General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I am amazed - really quite amazed - at some of the Brexit opinions I am reading here on DU [View all]OrwellwasRight
(5,170 posts)When people are denied populist solutions on the left, they will turn to populist solutions on the right. That's it in a nutshell.
Sadly, most Americans and Europeans have been living under 30 years of pro-business, pro-austerity, deregulatory, wage stagnating, neoliberalism. The tried voting left, and got bullshit pro-business tax cuts in return. So they don't think the government is responsive to their needs. And they're not necessarily wrong. Spain, Italy, Ireland, Greece, in every case it was the Democratic Socialists who implemented austerity, not the parties of the right. As Thomas Frank has eloquently written, the party of the left largely abandoned the economics of the left. I don't necessarily applaud the Brexit, but I understand it.
And I don't think you are rights about the elites. They are the same everywhere. There is a global elite class. They all went to Harvard, Yale, MIT, U Chicago. They all speak perfect accent-free English. They all want to make money and don't care about abusing workers in the process.