Brexit and Trump supporters

By Jason Lim

I stand left of center on most issues, especially those social and cultural. I prefer MSMBC over Fox News, follow George Takei on Facebook, support the spirit, if not all the rhetoric, of the Black Lives Matter movement, and have enjoyed watching one or two documentaries by Michael Moore. I am not an activist by any stretch of imagination, but I have Facebook friends who are vocal Bernie supporters. However, what has always made me feel uncomfortable about the progressive movement is how elitist it can be, especially with folks who support conservative causes such as Brexit or candidates like Trump.

By and large, we know who these folks are and what motivates them. They are mostly white, non-college-educated, working-class folks making less than $50,000 a year. The majority of them are men as well, those who have seen their standard of living and socioeconomic status erode most rapidly in the last few decades, mostly from the demise of unions and globalization of labor. As Jim Tankersley writes in his wonderfully insightful Washington Post article titled, “Britain just killed globalization as we know it,” the Brexit vote was a protest against globalization’s failure to serve the needs of this class:

“It is clear from the results of the British vote, and from Trump's rise in American politics, that there is a large backlash against the results of globalization so far. Native-born workers without college degrees are venting their frustrations with immigrants, with factory jobs outsourced abroad and with a growing sense of political helplessness ― the idea that their leaders no longer respond to concerns of people like them… The top issue among those voting to go was Britain's right to act independently. The second highest was immigration.”

And this is the key: immigration. The Leave supporters voted against immigration because it gave a tangible target for all the anxieties and fears that they have been feeling.

This is similar to what the core Trump supporters are also feeling. According to a survey that the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) undertook in collaboration with the Brookings Institute, “The most plausible interpretation is that working-class whites are experiencing a pervasive sense of vulnerability. On every front ― economic, cultural, personal security ― they feel threatened and beleaguered. They seek protection against all the forces they perceive as hostile to their cherished way of life ― foreign people, foreign goods, foreign ideas, aided and abetted by a government they no longer believe cares about them.”

In other words, they are afraid. They fear change. The fear change most acutely because they are most vulnerable to it and feel powerless to affect it in any way. They feel marginalized by the change, which they have seen. But it’s difficult to blame the intricacies of globalization and free trade agreements for this change; that’s too abstract.

Human beings tend to blame what we can see, hear and touch. And that’s the foreigners who look different suddenly living among us, taking jobs, speaking different languages and acting as if they rightfully belong in our old neighborhood. This is emotionally jarring and provides us with a target for all our anxieties, dissatisfaction, despair, hopelessness and fear. And when you have politicians conveniently supplying the “Us vs. Them” paradigm to frame our fears, then we bite.

Progressives call them racists. The younger generation, who are better educated than their parents and grandparents, condemn them for being ignorant, anachronistic and myopic. We heap scorn and disdain on them. We lord our better-educated arguments and vocabulary over them. In fact, we turn it into a religious argument, accusing them of being less moral.

What we don’t do is acknowledge them as partners in dialogue. We refuse to validate their fears. More importantly, we refuse to validate that they are justified in being afraid because their world has changed in front of them in less than a generation. And it’s a significant change for them, and not for the better. They may be uncouth and hateful in how they express their fears, but let’s not cast the first stone here. We don’t know how we might react if we suddenly felt similarly threatened.

I know that I am seated here safely in Washington, D.C. and pontificating over the progressives’ failure to be inclusive; I am sure that I would be singing a different tune if I had to read racist graffiti on building walls or hateful shouts on the bus telling me to go back to where I came from. But if we are to bring the world together, we can’t deny them the right to feel fear. We have to acknowledge their fears and give voice to their anxieties. They are also citizens of the world and have a right to be heard.

Jason Lim is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture. He has been writing for The Korea Times since 2006. Reach him at jasonlim@msn.com, facebook. com/jasonlimkoreatimes or @jasonlim2012.