What Makes Up an Angry Mob?
A simmering Warzone it has become. We do not fight the war in question with bullets or bombs; we need dollar bills and corporate insurance. People around the world seem to have come to a grim conclusion. The actions of their authorities while enforcing quarantine, the governments have chosen economy over epidemiology.
Everyone who has ever referred to the COVID 19 pandemic as “The Great Equalizer-hitting the rich and the poor”, earned a medal in mental gymnastics. This pandemic has meshed neoliberalism up with ‘privilege’. Any privilege is that white, corporate or a capital privilege.
The human tragedy in South Asia serves as a parody of the US and European neo-liberalist model. According to an estimate, the total number of migrant workers in India number around 500 million. The world observed Indian migrant workers “herded on hoses”. It gave those that were wealthy enough to book an aeroplane ticket, a First-Class treatment. Arundhati Roy summed this up as- a conflict between “Flying Class” and “Walking Class”.
One element that this pandemic has highlighted is the ‘transparency of capitalism’. As corporations disguise moaning their loss in profits as standing up for the rights of the people. The poor, lower- and middle-Class stare in their homes, destitute and jobless.
While everyone is suffering. The suffering comes in varying degrees. While the already struggling daily wagers are trying to ration food as best, they can feed their children. Celebrities, and the well-off go online to complain about their favorite restaurant being shut down.
Many citizens do not have access to the support systems or facilities that would allow them to request welfare, putting them in a hopeless situation with no means to earn for themselves or their family without committing crime or putting their loved ones at risk. Yet the ones running the governments are more concerned with discussing mending the torn wallets of industrial fat cats.
Like a dazzle of Zebras, neo-liberal economic systems come in a variety of unique colours and designs. Similar sounding and synonymous words from privatization, deregulation, to the free market are the same dishes from a single menu card.
The fanciful design of neoliberalism may have delivered. However, the neoliberal economic dividends are unfairly and unevenly distributed. In the United States, the wealthiest 1 percent took home about 8.5 percent of the national income in 1976. After a generation of neoliberal policies, in 2014 they captured over 20 percent of national income. In Britain, the top 1 percent captured over 14 percent of national income — more than double the amount they took home in the late 1970s.
A global contest is in motion. In the ring, on one side, deprivations, shortages, emptiness, and lawlessness. On the other side gigantic business, militarized police, and privilege. For the first time, capitalists are standing next to the militarized police.
Capitalism, neoliberalism, and the free market are under scrutiny. Former torchbearers of liberalism branded as slave traders. Undeserved faith in the supremacy of market efficiency has crumbled, as the masses now ask for humanitarian approaches to handle the economy.
The market failure has triggered a wave of government failures. Washington has become as vulnerable as New Delhi or Islamabad. The populists who used to get away with pointing fingers outside have voters’ hands on their necks. This time people are not blaming immigrants, they are blaming populist leaders.
One thing every neoliberal must understand about wars of attrition — these wars are Zero Sum. When citizens do not gain from populists, they go back to basics i.e. their origin. The citizens of the world aspire to rewrite the history with their sense of identity intact.
As the rich get richer, wages have been stagnant for workers since the late 1970s. Between 1979 and 2008, 100 percent of income growth in the U.S. went to the top 10 percent of Americans. The bottom 90 percent saw a decline in their income.
What makes up an angry mob?
‘Privilege’ is a fence built up to deprive and isolate. On an individual level, anger becomes an act of expression; and in a group it shapes in form of a mob violence-a collective expression.
While it cannot change history, the angry mobs on the fences eulogize or deride the icons of liberalism like George Washington in the Americas and Winston Churchill for former British colonies. History will have its final verdict. However, this is the time for commoners of the world to inscribe a new economic future.
What will happen to the Bretton Woods system?
About time, when supranational Bretton Woods babies like IMF & WTO must come clean to explain that these institutions are not just extended campuses of wall street.
COVID 19 pandemic is a trigger to depoliticize international financial institutions. It is about time to rewrite neoliberal manifesto, isolated from privilege.
This time it is a global reset. An upsetting reset for the privileged-a new social contract. A social contract based on social cohesion, fairness, and equality. This time the reference index for manifesto co-created from Karl Marx and Adam Smith; interestingly for Marx and Adam, their physical statues are still intact.
Writer: Moin Uddin
Moin Uddin is an occasional writer who loves to write about culture, economy, and psychology. He publishes on www.medium.com/@moinhunzai and tweets @moinhunzai
