It is too easy to label the people behind populists as mere idiots.
Donald Trump went and won. As a foreign commentator, it must be said that some signs have been around in the air although one cannot see them over here in since for us, USA is just New York, fame, money and Hollywood. Yeah, it´s true.
It is easier to label these people from somewhat unknown small towns as idiotic racists just because we think they do not understand their own good. In a manner that we all have to suffer, the whole world has to suffer for the next few years because of them and their naïve perspective of the things around. This way the whole worldwide problem is easily outsourced to be the result of one specific group of people and their bad decisions.
The fact is that most voters are really just people who think that they have not won anything personally when it comes to globalization or technological advancements. This is expected, especially when a human often only sees him or herself, or the groups around them – without comparing their experiences to the situations forty or even one hundred years ago. These positive results and outcomes we expect are often not seen by our own eyes too clearly, but are evident on paper. A factory worker has just lost his manufacturing facilities and the taxi driver is running out of ideas how to fix his ride, while the liberal elite of the cities around have got evermore benefits out of the situation. And now they are asking us average people to get used to even more changes and new cultures on top of all that. This is a moment when one really wants to hear someone say that a full stop is possible, and that we can all go back to way the things were before all of this.
For the Americans the person talking about going all the way back like Doc from Back to the Future was Donald Trump, for some European countries it´s the local right wing parties, for the Brits it was the whole movement of Brexit, and for the French it is likely to be Marine Le Pen. Next spring that is.
Of course, it´s needless to say that all of these people and movements are rallying for an idea that is based on a lie. It is not true. You simply can´t get your old jobs back since they are not around at all anymore. They do not exist in this reality. And none of the government can actually, in reality close their borders from new people entering their countries. This is because borders don´t matter anymore, or at least less and less every day. Despite the fact that someone saw an immigrant stealing a cash register in the outskirts.
The whole modern globalization has been based on the institutions founded after the second world war, agreements without borders – just like EU or United Nations, or the several free trade agreements. At the same time technology has developed in a major way and nations have begun to move to achieve a piece of the idea of a better life. This has caused a lot of good for many people, yet it has also brought a way of political thinking in which people underneath the middle class just have to bear with the prevailing conditions and decisions.
The local factory has been closed while the people have been instructed to move out to town and cities. The representative of a foreign culture has been brought into the picture and the others have been forced to understand the globalization or otherwise been labelled as straightforward racists. At the same time no one has really demanded any programs of change to be carried out together with the massive layoffs, and not enough people have been educated to understand equality in small places. The more better-off urban citizens have constantly told others off and ordered them to change their ways. How many of us remembers kindly of our ex boy or girlfriends doing this?
Modern politics, and media, have taken all these less-educated people residing outside the cities in to their core focus only when wanting to treat them from the top downwards methods. All over the world.
This would make me hate elite as well.
Trump is just part of the trend that risen from the outside of the politics of the rich and affluent. Next spring there will be another “fuck off” moment when the French national front representative Le Pen is elected as their president. At this point, the new ideal will begin to shake the whole world order. In the world of zero interests, the tolerance for crisis in weak. Banks do not have capital stocks they would have in more upswing times. Even China has a crisis underlying. Le Pen however, is yet another leader swearing in the name of protectionism and self-containism whose driven politics with modern rules only means another recession.
These neglected groups of people running after populism should finally be recognized as something much more than just a bunch of jokes as nobody is laughing at the moment anymore.