A few years ago, I attended a small party, a birthday celebration for a friend of a friend. The celebrant’s husband worked for the United Nations, as did some of the other party goers (all Europeans). They were nice enough people, but my lingering memory of that night was a subtle… well, I’m not sure if it was arrogance, condescension, elitism, patronizing, or just a general air of haughtiness, as in “we work for the UN, we’re the smart ones, we’re the Best-and-Brightest, and we know better.”
The widespread gnashing of teeth, bewailing of the future, and denigration of the masses that has poured forth after the “shocking” Brexit vote reminds me of those nice-but-snooty UN people. Britain is going to suffer, to land in the dustbin of history, to become an irrelevancy on the world stage. Britain’s voters embraced ugly nationalism, they voted against their best interests, they reacted to baseless fear mongering. In other words, we know they’re wrong for voting for the Brexit because we’re smart and they’re not.
Day-after petulance aside (protestors in London are marching on Parliament demanding either a re-vote or that the Brexit vote be ignored, some mandarins in Brussels are saying “maybe we should throw them out now instead of waiting until October”), the intelligentsia that completely missed the boat with their expectations and prognostications don’t get how they and their policies are the proximate cause for this “shocking” decision to choose self-determination over the edicts of unelected bureaucrats in another country.
Nationalism/nativism is being widely blamed for the “leave” vote, and I agree that it is a significant component. Nationalism/nativism is, however, something that has always existed among a segment of the populace, and it has managed to coexist with more liberal attitudes regarding immigration for decades and centuries. People have been moving around for a very long time, and they have always faced some degree of resistance from the “natives” of the new lands to which they’ve moved.
The movement of people in recent years includes a fundamental difference, one that is the real source for the rising tide of nationalism that has elevated Marine Le Pen’s National Front party in France, Geert Wilders’ Dutch Part for Freedom in The Netherlands, Nigel Farage’s UK Independence Party, and of course the rise of Donald Trump within America’s Republican Party.
For centuries, people left their home lands in pursuit of better lives in other countries. When they landed in those other countries, they brought some of their cultural norms and preferences with them, but they also understood that they were in a new land, with its own rules and norms. The culture they brought with them blended with and reshaped their new homes’ cultures, and America has been referred to as a “melting pot” due to the wide range of cultures that have shaped her own.
In recent years, however, the melting pot has been pushed aside in favor of multiculturalism. There used to be an implicit understanding: Come live among us, be yourselves, but understand that you’re in a place with an existing culture and a long-established and well-evolved set of rules and norms. Be yourselves, but respect those around you. Become part of the new culture, and make your contribution to the mulligan stew. Nowadays, immigrants are not expected to plop themselves into the stew, flavoring it but becoming part of it. Instead, they are told to hold onto their old cultural ways, because Diversity is a Good Thing. The natives, on the other hand, are told that their expectation that the new folks become part of the country is antiquated, bigoted, nativist, and just flat-out wrong. They’re told that their lives will be better if they celebrate the immigrants’ differences, subordinate their own ways out of respect to the immigrants, and elevate the immigrants’ rights above their own.
Lots of “telling” there, and that’s the problem. The people who have taken it upon themselves to dictate how society should be, rather than accepting how it is and allowing it evolve naturally, either don’t understand or don’t care that those diktats aren’t simply going to be swallowed wholesale by the presumably benighted masses who are on the receiving end. These Best-and-Brightest have, like the aforementioned UN folks, embraced the notion of their own superiority. So, when they rise to positions of political power, in no small part by selling idealistic fantasies to people who want to think of themselves as enlightened or smarter or more noble, they forget that they are representatives, not managers.
So, rather than heeding the people they represent, they do unto us as they believe is best, and dismiss any objections as ignorant, or bigoted, or unenlightened, or whatever condescending adjective you want to throw in here. After some time in an echo chamber where such haughtiness is reinforced, they lose sight of the fact that those benighted souls they’re trying to force into a different and subordinate mindset aren’t quite as pliable as they expect. Push people hard enough and they push back.
Thus, the Brexit. Thus, Trump, and Le Pen, and Wilders, and the other leaders of the nationalist parties in Europe.
The Brexit is a result of condescension towards the masses by the intelligentsia and the ruling classes. Trump is a result of condescension towards “flyover country” and the people who prefer melting-pot over multiculturalism. The nativist fervor on the Continent is the result of condescending dismissal of citizens’ concerns regarding the message to immigrants that they get to bring their own rules with them and ignore those of their new homes.
It’s easier to look back on historical events and find their causes than to identify the trends while living them, but it really takes a certain willful blindness not to have seen how the force-feeding of multiculturalism spawned backlashes that include but are not limited to Trump and the Brexit. There’s a reason that authoritarian regimes stoke deeper resentment than legitimately representative ones.
The Best-and-Brightest are shocked by the Brexit just as they are shocked by Trump’s rise. Maybe, if they acknowledged that they should first blame themselves, these could become teachable moments, they could learn a bit of humility, and they might stop trying to force societies to conform to their personal preferences.
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