The Great Realignment Part One: How a Revolt Against Identity Politics is Remaking Elections Around the World

 AMAC Exclusive           

Written By: Daniel Roman

Whether it is Brexit in the UK, Donald Trump’s election in America, or the rise of Narendra Modi in India, the world has been witnessing a conservative revolution for the past half decade. A Great Realignment is occurring, and not one driven by a racial “awakening” among minority groups, as the left has claimed, but rather by conservative members of minority communities gradually abandoning identity politics and the left-wing political parties that practice it. From Asian and working class voters in the UK, to Hispanic and African American voters in the USA, and even Arab voters in Israel, they have taken part in a global walkout on the left and increasingly embraced conservative parties and leaders who more accurately reflect their personal views.

          The last five years have certainly been frustrating for opponents of identity politics in corporate boardrooms and college campuses, as ever more absurd lesson plans, are forced on a captive audience. Yet as much as liberals might wish otherwise, this trend reminds us that voters in a free society are not a captive audience. They have the ability to make their own choices and the luxury of choosing their own identity. Increasingly, that is exactly what they are doing.

            This piece is the first in a series which will examine the rise of what the media terms “Right Wing Populism” not as the caricature presented by the Left, but as it is: a historic realignment not on the basis of resentments or emotion, but on policy and values. 

          Voters in a democracy are expected to vote for parties and politicians who actually agree with them on issues of governance. It has been a historical quirk that for much of the last half-century, Left-wing parties have been able to rely on the votes of millions of people who personally hold conservative principles and values, continuing to receive their votes solely on the basis of appeals to identity. Seen from the perspective of history, it is not the last five years which have been the aberration, but the preceding 50.

          “Identity Politics” has allowed the Left to implement countless policies which large majorities of the electorate, including their own voters, oppose. But as we can now see in numerous countries, the age of Identity Politics is coming to an end. The reason so-called “Populism” terrifies the Left is because it poses an existential threat to their entire method of governance. As people begin voting on issues and values, rather than identity, the Left can no longer win.

                That is what began happening in countries around the world starting in 2015 when Donald Trump launched his campaign for President. Around the same time in the United Kingdom, northern, working-class voters and Scots ceased voting for a Labour party which was a globalist creature of the London elite. Then in India, voters threw off their historical allegiance to the caste-manipulating Congress party. In Israel, for the first time, Arab parties rejected their leaders’ obsession with the Palestinian cause to pursue their own futures. And in the United States, millions of African Americans and Hispanic voters turned out to cast their ballots for Donald J. Trump in 2020, defying an unprecedented campaign of vilification in the media and voting their values and policy preferences over what Democrats claimed their racial or ethnic identity demanded.

             The untold story of the last five years is not, as the Left and the press would have us believe, the rise of a “Populist Right” mobilizing political support among majority demographics against minorities. If that were the case, the Right would have increased support among the majority populations. Yet in the United States under Donald Trump, and in the United Kingdom following Brexit, the Republican and Conservative parties lost support among white and upper income voters. The political success of so-called “Populism” has lain not in polarizing appeals to majorities on the basis of racial or ethnic identity but rather on the inverse–the ability of nationalist leaders to transcend the politics of racial, religious, and ethnic polarization which has previously allowed the Left to rely upon the votes of millions of people who personally oppose left-wing values.

               Donald Trump did not polarize America along racial lines. He polarized it along with philosophical ones, which in the process actually created a more racially diverse coalition for Republicans. For the first time in 2020, Latino voters who had fled Socialism asked themselves why they should vote for a party that embraced socialism, while African Americans asked what the Democratic party had done for them other than force them into government dependency, call them “Super Predators” and express shock at the obvious results. Both found the Democrats wanting and were attracted to Trump’s patriotic message, values, and policies.

                In Britain, voters of Asian descent wondered why lawyers and scientists from countries where English was the official language found themselves subject to draconian quotas and bureaucracy to take up jobs in the United Kingdom, while the poorest Roma from Bulgaria could arrive on the night bus without a job or residence and be placed in a government owned apartment. They too found the answers the Left provided wanting in the extreme.

                In this series we will cover past, present, and future. In the United Kingdom, the 2019 Election consummated a realignment that began with Brexit and looks set to continue on May 6^th with a special election to fill the vacancy in the parliamentary seat of Hartlepool, which Labour has held since the 1920s but now looks set to lose. In America, Democrats seem to have learned nothing from their near-death experience in November, and are actively ignoring the border crisis Joe Biden has caused, demonstrating the party’s contempt for Hispanic voters in the process. And in India, the Congress Party of Nehru and the Gandhi’s has nothing to say as Narendra Modi leads India into the 21^st century, aligning New Delhi firmly with Israel and the West.

                The articles that follow will combine historical context and statistical analysis in order to place recent developments in the context of this global conservative ascendancy. Each part will be a self-contained study focusing on politics within a single country. Yet these case studies combine to tell a larger story, one full of hope for conservatives worldwide. Despite the best efforts of the media, popular culture, and academia to divide people by race, gender, and religion, it is the transcendent power of conservative ideas and values that are ultimately breaking through. Socialism thrives on an atomized and divided populace, one where no one has the luxury to think for themselves. Socialism is now in retreat around the world precisely because voters have begun to do just that–think for themselves.

            Contrary to the hopes of global elites that November 2020 would end the revolution, the reality is that it has just begun.