Xenophobia in booming economy

Abbas Goya

April 2019

1. Terror in New Zealand
The top three key issues of the 2017 parliamentary elections in New Zealand were immigration, housing, and climate change. Immigration had hit record levels of around 72,000 new arrivals annually. In response to anti-immigration tensions, the Labor Party claimed that immigrants raise housing prices and cause a shortage of necessary infrastructure, such as roads, schools, hospitals, etc. In this way, the Labor Party intended to win anti-immigrant votes in order to win the election. The Labor Party called for a 30,000-strong drop in immigration to New Zealand.

How did the elections actually go? Of the 120 parliamentary seats, the conservative National Party won 56 and the Labor Party 46 seats. Perhaps the main winner was the New Zealand First (NZF) with 9 seats in the parliament. The party was founded in 1993 and has thus far made coalitions with both the National and the Labor Party and, it is the third largest New Zealand parliamentary party. NZF, the right-wing populist party with the anti-immigrant platform and a motto that reads “New Zealand for New Zealanders”, could put a strong foothold in parliament and make Labor to adapt rightist policies. The coalition government that emerged out of the election was composed of the Labor Party and NZF Party and it had the approval of the Greens.

One of the main reasons for the recent immigration to New Zealand was the economic boom that followed the 2008 economic crisis. Capital accumulation had contracted at nearly 2 percent in New Zealand in 2008, however, according to IMF ten years later, in 2018, economic growth was at ca 3 percent. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate in September last year was less than 4 percent. From 2010 onward, austerity measures accelerated to compensate for the cost of government capital injections to the market such as the $2bn bailout cost for the nine finance companies in 2008-9. Precarious jobs became even more commonplace as a subsequence of austerity measures. As per 2013 "A Detailed Report into Insecure", 28.6% of the workforce of 2,221,900-strong were occupied with insecure jobs, namely short-term contracts, often part-time with low wages. The ruling National Party's budget for 2017 signaled an expansion in austerities. The decline in the standard of living, among other things, was reflected in the staggering jump in housing prices. Also, the number of migrants who were classified as Muslims in New Zealand, a country with a population of nearly 5 million, increased 30% from 2006 to 2013. Today, their population is estimated at 50,000, or just over one percent of the New Zealand’s population.

The above schematic image highlights the environment in which the 28-year-old Australian, Brenton Tarrant, committed his terror. Regardless of personal motives, the cold-blooded slaughter of 50 people in two Christchurch mosques, the second largest city in New Zealand with a population of nearly 400,000, had no purpose but to terrorize. The question, however, is which social group he really is targeting via his blind terror? 

2. A brief outline of recent state of political economy

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) claims that the rate of global capital accumulation, aka economic growth, is short of 4 percent for 2019. China and India had a substantial contribution to the overall global growth. The IMF has placed Iran's economy with its 3.6% contraction as the third worst economy in the world, only better than South Sudan and Venezuela. With the available information, only ten countries experience negative growth. Capitalism, especially in the West, is not in crisis but rather in a fragile boom. The accumulation rate is not impressive. A gigantic volume of capital is concentrated in the hands of a few, depicting the enormous gap between the rich and the poor. The current economic growth began shortly after the 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent injection of trillions of dollars into the market. Subsequently on the pretext of the cost of state debt, Western governments engaged in vicious assaults on workers’ achievements, a process known as austerity measures, still ongoing. Although the unemployment rate in, let’s say, the United States is ca 4% today -- significantly lower than the two digit figure in early 2009-- but almost all new jobs are precarious, e.g.,  wages for these short-term contract jobs have fallen sharply and they are often part-time, non-unionized jobs. Thus, the current accumulation of capital was made possible due to a significant increase in labor exploitation rate in the West itself.

The diminishing standard of living that followed presented itself in staggering price hikes of housing, food, and other necessities. The current economic boom was possible because the welfare state has virtually disappeared and consequently the rate of labor exploitation in the West was raised substantially. This has boosted capital for some time but at the same time it has caused the workers to fall into a subsistence crisis. The worker subsistence crisis puts him in search of solutions. Now consider this quest within the Western democracy, that is, in response to the worker's quest there comes a party that addresses workers with a scapegoat: "Foreigners have taken up your jobs because they work for lower wages and below the working standards, so, your problem is foreign workers, kill em all." Another party comes along and states: "It's all about taxes. All the misfortunes are caused by the greed of big corporations. We have to raise taxes and distribute wealth fairly". Also, both parties yell at the same time: "These corporations shipped out our jobs along with our factories to China and Mexico; they have to be returned to our homeland". Suddenly the above populist tendencies which had a marginalized existence in the establishment would be driven out by the votes of isolated workers to the forefront of politics. Trump becomes president; Ardern becomes prime minister because she blasts both "capitalism" and foreign home buyers. Looking at this development from the workers perspective, it was the workers who fought back the austerities through creation of a political crisis for the rulers. Creating a political crisis for the establishment through the ballot box was a manifestation of class struggle even though having populists in the parliament was no solution to workers’ falling living standard.

3. The new dichotomy, right and left populists

Right-wing populist parties have become a normal phenomenon in the West. If no new parameters are added, these parties will replace the traditional conservative parties. The desirability of these parties is not related to their economic platform that can not be implemented anyways but this shift is due to the political utility of ultra right. Unlike fascism of the early 1920’s and 30’s when the fascist's immediate target was communists, ultra right’s immediate target is “Muslims”. However, their target is not limited to the Middle Eastern worker, labeled as Muslims. In his 2011 terror attack in Norway, Anders Behring Breivik targeted Workers' Youth League (AUF) associated with the Labor Party. He slaughtered 77 people. The right wing terrorists target “Muslims” because they intend to take advantage of the legitimate hatred towards Islamic terrorism. The racists intend to use the confusion created by assignment of the Muslim ID to immigrants and refugees from the ME where distinguishing Islamic terrorists from ‘born in the Middle East’ is distorted. Fascists do not target political Islam at all, quite the contrary, they do collaborate at times. Fascists’ blind hatred towards the working class starts with the hatred towards the more vulnerable immigrant workers from the ME. It will however escalate to confront the organized workers, their associated unions and the socialist organizations. The stronger the worker socialism trend, the more likely they’ll be on the hit list of the ultra right. The ultra rightists have already organized attacks on worker rallies including on May 1st, the International Workers Day. As for ultra right economic platform, they claim to be protectionist, a mere propaganda statement rather than a practical economic guideline. This populist movement has already gained power in some powerful countries such as the United States and Austria but they have never been able to even take one single serious step towards a protectionist economy. There is no pattern of economic protectionism.

Social democracy in the post WWII was consolidated in the body of Western political power because of the 'danger' of socialism due to the existence of the Eastern bloc. After the collapse of Eastern bloc, social democracy suffered an identity crisis. They wiped socialism off their party programs; their leftist identity became unrecognizable. Not only have they distanced from a welfare state but they implemented austerities in the most extreme in the past 40 years. With the emergence of the occupy movement in 2011, a new wave of Social-Democracy emerged associated with its opposition to austerity. Syriza, Podemos, Corbyn and Sanders are known examples of the "21st Century Social Democracy." The conflict between the new Social Democratic parties and traditional parliamentary parties in Greece peaked in 2015. The European governments, under the leadership of Germany, pushed Syriza for a total surrender. Syriza complied one hundred per cent. By doing so, the Western capitalist establishment succeeded in putting the anti-austerity movement to a halt for the time being. However, they were never able to turn off the tendency toward improvement and change among the deprived. Corbyn was elected as the UK Labor Party after the surrender of Syriza, and Bernie Sanders became popular in the 2016 election. The process of embracing socialism is still ongoing in the United States albeit various interpretations of it. New Social Democrats or marginal figures from within the traditional social democratic parties such as Corbyn and Sanders were highlighted by the young socialist masses. This new wave of social democracy is also known as left-wing populism. This is not a linear development of the post-World War II social-democratic tradition. Traditional Social Democratic parties can not represent the new wave of socialism and its associated youth who are the victims of these very parties in power. These leftist populist parties and prominent figures, very much like the right populist parties and prominent figures, are nationalists. The leftist parties are committed to nationalist policies which in turn indicate some degree of xenophobia. The difference between the left and right populist parties is the Leftist claim in its adherence to the welfare state. But this claim has so far not been practiced by any new left-wing populist party anywhere in the West. Furthermore, the only representative of such a Left that gained political power was in Greece. Syriza however bent over to the Right without any resistance and it resumed the harsh austerity plans.

4. Immigrant workers

Immigrant workers are used as a means of cheap labor all over the world. Filipino workers are hired as cheap labor in multiple Arabic countries. South Korea is the host for cheap labor from nearby countries, Afghans are a major source for cheap labor in Iran, and Pakistani workers are recruited as cheap labor in multiple countries including New Zealand. Immigration is not always referred to workers but also to the rich Chinese, Iranian, Indian, Brazilian, Saudis or the Mexican and Colombian drug lords who purchase massive properties in New Zealand, the US, Canada, the UK, and France for either investments or money laundering. However, the worker immigrants constitute the absolute majority of the immigrants. Immigration scapegoat provides capitalism with an ample opportunity to impose cheap labor within the Western societies. The cheap farm workers and housekeepers in the US are a typical example of that. Call these workers from Latin America immigrants, push them around for a piece of paper called a "green card" or "permit to stay", make them feel like a second hand citizen by depriving them of the services otherwise provided to citizens and there you have a remedy for cheap labor. In a capitalist society, everything is ultimately converted to dollars and cents. Segregation, be it against women, blacks, yellows, browns, indigenous, whites, disabled, immigrants, seniors have a concrete dollar value. This is where immigration and in particular Middle Eastern workers becomes an "interesting" subject for political gains.

5. Why Middle Eastern?

Along with the above developments in the West, the Middle East has increasingly turned into the main focus of world politics in almost all three decades since the collapse of the Eastern bloc. The initial US led assault on Iraq in 1990 was meant to establish the US as the only superpower. The wars that followed in the ME were essentially conflicts between various rulers to define their sphere of influence. The conflicts in the ME includes the presence of vicious political Islam with great support from the Islamic Republic of Iran, the fights over division of the spheres of influence between the European, Russian and the US governments, the so called Arab Spring, the erosion wars in Syria and then Yemen, and the brutal Arab nationalism represented by the Saudi Arabia which finds itself in a competing position with Iran and Turkey for the sphere of influence in the region. In this swamp of dirt and blood the ISIS was created and continued its barbaric existence for almost 3 years. These developments marginalized the ‘traditional’ Arab-Israeli war and the Kurdish issue. The most visible outcome of the above include the destruction of civil society in Iraq and Libya, political instability in Afghanistan, the worst imaginable humanitarian crisis and structural catastrophe in Syria, and the state of starvation for the millions in Yemen. The conflicts between the ruling class forces in the Middle East coupled with the Western governments and increasingly Russian government military interventions were sometimes tangled so much that the division between the united and hostile forces changed on a daily basis. One thing was however certain: the devastating rubble collapsed on the deprived populace. The inhabitants of Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, and Afghanistan were the most devastated victims of the conflicts in the Middle East in the past three decades. In addition, the expulsion of millions of people from Iran due to the brutal rule of the Islamic Republic gives us the leading cause of immigration and refugee flood from the Middle East and North Africa to elsewhere in the world including the West. Meanwhile, the Western governments fueled the mentality of nationalist "they vs. us" by associating the Middle Eastern victims with political Islam in the region through a blanket Islamic identity. "We” as in “civilized Westerners" versus “them” as in "Muslim immigrants and refugees". The establishment would then back the identity politics and cultural relativism to make the differences ‘tolerable’ for the Western born population. These policies, identity politics coupled with multiculturalism, would then encourage the creation of isolated communities based on religion and nationality in the major cities of the West. That in turn acts as a barrier to integration of immigrants into Western societies and encourages racism. The Middle Eastern immigrants, e.g. the very victims of the brutality of the political Islam and the US led militarism in the region, were hence encouraged to stick to their assigned Muslim identity which made them more vulnerable to the nationalist mentality of “They vs. Us”. As a result, the ultra-right populists did not need to sweat a lot to use "Muslims" as the scapegoat for the deteriorating workers’ living standard.

6. The ‘Muslim’ flaw

We as human beings have a universal identity or no identity at all if you will. We are all humans regardless of our gender, belief, age, color, place of birth, sexual orientation, and abilities. We have however various traditions, we adapt to the climate we live in for clothing, housing, eating habits, and daily activities. We might be a member of a political party, various scientific clubs, arts and otherwise cultural circles, sport leagues and different social groups. We may have religious or non-religious beliefs. If we were to assign an ID to this complex life style of humans what would be the most appropriate one? Take addiction for instance. If you were a smoker which one would dominate your life, the cigarette addiction or Islam? Other than the human identity, humans are divided based on opposing interests that class society has imposed upon them. A person hence is a factory worker, an engineer, a journalist, a factory owner, a shop keeper, a musician, a writer prior to be a Christian, Jewish, Muslim or Buddhist. S/he is further a vegan, a smoker, a parent, a football fan, a rock and roll lover, a fashion follower, a senior, a retiree, a woman, a democrat, a communist, etc. Assigning a specific, religious identity out of so many valid properties associated with our lives is an intentional political act. The assignment is irrelevant to reality of life. They call anyone born in the Middle East Muslim so that they reduce human to a mere believer of a religion. Let’s now see why the racists and political Islam as well as the Western establishment gang up to assign a religious ID to people and how convoluted it gets to deal with it. We need to know a) who supposedly a Muslim is and b) what political Islam is.

In almost all cases, a person born into a Muslim family ‘inherits’ the religion at birth and they cannot convert nor leave it. The punishment for leaving Islam or converting from it is death. The death penalty is enforced by Sharia law by the backward, capitalist, Islamic governments such as the Islamic Republic of Iran. 'Muslim' is therefore a title rather than a practice of Islam; a title one cannot escape from without risking the death penalty or ending up being exiled from the Islamic stricken countries. Political Islam, however, is a conscious Islamic movement, members of which must be believers in Islam; that is, Islam is an inseparable, integral part of political Islam where PI bases itself on it. As a political movement, political Islam occupies a position at the far right of nationalist movements. The ultimate goal of this movement is to gain political power to rule the society based on a brutal doctrine of Islam. The so called Muslims, like any other believers of a religion, are not a homogeneous group. The greatest number of “Muslims” never chose to be Muslims or believer of any religion for that matter. There are also those who consciously choose to be a Muslim as a private matter and do not support political Islam. Finally, there are those who are not only conscious Muslims but have also chosen to be followers of political Islam. Islamic terrorists are recruited from this movement. They are those Muslims who are the armed force of political Islam, aka Islamic terrorists.

Once they assign a person a Muslim id we have to remember that a Muslim is not necessarily an Islamic terrorist; however, an Islamic terrorist is necessarily a Muslim. The distortion of the above ends up with either racism against folks known as 'Muslims' or a coalition with political Islam, that is, the hotbed of Islamic terrorists.

Hardly anyone can stick to the above convoluted, prone to distortion picture that is based on a fallacy, e.g. the arbitrary assignment of a religious ID to fellow human begins. What sticks in mind is simply “people born in the Middle East are Muslims” and that's exactly what racists and political Islam wish for. Racists equate all Muslims with Islamic terrorists while the Western establishments, including the pro-Islamic Left, acquit all Muslims from Islamic borne atrocities and hence they support political Islam under the pretext of defending Muslims. Despite the differences, Trump and Ardern share an identical approach in assigning a religious ID to people. Regardless if they favor or stand in opposition to "Muslims", the application of assigning a religious ID to people is a distortion and deception aimed for a political agenda. Ardern, Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Federica Mogherini, Swedish Trade Minister Ann Linde and her associates are as demagogue as Trump when they chose to put on Islamic headscarves.

Most people in the world despise both Islamic and xenophobic terrorist trends. With that in mind, both racists and political Islam use a uniform id, “Muslim”, to describe whoever was born in the Middle East. The racists use this id as a scapegoat, and political Islam uses the identical id to justify its atrocities, claiming that they represent the Middle Eastern “Muslims”. Finally, the establishments in the West uses “Muslim” id for various purposes to A) appease the theocratic governments in the ME such as Saudi Arabia and Iran B) use the Islamic grouping as an instrument for the division of sphere of influence C) maintain cheap labor within the West.

Interestingly enough, various institutions of political Islam, Islamic theocracy, the pro-Islamic left and the western establishment unanimously claim that "Islam is innocent" and oppose legitimate opposition to political Islam with Islamophobia. Islamophobia which literally means fear of Islam, i.e. a belief, is NOT a fear of the believer. While the fight against political Islam includes confronting the belief itself, the focus of the fight is religion in power; hence it is a political battle, not a battle of beliefs. Islamophobia nonetheless is a legitimate fear and can rightly be considered a phobia similar to that of fascistophobia

We don't fight racism for the respect of Islam, Christianity of Judaism nor do we fight racism for the respect of homeland. That would be oxymoron.  In our fight against xenophobia we need to strip away any national and religious identity we have been assigned to. We only need to rely on universal socialist values where humans are treated equally irrespective of their beliefs, gender, ability, color, sexual orientation, age, looks, and place of birth. In addition, fighting xenophobia requires dismissal of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism point of departure is equality of cultures, NOT equality of human beings. Multiculturalism expects respect for other cultures while a chauvinist, misogynist, homophobic, theocratic culture that treats humans on the extreme sense of inequality deserves no respect whatsoever. While everyone is entitled to their belief, the belief itself is not necessarily respectable.

7. Xenophobia in booming economy

Unlike the common belief that the more brutal political trends such as fascism and racism become the mainstream of politics during a capital crisis, the extreme nationalist parties are emerging in an era when capital is in a boom, albeit fragile, but workers are in a state of subsistence crisis. A consistent growth in global GDP for an extended period is a booming economy. For example, a global annual growth of 1.1% (in correlation with the currently 1.09% global population growth) or more, over a 2 year or longer period is a booming economy. The current boom was the outcome of ending welfare state and consequently raising the exploitation rate substantially in the West. In the past four decades, the confiscation of labor achievements and welfare took different phases. Deindustrialization of 70’s followed by the cutback on workers' achievements in the 1980’s. These assaults on workers living standard succeeded with a short-lived booming period of capital in 80’s. The next phase of the austerities followed the collapse of the East bloc, a further milestone in cutbacks. Furthermore, the rulers used any regional, local, industry specific crisis or any crisis in each and every moment of capital, e.g. financial, industrial, and commercial, such as the IT crisis in 2000 and the financial crisis in 2008, as an opportunity to further cutback on workers' living standard. Today, there is hardly anything left from the welfare state. Precarious jobs are commonplace and the sinking living standard is widespread. Workers either fought the austerities through direct confrontation with the rulers at workplace, rallies and on the streets or they reflected their dissidents via ballot box. In the aftermath of 2008 financial crisis, workers sought fundamental solutions to their continuous subsistence crisis. It was within this context that both right and left wing of populism were put on spotlight at the ballot boxes and found their way in to the mainstream of politics in the West. As a result, the parties that dominated the forefront of politics in the West since the WWII are due for expiry. Today, both the left and right factions of Western establishment are redefining themselves. There are two growing nationalist trends which their party representatives could soon substitute the traditional, post WWII Liberal vs. Conservative dichotomy. One is national-reformism, aka populist Left, and the other is the anti-immigrant, ultra right populist. The right wing's demagogy and deception is based on a simple scapegoat formula: Xenophobia. The more vulnerable groups of immigrants the better chance to deceit the general population. Assigning a religious ID to the Middle Eastern workers who escaped various catastrophes created by political Islam and the Western rulers makes them a perfect target to blame them for what they are victims of. Meanwhile Left populism uses the Right populism as the scaremonger in order to pursue its own delusional agenda. In the mere economic sphere, neither the new left is capable of implementing reforms for the well being of workers nor can the new ultra right trigger a nationalist, protectionist economy. The value of using the right and left populists is political.

By pushing both right and left wing populism to the forefront of mainstream politics, the workers responded to the cutbacks with a political crisis for the rulers in the West. The progress of current struggles, however, requires fighting the right populism while criticizing the Left. The dominant tendency in the so-called socialist movement in the West is reformism. This tendency can not carry out any reform to improve workers living standard because it does not question the existence of capitalism that causes the problems in the first place. It therefore is not a threat to the root cause of the problem. Capitalism has no reason to compromise with reformism. However, reformism is a good tool to delude workers with and hence it is beneficial to capitalism. An illustration of the usefulness of “reformism” can be spotted in Iran, i.e. a faction of the Islamic Republic or Iran whose entire "reform" constituted, with a touch of exaggeration, in diversity of colors for Hejab and less savage methods of capital punishment. These were the peak of "reforms" promised by “reformists” in Iran and they managed to delude masses for nearly two decades with it. Imagine how many decades Sanders could delude the youth of America for "improving conditions." The rise of worker socialism in the West entails a relentless criticism of the reformist left while it fights the rightists as well. I believe that the more likely chance for the rise of worker socialism in the West is the victory of a socialist revolution in some corner of the world. Currently, Iran is perhaps the best candidate for that corner as workers dominated the protests against the IRI in the past 15 months.

From a worker socialist stand point, xenophobia is a different face of capitalism where humans are once again divided into superior and inferior groups. While multiculturalism treats all cultures equally, it doesn't care for the unequal treatments of humans within the cultures. In addition to dismissal of multiculturalism, fighting xenophobia for equal rights requires stripping away national and religious identities we have been assigned to.