This is Not Trump’s Fault
“Yellow vests” are rampaging through Paris. “Brexit” is teetering on the brink of collapse. Trump is on the verge of impeachment. The leaders of Russia and Saudi Arabia, both murderers, are greeting each other like boys who won the big game. Authoritarian leaders are in control in Turkey, and Hungary and the Philippines; nations we thought were well in the “democratic” camp.
What is going on in the world? Why has a world that seemed to be moving towards a more stable society (or if you are an alt-right conspiracy theorist – a NEW WORLD ORDER) now seem to be falling apart; why the unrest, why the uncertainty? Didn’t we win the Cold War, the War to stabilize the world against Communist aggression? Why didn’t that fix things?
So something you don’t hear everyday here in Trump World: this isn’t Donald Trump’s fault. The forces driving the unrest in the world, including here in the United States, were happening long before his ride down the golden escalator in Trump Tower. I will say though, that he isn’t helping to solve the crisis.
It was on Christmas Day seventeen years ago that the red hammer and sickle flag of the Soviet Union was lowered for the last time. With the end of the Cold War, a world carefully balanced ended as well. We were we no longer poised on the point of nuclear holocaust, but the “controls” that the Soviets placed on their “satellite” states were gone.
The lesson should already have been learned after the death of Marshal Tito, the dictator of Yugoslavia. Once Tito, in power since the end of World War II, no longer had his iron fist in control of the nation, it quickly broke up into combative ethnic regions. One nation, held together by a shared history of resistance to Nazism and the fierce personality of Tito, became a struggling amalgam: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Serbia. Ethnic violence between Christians and Muslims became ethnic cleansing; European cities like Sarajevo, site of the 1984 Winter Olympics, became battlegrounds with mass graves.
And the United States had to learn that lesson again, soon after the Persian Gulf War. President George W Bush determined to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, taking the “cork out of the bottle” of ethnic hatred. Sunni, Shi’ite and Kurds fought for power, ISIS grew from the conflict, and the United States still remains bogged down in the region, unable to find a stable government to leave behind.
The battles in the Balkans and in the Middle East created waves of refugees that moved into the rest of Europe. Many were Muslim, and most “looked different” than the Germans, or French, or British where they landed. They needed jobs and housing and education; and “ethnic minorities” became an issue in places where it had never occurred before: the small “crossroads and pub” hamlets of the United Kingdom and France and Germany.
Nationalism is the belief that a national group is “better” than the rest of the world. It has a positive side, patriotism, evoking national pride and encouraging work and sacrifice. But its ugly side: superiority that becomes a reason to hate and repress, grew powerful in the economic tensions of the 1930’s. As a “ national force” it was discredited and disgraced at the end of World War II: the catastrophic destruction of the war, and the racist annihilation of the Holocaust, made it clear what Nationalism could do. National identities were subsumed into the idea of trans-national governments, whether it was the European Union, the Soviet Union, or even the United Nations.
But Nationalism didn’t die, it was right under the surface. In those nations where it was suppressed by force, like Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union (now fifteen separate “republics”) the removal of authoritarian regimes quickly allowed ugly nationalism to blossom. In more democratic nations it still existed, but in tension with the egalitarian ideals of “…liberty, equality and brotherhood.”
Discontent usually starts with economics. In the “western world,” there has been an increasing trend of income inequality. In the 1980’s the average income of the top 10% was 7x that of the lowest 10%, today it is 9 ½ x more. Today in Europe, the top 10% of wealthiest households have 50% of the wealth, the lowest 40% have 3% (Understanding the Socio-Economic Divide in Europe– 2017).
As economic inequality increased in Europe, those in the lower economic range were left discontented and competing for lower paying jobs. Their increasing competition was with the migrants and refugees coming from dislocated regions in and around Europe. One way to “win” that competition was to block migration, a move that has nationalistic as well as economic foundations.
Add to this the forces encouraging nationalistic actions: a nation that had a stake in the failure of democracies and world unions: Russia under Vladimir Putin. Putin has his own economic issues and inequalities, but his nationalistic aspirations were to re-build the Russian Empire. In order for him to do that, he had to reduce the power of the competing forces that blocked his expansion: the European Union, NATO, and the United States.
He found a new weapon: the internet. Russia became the master at reaching and enflaming nationalist groups within a nation. The US saw this happen in the 2016 election (and still today) but it also happened in the United Kingdom during the Brexit vote, and in the last French election (Marie LePen.) It continues with the “Yellow Vests” today; faked videos of French police shooting down protestors with sniper rifles go online and are amplified by nationalists throughout the world.
The underlying factors for unrest are already here: economic inequity and dislocation. The resulting despondency is looking for a rationale: nationalism and the internet are providing the answer. Governments are unable or unwilling to respond to the underlying economic causes of the crisis, so the nationalistic themes, repeated over and over on social media, take hold. It wasn’t the right answer in 1930’s, but history is often forgotten. So it may not be repeated exactly, but unfortunately it may rhyme.
