y va marquer wrote:
I disagree that it's people's relative material conditions that are the key drivers of these behaviours and attitudes.
It's all intertwined, but in the end I think false consciousness about the main sources of long term risk to prosperity certainly does drive this resurgent nationalism and racism we're seeing.
The supporters of the populist right identify migrants, racial "impurity" and economic globalisation per se as the risk, and seek an authoritarian ethnostate as the solution, often rationalising their racism under rubrics concerning the relative economic performance of ethnically homogeneous nations, or universalising theories concerning a fundamental (and therefore by their mode of argument, not racist in its particularity) impossibility of harmonious cospatial ethnic difference.
A left-winger like me attributes risk to the destructive and relentless profit motive that orders our lives collectively within the enclosures of nation, family and corporation.
We all think we're right, and for the most part we pursue our politics because we think it serves the future security and prosperity of ourselves and those near to us.
