The Globalization of Whitelash

It’s extraordinary to behold: The leader of the free world, on foreign soil, inciting xenophobia. Then again, whitelash has no boundaries—both literally and figuratively speaking. The synchronicity of white people’s rebellion against immigration worldwide may appear coincidental. It is not. Postindustrial distress, magnified by the Great Recession of 2008, characterizes the economies of America and Europe, among other regions. From Brexit to the election of Donald Trump to the installation of his self-professed clone in Brazil, right-wing populism has become the vector of choice for whites’ expression of their unease with the current state of their societies. According to John B. Judis in The Populist Explosion , a key feature of this brand of populism is that it “champion[s] the people against an elite that they accuse of coddling a third group,” such as immigrants or Muslims Yet the history of whites debasing racial and religious outsiders long predates any supposed disillusionment with modern capitalism.