Monday 25 March 2019

Why people vote far right

People who vote for the right are in many cases concerned with foreigners, inequality in the economy, job insecurity, poverty and the general welfare of their nation. In some cases they are bigots, madmen, racists, etc. but I won't talk about those people here because we understand their motivations. They are bad people with views which are wrong and act on these.
The interesting cases are those who don't share such radical views and/or are not bad people. Their worries stem from general insecurities. These insecurities are fueled by real life hardships, individual history. One of the many social reasons for them is what I highlight here. These days we tell a false story about our economy saying that anyone who studies and works hard can have a good life and become successful. This is far from the truth.
For success beyond hard work money, good connections, and a strong family is also needed. Without the first investment and starting a business are impossible these days. For example, for new businesses AI is needed. AI is incredibly expensive, experts are scarce. That is why the US is the leader in the field. They had the enormous amounts of money to poor into experimenting with and perfecting these companies. It is not - mostly not - about culture or individuals.
Good connections are important in a sense that people need to have first person experiences of what is possible. They need to see and be able to work in environments which broaden their horizons. This is often not possible or only limited exposure to such experience can be gain if one's family, friends, or school cannot supply the right contacts.
Third, the stability and financial support of families is incredibly important. I'm no high flier in life and I have OK abilities. I'm in a good place. But my family both put a lot of effort into teaching me, studying with me, talking at the dinner table about important and interesting topics, showing me how they work, and they also paid a good deal of money for school, extra curricular trips, extra tuition. This is only accessible for few people.

So, as long as states poor money elsewhere instead of the social and educational services, and as long as we lie to ourselves and our societies that anyone can be successful these days we're preparing people for a lot of pain and disillusionment. That's how we create layers and layers of working class and lower middle class people who become bitter and try to explain why they are unhappy by pointing their fingers on others. The right wing offers an explanation, but the wrong one. It is our economic system and the politicians serving it who are the problem, not race or religion.

No comments:

Post a Comment