Zaigham Khan<\/p>\n
The White House, the shrine of neoliberal capitalism, has become the latest and by far the biggest victim to globalisation, or its discontents \u2013 to be specific. Donald Trump, in his victory speech, called his election campaign a movement. And a movement it was. Though just one of the hundreds of movements shaped by discontent to globalisation worldwide, this uprising is so spectacular because it has happened not in some distant outpost of the empire, but in Rome itself.
\nThe poor rising against the rich makes the perfect narrative in journalism. Storytellers are keen to portray every uprising as an insurrection of the wretched of the earth and every coup as a revolution. Even serious analysts can make the mistake of confusing material discontent to globalisation with the reactions created by ideological or cultural reasons.
\nIn March this year, the Atlantic magazine tried to make sense of Trump\u2019s following. According to the magazine: \u201cThe single best predictor of Trump support in the GOP primary is the absence of a college degree….Although white men without a college education haven\u2019t suffered the same historical discrimination as blacks or women, their suffering is not imagined.\u201d
\nThe magazine referred to findings by The Hamilton Project that found that the full-time, full-year employment rate of men without a bachelor\u2019s degree fell from 76 percent in 1990 to 68 percent in 2013. \u201cWhile real wages have grown for men and women with a four-year degree or better in the last 25 years, they\u2019ve fallen meaningfully for non-college men\u201d, the magazine quoted an expert working with the project .
\nIn December 2015, the Economist conducted a survey of \u201cEurope\u2019s Little Trumps\u201d, populist leaders who are gaining ground across the continent. The Economist noted that \u201csupport for xenophobic populism is strongest among those who are older, non-university educated, working class, white and male.\u201d The opposition to these leaders, according to the Economist came from younger, educated, working in service and professional jobs, and comfortable with diversity. Similar demographics were observed in the case of Brexit voters as well.
\nHowever, this is only half the story. As Nate Silver, a statisticians and Special Correspondent of ABC News observed: \u201cAs compared with most Americans, Trump\u2019s voters are better off. The median household income of a Trump voter… in the primaries is about $72,000, based on estimates derived from exit polls and Census Bureau data. It\u2019s well above the national median household income of about $56,000. It\u2019s also higher than the median income for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders supporters, which is around $61,000 for both.\u201d
\nIf we combine the two analyses, it is clear that Trump supporters are a section of American population \u2013 albeit a very large one \u2013 who are better off but are feeling left out from the gains of globalisation and want to stem the tide of global movement of goods, services and people. For supporters of big Trump and little Trumps, movement of people, causing threats to identity, is as threatening as movement of goods and services that poses threats to jobs.
\nAs Fareed Zakaria observed: \u201cBut it\u2019s not just about economics. The most disruptive element of all has turned out to be not the free and fast movement of goods, services, and information across the planet, but of people. The migration of people in and out of countries has produced an emotional backlash against immigration, refugees, and indeed the entire idea of globalization. Economic issues affect the head; identity issues hit the heart.\u201d
\nEconomic growth that aggravates inequality has been a perfect recipe for uprisings in the modern age. In 1962, James C Davies presented his\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 J-curve theory. The theory states that revolutions are most likely to occur when periods of prolonged improvements concerning economic and social development are supplanted by a period of sharp reversal.
\nAccording to Davies: \u201cRevolutions do not usually occur in impoverished societies. The reason is that when people are preoccupied with their physical survival, the community-sense and consensus on joint political actions goes down and thus also the likelihood for revolutions to occur. Even though physical deprivation is to some extent present at the onset of revolutions, it is seldom the primary cause.\u201d
\nIn our part of the world, the uprising against Shah of Iran happened after the \u2018White Revolution\u2019, a historic period of prosperity ushered due to oil exports. In Pakistan, a movement against Ayub Khan was shaped towards the end of the \u2018Decade of Development\u2019, a period of unprecedented growth and rising inequality.
\nStarting from the beginning of history, uprisings have been a norm rather than an exception, both in democracies and dictatorships. While in dictatorships, uprisings can result in serious violence and widespread disruption, in democracies they result in accommodation and re-adjustments. In fragile or new democracies, however, uprisings can also result in the reversal of a democratic experiment.
\nIt is clear that very often uprisings are not staged by those who find themselves at the bottom of the heap. The backlash from the relatively privileged to turn the tide is even more likely due to their relative social power. Another important point to remember is the fact that humans not only fight for power and material resources but also for identity and symbols.
\nIn India, democracy gave lower castes a chance to gang up against the upper castes. Through caste politics, they have been able to extract sizable concessions from the state and have also been able to rule a number of states through their representative parties. Using religion and identity as an emblem, upper castes and well-off classes have been able to stage their own insurgency against the lower castes via the BJP, though Muslims are seen as symbolic outsiders of this brand of identity politics.
\nPakistan, soon after its creation, went into the hands of the salariat who ruled it with the help of their client crony capitalists and local electables. The PPP\u2019s uprising against Ayub\u2019s dictatorship was backed by the classes that had been left out by the arrangement. However, the ruling salariat soon had its revenge and \u2018normalcy\u2019 was restored by Ziaul Haq after the PNA movement.
\nIn Pakistan, peasants and small farmers have been harmed the most by globalisation. However, due to lack of education, it is hard for them to make a logical link between their misery and globalisation. They also lack a political platform as all major parties conveniently ignore them.
\nThe discontent to globalisation has been mainly articulated by the religious groups and the educated middle class, mainly for identity reasons. This discontent has also brought them together under the PTI\u2019s banner in an amusing manner, making Western-educated men and women share the dance floor with bearded Taliban supporters.
\nWill the success of big Trump be followed by the triumph of our own little Trump? Reading tea leaves has become an arduous business after the failure of the survey industry in the US.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Zaigham Khan The White House, the shrine of neoliberal capitalism, has become the latest and by far the biggest victim to globalisation, or its discontents \u2013 to be specific. Donald Trump, in his victory speech, called his election campaign a movement. And a movement it was. Though just one of the hundreds of movements shaped […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6484","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-article"},"yoast_head":"\n