Brexit, Trump, Modi: To suggest voters worldwide are racist fools is the death of liberalism

The reaction to Brexit so far from the global liberal media, which is also disturbingly national-capital centric, has been quite similar to its response to the rise of Donald Trump in the US or the voting in of Narendra Modi. This reaction is characterised by a denial of the new reality, followed by an intense hatred towards the masses, culminating into cynicism towards democracy itself. To recall, when it became clear that Modi was in pole position to become India’s Prime Minister, it was suggested that voters lack the intellectual wherewithal to understand the mistake they are committing. “Modi is dangerous to India, because he is the kind of model of Chinese authoritarianism presented in Indian dialects. That’s the last kind of person we need for a confused and complex democracy such as India,” a member of the academia was quoted in this 2013 interview. This statement was hardly a lone voice. This attitude of talking down from a pulpit, a kind of I-know-what-is-best-for-you, has again been on display after United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. An Indian English daily interpreted Brexit as: “politics of fear, hate, lies, xenophobia and blaming the ’ other’, or in this case the ’ outsider’, for all troubles winning the day.” How ironic that this is a reflection of the very prejudice that liberalism professes to fight against! [caption id=“attachment_2855648” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  People react to the result of the referendum on Brexit. AP[/caption] If, for the sake of argument, we assume that right-wing populism is on the rise, it must point to an ever increasing dissatisfaction and insecurity. And if that is so, there must be a widening chasm between the leaders and the masses they represent. The gap between promise and delivery. Tied to these are questions of unequal growth, the market following its own logic, the influx of refugees, immigration and terrorism. All of these are pressure points that demand a complex evaluation. Instead of even attempting to grasp why voters across the world are delivering stunning repudiations to the economic and political elites, liberals have resorted to painting entire populations across continents with a broad xenophobic brush. Such tendencies have been seen in Europe, America, as well as in India. To marginalise and term millions as “xenophobic”, “racists”, “haters”, “liers” “fools” when referendums do not throw up results liberals like is the defeat of liberalism. Be it the Modi-led BJP winning an unprecedented mandate in India, Trump clinching the primaries, or voters from mainly disadvantaged parts of England choosing to ’leave’, the overwhelming response is to suggest that the voters are not qualified enough to make such decisions. It is as if democracy is a tool for a specific agenda. It is to be lauded when results go one way and questioned when they take a different path. The European Union is not just a single market, but is also a cultural idea—a sort of an elite institution that seeks to dilute boundaries and merge regional identities into one big European melting pot. And equally, it also divests the voters of the democratic power to control the fate of the countries they live in. They still have voting power to elect governments but that power amounts to very little when confronted with shared realities. If the western elites and liberals — the font of intellectual sustenance for Indian elites — had managed to delude themselves into believing that nationalism is a failed concept and boundaries do not matter, then the Brexit referendum is a sound repudiation. Incidents such as the one that took place in Germany when 1000 drunk young men of Arab or North African appearance mugged many during New Year celebrations in Cologne and sexually assaulted around 80 women, raise uncomfortable questions that politicians are loathe to confront. But not addressing a problem does not make the problem go away. When we declare people who suffer from such insecurities are decidedly racist, it makes the masses suspect the elites of disloyalty. For the first time in her political career, presumptive Democratic US presidential nominee Hillary Clinton used the term ‘radical Islamism’ to describe the calamity in which shooter Omar Mateen gunned down 50 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando ostensibly to blunt the attacks from Trump. The Republican US presidential hopeful had accused Clinton of shying away from reality. It is easy to see why ordinary American people who just want to get on with their lives, have a drink at a pub with friends and family members after work, would rather side with someone who is ready to address the real issues instead of someone who is lost in desperate semantics. On the economic front, all that Brexit does is show just how out of touch the political and economic elite is from the reality of the common man. While sermons were given on how it will be catastrophic for the economy and how the British pound will lose 10 per cent of its value, the worker in a grocery store, struggling with unemployment because his job has been outsourced to another country where labour is cheap, had little patience to hear it. If pundits and politicians keep talking down to people on what is best for them for decades even as their prospects go down the Thames, at some point there would be some sort of a reaction. Brexit is that.