By D. J. Webb
I need to think more carefully about this. But it’s dawned on me that the Trump phenomenon is important, not because of Donald J. Trump, but rather in terms of a broader realignment of politics. Put simply, the left-right divide is pretty exhausted, appearing to reflect the politics of the Cold War. The new alignment is more Us v. Them, the People vs. the 1%, the Populists vs. the Establishment.
This is a class divide of sorts, in that anyone in control of the public-private sector managerial class supports the globalization agenda. They are the real ruling class — and not the famed capitalists or bourgeoisie. By continuing with anti-capitalist politics, many “left-wing” activists have failed to realize that they’re supporting the one-percenters’ agenda. They support mass immigration, the big state, controls on speech and the disaggregation of the demos via multiculturalism. How is any of this really “left-wing” and “anti-Establishment”? Left-wingers quite wrongly view themselves as radical and anti-Establishment because they soldier on with the fake left-right distinction, which doesn’t reflect the politics of a managerial society.
At the same time, the “right” has adopted cultural Marxism wholesale, because it is in the interests of the 1%. Conservatives are by nature pro-business, but they have failed to realise that there is no entrepreneurial bourgeois capitalist class nowadays: their “pro-business” credentials have devolved into supporting the cultural agenda of the Establishment, precisely because Conservatives view themselves as pro-elite. By supporting the cultural Marxist agenda, the conservatives traduce all their former values. Libertarians fall into the same trap, of supporting free borders and state propaganda on race, sex, sexuality, etc. The so-called “left libertarians” do not recognize that there is no left-right divide, and that they are just pro-Establishment mouthpieces, retailing the ideology by means of which the 1% keep control.
Take, for example, Donald Trump’s “problem with women”. There is no obvious reason why women should support the 1% or elite plans to hold down wages via immigration or dissolve the nation (and thus the possibility of elite accountability to the demos) via immigration. Yet the 1% continue to exploit cultural divisions to remain in control, most notably in the form of abortion and the more inchoate dislike some women may feel when they see a rich and unattractive businessman “sponsor” a succession of supermodel wives in the manner of a Sugar Daddy. “Feminism” thrives where politics is conceived as a left-right contest, as the “left” constantly demands that the “right” take ever more strenuous efforts to prove they have truly modernized on cultural issues such as feminism. Trump ought to reorient the discussion in the form of “the 1% versus the People”: most women are not in the 1%, and should reject the efforts of 1% globalizers to wield such cultural issues to buttress their social control. Do American women really want to see wages undercut by immigrants and jobs shipped overseas? Why should women align themselves with the 1%?
The awkwardness of the realignment of politics is that it is not 1% versus 99% — which would be no contest, arithmetically speaking. This is because many middle-class professionals support the 1%. So the populist end of the political divide contains many working-class people who were previously discouraged voters: many of these may not turn up on Election Day to vote. The cultural flaw of Anglo-Saxon societies — the tendency towards sanctimony and self-righteousness — means that the professional class side morally with the 1%.
We can try to morally rearm the populist end of the discussion. Issues such as feminist support for immigrant rape show that most of the “moral” component of the elite ideologies is bunkum. When push comes to shove, the women being raped are shoved under the bus in order to keep the elite’s demographic change on track. The Munk debate between Louise Arbour, Simon Schama, Mark Steyn and Nigel Farage showed clearly that women’s issues were always a feint used to establish the 1%’s control. Grand feminists are prepared to laugh at gang rape of toddlers if need be in order to defend immigration.
But more to the point: we should reject the entire moral discussion. We ought to support our interests. There is nothing wrong in viewing ourselves (English people, white people, etc) as people with interests to defend. The populists, the people, the silent majority, whatever you call them, need to unabashedly enunciate their own interests against those of the Establishment. The class divide that corresponds to the real configuration of society is the managerial elite vs. the rest. Unless we have political classes that are articulated to that interest divide in society, we will lose and carry on losing. Donald Trump may have done us all a favour by galvanising the People as a political force.
