It's not just about 'DEI.'
Resisting the far-right means asking questions about wealth inequality that civil society may find a tougher sell....
I generally try to stay on the ‘philanthropy and charity’ track with this blog, but it’s difficult when there is so much going on that feels, yes, impactful to what we are doing, but also about far, far more than that. So this week, we’re looking at what needs to happen in civil society, but also at ‘what’s happening in the world’.
And I’m sorry, but this week I am not funny at all. I’ve tried to make up for it with memes, and I promise to post a picture of Trevor, my cat, next week, as compensation.
The fight against DEI
I’ve heard a lot of people in civil society focusing on the culture wars and DEI1 angle since the Trump victory - with all its fascist significations and casual but oh, so intentional, cruelty. We’ve been rightly horrified by the cancelling of DEI programmes, the shock of seeing things like Trump firing people pretty much openly because they are African American, the ongoing stigmatisation of migrants, queer people, and others. We’ve been shocked to see Stonewall reeling from Trump and Musk’s USAID cuts.
We need to keep pushing back on these issues and never let them go. But at the same time, I think sometimes the DEI stuff feels like it’s slightly in our comfort zone. The dominant discourse in UK charity philanthropy is fairly socially progressive - on the surface at least. (Insert whole essay on the reality behind the discourse here…) Broader civil society is much more mixed. Many of us have been openly angry about DEI cuts on LinkedIn - and been silenced by algorithms in some cases (see last week’s post). Continuing to make those arguments is vital, but alone, they’re not enough.
There is something else we need to talk about: what if we look at the other fundamental issues driving this massive shift to the right across the world? What if we start talking about the structural causes—about extreme wealth inequality, about the economic orthodoxy that has helped lead us here? Dare we ask those questions and challenge the fundamental distribution of wealth and power in our societies?
The problem is, that is far more likely to upset some of the powerful people we ourselves rely on in civil society…
If we want to prevent the rise of the far-right here in the UK, saying positive things about diversity is not going to stop the drift. We have to dig beneath that, into something that, sadly, we will find much harder to affect.
Here come the fascists
Friends and colleagues I know have been very much taking about the threat to minorities posed by the rise of the right. They’re correct to worry. But what is happening goes so much beyond just cancelling DEI programmes and refusing the ‘woke’. With the far from surprising show of support for the far-right AfD in Germany’s elections, with recent fascist convert Elon Musk making a congratulatory appearance, the rise of the most extreme right-wing continues. We’ve had Nazi salutes from Musk and also Steve Bannon (‘Roman salute’ is so ridiculously euphemistic - like a Glasgow Kiss or a French Letter).2 Much of what is happening in Trump’s ideological and political sphere has echoes of fascism. Project 2025 is terrifying, and in action. The Proud Boys and any number of highly extremist groups are supported by major US political and economic figures. As are our own sad little w*nkers like Stephen Yaxley Lennon.
Make no mistake, minoritised communities and individuals, and anybody poor or migrant, will bear the brunt, today as in the darkest days of the 20th century. But it’s a mistake to think what is happening now is all just a reaction to ‘woke’, or that people are finally accepting or revealing that they are really racist and hateful. That is what ‘they’ (those in power, and an increasingly democratically unassailable economic elite) want you to think.
Follow the money
The next thing to remember is that while our criticism tends to focus on hate speech - because it is the most visible, obvious, and lurid aspect of what they offer - deep down, the allure of fascism for those who come to accept it is driven by inequality of all types, not just by social conservatism. It provides answers with its hatred. But finding scapegoats for the public that allow the wealthy and powerful to continue their pillaging and plunder is the key function of that hate.
One of the best books I’’ve read recently is The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism by Clara E. Mattei.
As she points out, fascism has always worked really well for capitalism. It uses violence, fear, and hate to concentrate power in the hands of a few people. The kind of society, for example, where the top 3 people own more wealth than the bottom 50% of the population - that is, than 179 million people.3
As Mattei shows, the rise of fascism in Mussolini’s Italy gave businesses, economists and the wealthy the ability to ride roughshod over anybody who had less money and power. As we look at Musk and his chainsaw cutting programmes inbetween lines of Special K, we’d do well to remember how much this austerity goes hand in hand with autocracy:
“Italian economists’ anti-democratic views were more explicit—Pantaleoni called democracy “the management of the state and its functions by the most ignorant, the most incapable” (Pantaleoni 1922, 269)— […] economic experts, whether Fascist or liberal, recognized that in order to secure economic freedom—i.e., the market freedom of the “virtuous” saver/entrepreneur—countries had to forgo, or at minimum marginalize, political freedoms.”
“Pantaleoni—an architect of austerity and later an adviser of Mussolini’s dictatorship—pointed out [..] “where democracy is strong, public finance will go the wrong way” (Brussels 1920, vol. 4, 109).
- Mattei, Clara E.. The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism (pp. 15, 143). University of Chicago Press. Kindle Edition.
Mattei sees a ‘universal link between austerity and political oppression.’ Fascists don’t need to tell people why they have to make cuts, or make excuses. Nor to explain why suddenly money flows into the pockets of oligarchs more than ever before. All they have to do is suppress unions, fire workers, and threaten anyone who stands up to them. The wealthy love fascism because it is the perfect way to make sure they keep, and keep increasing, their wealth. As you watch what is happening in the US with Trump and Musk, just remember this.
Furthermore, what is rarely noted in our popular narratives about fascist history is how fabulously wealthy businesses and senior leaders in fascist regimes become. Hitler was a vicious antisemite, but also very focused on feathering his (Eagle’s) nest. He was a multi-millionaire many times over by the end. Likewise the other architects of the Third Reich, and indeed, the Italian fascists. This approach - opportunistic and yet strategic enrichment through the glorification of power, violence, and hate, is the fascist playbook.
Inequalities of social category are raked up and utilised in order to draw attention away from wider socio-economic ones. Fascist ideologues - those true-believer racists, hate groups and palingenetic nationalists (palingenesis - ‘rebirth’ - of the nation) - are very useful to oligarchs because they draw fire from them by blaming migrants, minorities, political enemies, and others. They use the true believers of organised hate to help them get what they want. The oligarchs will throw them a dog whistle, some religious nonsense, some hate speech, and eventually a salute, in order to get them on side. The fascists will whip up a mob which frightens everybody and makes many centrists more afraid to speak out for fear of attracting their ire. The power moves even further in the direction of the billionaires who get to do whatever they want economically because the fascists give them cultural, and often physical, muscle.
Meanwhile, the new politics of hatred gradually moves debate and discussion further towards the right and away from tolerance, aided by a media which is at best cowed, and at worst, controlled or even cheerleading. The media’s owners are similarly the wealthy class, after all.
As the power becomes ever more concentrated in the hands of a hateful political elite, the range of foes increases, because one-by-one you deal with each of them and yet, strangely it doesn’t work. Onto the next enemy. Of course it won’t EVER work because the people stealing money, democracy, and power from the majority are not homosexuals or Gypsies or migrants, but the extremely wealthy. This is how we get to the stage where almost everybody who is different is an enemy, with a list of enemies that gets ever longer.
What tends to happen is that the billionaires and elites think they can use the true-believers politically in order to get what they want. But unfortunately, they eventually always discover that they can’t control those people and their ideologies. Before long, the tail is wagging the dog and even billionaires are afraid. Musk, Trump, and the tech bros could find this very quickly. (Zuckerberg and Bozo are already shitting themselves. If that sounds like something to celebrate, I’m afraid the problem is that the next stage is full control by the fascists and true believers. They cannot be controlled.)
Sidebar: Is Musk a True Believer?
So the powerful are just using fascists and fascism to get what they want. Musk, as one of his former friends, Dr Philip Low reminds us, is not a Nazi in the basic white supremacist sense. He’s is something ‘much better, or worse’. He is a narcissist who simply believes not in one race above all others, but rather in one person above all others. He is using these ideologies, and the mob around them, simply to get what we wants - absolute and total power.
Money, for Musk, means you are better and smarter, and that is what gives you the right to dominate. But it is helpful for him to salute a crowd of people (many of whom I guarantee thought ‘what the f*ck’) and hope to gain absolute control of the narrative through the enthusiasms of a smaller group he knows he has to sway in order to get the control he needs. The thing to remember, however, is that in any fascist movement, probably about 20% of them are ‘real’ fascists. The rest are along for what they can get, swept along with the excitement, or happy to go with the flows of power.
It’s not just your racist grandpa
So who is voting for neo-fascists and the far-right? There are many different myths that are being told at the moment about why the world is going right wing. As I mentioned earlier, one of the least helpful is still that it’s a generational problem - once the Boomers are dead, we’ll finally be rid of all the socila conservatives. This is absolute nonsense. Here’s a picture of some of those stick in the mud, hateful Boomers, for example.
But my main point is this: the AfD vote is young. Yes, they are moving both ways (right and left). But this gives the lie to the idea that we are just seeing the last gasp of your racist grandpa.
Young men are particularly an issue: there is far too much to say here without the risk of saying something too simplistically, so I’ll leave others to discuss that, but we know the Andrew Tate shift, and all the associated vileness which is cross-contaminated with various extremisms. But even adorable Geordie angel-voiced socialist troubadour Sam Fender gets it:
What the right talks to young men about (bad women, trans people, woke) is not their real problem. But as we can see, the narrative about ‘privilege’ that often clusters around what are known as woke ideologies constantly elides class, which is a massive driver in the move towards the far-right, and alway has been. If young, working class white men find themselves irritated and angered by being told they’re privileged given the economic trajectory of the last 40 years, is that surprising? Not all of them are neo-Nazis, but they are feeling politically homeless. And the reason is simple: they’ve been shafted economically, and the only people talking to them are the right.
So what is it then?
We have to talk about class.
It is obvious to many, but it needs to be said over and over: a vast group of society - in fact the majority - has felt left behind economically, as the wealth-owning class have systematically increased their wealth to levels of unimaginable inequality over the last 30 years.
If you look at the maps of the German election results last week, you find the same spread of results as you do in other places swinging right. German reunification at the end of the 20th century saw a wealthy West, long-bolstered by American money, taking on a stricken, poor, left-behind East, abandoned financially by the Soviet Union, and then politically by its own government. Many felt that the East was stripped of its remaining wealth and left to fester. To this day, the sense of difference between the left-behind East and the modern, thriving West, is palpable. And people feel it.
The new electoral map shows a wealthier former West, all centre-right CDU/ CSU (Tories), except for tiny pockets, highly concentrated, of the centre-left SPD in more urban and industrial/ post industrial cities (godless heathen, migrant and The Gays party). In the East, on the left, we have the far-right AFD (far-right wankers). And then within that, Berlin, home of the worst woke metropolitan elite and godless heathens/ migrants, an island of woke, weird and wealth sat within a ‘foreign land’, just as it was when it was in the DDR and only accessible by a corridor.
Germany’s map tells you everything you need to know about who votes for the far-right and why. This could not be starker - rural/ urban, richer/ poorer, left/ right.
Now these voters in the old East are not fundamentally just mean and hateful (although no doubt some are that too). They have just been screwed economically, and left politically homeless, with nobody else speaking to them and their needs.
Look at the map of the US, and you will see a very similar picture. The AFD sections in the German map could be the Trump heartlands of the rust belt, Appalachia or the Deep South. All of the lost, ill-educated and isolated Americans starved of real information, and alienated by ideas that make no sense to them outside of urban contexts. And indeed, some of them are even in the very groups that the Republicans are stigmatising. All they can feel is the long extraction of wealth, resources, and livelihood from their own communities, as they rage against the people rich billionaires tell them have hurt them.
Who can we afford to p*ss off?
If we want to avoid our own maps in the UK looking like that in four years (and to an extent they are already starting to), now is the time to move that needle on economic distribution. Growth ain’t going to cut it, Rachel and Keir, especially since the growth you might be able to achieve would likely come with the cost of further inequality.
Without economic change, the far-right are coming, everywhere. Fascism, racism, all the isms, are not things we grow out of, as our cosy narratives of liberation and enlightenment suggested. They are constant currents, and responses to battles for resources that are as anthropological as they are political. This battle is never over.
Meanwhile, challenging myths about diversity matters more than ever, in civil society as much as anywhere else. But we also have to play our part in demanding that the wealthy start paying their fair share. We have to push on DEI, but focusing on this and the ‘culture wars’ is a fully intentional distraction by oligarchs from the role of inequality at a class and economic justice, aided and abetted by a whole range of hateful voices.
This isn’t easy. First, it’s not clear who listens to us. (We’re bunch of youth workers and weirdos and misfits and policy wonks. I wouldn’t listen to myself.)
But here’s the tricky one: it also might upset some people we really want - need? - to like us.
If we start to also talk about the role of the fabulously wealthy, we might start to offend our wealthy donors. If we ask about more democratic accountability of funds, trusts and foundations may get uppity. What if we start to question the distribution of wealth in our society, regressive taxation, the role of forever-austerity, and the depths of inequality that the progressive neo-liberal orthodoxy in the last 40 years has created?
We may find that Civil Society Covenant with our fair-weather government friends is over before the ink dries.
It would be easier for us to stick to campaigning on diversity alone. But believe me, if we do that, the future for all of society’s scapegoats will be so much worse.
Stop Press: follow the money pt.II….
Woke or not woke, they don’t give a sh*t. All that matters is that cold, hard cash….
Coming next week: Fundraisers are dangerous
Which brings me to next week’s BCS: ‘Fundraisers are dangerous’. The clickbait it baked right in with that one! Score.
And finally….
Pretty sure a funny bit at the end isn’t on the cards today, but at the very least, I can leave you with a happy thought.
Full marks to those who created the terms ‘Wankpanzer’ and ‘Swasticar’ for Musk’s cybertrucks.
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Back to charities and philanthropy next week. Thanks for bearing with me!
- Alex
Okay, first of all ‘DEI’ is such an unhelpful and flattening terminology for something much more complex and important. But that is the term the ‘enemy’ are using, so we’ll stick with it for now.
—It’s being used instead of ‘Nazi salute’ because people are scared of being sued by the richest man on the planet and his cronies.
https://www.instagram.com/berniesanders/reel/DE8PgXxyQl7/