Economic insecurity, or the threat of constant impending economic insecurity, which is characteristic of the neoliberal era, is casting a shadow of worry.[1] Compiled with the deep (almost systemic levels of) frustration and resentment as a result of the lack of fulfillment of the neoliberal promise – namely that ‘if you work hard or are willing to work hard, you will be rewarded’ – the reactionary politics of the far-right needs someone, some group, to blame. The basic logic here is in how one might ask, for instance: ‘if the system promises all of this prosperity to those who work hard or are willing to work hard, why am I not reaping the rewards?’ As groundless as the logic often is, the far-right channels this frustration and, as a crisis ideology, refuses to question the system itself, instead displacing the source of the crisis and focusing blame on immigrants ‘taking all of the opportunities’. The anxiety – the psychological trauma imposed on people by a brutal political-economic system – where precarity and futility become characteristic of the experience of an entire generation, this is representative of the structural and ideological mechanisms of capitalist control.[2] Those who live in dire economic circumstances – and let’s be honest, many people do live in dire economic circumstances post-2008 crisis – have a good reason to be anxious about basic necessities: food, shelter, clothing, general livelihood and well-being. And the increasingly scarce ability to attain these basic necessities is directed at the immigrant who is said to ‘steal one’s basic means of survival’. To explain this even more let us consider how from an economic perspective, with the rise of neoliberalism, which has been accompanied by a deregulation of financial markets, there’s been a massive redistribution of wealth from wages to profits.[3] With capital concentration and centralisation intensifying and inequality gaps widening, the practical experience of many people corroborates with the generally accepted consensus of decreased power of workers under the neoliberal paradigm, of the scarcity of job opportunities, of low wages and zero hour contracts, which is essentially the grounds for many people of a lack of basic sustenance. (In fact, society doesn’t appear to be helping sustain some people at all, with a record number of people in the UK reliant on the non-profit sector, such as food banks[4]). This is the practical power of capitalism, this is how it perpetuates itself systemically: it creates the appropriate conditions in which people are dependent on the system of capital to “earn a living”. In times of crisis, many are left to directly compete against others for whatever scarce opportunity might arise to satisfy the requirement to pay one’s bills and buy food. heathwoodpress/insecure-britain-anti-immigrant-narrative-rise-ukip-unquestionableness-capitalism/
Posted on: Thu, 16 Oct 2014 15:37:10 +0000
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