Ian Buruma: Globalisation is turning the west against its elites

Anew alliance is being forged between Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pen to fight what the Dutch populist calls “this monster called Europe”. They make a striking pair, with their shared taste for dyed butter-blonde locks. Yet their parties – the Dutch Party for Freedom and the French National Front – differ in several respects.
Before he switched the focus of his vitriol to “Europe”, Mr Wilders built his platform on a defence of “Judeo-Christian European civilisation” against the Muslim peril. One peril of “Islamisation”, in his view, is the threat to gay rights. “Judeo-Christian” sits awkwardly with Ms Le Pen’s party, whose founder, her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, once dismissed the Nazi gas chambers as a detail of history. Her party is not keen on gay rights.
But loathing of the European monster has bonded the two politicians in a common cause. The same sentiments are shared by many other European populists, from The Finns (formerly the True Finns) to the Flemish Block and the UK Independence party. Dire predictions have been made that a populist eurosceptic alliance will dominate the European parliament after elections next May.
This is unlikely, since the parties, some of which are more disreputable than others, are having trouble coming together. Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, for example, wisely keeps his distance from his Dutch, French and Flemish confrères; he is worried by racism, be it against Jews or Muslims.
There is, of course, much to dislike about the EU. The so-called “democratic deficit” is real. The high-handed manner in which eurocrats push through sometimes quite misguided policies (the euro, to mention just one) has – rightly – put people’s backs up. And the European parliament is filled with obscure cranks, many of whom are of course from the parties that hate “Europe”.
But there is something more visceral about the populist aversion to the EU. People who suffer from these anxieties are often far removed from the consequences of what frightens them. Many Ukip voters in the English shires do not encounter many immigrants. “Europe” is little more than a demonic abstraction.
What the followers of the Pied Pipers of popular resentment really hate, perhaps more than Muslims and other aliens, is their own so-called liberal elite – the educated mandarins and commentators, the bien pensant writers and academics, the left-of-centre internationalists, the cosmopolitans and the eggheads. In short, the people whose superior airs make them feel inadequate.
The common idea is that the liberal-left elites are destroying our identities – ethnic, national and religious. It was the liberal elites that allowed immigrants to “swamp” our cities, legally or illegally. It was they who built pan-European institutions and the UN. Liberals created welfare states, which reward the lazy and allow foreigners to sponge off our taxes. In the US, liberals elected a black president. And some Tea Party enthusiasts sincerely believe that the UN is robbing the US of its sovereignty (because of the liberals, of course).
The world is shifting in ways that make many western citizens uncomfortable. Non-western powers are rising fast. The European sense of superiority is becoming harder to maintain. Non-white populations are growing in the west. In much of the US, white Christians of European origin no longer dominate politics.
It is also true that the ideals of the postwar elites, their hopes for social democracy, for international institutions, for European unity, are looking more and more threadbare. The crisis, and the reasonable fear that our children will be less well off than we are, has dealt a blow to those ideals and the educated class that did most to promote them.
But to blame the liberal elites is in one important respect to miss the point. For those elites are much less responsible for the destruction of customs and traditional communities than something quite different. Just as Thatcherite laisser faire economics did much to sweep away traditional institutions in Britain, the new neoliberal global economy is doing the same all over the world.
Industries now move swiftly from continent to continent. Metropolitan financial centres have become more influential than governments. And these neo-liberals are different in at least one vital respect to the old elites: whereas old lefties wanted the state to play a central role in society, the neoliberals have little time for any state intervention.
Many people benefit from globalisation. But many others feel left behind and marginalised. This is why they are so resentful. Exploiting this feeling is politically expedient and wins a lot of votes. But there is a contradiction in much contemporary populism. In the US, populists who hate Wall Street almost as much as the UN are sponsored by billionaires whose interests are far removed from those of their supporters. Supporters of Ukip want Britain to break away from Europe and become a western Singapore. This might be good for London, but would surely be a disaster for provincial England – where most Ukip voters live.
The politics of hatred never result in anything good. But preaching the old liberal shibboleths about internationalism, the richness of immigrants’ cultures and the horrors of racism are not enough. The borderless economy must become more equitable to temper growing inequalities and to shield the vulnerable from global market forces.
Neither Mr Wilders nor Ms Le Pen will achieve this. If the new elites in the global economy want to stave off the storm of destructive hatred, they had better come up with some ideas of their own on how to temper the market forces from which they have profited so well.

Ian Buruma latest book is ‘Year Zero: A History of 1945’. He teaches at Bard College in New York

Fonte:FT