Trump and the new Fascism. . .

John Ibbitson, the conservative shill who told us not that long ago that Harper's Conservative Party would be in power for a century, (to give you some idea of his ability to predict the future) wrote in the Globe and Mail today that "He'll likely lose - but Trump is the final warning to elites." The headline tells the majority of the story since, as with most of Ibbitson's articles, the rest of the text is a rambling hodgepodge of poorly written blather.

But what is the narrative that Ibbitson (along with Trump and many of his supporters) is trying to sell here? That Trump, despite being a billionaire who rubs shoulders with every kind of political and business mover and shaker is not an elite? Well, denying that Trump is an elite is obviously only for the most ignorant and simpleminded of the Trump audience. We know Trump is an elite. The unspoken narrative here is that there are two groups in society, on the one hand a "political elite" who have been running the political system and in the process lining their pockets and screwing up the system. This elite, so the story would go, is not telling it like it is, they are hiding behind a rarified field of money and assumed political correctness to maintain their power and continue to line their pockets. On the hand, the narrative would have us believe that over and against this political elite there is everyone else, rich and poor, who are getting screwed by this institutionalized political elite. Thus Trump (or Kellie Leitch for that matter) claim that despite being wealthy and powerful, they somehow represent everyone else who should be opposed to this supposed political elite.

The problems with this narrative are so many that it seems fascicle. For one thing, in most countries the political elite are active members of the financial elite. When was the last time, for example, the man who was elected president wasn't rich? Most of them start out rich, but if they don't they are rich long before they make their way to the oval office. This is true of the top politicians in most other countries too. Furthermore, the excessively rich, the so-called One Percenters like the Koch Brothers, for example, are very active in politics behind the scene and have been for as long as we have had modern politics. These ultra-rich are the actual source of the kinds of policies that politicians have been pursuing for ever. The neo-con agenda was formulated by the financial elite, and the political elite, being their proxy actors, were more than ready to oblige in instituting that agenda.

Trump has always supported these policies and the only time he began to badmouth modern trade agreements, for example, was when he decided to run for president. You see the only thing that has changed here is that the neo-con agenda pursued for so long by both the political and the financial elite has begun to break down under its own weight. It is becoming clearer and clearer each year that these policies have not only failed to deliver on the promise of general prosperity, but they have systematically made things worse. The left has always known this but only since a general dissatisfaction began to grow a few years ago did the mainstream political left (long in the thrall the neo-lib policies) begun to panic and try to address the issue is small ways. Meanwhile people like Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corben have come out and said point blank that the system isn't working and needs reform. The rightwing, on the other hand can never admit that the past forty years of neo-lib policies were never intended to deliver on prosperity for everyone but were, in fact, intended to increase economic inequality. This puts them in a kind of double bind. The rightwing response is once again the same as it has always been, divert the people's attention by blaming others for the failure of our system over the past decades. Their targets are painfully predictable - foreigners and the supposed elites. Both Trump and Leitch's approaches so far have been textbook; maintain the same financial policies that have brought us to this point and failed so miserably to deliver prosperity, but suggest that foreigners and some imaginary elite have screwed things up and that they are the only ones who can put things back in order, despite the fact that they are the ones that have been exporting jobs for decades and giving away their national sovereignty in corporate trade agendas.

In England the people have reacted more swiftly than the rightwing politicians believed that they would. As a result those voters who were foolish enough to believe that foreign workers had taken their jobs and foreign politicians had rigged the system against them, unexpectedly opted to leave the EU. This is a very temporary set back for the rightwing in Britain who will quickly respond by feeding this narrative to maintain their power. Because anyone who thinks that leaving the EU will help the average people in Britain (without a radical left government) has just bought into decades of neo-liberal lies.

As the model of capitalism that the rich and powerful have been pursing for decades begins to breakdown, the rightwing knows that they have a major problem; if the people realize what they have been up to for so long, the idea of actual capitalist reform will work its way onto the agenda. In a desperate effort to avoid this they are once again fanning the flames of xenophobia and pointing to an imaginary political elite. It is a strategy that can work, but only with the most dire of consequences. And in the end, the problems that they say that they are going to solve will only deepen until disaster results.

Unlike what Ibbitson would have us believe - that Trump is a final warning to the elite - what he really is is the first salvo in a new effort in modern fascism.