The rise of racism, xenophobia, anti-migrant rallies, flag-waving reactionary nationalist groups taking to the streets to claim ‘Britain is for British people, Europe for Europeans, and America for Americans (white people only)’, alongside other reactionary politics, is no longer a fringe phenomenon confined to isolated streets or remote areas. These racist and reactionary groups are influencing mainstream political parties, prompting an illiberal turn in their everyday political, economic, and electoral propaganda, as well as in policymaking during governance. The Western world, which once took pride in its scientific advancements, Renaissance, economic prosperity, democratic governance, and human rights, is now backsliding into its reactionary and racist past. So, the growth of right-wing populism across Europe, the UK, and the US is not merely a fleeting political and cultural anomaly; rather, it reveals a multi-layered social and economic crisis that resurrects the lineages of its racist colonial past and recasts them as glorious history. The colonial prosperity in western world was built at the cost of people. It continues to be the foundation of both the racist colonial past and the racial capitalism of the present – a system that breeds otherness to hide and justify its failures.
The state-imposed post-World Wars consensus on multiculturalism was an economic necessity, yet it is now collapsing due to the different forms of capitalist and imperialist crises engulfing the Western world, where working people have been marginalised over the past five decades of neoliberal governance and praxis that have drained wealth from the majority and transferred it to the capitalist classes under the logic of a fraudulent free market and free choice. The reactionary revival of racist politics signals the decline of the West and its propaganda about democracy and human rights, revealing a deficit on both counts. Flag-waving nationalism also reveals a superpower anxiety that fuels xenophobia to hide the failures of market-led democracy and the failure of capitalism in the West. The so-called multicultural, democratic, and liberal order has failed the test of time in the West, as illiberalism was integral to its capitalist and imperialist models of governance.
The neoliberal economic project promised to deliver shared prosperity under the leadership of market-led democracy, but in reality, it converted citizenship into ‘customers‘ and rights into ‘purchasing power’. The fall of purchasing power means the fall of customers’ ability to access and enjoy a dignified everyday life as human beings. Such deprivation has produced a democratic deficit in the contemporary Western world, which is producing conflicts and wars to divert the attention of people living in Western countries. It also outsources its failures to the rise of migrants, which is factually incorrect.
In reality, the neoliberal projects liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation has deindustrialised Europe, and there was no longer the opportunity to extract free labour and free raw materials from the colonial peripheries to make superprofits. The rise of the service sector – such as banking, insurance, and fintech – has disproportionately benefited urban, educated, and skilled workers. This has created working-class resentment against ruling elites, who successfully diverted people’s attention towards migrants (people of colour) who are relatively successful due to their skills, education and hard work. The economic marginalisation of working people, the failure of capitalism to provide prosperity, and the lack of progressive political leadership have led to the rise of racism and xenophobia, which are integral to racialised capitalism and the political establishment in Europe, the UK, and the US.
The capitalist system promised a supercilious American dream and its unrealisable libidinal happiness, but instead offers mental health crises and various forms of anxiety, driven by the economic marginalisation of people in the real world, where they cannot access the goods and services they need in their everyday lives. Such conditions have even denied people their reproductive rights. It is an expensive choice to have a baby or to nourish the future of humanity. The demographic decline is a direct result of these economic conditions of marginalisation and social alienation, where collective social support is non-existent. This gives rise to conversations about a non-existent national identity based on white supremacist political propaganda. The divide between native white populations and non-white immigrants is a clear outcome, even though migrants run schools, colleges, universities, and health systems, drive buses and trucks, and work on construction sites.
Racial capitalism in Europe, the UK, and the US has always viewed immigrants and shaped immigration policies based on economic needs rather than promoting an organic multicultural society. This self centered rent-seeking nature of the state and government continues to create divisions in society based on the economic and political needs of the white establishment, which domesticates both people of colour and the white working classes. The political leadership of mainstream political parties has moved in a right-wing direction to seek votes and has failed to facilitate a cohesive national narrative based on multicultural unity and solidarity. This right-wing shift has provided fuel to the reactionaries to consolidate and deepen their existing political base in the Western world.
The policing, legal infrastructures, courts, and other legal, political and economic tools of governance are not designed to uphold the multicultural ethos of the Western world, where the majority of police, lawmakers, judges, legal professionals, paralegals, and political leadership continues to be drawn from the elitist white population or the lumpen white working classes. In these groups, othering is integral to their upbringing, education, and training, which are largely based on perceptions of non-white people rather than on deep knowledge of diverse cultural and social backgrounds. This destroys the institutional credibility of governance that peddles racism as if it is normal and natural.
Economic marginalisation, a deficit of democratic credibility, and a privatised judiciary without the ability to deliver justice have led to the collapse of all pillars of a cohesive society based on multiculturalism. The self-serving cosmopolitan ruling elites irrespective of their skin colour continue to defend capitalism and imperialism, which have undermined marginalised people and further ruined Europe and its so-called essentialist and functional multicultural society.
The growth of racist and reactionary politics reveals the racist core of the Western world, which used to hide behind progressive ideals of liberalism, democracy, human rights, women’s freedom and multiculturalism as merely a political and economic strategy rather than as foundational values of Western society. The Western world did not reject its colonial past but celebrates it as its history and feels nostalgic about it. So, the racist shit which was under the carpet is flying in everyone’s face in the Western world today.
Market-led capitalist democracy promotes all forms of historic fault lines to discriminate, dominate, domesticate, and disenfranchise people in their everyday lives in the Western world. The revival of the Western world depends on the rejection of its racist colonial past and its racialised capitalist and imperialist present. There is no temporary solution to such an illiberal turn, given its historical foundations and integral present challenges. It needs a social, political, economic, and cultural realignment based on ideals of equality, liberty, and justice. A democratic culture breeds an inclusive culture which celebrates a multicultural West and buries its white supremacist past and present. Such a progressive future is the only option available for the Western world to revive as a civilised place for people to live and work in peace and solidarity.
