Brexit represents a growing trend in worldwide populist movements that threaten to undermine democracy, both in Europe and in the U.S.
In the U.K., a small, wealthy, white, rightwing upperclass has deliberately stoked its country’s xenophobia into a belligerent nationalism that now threatens its very existence.
The usual conditions of growing inequality, rising poverty, and poor economic opportunity allow such demagogues to manipulate the masses to further their own financial and political agenda.
What’s dangerous is that this race-baited anger has been fueled here at home by Donald Trump, whom my German friends refer to as America’s Hitler. The exploited anti-immigration paranoia in the U.K. parallels directly to the flames Trump has been fanning since he began his presidential bid.
Writes Lopez, “Inextricably combining conservatism and racism, the [modern day] Tea Party was almost wholly a creature of right-wing dog whistle politics...the movement reflected the confluence of four forces:
-First, the anger and fear of everyday white folks – persons whose political conservatism was directly molded by racially infected fears of a liberal government run by a black president.
- Second, opportunistic Republicans seeking a new label for a damaged brand.
- Third, right-wing billionaires like the Koch brothers, with their well-funded propaganda machines.
- Finally, Fox News and the right-wing media machine which promoted the movement and also helped racially agitate and misinform its soldiers.”
“are all furious at the implication that race is a factor in their political views, despite the fact they blame the financial crisis on poor black homeowners, spend months on end engrossed by reports about how the New Black Panthers want to kill ‘cracker babies,’ support politicians who think the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was an overreach of government power, tried to enact South African-style immigration laws in Arizona and obsess over…Barack Obama’s birth certificate.”
“The Boston tea party was a revolt against the economic royalists, who had seized the British government and passed the world’s largest corporate tax break at the time, devastating colonial tea sellers. The purpose of the Tea Act was to increase the profitability of the East India Company to its stockholders, which included the king, and to help the company drive its colonial small business competitors out of business. Because the company temporarily no longer had to pay high taxes to England, and held a monopoly on the tea it sold in American colonies, it was able to lower its tea prices to undercut those of the local importers, and the mom and pop tea houses in every town in America.”