fuels the racist xenophobia behind Brexit and Donald Trump - Salon.com
