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Everyone in the liberal press has become excited over the past decade or so by the rise in far-right political movements across Europe and North America, and with good reason. Racism, Antisemitism, and Islamophobia are very much in vogue in certain quarters. This is a problem no one can overlook or indeed underestimate, but there is a greater problem to which attention has been raised but without anything approaching the same sense of panic – the resurgence of the right. Not since the 1929 Wall Street Crash has the wealthiest single percentile of the human population been so incredibly rich. By the middle of 2016 it is estimated that the top one percent will be in possession of over half of the world’s wealth.
Wealth, more than any other commodity in the socio-political playing field, buys power, and over the past fifty years this infinitesimal segment of the population has clawed back all of its wealth and power to the cost of the majority. Owing to its fabulous wealth this segment owns a controlling stake in the world’s political economy; making decisions in their own financial and economic interests on a global scale. As political funders, influencers, and decision-makers – interested exclusively in their own power and wealth agendas – they are, by definition, the right-wing of the international political establishment. With larger and increasing shares in commercial corporations, trading floors, the media, and elsewhere, they are pulling the strings. This is not a conspiracy theory, but it is a conspiracy – and we are its victims.
These new and largely unknown oligarchs know, as do we well, that the preservation of their hegemony rests in their control of political power. To this end they have worked tirelessly to arrogate to themselves all the instruments of public information and influence, and with this all the weapons to defend their position. It stands to reason then that every war fought by Western states since the end of the Cold War have been wars for resources – with the objective of monopolising the means of wealth creation. It is no accident that Israel has been armed to the teeth to wage a genocidal war against Palestine or that private contractors were the chief beneficiaries of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Most new wealth flows to the top 1 percent. It's a system held in place by corrupt politics. #DemDebate
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Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) December 20, 2015
The soaking of wealth to the top – this disequilibrium of wealth distribution – has dried up the resources available to the rest of humanity, and the result further down the social pecking-order has been chaos. The media continues to play its part in stirring up tensions between the poor so as to deflect their attention from the scandal of wealth. It stands to reason also that the rise of the far-right parallels the rise in wealth inequality; the less that people have at the bottom the more likely they are to look for people to blame. As this wealth transfer to the top continues the mayhem below will only get worse.
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