There’s been a trend at work in the world this year that history will regard as strange, troubling, and gruesome. The working class is being captured by the hard right. It’s true across the globe — and it’s especially true in the two societeis which have been torn apart by it, America and Britain. It’s profoundly troubling phenomenon. Why? Because the working class is the linchpin of progress. But when it turns away from progress — when it turns regressive — then entire societies can fall at light speed (just like America and Britain have done.)

In Britain, and to a lesser extent in America, the working class was the deciding factor. In elections. In what kind of social contract there was to be. In what kind of future a society would have. And so in Britain, the working class effectively formed the Labour Party, and in the States, the Democrats. The Labour Party offered Brits a taste of true social democracy — healthcare for all, media, education, transport, etcetera. America’s Democrats never went that far — but they managed to enact a meagre semblance of retirement and healthcare, at least for the elderly.

There’s a lesson there. The working class is the linchpin, the engine, and the lever of modernity. Without the working class on the side of the left, no coalition can be forged that delivers better lives for a whole society. Only regress can happen. That is how Europe became the world’s first truly modern continent — by ensuring its working classes stayed firmly on the side of Social Democratic, if not Communist, parties — which meant Europe could develop public healthcare, retirement, childcare, education, childcare, and so on — all the stuff we think of as the defining essence of a “modern society.”

But now all that is undone. The working class is slowly but surely shifting right — hard right. The question is whether that trend, so evident in America and Britain, will continue globally. The new, weird paradox of the American and British working class hard-right — they’re Trumpists and Brexiters. Maybe that’s not you, individually, but it’s surely true as a social group. The working class in these countries doesn’t support the politics and economics of progress anymore. They support regress. Hardcore, light-speed regress — enough of them, at least, to make the difference politically and socially. What happened? How did the working class end up captured by the hardest of the hard right?

Let me pause to explain how I mean “captured.” Not in some naive quantitative Nate Silver sense — that 100% of the working class votes for the hard right, always, predictably — equations!! Of course it doesn’t. I mean that as a bloc, as a group, the left can no longer count on the support of the working class. It’s gone from a sure thing, a fish in a barrel, to a profoundly uncertain affair, verging on being more and more certain for the hard right. The rise of a Bernie is vivid evidence of that. He’s an outsider even among the Dems — pointing to how bad the breakdown really is. And that breakdown is what really counts. The working class’s relationship with elites is broken, perhaps beyond repair. For the left, the working class’s relationship with its leaders, ideologies, thinking, and causes has broken down catastrophically. How? Why?

The working class, I think, in a word, feels abandoned and betrayed by the left. And they are betraying and abandoning it right back. We’re told that feelings don’t matter — but that is the flipside of “people are rational.” See much rationality around these days? Social transformations are about feelings. Feelings like anger, despair, rage, disappointment. That is what today’s working classes feel. They feel they have been left behind, left out of any chance at living a decent life, better than their parents or grandparents — and it is elites who failed them. Particularly elites on the left.

Now, elites on the left don’t understand why working classes reserve a special fury for them. They point to elites on the right — and say it’s their fault. It is, in a way. But that is missing the message entirely. It’s elites on the left who were supposed to stand up for working classes, who were supposed to deliver, not just promise, oppose, not appease, fight, not compromise — and didn’t. Hence, proles feel especially disappointed by them, especially angry at them, especially disillusioned by them.

For a long time, our politics worked like this. Elites pretended to care about the proletariat, and the proles pretended to politely believe in the promises of their elites. Elites paid lip service to the idea of an American Dream or equality and justice and freedom and so forth, the fundamentals of democracy — but they weren’t really interested in those things very much. What they were interested in was getting rich. Hence, a revolving door that developed between Wall St and K St, or between Congress and Silicon Valley. The idea amongst elites was — explicitly — that if you do your time in public service, you’ll go on to become a tycoon.

Hence, today, Nick Clegg..the former head of Britain’s Liberal Democrats…is a VP…at Facebook. Don’t stifle that giggle. Let it out. A former head of a major political party…a Vice President…at Facebook? LOL. But that’s true wherever you look. Tim Geithner, the treasury secretary that oversaw the bailouts, went on to a mega-lucrative Wall St career. I could go on endlessly. The point is simple. Elites pretended to care about proles — but were only using them as a ladder up the capitalist hierarchy. And proles pretended to listen believe in elite promises of better lives, even as they saw those promises turning into nonsensical, crackpot ideas — “privatize everything! Deregulate it!!”

At the same time, while the left’s professional elites were focused on their economic self-preservation, the left’s intellectual elites were focused on…sex. Now, you’re probably going to hate this part of this essay. Good. Someone badly needs to reality check the left on this score.

The left’s main intellectual concern during the 2000s and 2010s in Anglo societies didn’t seem to be…the economic collapse of the working class…the implosion of the middle…the fact that the average person was living a life of despair, a little more every year. It was…gender politics. The idea, born of college-level communism, was that my right to have or be whatever kind of sex I want will liberate you, too. Wait, what? Never mind — the left, as a whole, became hardcore and genuinely militant about “gender identity” and sexuality and pronouns and whatnot…to the point that people would be attacked for using the wrong word for someone’s sexuality….but not, say everyone’s right to healthcare, decent work, a good income, not living a life of poverty and penury. What the?

The left’s militant obsession with gender politics only alienated — badly — the average person. What were they to care about gender-free bathrooms for asexual panromantics? They were kind enough, mostly, to support those rights, sure. But nobody, it seemed, cared about them back. Nobody saw their lives of despair and frustration, going nowhere. The left was now fully obsessed with gender politics, sex as the path to the glorious revolution. And it’s thanks was that the average person did what any sensible person would do, confronted with the statement that “me having sex however I want, whenever I want, is more important than you having a livelihood, family, or future”…they walked away, rolling their eyes.

Let me be crystal clear. It’s not bad to care about gender politics. It’s a good thing. But it can’t be the only thing — or even the most important thing. Especially during a time of widespread economic stagnation and growing despair. The average person isn’t some kind of gender rebel, and never will be, by definition, or otherwise the word “straight” has no meaning. They might be nice enough to support you in your sexual aspirations — but if you are not supporting them back in their broader ones, then who is really failing at the work of building a working politics?

As a result of profound, widespread intellectual and political failure, working class anger and fury was growing by the year. Their discontentment was simmering and reaching fever pitch — the point at which relationships break, right along with thinking minds. That sense of abandonment — did you know it’s one of the most powerful feelings a human being can have? It goes back to our primal fears, our terror of being abandoned by those who are supposed to love us. When we are abandoned, orphaned, even as adults, we lash out in spectacular ways. It is all a baby knows how to do. It is all we know how to do, in those moments of terror and rage and despair.

Snap! The old relationship between elites and proles — one of trust, gentle care, wise stewardship, fairness, decency, perhaps, if only at the best of times — had become something else. Something poisonous. A relationship of convenience. Elites were using working classes as rungs to climb up ladders, or punching bags. Working classes were beginning to whisper impolite murmurings of overthrowing their elites, the moment the chance came along.

(At this juncture — around the 2010s or so — working class culture itself reflected these feelings, with a kind of haunting precision. The smash book and film for American proles was literally called “Left Behind” — it was about the chosen people ascending to heaven, while the unfaithful stayed trapped on earth for the apocalypse. Could a more telling choice have been made? Was there a better metaphor for working class abandonment? It’s songs, once rock’n’roll anthems of desire and optimism, turned fatalistic and dark. I could go on. Perhaps you see the resonance.)

The relationship of convenience between elites and proles was always destined to die a sudden, swift death — the moment a better alternative came along. And it did — at least for the proletariat — in the form of a new breed of extremists, lunatics, and demagogues. Sadly for the rest of us, they were even more foolish than the failed elites of our societies.

Let me pause for a moment to restate the point. The old relationship is gone now. Between the left and the working class. There is no trust left between them. There is no sense of camaraderie left among them. There is no feeling of commonality within them. The working class has learned that it can’t trust its elites, can’t rely on them, can’t count on them. So who can it trust? Who can it turn to?

Along came the new demagogues. The working class swiftly struck a kind of suicide pact with them — the more extreme, bizarre, and outlandish, the better. There’s Trump, there’s Farage, and so on. What did they offer working classes? Three things, in particular.

First, they offered the chance to burn it all down. All of it. The system wasn’t working. So why not set fire to the whole damned thing? Hence, Trump promised to “drain the swamp.” Farage promised to leave the EU — apparently a bloated, tangled mess of bureaucrats, keeping the good Brit down. See the point: elites offered incremental change, if that. A minor Ezra Klein style tax hike, a careful, cautious 0.01% level of social change. But the new demagogues offered a revolution. But not a progressive one — a regressive one. Maybe, the only way to begin again is to burn it all down, sometimes. Sure — you’re only left with ashes. But what do you have to look forward to, anyways?

Second, the new demagogues offered working classes someone to hate — and entranced them this way. This point, which is so crucial, is again missed by the left. Working classes were made to feel worthless, for a very long time. It’s not just that their basic human rights were chipped away at — that they didn’t have decent healthcare, education, transport, media, and so on. It’s that elites — on the left and the right — told them that they didn’t have those things because the working class wasn’t worthy of them.

That’s no small thing: it’s a profound moral betrayal. If you don’t believe that, just ask yourself: how would that make you feel? To be told that you were poor, that your fortunes were declining, that your life was going to be worse than your parents and grandparents — and it was all your fault? You’d probably feel a combination of things: a) depressed b) fatalistic c) hopeless d) angry e) worthless.

Now imagine that someone comes along and tells you — you, who’ve been made to feel worthless and small and meaningless — that you are really a good and worthy person, noble and wise and wonderful. How do you know? Because they are the bad and unworthy ones. A mistake was made. Your greatness and glory was never recognized. Why? Because nobody saw that the true subhumans, the dirty, filthy ones, were really those animals, those vermin, those aliens and foreigners and strangers. If you do that, your own superiority will reign again.

By giving working classes someone to hate, marginalize, demonize, and scorn someone to feel superior to, to prove the fact that they were good and noble and wise people, demagogues performed the ancient sleight of hand for which they became famous, millennia ago — they rocketed to power, on the backs of people who’d been made to feel nothing but the despair and rage of worthlessness for too long.

In Britain, that was the European. In America, it was the Mexican, Latino, Muslim, Jew. The process was precisely the same. The demagogue cast a kind of spell. He made working classes feel good about themselves again. And they loved him for it. They loved him desperately and bitterly, just like children. They were left unable to use their thinking minds — hence, that old line of “you can’t debate with a Trumpist or Brexiter,” which is perfectly true. The orphaned mind had come to attach itself to the demagogue as a surrogate father figure — just as in the 1930s. What could facts do against that level of bond?

Third, the new demagogues used technology to create new relationships with working classes. They solidified a new bond, that was hardier, faster than old elites ever did. Remember how the average prole had come to hold his own very elites in contempt and scorn? They were remote, aloof figures. Who could penetrate the ivory towers of Congress or Whitehall? Nobody — barely even lobbyists. How was the average person to feel like he genuinely belonged again, was genuinely cared for, was truly a part of something like a tribe, a clan, a class?

The new demagogues wielded new technologies with expert precision. In the 1930s, demagogues learned to use radio, film, and TV to spread their message, and cast their spell. In the 2010s, demagogues learned to use Twitter and Facebook and YouTube. Their spell was cast, at lightspeed — literally.

So there’s the average prole. He doesn’t trust his elites — and he has no way to penetrate their bubble of yes-men, of hangers-on, of flunkies, of “advisors”, and so forth. He will never meet a single one, every, in reality. And suddenly, there, in the palm of his very hand, is a smartly dressed man, whom everyone says is of great importance and renown — bellowing that he, the prole, was always the good and glorious and worthy one, that he never deserved such a life, and those dirty, filthy others are the truly unworthy and impure ones, the ones who took away all his chances and opportunities, his fortune and destiny.

My God! Wouldn’t your head spin, too, so fast you’d get backlash? Who else was telling you anything — anything — else to make you feel, good, worthy, whole, instead of betrayed, abandoned, and neglected, blaming you for your own decline? And yet here this person was — and better yet, miraculously, you could hold this saviour in the palm of your hand, and hear his message over and over, as many times as you liked.

Is it any surprise that the new demagogues ripped Anglo politics to shreds? They had learned to use technology to create the stuff of relationships — intimacy, sympathy, empathy, emotional resonance — at precisely the same time working class relationships with elites were imploding. The working class soon enough became their digital army, evangelizing their message with the fervor of the newly converted. Meanwhile, orthodox elites literally fumbled at using these new technologies so badly that mostly, they were lampooned as jokes when they tried. The demagogue’s spell had been cast. The working class came to feel that the new demagogues really cared about them — that each one had a kind of individual relationship, a special, meaningful one, with his or her very own personal demagogue. After all, when you could hold a person in your hand, and hear them over and over again — wasn’t that something that felt like love?

And that brings me to the point.

The working class is leaving the left in droves because it feels unwanted. Uncherished. Unappreciated. Above all, unloved. Like an orphaned child, left to fend for itself as best it can. What is it to be loved? I think it’s pretty simple: to be seen, known, and held. The left does none of those things anymore, really. It doesn’t see working class pain, it doesn’t know the working class mind, and it doesn’t hold the working class’s broken, bent body anymore. What does it do? Mostly, it still blames the working class for its own abandonment. But that’s a pretty good definition of abuse, too. When a parent says to a child — “you made me leave you!!”

This rift between the working class and the left is here to stay. Perhaps you want to know how to fix it. I don’t think it can be repaired. At least not quickly and easily. It will take time. It will take attention. Most of all, it will take a new spirit, a new attitude, a new way. Trying to rebuild a broken relationship is the hardest work of all there is in this life. It involves the grief of letting go — and the newfound trust to be able to love again. It won’t happen with pundits and soundbites and policy. It will take something deeper. Something that feels a lot more like care, concern, truth, love, passion, mourning, sorrow, and joy.

If all that makes you roll your eyes, in cynicism, bitterness, twist your lips in a grimace — congratulations. Like I said, the relationship between people and elites is broken. But do you know what’s really broken when a relationship is? Our hearts are.

Umair

December 2019