What do the American "alt-right", white supremacists, hard "Brexiteers" and Jihadists have in common?
A common thread that runs through each of these "extremist" movements, regardless of their background and religion, is a sense of feeling "left behind" or "lost" in modern, globalist society. Identity politics is something that has been gradually gaining traction in the Anglo-Saxon sphere for some time, but the financial crisis seems to have given it a substantial leg-up.
The extent to which this has been quietly brewing under the surface had been ignored or played down, until it was no longer possible to deny its influence: the recent events in Charlottesville, USA, simply add to the danger of pretending this issue doesn't exist. When the ranks of the "left behind" suddenly emerge from the shadows, the effect is all the more frightening.
In some ways, the hand-wringing and moral equivalence by Donald Trump of these extremists is as bad as those in the UK (both in the Muslim community and left-leaning liberals) who are wary of calling-out the hateful racism and misogyny evident in the "sex gangs" that exist in the Pakistani community. In spite of the different motivations, what connects the Muslim "sex gangs" and the home-grown Jihadist network is the common vein of malignant narcissism that runs through their psychology: the basic desire to control others (either through sexual domination or violence) regardless of the consequences.
In a different way, the same accusation could be leveled at the "alt-right", white supremacists/nationalists, and the devil-may-care attitude seen in some hard "Brexiteers": they are determined to do what they want, regardless of the consequences on others (or the national interest).
The author has stated before that Islamic extremism could well be seen as a form of malignant narcissism; it takes only a small leap of logic to identify all forms of extremism (both religious and ideological) as a form of malignant narcissism.
From a psychological point of view, narcissism has been identified as an increasingly-conspicuous problem in modern society. Over the last thirty years, changes to the structure of the economy have created greater inequality as well as greater work insecurity. At the same time, this has led to an explosion in under-educated men from run-down parts of the country finding it more and more difficult to identify their place in society. It can be no surprise that white men from under-educated, low-skilled backgrounds tend to be the ones that flock towards nationalist extremist movements, and that Muslim men from under-educated, low-skilled backgrounds tend to be the targets for Islamic extremist movements. While this might be a simplification (there are graduates that can also be drawn to the same movements), the overall trend is clear: violence and hate are now seen as legitimate means of expressing the frustration these men feel at modern society.
The issue of Islamic extremism is more complex than that of what (for the sake of simplicity) can be broadly called "White Nationalism" i.e. including the American alt-right and British far-right. "White Nationalism" has more palatable tones in the "take back control" style of rhetoric used in Brexit, in the same way how Donald Trump's populism found a more mainstream method of expression for this undercurrent of malignant narcissism. The alt-right and British far-right (such as the EDL) are merely violent expressions of the same form of frustration as that expressed by Jihadists; the only difference is cultural.
In the Anglo-sphere, a clear up-welling of political violence has occurred in the years since the financial crisis: shootings of politicians, attacks on ethnic minorities, violent protests by ethnic minorities etc. etc. Meanwhile, the superseding of Al-Qaeda by ISIS in the public consciousness has led to a similar exodus of home-grown Muslims to fight for "Jihad". If one were to be stereotypical of the trend, it would be to say that poor White men become neo-Nazis, poor Muslim men become Jihadists, and poor Black men become gang members. On the last point, the London riots of 2011 were sparked by the killing of a young black gang member, and recent riots in Hackney were sparked by similar violence by the police against a black man.
As said earlier, what links these types of men together, in spite of the difference in culture, is the under-privileged backgrounds and lack of education. This has been a growing issue for the last thirty years in the Anglo-sphere: a lack of opportunities simply can lead to frustration; the outlet many seek is to transfer the blame through violence and hatred.
This malignant narcissism is the psychological vein that runs deep in these segments of society. The vote for Brexit was also a vote from the "left-behind" for something different; anything that wasn't the status quo. The same psychology was evident in the kind of areas of the USA that voted for Donald Trump; the same "neo-Nazis" that claim his support do so because of the feeling he supports the "left behind" white men; the same "left behind" white men from places like Burnley and Darlington than voted for Brexit.
Voting for Brexit and voting for Trump psychologically amounted to the same thing: a vote against a system (neo-liberal globalisation) and a retreat to "cultural nativism"; Jihadism is simply a more violent expression of the same psychology from frustrated Muslim men (and women).
In this sense, it is the pendulum swinging back the other way: after thirty-odd years of dominance of the neo-liberal model, some of those "left behind" by these changes to the economic system are finding violence and extremism as the best way they can make their point. The sad truth is that a society that creates inequality (and considers inequality to be a good thing) is one that implicitly gives sanction to a psychology of violence; it is this culture of violence that breeds "angry white men". There is plenty of research evidence to support the view that more unequal societies are more violent, and it is well-understood that it is the underclass of those societies that descend into a career of casual violence. From a criminology point of view, therefore, could Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump be partly because of a malignant psychology that has been allowed to stew unchecked for the last three decades?
These may well be the dark forces that have been unleashed on the Anglo-Saxon world; coalescing into something identifiable since the financial crisis, while quietly stewing for the last thirty years, an under-current of violence and hate have now found their vehicle on both sides of the Atlantic. The question is what will be done next.
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