Yesterday we had “Pompous Pete” Hartcher telling us all that we’re all racists:
For Trump and Johnson, it really is all about winning. The first achievement of right-wing populism was, through men such as these two, to storm the bastions of the centre-right establishment. The movement’s impulses of nationalism, xenophobia, protectionism and populism now inhabit the logistics shell that was left behind when the US Republican and British Conservative parties jettisoned all their principles and policies to make way for the new wave.
Today Chris Uhlmann gives this the treatment it deserves:
A couple of paragraphs on we learned from where this world-class analysis had sprung. “The study was jointly commissioned by Best for Britain, which is campaigning against Brexit, and the anti-racist Hope Not Hate group.”
This single sentence neatly sums up everything that is wrong with loud, self-basting “progressive” insiders. It was propaganda masquerading as research that should have been punted to the kerb by the Sunday sister of The Guardian, a newspaper which published some brilliant work on the seething anger growing in working class communities in the UK prior to the Brexit vote.
The participation of Hope Not Hate in the exercise was a nod towards the suspicion that everyone who voted Leave was also probably a racist, because they railed against EU rules which allow the free movement of labour.
Whenever working-class outsiders complain about how an immigration or economic policy blights their lives the response of the enlightened insiders is to brand them either “racist” or “stupid”.
This is the judgment of those who make or champion enlightened policies but don’t live in the frontline suburbs where they land. It is not their jobs, wages or communities that are asked to endure wrenching change.
It is evident across the Western world that there is now a chasm dividing inner-city internationalists and the working-class nationalists who sustain their lifestyles. Many in wealthy city sanctums are now so disconnected from their sources of food, wealth and energy that they are voting against them or seeking to ban them.
Exactly.
Gideon Rachman at th FT gives a more subtle treatment:
The question of whether Mr Johnson and the Brexiters can, in any way, claim to be “liberal” is of more than academic interest. As Mr Lukyanov’s reaction suggested, it has international significance. The Brexit vote in 2016 saw liberal internationalism — championed by the EU and the Obama administration — take a double blow: first, the Brexit vote, followed shortly afterwards by the election of Donald Trump as US president.
…The new nationalists sometimes describe their enemy as “globalism”. The “globalists”, they complain, are a self-interested international elite, intent on erasing borders and national cultures. Many liberals (me included) reject the label “globalist” as meaningless and sinister, since it often gives way to conspiracy theories about George Soros or the Trilateral Commission.
On the other hand, plenty of liberals would agree that nationalism is their foe. The nationalists’ stress on the interests of a dominant ethnic or religious group often comes at the expense of the individual and minority rights that are dear to traditional liberals. The latest example of this trend has come in India, where Mr Modi’s government has just passed a law on refugee rights that discriminates against Muslims in favour of non-Muslims. The furore caused by the law has now provoked riots in Delhi and elsewhere.
…Viewed from today’s perspective, it seems clear that liberalism and nationalism are enemies. But that was not always the case. As recently as 1989, liberalism and nationalism were allies in causing the collapse of the Soviet empire. In countries such as Poland and Hungary the demand for national self-determination was closely linked to demands for liberal freedoms.
Yes. The new nationalism is incontestable. What is up for grabs is who shapes it, whether for good or ill. BoJo is good, moving left. Trump is bad (except on China), moving populist.
I support the movement because it is my view that it is essential to saving liberal capitalism which has lost its soul to a pack of globalised, rent seeking hyenas.
Be warned, pollies and media, if you stand outside of the new nationalism with pompous declarations of “racism” or “xenophobia” you’re already in the dust bin of history.
Meanwhile, Albo-tross backs coal in a useless crusade to appear working class…
