To read Parts I, II and III, please visit the
following links:
http://vivoonwarpeaceandjustice.blogspot.com.ar/2016/08/the-rise-of-nationalist-populism.html http://vivoonwarpeaceandjustice.blogspot.com.ar/2016/08/the-rise-of-populist-nationalism-part.html
Although an undercurrent of populist nationalism has been surging toward
the surface since the turn of the millennium, it is no coincidence that it has become
a fully-fledged international trend in the years since the 2008 world financial
crisis, the catalyst for which was the US mortgage debacle and the ensuing
stock market crash that it triggered. Nor is right-wing populist nationalism
the only manifestation of rage and frustration on the part of common citizens
at what they perceive as a broken system and as a worldwide “game”—led by the
West—in which the deck is definitively stacked against them. Trumpism in the
US, Nigel Farage’s Independence Party in
the UK, the Le Pen far-right political dynasty in France, etc., are mirrored in
a wide variety of political colors in grassroots movements around the globe, of
which the liberal Occupy movement and the conservative Tea Party movement in
the US are typical and opposite exponents.
In the new millennium, this view of a skewed world in which democracy is
more lip-service than fact and in which 62 billionaires, with the help of
highly-lobbied laws, have accumulated equivalent to half the wealth of everyone
else on the planet has led not only to the kind of right-wing populist
movements recently seen in Europe and the United States but also to left-wing
populism like that experienced in Latin America—notably Venezuela, Argentina,
Bolivia and Ecuador—although in practice such movements have often campaigned
on the left while ruling in ways more in keeping with right-wing populism once
in office. In practically every case in which populist nationalism has been
successful in gaining any appreciable level of power, the result has seldom
been increased democracy. On the contrary, the outcome has quite often been
regimes that govern to their immediate constituency while ignoring or
repressing the rights of the minority, a situation that, in certain cases, has
been accompanied by massive corruption and economic decay.
This perception, then, of a skewed and increasingly undemocratic world
isn’t wrong. Or at least not entirely so. What is erroneous, however, is the
idea that democracy and injustice can be fixed by imposing autocratic or
authoritarian models in countries where people deem democracy to have “failed”.
In fact, democracy never fails: it is, instead, subverted, corrupted and
ultimately lost through the dishonesty of its elected officials and the
complacency and/or ignorance of their constituencies.
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What is of crucial importance to point out is that the common
denominator, across the board, in the rapid inroads being made by populist
nationalism is ever-increasing inequality. Not merely economic inequality, but
also inequality at political, social, cultural, environmental and
knowledge-based levels. According to the 2016 World Social Science Report published by the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in conjunction with
the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), “Too many countries are investing
too little in researching the long-term impact of inequality on the
sustainability of their economies, societies and communities.” The report adds
that “the recent increase in economic inequalities seems to find its origin in the
1980s and 1990s, when the neoliberal paradigm became dominant in Western
countries.” It is indeed that paradigm that has largely tipped the playing
field by equating ever-increasing accumulation of wealth at the top of the food
chain with “healthy capitalism”.
The UNESCO report indicates that there is at least good news in that
inequality is finally being recognized as a growing and serious problem that
needs to be faced and dealt with sooner rather than later, explaining that
there has been “a five-fold increase in studies of inequality and social
justice in academic publications since 1992” and that “numerous international
reports and books on inequality have been published, and some have become
international bestsellers.” But it adds that a great deal more study and
concrete measures will be required to change the clear trend toward social
injustice and that, “unless we address this urgently, inequalities will make
the cross-cutting ambition of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to
‘leave no one behind’ by 2030 an empty slogan.”
One of the problems with research carried out to date is that it tends
to be theme-specific, focusing on one type of inequality or on a single region,
when the truth is that there is a broad range of inequalities that today affect
every country and region on earth in one way or another and that inequality has
become so ingrained that even the people who easily fall under the spell of the
empty “I-can-fix-it-all” rhetoric of populist nationalist leaders would, if
asked, have trouble vocalizing their
complaints about all of the inequalities facing them, even if they know
perfectly well that their lives should be a lot better than they are, and that
they are outraged over a system that they see as unfair, unresponsive, loaded
against them, and essentially corrupt.
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| "The Economist", a graphic take on the problem |
The fundamentals of the distinct yet interlinked inequalities that the
UNESCO/IDS report contemplates are clearly definable. The type of inequality
that comes to the surface most quickly is, of course, economic—differences in
income levels, employment, assets, available capital and variations in living
standards. Only slightly more subtle is resulting social inequality, affecting
not just variations in social status per
se from one group to another, but also in the functionality of education,
health care, justice and social protection systems. Linked to this second type
of inequality is cultural inequality, which encompasses discrimination based on
gender, ethnicity, race, religion and other sorts of group identity factors.
But today’s all-pervading inequality goes far beyond these more commonly
known tipifications. Take, for instance, political inequality, or the varying
capacities of individuals or groups to influence political decision-making and
to effectively benefit from it and/or to actually enter into some sort of
meaningful political action. This type of inequality has been dramatically
revealed in the current and closely-watched US election process in which two of
the least popular presidential candidates in American history are the last two
standing in a race that included an incredibly successful independent candidate,
who, in the end was forced to bow to the enormous wealth and power of the other
two and in which there was a plethora of “also-rans” who simply never had a
chance against the main two candidates’ combined resources. Add to this the
recent approval by the US Supreme Court as “constitutional” of sky’s- the-limit
donations by big business to election campaigns of their choice and it is hard
not to perceive of the common US citizen as overwhelmingly disenfranchised at a
political level.
A frequent offshoot of political disparity is spatial inequality, or, as
the UNESCO report describes it, the marked differences that exist from one
region to the next or between urban centers and marginalized peripheral or
rural zones that because of where they are or the influence they wield, possess
more or fewer resources for their development. And this is, in turn, linked to
environmental inequality, which refers to uneven access to natural resources
and their exploitation, exposure to pollution and its risks and differences in
access to the agencies required to adapt to and/or solve such disparities.
Yet another heading is knowledge-based inequality. This refers to both
access and contribution to a variety of distinct types of knowledge and
sources, as well as to the consequences of this type of inequality. A good
example of this is how world statistics are frequently skewed by the fact that vastness
of knowledge is often limited to the resources applied to gathering it.
Therefore, enormous amounts of data may be accumulated on issues affecting the
richest countries or regions in the world, while little or no comparative
knowledge may be forthcoming regarding those affecting the world’s poorest
nations because of the dearth of resources for data-gathering in those places.
While inequality can be seen as a major problem for which a swift
solution must be found (and indeed that is the case), it is, in the end, a
consequence rather than a cause. It is less likely, then, that a solution can
be found by concentrating on the consequence than by identifying and focusing
on its sources. And the first source that needs to be analyzed and dealt with
is the ever-increasing concentration of economic and political power in the
hands of an ever more exclusive elite that protects and defends its own selfish
interests exclusively.
The generation of wealth as such is not the problem. On the contrary, the
problem comes when that wealth is used to create and acquire the kind of
political power necessary to institutionalize greed and corruption with the aim
of largely relieving the richest of the rich from the obligation of paying their
fair share back into the very societies that have made them wealthy. In other
words, a major problem in much of the West is that the wealthiest citizen and
entities simply don’t pull their wait in terms of either seeking to improve the
lives of the poorest segments or to alleviate the social/fiscal burden that
inevitably falls to the middle class. And since they form precisely the segment
with the power to both foster and undermine government administrations and
deeply influence the law, there is no way to ensure that they do.
American billionaire/philanthropist Warren Buffett laid this dilemma out
best when he wrote that it was completely unfair that he should pay a much lower
tax rate than the office workers in his company. While conservative writers and
“one-percent” surrogates alike have rushed to accuse the billionaire of “faulty
math” (Warren Buffett, faulty math, right?) the point he was seeking to make is
clear. The top one percent in the US and much of the rest of the West is not
paying anything close to its fair share toward the creation of a more just
society. And the only way to change that is through greater democracy and
worldwide cooperation, not less, because the undermining of democratic rule by
the power of wealth, greed and political intrigue is precisely the problem.
But not the only one. Simply making everyone pay their fair share won’t
automatically guarantee that the cumulative wealth of the world is distributed
in such a way as to improve the lives of every human being on earth—to start
with, at least, to end world hunger, which is always talked about as if it were
an impossible task, when it is, in fact, absolutely “doable”, if the richest
nations on earth would simply destine part of their enormous military budgets
to overcoming famine. That will, of course, require an earth-shaking change in
mindset worldwide. It will mean mounting a concerted worldwide effort to end
war, promote peace and cooperation, ensure inclusion of all stakeholders,
stimulate multi-sectorial participation in the search for mutual solutions to
common problems, and generate worldwide awareness of and interest in the need
to work together on a massive scale, if we are to have any hope of surviving as
a species.
While there are those who will argue that global inequality, on a
general scale, declined in the first decade of the new millennium, the UNESCO
report indicates that practically all of that improvement was due to vast
economic development in China and India with their enormous populations, while,
in the West, in Africa and elsewhere, inequality has continued to worsen and
could eventually cancel out improvements in the East at a bottom-line level.
Add this to the unpredictable tendency of work, as we have known it up to now,
to be disappearing as a means for common everyday people to earn a living and
the future looks grim. The cause for this is that social advancement has not
kept pace with technological advances and those in power tend—whether by reason
of greed or ignorance—to apply obsolete formulas to the attempted solution of
an absolutely new and burgeoning dilemma.
All in all, the greatest problem of inequality at every level facing the
world today is a profound lack of greatness that is affecting not only business
and government but also their individual leaders around the globe. Hollow
slogans by populist nationalist demagogues—like US presidential candidate Donald
Trump’s “make America great again” bumper-sticker catch-phrase—will only take
on true meaning when world leaders put their petty grievances, political
rivalries, war-like rhetoric, violent actions and avaricious personal interests
behind them and agree to work together to solve, rather than helping create,
the world’s most pressing problems, and when common citizens, en masse, and in the strongest possible
terms, demand that their leaders do so. Until that happens, the vast majority
of the world’s population can expect to see inequality continue to grow far worse
before it lessens one iota.
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