The economic contradictions of Racism

Nuove Narrazioni
Sep 4, 2018 · 3 min read

When I first started researching for this post, I had in mind to write about the international challenge launched by Steve Bannon and the American business aristocracy to the European Union. Bannon, the Koch brothers and the republican elite who had put the Tea Party and President Trump where they are — this was my original project — are finally about to attack the only competitor the United States have had in the last twenty years: the common market and the European regulations (especially antitrust).

Bannon’s announcement to spend half of his time in Europe to empower and federate the souverainiste movements in view of the upcoming European elections seemed like a perfect input. In fact, Bannon himself had told Reuters that his Movement’s goal was to “undermine, and ultimately paralyze, the European Union”.

While doing my homeworks for the article, however, I realized that the situation is much more complex than that, and that the social, economic and cultural bloc supporting the populists is much less solid than it appears. Steve Bannon, expelled from the White House for calling President Trump “unpatriotic”, saw his candidate in the Republican primaries in Virginia defeated and was ousted by Breitbart.

Steve Bannon and Marie Le Pen. Source: New York Times

The Movement sails in unknown waters, has little funds and was received with skepticism by both AfD (Germany) and Front Nationale (France), to name only two of the main European right-wing actors. It seems that being an isolationist nationalist makes it difficult to join other isolationist nationalists, who would have thought it?

Even more interesting, however, is the breakup between Mr Trump and the Koch brothers, the masterminds of U.S. far right, whose motivation are purely economical: the defense of free trade, essential for capitalists like Koch but poison for the Trump’s voters.

The souverainiste block is composed of at least two souls, and one does not necessarily want to be in the company of the other.

The Business — capital B — is linked to international trade, open borders and an aggressive foreign policy. In this perspective, racism and sexism are not values, but simply wage dumping — if black people and women have less rights as persons, they also have less rights as workers.

On the other had, for the “enraged, excluded and disilluded” low- and middle class, racism and sexism are simple social Darwinism. Being the second to last is still better than the last, especially in an highly competitive and low-welfare society.

In reality, these are two completely different forms of racism. One wants more rights, more welfare and more services, and tries to get them (spoilers: it will fail) by taking them away from others; the other needs free trade, few taxes and workers who, blacks or whites, catch mices without talks of “unions”.

A similar contradiction seems evident also in Italy. The small capitalism from the North are happily exploiting Fatima (and Brahim, like Othello, should not think of marrying their daughters!), but need the Euro free trade to export, as well as a stable economic system to let production and sales grow. The poorer middle class, on the other side, needs a scapegoat for its worsened situation.

The coalition is only apparently and very superficially guaranteed by the identification of a single enemy, which happen to be migrants (but also Muslims, Communists, Europe , etc). In a healthy democracy, the contradictions would soon explode — the only alternative for a souverainiste party that wants to stay afloat are repression and war.

So, what is the solution? None, at the moment — we are way to far from having clearly identified the problem, yet. But the crucial point is stop using only values ​​as political judgment meter. The contradictions of the far-right movements are in their interests, in the distribution of wealth — at the end of day, once again, it’s the economy, stupid.

Nuove Narrazioni

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Un progetto per la costruzione di una nuova narrazione progressista — A project to build a new progressive political narrative

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