A Brexit-style revolution in the
USA? *
TAKIS FOTOPOULOS
(05.11.2016)
Abstract: In this article
the movement for Brexit in Britain, as well as the
movement for Trump in the United States, are seen as
parts of a rising new antiglobalization movement
which began in Europe and has spread all over the
world. This is a global movement of the victims of
globalization, the vast majority of the world
population, for economic and national sovereignty as
the necessary condition for any radical social
change. The fact that this antiglobalization
movement is expressed at present by neo-nationalist
movements (no relation to the old nationalist
movements) is simply the symptom of the theoretical
and political bankruptcy of the globalist ‘Left’,
i.e. the Left which is fully integrated into the New
World Order of neoliberal globalization and its
transnational institutions.
There is no doubt that the forthcoming US
Presidential elections are perhaps the most
controversial ones in the US history. This has
nothing of course to do with the various personal
‘scandals’ supposedly marring the two candidates,
i.e. the emails scandal vs. the
sexual utterances that are incompatible with the
political correctness imposed by the ideology of
globalization. These are obvious
diversions created by the system itself in order to
disorient the American victims of globalization from
the real issues of these elections. In fact, if we
talk about real politics rather than politicking,
the personalities of the two candidates matter
little, as both are ‘products of the system’ and in
this sense one could argue that there is no real
difference between them. Yet, there is a crucial
difference between these two candidates, which was
not present in previous post war candidates, who
were simply ‘products of the system’ distinguished
only by their differences as regards usually minor
aspects of economic policies, i.e. more
liberal/neoliberal or, alternatively, more state
interventionist measures.
Yet, none of these candidates ever questioned the
very fundamentals of a system, which
eventually —helped by the post war US hegemony— led
to the emergence of a new phenomenon: the
multinational corporations. This marked the rise of
the New World Order (NWO) of neoliberal
globalization, as well as the emergence of a
Transnational Elite that informally runs it, with
the help of the transnational economic and
political-military institutions that the same elites
created, such as the IMF, WB, WTO and NATO). These
fundamentals may well be summarized by what is
called euphemistically ‘the four “freedoms”’, i.e.
the free movement of goods and services, as well as
of capital and labor. This is what the US elections
(and the Brexit referendum before that) is all
about.
The real differences between Clinton and Trump
Hillary Clinton is in fact a typical ‘product of the
system’, who was systematically promoted by it,
exactly in order to carry out faithfully the demands
of the elites in the implementation of these
“freedoms” and what they imply both at the domestic
but also the foreign and geopolitical levels. She is
well known for her criminal role in the massacre of
the Libyan people and her infamous
exclamation “we came, we saw, he died”, referring to
the brutal lynching of Muammar
Gaddafi,
the Nasserite leader of the Libyan national
liberation movement, at the hands of the Libyan
‘revolutionaries.’ That is, at the hands of the
barbaric terrorists, who were funded by the
Transnational Elite and supported by the State
Department, which she headed at the time. It is the
same kind of ‘revolutionaries’ who today are
employed in Syria (some of them moved from Libya to
Syria immediately they finished the ‘job’ there),
with the same aim for regime change.
On the other hand, Donald Trump, although a product
of the same system himself, he is a
self-made
product of it, who managed to become a candidate for
the highest post of the Transnational Elite without
any direct or indirect
assistance
by it and its institutions (mass media, economic,
political, academic, and cultural institutions). No
wonder he has been the target of an unprecedented
attack by all of these elites and institutions. In
other words, he was savagely attacked by them, not
because he is a revolutionary of some kind, but
simply because he is not as controllable by the
elites, as all previous US presidents—not to mention
the Clintons (husband and wife) who have been
executive assistants of the elites, par excellence.
Hillary is therefore the perfect candidate to carry
out their criminal plans (the first woman candidate
and a perfectly controllable ambitious politician),
exactly as Obama was before a similar perfect
candidate (the first black candidate—a privileged
black of course—and a perfectly controllable
ambitious politician).
So the main problem for the elites with Trump is
that he is an ‘unknown quantity’ –the biggest, for
the elites, crime. Particularly so as his professed
policies firmly put him within the rising world
movement against globalization, which already gave
us Brexit, that is, a genuine revolution of the
victims of globalization in the UK, and the
consequent counter revolution. At the same time, in
the USA, because of the much higher stakes involved,
the counter revolution began even before any
corresponding revolution there!
This, despite the fact that Trump had drawn mass
support and won elections and public opinion not
just because he is a ‘populist demagogue’ (as they
claim) but because, as even a prominent member of
the globalist ‘Left’ admitted,
he rejected the free trade agreements which allowed
multinationals to exploit labor all over the world.
Furthermore, domestically, he questioned the
uncontrolled importation of cheap immigrant labor,
called for large-scale public investment, opposed
the new cold war with Russia and China, and rejected
US support for NATO’s military build-up in Europe
and intervention in Syria, North Africa and
Afghanistan. Similarly, as even a columnist of the
flagship of the globalist ‘Left’ recently
stressed—after expressing first his dislike for
Trump and Farage—the assumptions that globalists (he
calls them ‘free traders’) make about the beneficial
effects of free trade are wrong and as the
latest transatlantic deal (CETA, the deal between
Canada and EU) shows, globalisation is all about
protecting big business – from the public. And then,
he went on:
“For
decades, presidents and prime ministers,
policymakers and pundits have told voters there is
only one direction of travel: free trade. Now comes
Brexit and Donald Trump – and the horrible suspicion
that the public won’t buy it any more. And the
elites don’t know what to do, apart from keep
insisting the public listen.”
Globalization: the class issue of our era
As I am going to show here briefly, globalization is
a class issue. In fact,
the class
issue of the globalization era.
It is common knowledge nowadays that the
globalization process has already led to an
unprecedented concentration of income and wealth,
which several studies have confirmed. Thus, as
regards, first, the US concentration of income,
according to Nobel laureate in economics Joseph
Stiglitz:
“Large
segments of the population in advanced countries
have not been doing well: in the US, the bottom 90%
has endured income stagnation for a third of a
century. Median income for full-time male workers is
actually lower in real (inflation-adjusted)
terms than it was 42 years ago. At the bottom, real
wages are comparable to their level 60 years ago.”
Also, as regards the concentration of wealth as a
result of globalization, a recent study has shown
that in the last five years or so, the wealth of a
circle of billionaires consisting of 388 people has
risen by 44 per cent, (or half a trillion dollars),
while the wealth of the poorest fell by 41 per cent,
(more than a trillion), the result being that the
richest 62 people in the world are worth the same as
half the world population!
The social consequences of the huge inequality
created by globalization, even in the USA, the
country that played a leading role in promoting the
opening and liberalization of markets throughout the
post-war period, are well known. Thus, a very recent
study published in the
Journal of
the American Medical Association i implicitly
showed that the more a country is integrated into
the NWO the greater the negative impact on health
and life expectancy. The result is that, as average
life expectancy in developing nations continues to
rise, life spans in parts of America are getting
shorter. This has reached the point where the
poorest American men, at the age of 40, have a life
expectancy comparable to the average 40-year-old man
in Pakistan and Sudan! Rightly, therefore, Dr
Deaton, a professor of economics at Stanford
University, noted that the “infamous 1 per cent is
not only richer” they have also “ten to 15 more
years to enjoy their richly funded lives,” with
their life expectancy being better than the average
for any nation on earth.
No wonder that, following the victory of exit and
the fact that one of the two presidential candidates
in the forthcoming US elections has adopted many of
the demands of the victims of globalization, the
Transnational elites have been terrified by this
rapid rise of the anti-globalization movement.
Particularly so as it is not anymore just the
neo-nationalist movements in East Europe (such as
those in Hungary and Poland) which challenge
globalization. Thus, following Brexit, the
Eurosceptic Alternative for Germany party (AFD) came
second, ahead of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU, in
regional elections held in September, while similar
parties and movements in Italy, France, Austria and
the Netherlands have also seen a huge rise in their
popularity.
This could explain the recent concerted attack
against the rising new anti-globalization movement
by some of the prominent members of the
Transnational elite, such as the head of the IMF,
the president of the European Central Bank and the
president of the European Council.
All of them suddenly discovered the gross inequality
in the distribution of income and wealth as a result
of globalization and blamed the political elites for
not taking enough measures on boosting support for
low income workers and reducing inequality. Yet,
they are fully aware of the fact that any such
measures are impossible, in an environment of open
and liberalized markets. This is because any such
measures, if they are designed to be as effective as
present circumstances demand, they are bound to
affect negatively competitiveness—the foundation of
globalization itself. Not surprisingly, the
arch-gatekeeper of globalization, the EU Commission
President, immediately came out to ‘restore order’
and declare that the recipe for combating growing
discontent in Europe was “more union” including a
military headquarters “to co-ordinate efforts
towards creating a common military force”. No wonder
Le Pen, the leader of the French neonationalist
movement, was prompted to ask, in an obvious
insinuation that the new EU army will in effect be
used to smash any popular revolts against
globalization and the EU: “What is the EU protecting
us from — are you protecting us against prosperity?”
It is therefore clear that this binary strategy
(i.e. the ‘good cop’ strategy of improving the image
of globalization and the ‘bad cop’ strategy of force
to impose ‘law and order’) are going to define the
response of the Transnational Elite in the future to
the emerging revolt of the victims of globalization.
Yet, the disquiet of globalists cannot anymore be
hidden, as it happened in their latest big family
reunion in New York.
Therefore,
neo-nationalism is basically a movement that arose
out of the effects of globalization,
particularly the liberalization of labor markets, so
that labor could become more competitive.
However, the globalization process has already had
not only devastating economic and social
consequences on the majority of the world
population, but has also resulted in tremendous
changes at the political and the cultural levels, in
the past three decades or so. Furthermore, it has
led to a series of major wars by the Transnational
Elite in its attempt to integrate any country
resisting integration into the New World Order (NWO)
defined by neoliberal globalization (Yugoslavia,
Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria). In fact, an
election victory for Hillary, the blindly obedient
organ of the Transnational Elite, could well lead to
a new and potentially more serious crisis than the
1962 missile crisis, given her support for the most
dangerous policies on Syria, advocated by the same
criminal elements of the same elite that led to the
present catastrophe in the Middle East.
The bankruptcy of the globalist ‘Left” and the rise
of neo-nationalism
In view of the above, It was almost farcical to see
that a prominent role in the present front against
the victims of globalization in the USA is played by
its globalist ‘Left’, that is the Left which is
integrated into the NWO and does not question
globalization and its institutions. This, on top of
course of the entire
political establishment (from Obama to George W.
Bush) and also the whole economic establishment, the
press corps, and the social media,
(let alone the CIA!)—all
playing a vital role in this reactionary front.
Thus, from Bernie
Sanders, the ‘socialist’ candidate and
Nation to
the self-declared “anarchist” Noam Chomsky and
Michael Albert’s
Znet, as
well as many others, all declared their
(‘reluctant’) support for the criminal candidate of
the Transnational Elite. No wonder that even
Slavoj Žižek, one of the protagonists of the world
globalist ‘Left,’ seemed worried about this
“Stalinist” image of the ‘Left,’ presenting a total
consensus in favor of Clinton: “from Bernie Sanders
supporters, to what remains of the Occupy movement,
from big business to trade unions, from army
veterans to LGBT+ and ecologists…something that even
the worst kind of one-party systems have never
achieved.”
Clearly, for this politically and theoretically
bankrupt American ‘Left’,
the fact that the working class (for which
supposedly they fight) fully supports Trump is
irrelevant. Alternatively, for these ‘libertarians’,
workers are ignorant enough, so that they have to be
‘educated’ by these enlightened people about whom to
vote for! In fact, however, the blue collar ex
workers of the American motor industry, for
instance, who are determined to vote for Trump,
know better than the Left intellectuals, academics
and others who, mostly are beneficiaries of
globalization.
Yet, there is little doubt anymore that it was the
intellectual failure of the Left to grasp the real
significance of a new systemic phenomenon, (i.e. the
rise of the Transnational Corporation that has led
to the emergence of the globalization era) and its
consequent political bankruptcy, which were the
ultimate causes of the rise of a neo-nationalist
movement in Europe. This is a very different kind of
movement than the old aggressive nationalist
movement. It is a movement that is embraced by most
of the victims of globalization all over the world,
but particularly in Europe, mainly by the working
class that used to support the Left, whilst the
latter has effectively embraced not just economic
globalization but also political, ideological and
cultural globalization and has therefore been fully
integrated into the New World Order. In fact, today,
following the successful emasculation of the
antisystemic movement against globalization, thanks
mainly to the activities of the globalist ‘Left’, as
well as of the World Social Forum
and the various Foundations funding it, the
neo-nationalist movement is the only political force
left to fight against globalization in general and
the EU in particular.
It is therefore clear that the neo-nationalist
parties, which are all under attack by the
Transnational Elite, constitute cases of movements
that simply filled the huge gap left by the
globalist ‘Left’, which, instead of placing itself
in the front line of all those peoples fighting
globalization and the phasing out of their economic
and national sovereignty,
indirectly promoted globalization itself, using
arguments based on an anachronistic
internationalism, developed a hundred years ago or
so. As a result, the neo-nationalist parties are
embraced today by most of the victims of
globalization all over Europe, particularly the
working class which used to support the Left,
whilst the latter has effectively embraced all
aspects of globalization (economic, political,
ideological and cultural) and has been fully
integrated into the NWO—a defining moment in its
present intellectual and political bankruptcy. Similarly, in the USA, where it is Donald
Trump’s campaign which expresses these
neo-nationalist trends, we may see a new revolution
similar to the Brexit revolution, albeit much more
important given the hegemonic role that USA still
plays in the world.
The Brexit revolution and Trump
Despite the obvious differences between the Brexit
revolution and the movement for Trump, which arise
also from the fact that the former was a referendum
whereas the latter is an election, what matters most
are the similarities between them, as both reflect
different instances of the same world revolutionary
phenomenon.
Thus, the Brexit revolution, far from being an
isolated incident, related —as some globalists
argued in order to defame it— to the ideological
paraphernalia of old British imperialism, reflects,
in fact, a world revolutionary phenomenon. In fact,
it was the IMF itself that lately came out in
recognizing the revolutionary character of Brexit —
of course, in order to express the Transnational
Elite’s panic about it and draw the appropriate
conclusions. Thus, as
The Times
described the statement by Maurice Obstfeld, the
IMF’s chief economist on recent world economic
developments:
“Brexit
may be the start of a growing revolt against
globalization and technological advance in the
developed world that threatens to depress living
standards, the International Monetary Fund has
warned. Persistently weak growth is unleashing
“negative economic and political forces” that are
fuelling protectionism in Britain, the rest of
Europe and the US, according to the IMF, and
governments need to respond before the problem gets
worse.”
Furthermore, as I will try to show briefly here,
Brexit was very much a popular ‘revolution’, as the
entire movement was a movement ‘from below’, i.e.
from the victims of globalization themselves. The
main factor which created a movement ‘from below’
for Brexit was the growing realization by the
British people that its national and economic
sovereignty has been decisively eroded within the
EU, forcing the elites, albeit reluctantly, to
accept the demand for a referendum. This realization
was inevitable if one takes into account that
Britons, who used to live in one of the strongest
nation-states in the world, have now been reduced to
spectators, forced to watch, powerless, the
effective destruction of their industrial base, in
the very place where industrialization was born. In
fact, this was a referendum in which an
unprecedented number of voters took part, and in
which well over a million more people voted for
change than for the status quo on UK’s membership of
the EU.
Two important characteristics of the referendum were
usually minimized by the Transnational Elite’s
media: first, the geographical pattern of the vote,
which is particularly revealing as regards the class
nature of Brexit and, second, the age pattern of the
vote, which is very much related to the ideological
and cultural aspects of globalization.
As regards first, the geographical pattern of the
vote, the way in which people voted was a clear
indication of the fact that this was a ‘revolution
from below’ of the victims of globalization. Thus,
the only region in England to vote for Remain was
London, while the Brexit victory was overwhelming in
the deprived areas of England, where the victims of
globalization live, i.e. the victims of the criminal
de-industrialization process imposed by the
multinational corporations, which they moved en
masse to the Chinese and Indian labor
‘paradises’—exactly as they have been doing in the
USA in the last three decades or so. That is, to
the places offering multinationals not only a very
disciplined work force that is paid survival wages,
but also all the tax concessions possible, in order
to induce them to invest and create a pseudo kind of
development
Also, as far as the age distribution of the Brexit
vote was concerned, the most significant exception
to the voting pattern described above was among
those under the age of 24, where the Remain vote was
75 percent in favor.
In fact, Bremain was supported by an apolitical
youth — the perfect subject for manipulation by the
elites and its media (including social media) — who
are brainwashed by ideological and cultural
globalization. Thus, it has been estimated that
while there was a turnout of 82% among those aged 55
and over, barely a third of the 18-24 age group
managed to cast their vote. But those youngsters who
did bother to vote were fanatical opponents of
Brexit, who as soon as the referendum result was
announced, began demonstrating against it with the
direct or indirect support of the local elites, as
well as of the Transnational Elite (George Soros
, the well-known ‘master of ceremonies’ of pink
revolutions of every kind, played a leading role on
this).
Yet, when these youngsters were asked to explain
their fanatical support for the EU, they were
usually at a loss to justify their stand!
No wonder the Hillary camp has been very keen to
persuade (usually a-political) youngsters to vote.
The counter revolution in Britain and the USA
As one could expect, the Brexit revolution has led
to a fierce counter revolution in Britain by the
globalist establishment (which now includes the
Labor Party), that I described in
The New World
Order in Action. This counter revolution
was manifested both at the economic and the
political levels.
At the economic level, the Transnational economic
elite and its institutions (IMF, OECD, the Bank of
England etc.), as well as various think tanks,
economists, academics, Nobelists and so on, came out
before the referendum with a ‘Project Fear’ aiming
to portray the doomsday that supposedly was going to
follow a Brexit decision. Yet, the latest news give
a very different economic picture than the doomsday
predicted by the prophets of doom. Data from the
Office for National Statistics for the third
quarter, the first full quarter since the referendum
in June, showed that the Treasury was wrong to
suggest that the economy would collapse into
recession after a vote to leave. Instead, Britain’s
economy has defied expectations of an immediate
post-Brexit crash, by growing 0.5 per cent in the
three months to September, a stronger rate than the
start of the year.
The only significant economic impact of Brexit so
far was on the value of sterling—something that was
to be expected given the role that speculators such
as George Soros had played in the past, when he
became multimillionaire by simply speculating
against the British currency. Today, Soros’s role is
to try to reverse at all cost Brexit. Thus, as soon
as the result of the referendum was announced Soros
declared: “Britain eventually may or may not be
relatively better off than other countries by
leaving the EU, but its economy and people stand to
suffer significantly in the short-to medium term.”
At the political level, the globalist establishment
in Britain had used every possible means so far
either to revert the result of the referendum, which
politically is extremely difficult, given the
massive participation and support for Brexit by the
victims of globalization, or at least to water down
the meaning of it to render it meaningless—what they
call euphemistically, a “soft Brexit”. This counter
revolution
culminated today with the British High Court
decision aiming, in effect, to water down any future
Brexit decision, according to the elites’ wishes.
So, Britain, the famous ‘mother of
parliamentarianism’ has been reduced in the
globalization era to the level where a few High
Court Judges, with the help of parliamentarians
under the control of the economic elites, are able
to challenge the popular will which was expressed
directly and massively.
Finally, one common characteristic of the British
and US counter revolutions is the exploitation of
the immigration issue in order to smear Brexiteers,
as well as supporters of Trump, as anti-immigrants,
if not racists. Although of course such elements may
well exist within the neo-nationalist
antiglobalization movement in Britain, Europe and
the USA, yet the vast numbers of the victims of
globalization who support this huge movement mostly
consist of workers and ex-workers, who used to be
supporters of the Left, before the latter was
integrated into the NWO. It is therefore hard to
believe that all these people have suddenly
abandoned the ideals of the Left and moved to the
Right. In fact it can be shown that it was the Left
that moved to the Right, as far as the issue of
entry into the EU clearly showed (see
New World
Order in Action).
The exploitation of the immigration issue was
intensified particularly
in the last few years when the ideology of open
borders was massively promoted by the media of the
Transnational Elite, accompanied by a mass,
supposedly humanist, campaign to save the refugees.
That is, the mass of dislocated people who were of
course created in the first place by the
Transnational Elite itself, through its wars in the
Middle East!
Needless to add that ‘open borders’ — the policy
promoted by Soros, the Transnational Elite, Varoufakis and the
likes — in fact exploits an old libertarian ideal,
completely distorting its essence in the process.
Open borders is meaningful only in a democratic
world order where the peoples of the world are
really self-determined, controlling themselves the
productive resources at their disposal, including
human resources. That is, a world with no
exploitation and no inequality, where it is peoples
themselves that determine how best to meet the needs
they decide to satisfy, through social control of
some sort (e.g. through an economic democracy as I
described it elsewhere)
rather than through the anarchy of the markets.
Clearly, the world we live in today is exactly the
opposite of this kind of ideal world and those
fighting for open borders are in fact the elites and
their associates aiming to maximize their profits
through the free movement between countries, not
only of capital and commodities, but of cheap labor
as well. The inevitable effect is the equalization
‘to the bottom’ of the real value of wages and
salaries (their ‘cost of production’) all over the
world.
This is therefore the essence of the economic side
of immigration and not the pseudo-humanist black
propaganda about helping the masses of refugees and
the victims of globalization. Particularly so, when
both the former and the latter are simply the
byproducts of political and economic globalization
respectively. Clearly, it was the unprecedented
economic violence of the NWO (initiated by the
opening and liberalization of markets) as well as
the military violence (unleashed by the wars of the
Transnational Elite in the globalization era) that
created the billions of the victims of globalization
and the millions of refugees respectively. In other
words, the successful attempt by the Transnational
Elite to convert an economic consequence of
globalization, and the economic and military
violence it implies, into a (supposedly)
humanitarian refugee problem and an issue of
satisfying the libertarian principle of ‘open
borders’, is perhaps its greatest deception of
humanity today and one of the great deceptions of
all times. What is even worse is the general
acceptability of this deception by almost every
country in the world which has been integrated into
the NWO.
It is the same deception which is used extensively
by the elites, with the full support of the
globalist “Left”, in order to smear the new
antiglobalization movement (which at present is
expressed almost solely by the neonationalist
movement) as anti-immigrant, if not racist.
Therefore, the need for the creation of a radical
antiglobalization movement, which would unite the
growing millions of the victims of globalization,
irrespective of Left and Right labels, with the aim
to fight for economic and national sovereignty, —as
the necessary
(though not the sufficient) condition for a real
systemic change—is more imperative today than ever.-
* This article is based on the author’s new
book under the title
The New World Order in Action: Globalization, The
Brexit Revolution and the “Left”,
(Progressive Press, November 2016)
Aditya Chakrabortty,
“I hate Trump, but on the issue of free
trade he has a point,” The Guardian (19/10/2016).
Joseph E. Stiglitz, “Globalization
and its New Discontents,”
Project Syndicate (5/8/2016).
Sam Joiner, “Richest 62 in world worth the
same as poorest 3.5 billion,” The
Times (18/1/2016).
Will Pavia, “Poor Americans have same life
expectancy as Sudanese,”
The
Times (13/4/2016).
Claire Jones & Alec Barker, “Do more to help
globalization’s losers, say champions of
liberalism,”
Financial Times (13/9/2016).
David Charter,
“Juncker calls for more union
to beat ‘galloping populism’,”
The
Times (14/9/2016).
Anand Giridharadas, “Besieged
Globalists Ponder What Went Wrong,”
New
York Times (26/9/2016).
[12]
see e.g. Sam Fleming and Patti Waldmeir,
“Donald Trump’s trade message resonates in
car country,”
Financial Times
(8/8/2016).
[15]
Francis Elliott et al. ‘Working class
prefers Ukip to Labour,”
The
Times (25/11/2014).
[16]
Philip Aldrick, “Brexit
was just the start of a global revolt, IMF
warns,”
The
Times (5/10/2016).
[19]
Dominic Lawson,
“OK, you’re angry. But ignore the vote and
tanks could be on the streets,”
Sunday Times (3/7/2016).
[20]
Philip Aldrick,
“Economy
defies Brexit slowdown fears,”
The
Times (27/0/2016).
[22]
See Takis Fotopoulos,
Towards An Inclusive Democracy (London:
Cassel, 1997), ch. 6
source:
www.inclusivedemocracy.org/journal/vol12/vol12_no1_A_Brexit_Style_Revolution_In_The_US.html
The
International Journal of Inclusive Democracy
: http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/journal/
Print 
PDF