How Neo-Liberalism put Trump in Power

by Evan O’Gorman and Stephen Keogh

As the fresh winter snow bleeds onto the crest of the Rockies, remnants of a defying night echo clearly in the valley of thought. The Sun, blissfully unaware of its kin’s fray, will breach tomorrow, another day.

Pure conflict reigns throughout the world of words. Debates and arguments; too little, too late.

The Trump wins.

But why? More importantly, how did the polls, the papers every expert in America and beyond get it so horrendously wrong?

Before continuing, remind yourself that in every election, in any democratic state, the utmost crucial factor is the electorate. The people on the ground: those who will feel the impact and aftermath of the result.

Donald J. Trump will be the next president of the United States. He will be surrounded by a Republican majority government, meaning he will have a significantly more control than his predecessor, Barack Obama.

A lot of people aren’t very happy about this. But ironically, most of these people – particularly in America – carry a partial responsibility for the success of their worst nightmare.

Many fail to realise that campaigning for a successful election does not solely rely on retaining your base support, but influencing those who have voted against you in the past an annexing their decision.

But how could a group of people, so opposed and disgusted by a man and everything he stands for, play a part in his election?

How extreme liberalism backfired

Not wishing to rub salt within wounds, but if you spent the entirety of the campaign trail slating Donald Trump and his voters; then you had a collective hand in their success.

Trump ran the pinnacle of extremism and controversy in his campaign trail.

He offended, he mocked, and he made delusional promises. But nobody – if but not very few – directly challenged him on it.

The opposition, be it his counter-runners, Democrats, journalists, the general public – everyone who had something to say on the situation failed to follow the key principle of any debate (because that’s what an election is, a national scale debate).

They failed because instead of engaging with their opposition, they chose to either ignore them or dismiss them. As someone said to me during the recent 48 hour fallout, which really hit the nail on the head, “the Republicans ran for their nominee; the Democrats ran against their opposition.”

This is such a crucial part of Trump’s win. And before you ask, the Republican Party knew exactly what they were doing.

When Trump said “let’s build the wall”, the Democrat campaign didn’t respond how they should have.

They, with the backing of their 54th Keyboard Infantry Division, branded Trump and his support racists, bigots and even Nazi’s. Not to say these accusations are true or false, however, but that’s not the point.

The point is that by dismissing opposing opinions, instead of challenging them, leads one only to a fatal political backlash.

How did this begin?

To understand exactly how this happened, let’s go back to 2008, when the Democrats and Obama had just won a historic victory on the backs of a young, liberal, politically correct, college educated generation.

It was here we saw the concerning rise of neo-liberalism.

A group of those who had put Obama in the Oval Office began demonstrating everything Obama had stood for: resentment, bullying and hate.

As the born-and-bred Republicans began protesting (as the anti-Trump movement are doing at this exact moment),this rising neo-liberalists branded them as dumb, backward, hill country rednecks who were protesting because there was an African American liberal – their worst nightmare – in the White House.

oh Britain, where art thou?

But this kind of behaviour is not unique to the United States.

The first major upheaval and victory for the dismissed right-wing ideology in the West was Brexit. A disgruntled population of Britain was tired of seeing industry disappear to elsewhere, tired of competing with foreign nationals for work and tired of the European Union.

Their views were conflicted, yes, but when they complained, their Government and its supporters ignored them, labeling them uneducated and racist.

Time saw the rise of UKIP and a strong anti-government movement throughout rural UK, and under massive public pressure, David Cameron capitulated and called a referendum. Those in power smiled, they met with the leave supporters, they worked tirelessly to make the population feel accommodated.

But the damage was done. The scars were cut deep. Britain voted to leave the EU and Cameron’s cabinet was forced to resign in a hurricane of political chaos.

The ignored had won the day.

Fear & Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’16

Now let’s take America. The Democrats never attempted to win over the “deplorable” conservative demographic. They never even acknowledged them.

Meanwhile Trump is running amok, with talks of building walls, tearing up trade agreements, ending immigration and torturing with terrorist suspects.

As expected, the neo-liberals rallied to brand Trump and his supporters as racist, misogynistic, backward, evil, etc. Just like it were in 2008.

Meanwhile, those exact supporters became even more aggravated. And, as we have already discovered, your supporters are the ones who get you into the White House.

As we’ve tried for so long to root out extremism and hatred, we – as a socially progressive society – have only managed to make it more popular and strong by outright banning or shunning it.

The problem lies with neo-Liberals. Just like it lay with the anti-establishment Nazi Party.

History repeats

In the 1920s, the National Socialist German Workers Party was banned by the government of Weimar Germany. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the Nazis were prosecuted numerous times for “hate speech”. Rather than hinder the Nazis, this merely helped them in every way imaginable.

Through the courts, the Nazis were given a platform to spread their views to a far wider section of the public than they otherwise would have had access to. Through their prosecutions, they were able to cultivate an image of themselves as martyrs and political prisoners, drawing people to their side in droves.

Sound familiar?

Today, Europe and America is making the exact same mistake that Germany made with the Nazis.

In a nutshell, the West is currently undergoing a social uprising by right-wing ideologies, solely due to the attitude of intolerance shown by an alarmingly dismissive neo-liberal society.

No longer technology. This is the Age of Uncertainty

So where does that leave us? We’ve seen the uprising against liberalism in both the U.K and the U.S.A., but where do we go from here?

Will we continue to see this global trend of right-wing success, which may undo some of the hard-worked social advancements over the last decade?

This election, as well as Brexit, and the growing popularity of right-wing has shown that no matter how much analysis you do, no matter how many polls you obtain, the idea of prediction at this moment in human history is utterly outdated.

Crucially, never assume. To assume only conjures the possibility of being wrong.