November 12, 2020 - 8:00am
“Was last week’s U.S. presidential contest between Joe Biden and Donald Trump the first global election?” That’s the question posed by the American economist Tyler Cowen in his latest column for Bloomberg.
The quick answer is ‘no’ — as America’s politics has been globalised for decades now. Though I’m British, my earliest political memory is of Jimmy Carter’s inauguration in 1977. The reason why I remember it is that my parents insisted on watching the live coverage on BBC2 instead of the children’s programmes on BBC1. I was furious.
Still, who needs the Magic Roundabout when you’ve got the spectacle of American politics? The fact is we’re hooked — and have been ever since the Kennedys.
2020 is the continuation of a trend, not a new departure. Nevertheless, Cowen is on to something when he says that “political coalitions will, over time, be defined globally rather than nationally and locally.”
Social media internationalises political debate — at least among speakers of the same language. In recent years, we’ve seen publications from one country acquiring significant online audiences in others. And so tweet-by-tweet, link-by-link and clip-by-clip, we see a flourishing of public discourse between nations not just within them.
Cowen wonders where this is all heading: “What if much of the world ends up with a common, one-dimensional political spectrum, rather than each country having its own (mostly) independent politics? We may be about to find out.”
We’re halfway there already — because one end of the new political spectrum represents the interests and values of an increasingly globalised knowledge class. In many ways, a Biden supporter in New York, a Remain voter in London and a Macroniste in Paris have more in common with one another than with their respective compatriots. College-educated liberals who live and work in well-connected global cities are pretty much interchangeable — and thus so are the political movements they support.
However, the same can’t be said on the other side of the argument. A Trump supporter from Kansas, a Brexiteer from West Yorkshire and a Le Pen voter from Lille may face some of the same economic challenges, but otherwise have little in common. The differences between the worldviews of the politicians that they support are much greater than those between Joe Biden, Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron.
Of course, if the new spectrum is about the universal versus the particular, that’s exactly what one would expect.
Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.
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SubscribeTaking money out of the physical economy and giving it, via bailouts and Central Bank money printing schemes and negative interest rates, to huge, globalist financial institutions has the same effect on ordinary people throughout the world.
When it was decided back in the seventies that this was the way the ‘globalist’ world was going to go, the decimation of traditional, manufacturing only affected working class people. This time around the end of the service sector, the end of rents on city centre buildings and the knock on effect that has on pension investments etc. will affect all but a tiny group of billionaires. The middle class ‘college educated liberals’ are too thick to realise it’s their turn. They have lapped up every last drop of green ideology and believe the world will be a better place, rid not only of industry, but nearly everything else that makes life tolerable in the cold west.
Their children will perhaps develop some of the wisdom the children of the former industrial working class have and come to realise this globalist, funny money, cashless Utopia is anything but. Sadly the current generation of ‘college educated liberals’ will lead the western world to ruin, loudly cheering as everything the rest of us hold dear turns to dust.
As usual, Alison, you are probably right. Ironically, the main hate figure of the ‘educated’ middle classes who will be destroyed in the next wave of globalization – one Donald J Trump – was the one global leader committed to fighting, or at least alleviating, the effects of globalzaiton.
Even more ironically, the “educated liberals’ are almost certain to eventually realise they should logically hate themselves … at which point they will hopefully grow up …
I’m with you – apart from the bit about ‘green ideology’. I’ve no idea what you mean. The destruction of life on Earth is not an ideology, it’s a fact. And it has nothing whatever to do with left/right politics, liberalism, Critical Fundamentalism etc.
“A Trump supporter from Kansas, a Brexiteer from West Yorkshire and a Le Pen voter from Lille …. have little in common”. But they are all ‘people from somewhere’ as opposed to ‘people from anywhere’. That is actually quite a lot in common. I suspect that I have more in common with any of those three than with a typical fanatical Remainer in the UK. At least those three people wouldn’t roundly abuse me as an ignorant racist simply because I voted a different way to them.
Those people (that you claim to have things in common) considers “the other” traitors. That is how Remainers were considered by Leavers: traitors.
Everyone is from somewhere. There are different Somewheres.
Yes, but that doesn’t mean they are loyal to their particular Somewhere.
The Somewhere/Everywhere dichotomy is from David Goodhart’s book The Road to Somewhere, and refers to values, loyalties, and attitudes towards tradition, rather than to geographical origin.
Besides, your comment is not true. Many people have tangled genealogies which defy any attempt to locate them as coming from any particular Somewhere. I am myself a case in point: goldmining in Ghana and South Africa on my father’s side, tea-farming in Assam on my mother’s side, I was born and raised initially in Canada, and have lived in London, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Paris, and for the last fifteen years Bristol. So where am I ‘from’? I don’t know. The long and the short is that I’m a geographical Anywhere with Somewhere sympathies.
It strikes me that your “knowledge class” is very much like the old medieval “land class”.
We seem to be going towards feudalism these days, being told what to do, how to speak and with the jolly new rules about Covid told where we can go.
One key difference, the aristocracy cared about the Kingdom. These globalised elites hate their countries.
“..elites hate their countries…”
No they don’t.
I worked in Investment Banking (NYC & London) and all my colleagues were proud (Germans are a different story) of their respective countries.
Oh yes they do. They despise and distain the rank and file of ordinary citizens who make up the country. This much was obvious in their repudiation of the UK electorate who had the temerity to vote Brexit when they had been instructed not to. In the US it was equally obvious by the vitriol with which Trump voters have been demonised over the last 4 years.
Anyway, on what grounds do you count yourself a member of the elite. I only ask because I would like to join
48% of the population voted Remain. That is almost half of the population not by any definition “the elite”.
I don’t consider myself as part an elite. I have been counted as part of the elite by the people that claim to be the “patriots”.
Stop straw-manning. Nobody is describing rank & file Remain-voters as the elite. They’re just people who thought – albeit wrongly in my personal view – that the UK would do best to remain in the EU.
I’m not sure that the aristocrats really cared about their country or their people. Equally, nor do the new elites.
Given that they were part of the founding of patriotic orders within the Kingdom, I’d argue they did.
It’s hard to see patriotic orders as evidence of rulers’ loving their countries: they’re more like an inexpensive reward system for favours rendered.
Fair enough, then I’d argue the measures the monarchs took to ensure that their people were looked after under the circumstances of the time through Poor Laws, the abolishment of feudalism etc.
Was feudalism abolished in any formal way? I was given to understand that its end came about organically as a result of the Black Death generating a so-to-speak labour-seller’s market.
The Black Death plus the forming of towns not controlled by the lords of the realm, led to the demise of feudalism. There used to be a German saying that town air made one free.
Oh yes, thanks for reminding me of the latter factor.
Yep, the Tenures Abolition Act formally ended feudalism.
Thanks for the illumination.
No worries 🙂
Mr. Franklin was absolutely correct to be furious with his parents for pre-empting his children’s cartoons in favor of a U.S. presidential inauguration.
I’m almost certain that I’ve never watched more than a few minutes of a presidential inauguration, and I’m American who is more engaged with political news than most of the population.
We need some universal aspects in the particular. I hope they will be belief in a traditional Liberal Democracy with free speech and proper democracy etc.
LePen/Trump voters are all believers in the superiority of the Western Civilization. West is Best!
And many of the NY/California elites wouldn’t want to migrate to Somalia or Pakistan. Paris any day.
I always look forward to Peters articles, but this one has a major flaw – well described by Mark below.
The people described as having “little in common” have more “timeless” values in common – rather than whatever the latest “gloabalist groupthinkers” decide is intellectually fashionable …
what an arbitrary load of rubbish…
“College-educated liberals who live and work in well-connected global cities are pretty much interchangeable ” and thus so are the political movements they support.”
and yet somehow…
“A Trump supporter from Kansas, a Brexiteer from West Yorkshire and a Le Pen voter from Lille may face some of the same economic challenges, but otherwise have little in common. The differences between the worldviews of the politicians that they support are much greater than those between Joe Biden, Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron.”
poppycock.
Makes perfect sense to me.
which is all we need to know about you.
Ah, more ‘poppycock’!
as I said…
Well of course, I was quoting you, I wouldn’t say something so puerile.
interesting that you did not bother to show a single example of how it’s ‘poppycock.’ There is an enormous amount of sameness among the leftists in the first quote you cite, far more than the people in the second. The second group may well agree on some things but it does not share the same enforced orthodoxy that is so prevalent on the left.
I’m pretty sure that they agree on their priorities – such as: look after your local community first – everything else comes second.
Yes, look after your community paid by the tax money of NY and California.
Sunderland is not contributing to the budget, London is.
empirical evidence abounds
“The second group may well agree on some things but it does not share the same enforced orthodoxy…”
I will simply point to Qanon as rebuttal.