Dickson Igwe, Senior political contributor
Donald Trump’s Pitchfork Revolution, BREXIT, and a world in upheaval, are a refusal by the western Anglo Saxon driven culture, to accept a radically altering world.
At the core of Donald Trump’s populist movement, Brexit, and populism in Europe, is what has been termed by sociologists” WHITE ANXIETY.” White Anxiety is a fear among whites, that changing demographics, international economics, and shifts to Asia from the west, of wealth and power, threaten white privilege.
White privilege is the social, political, and economic advantage, of being caucasian in a world controlled by middle aged white men.
White anxiety is driven by an increasing minority population in the west, especially in the USA. The reason for this increase is the higher fertility rates among minorities especially, Latinas.
In the USA, minorities – Latina, African, and Asian- will become a majority by 2040.
In the UK, Brexit is a similar phenomenon. Migration, and a changing demographic, especially Asian Muslims, and Eastern Europeans, has created anxiety among the indigenous white population.
The result is increasing racism and xenophobia.
Now the platform upon which western culture wars sit is what has been termed globalization: the shrinking of the world through digitization, financialization, and borderless trade.
And white blue collar working men in the west: the base of Trump’s Pitchfork Revolution and the Brexit movement in the UK, have been angered at the havoc globalization and outsourcing has wreaked in their communities.
Photo courtesy https://www.qs.com/
Globalization further drives white anxiety on the western street. The problem is, globalization is an express train that has left the station, and a train that will not be returning to the platform.
The world will continue to integrate, migrants will continue to seek greener pastures abroad, and the 100 families that run the world economy, continue to grow wealthier from the globalization process.
Trumps Revolution, Brexit, and populism in Europe, are a simple blip, on a fundamentally changing world where technology, digitization and artificial intelligence are turning everything ”upside down.”
Globalization and wealthy western investors have helped to create a new global middle class of 1.5 billion. This new global middle class is doing the jobs western blue collars workers once did in the 1970s and 80s, in places such as Wyoming, Utah Colorado, Sheffield, Manchester, Coventry, and Bristol.
Today, supply chains are global. No one product is sourced in one country.
Multinational corporations may be owned by super wealthy investors living in western cities, but the manufacturing and distribution of products takes place in several countries, and are also consumed in these countries, as well as the west.
What is made in China is consumed in the west, and what is made in China is controlled by corporations owned by both Chinese and US/EU investors.
Globalization and international intervention alone can deal with the big questions that face humanity: climate change; natural disasters; changing work patterns; global inequality; the Middle East; poverty in Africa; and the management of robotics and artificial intelligence.
It is indeed ironic that some of Britain’s wealthiest men are self described Brexiters and populists, but today these men are moving their businesses and assets overseas where the benefits of globalization appear much more beneficial than the threat of the UK’s exit from Europe- the world’s largest middle class market.
The European Union is poster boy for globalization.
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Dickson Igwe is an education official in the Virgin Islands. He is also a national sea safety instructor. He writes a national column across media and has authored a story book on the Caribbean: 'The Adventures of a West Indian Villager'. Dickson is focused on economics articles, and he believes economics holds the answer to the full economic and social development of the Caribbean. He is of both West African and Caribbean heritage. Dickson is married with one son.
