Dickson Igwe. Photo: VINO

Trump appealed to enraged white working class voters. These voters in turn overthrew an American Establishment that cared less about the working man’s “terrible plight.” The fault could be laid at the feet of King Global and his globalisation model. Globalisation created an unbridgeable chasm between the working and upper classes in the West.

Globalisation was the catalyst of working class revolt. It was the dislike for the new global model of open borders and borderless capitalism that swung US voters towards Donald J. Trump in November. This was the same for Nigel Farage and his United Kingdom Independence Party. The idea of outsourcing and migration causing working class misery drove angry white working class men and women to give the “middle finger” to the British Elite in Brexit.

This demographic was the aptly termed “SILENT MAJORITY.” These were the numerically significant white voters who frequently say very little but who as a bloc hold enormous political power. It was the Silent Majority that put Ronald Reagan into the White House.

All the while, liberal activist types went on their very “politically correct” rampage. They harassed Joe Public with their assertions on everything from taking prayer out of schools to an overweening tolerance for values that were alien to Joe Plumber. Their performances were held on local, national, and international media. “Joe Deplorable” wasn’t drinking the media’s “Kool-Aid.”

White workers rewarded Trump with the White House. Trump had a canny instinct. He understood the heartbeat of the white working man. He felt his pulse. Trump had the proverbial “last laugh.” Hillary R. Clinton underestimated the white working class demographic. It cost her dear. The white working people were her “deplorable and stupid” people.

And like Brexit in the UK, there was a very strong anti-immigrant component in the US election. American workers felt threatened by migration from Latin and South America. Trump’s rhetoric further fueled this fear and led to xenophobia against Hispanics, hatred of Moslems, and resentment of African Americans. There was a strong racist element to Trump’s victory. 

Now, Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, and Marine Le Pen, are modern day insurrectionists. In an older age they would be considered revolutionaries. Today they are the spearheads of a populist nationalist revolt that appears to be spreading. This has been interestingly called the “Pitch Fork Rebellion”: the rebellion of the white working man. Populism is anti-status quo.

OK, there was a core economic and social narrative in the November 8, 2016, USA General Election. The war between globalisation and nationalist isolationism was front and center. And the great paradox in US General Election November 2016 was the polarisation that took place within both the Republican and Democratic Parties.

Both political parties possessed globalisers and anti-globalisers. The globalisers were the elites. They were the party establishment. They were the people who earned in excess of 250k per annum. They possessed a certainty that theirs was the invincible position. This was a certainty that bordered on arrogance. They would be in for a “rude awakening.”

Trump has told the American working man that globalisation is bad for him and his bottom line. Trump has stated that the working classes have suffered in the global process of greater economic and social integration. He has stated that their economic and social woes have come from increased migration and the unfettered flow of capital and finance between nations. American workers, according to Trump, have lost out in terms of wages, earnings, and bargaining power, as a result of overly generous global migration patterns.

Once upon a time the social democratic parties in the USA and UK, the Democrats and Labour, represented the underdog. They were the parties of working men and women, the poor, and the vulnerable. That is no longer so. Instead these political parties have become elitist and globalist. The Democrats in the US especially, have become the champions of a globalisation that appears to pursue a One World Order.

Globalisation is driven by technology, capital, and an ideology termed neoliberalism.

Neoliberalism was the offspring of Milton Friedman and his Chicago School ideas of free markets and monetary control management: Monetarism. Friedman was the guru of supply sided economic theory.

This was a rendition that viewed production as superior to consumption. Supply Sided Economics placed the businessman and capitalist at the top of the social and economic food chain. The businessman was viewed as superior to the consumer. Supply prevailed over demand. Business, not consumption, was King

Friedman advocated the control of the money supply to control inflation and drive economic growth. He preached the use of fiscal spending controls to control national economies that overheated.

Friedman was a disciple of a capitalism that advocated wealth inequality as a critical cog in the wheel of effective economic thinking. Competition was god. Friedman was the Father of Austerity.

But make no mistake. Friedman’s Neoliberalism has failed. Today the world is back to where it was in the early 1900s. There is great unpredictability. Global economic growth has remained anemic since the 2007 Great Recession. Globalisation has done wonders in the developing world creating a middle class of over a billion in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

However, in the developed west, globalisation has pummeled the middle class. It has created poverty, stagnation, and misery among working men and women everywhere. Globalisation has closed down thousands of businesses and factories. It has outsourced hundreds of thousands of jobs. It has moved western production to cheap Asian jurisdictions. Consequently the ground is ripe for a revolution of the working man in the west.

Globalisation was thought to create a more equal world. Ironically the opposite is the case. Globalisation has driven social and wealth inequality worldwide. In the west globalisation, has reintroduced social class as a critical component in politics. Class war has returned. Voters appear to be voting in terms of what social class they belong. That will change politics in the west, probably dramatically. Class has returned as a central component of politics.

Martin Jacques writing in the Guardian Newspaper of August 21, 2016, described globalisation in these terms: globalisation has scorned equality; it has lauded trickledown economics, it sees government as a fetter on the market, it has encouraged runaway inflation, it sees regulation as a negative limit on free markets, it supports corporate and tax evasion.

Jacques reminds his readers that the most dynamic period of post war western growth was between the end of World War 2 and the early 1970s. This was the era of John Maynard Keynes and what Jacques terms Keynesian Welfare Capitalism AKA Stimulus. Western growth at the time was double what it was post 1980 to present.

The failure of the US and British establishments to include the working class in the prosperity created by globalisation post the 1980s has backfired terribly. TRICKLE DOWN does not work.

Therefore, the Age of Trump begins with a redrawing of the international geopolitical landscape. However, there has been too much alarmist overreaction to Trump’s General Election win of November 2016. Trump is a pragmatist. He is expected to move towards the center. His presidency may well be a very successful one.

However, the international landscape will change. Trump has surrounded himself with hardliners in national security. This may herald a return to Cold War type politics with increases in proxy type conflicts, and greater militarisation, and risk of war. There will be an increase in American aggression against those considered enemies: North Korea, Iran, ISIS, and Radical Islam. However, these will be pin pricks: commando type attacks that end swiftly. Trump is not a nation builder. Trump’s instincts are isolationist and protectionist.

In any event, over the next few years Globalisation will be placed on the backburner.

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