Greenwald on "Democrats, Trump, and the Ongoing, Dangerous Refusal to Learn the Lesson of Brexit" | Democracy Now!
Part
2 of the Glenn Greenwald interview has good insights too about the
backlash against our ruling elites, whether in the form of Trump, Brexit
or Corbyn.
Greenwald:
And so, the people who were
supporting Brexit and the people who were supporting Trump weren’t
really ever heard from; they were just talked about in very contemptuous
tones. These were the troglodytes. These were the uneducated idiots.
These were the people motivated by malice and racism and xenophobia. And
so they were sort of looked at like zoo animals, like things that you
dissect and condemn. ...
And then, both before and after you had
this result, what you saw is not any notion of accountability. Why are
there so many people wanting to leave the EU? Why are there so many
people supporting this person so far outside the norm? No
accountability, no self-critique. Only a way to distract attention from
their own responsibility by just spouting hatred and disgust for the
people who are being insubordinate. ...
And the more you ignore
them and the more you scorn them and the more you tell them that their
grievances are invalid, the more they’re going to be susceptible to
scapegoating, the more their bigotry will be inflamed, and the more
they’ll want to destroy the systems and the institutions that they
believe are responsible for their suffering. And so, a lot of people who
voted for Brexit, a lot of people who voted for Trump understand
exactly all the arguments that were made about why each of them is
potentially destructive and so dangerous, and they did it, not despite
that, but because of that, because they want to punish and ultimately
destroy the institutions who no longer have any credibility with them
and who they believe are responsible for the suffering and the lack of
security that they experience in their lives without anyone really
caring about it at all. And until we start to address that and until
institutions, elite institutions, take responsibility for it, those
things are going to continue to fester and grow, and it very well may be
the case that Trump and Brexit are just the beginning of this very
alarming cycle, rather than the peak of it.
