We cannot have social and environmental justice without economic justice. Women and children of all identities, as well as all men, have seen their poverty rate grow in the last decade, and those living just above the poverty line are increasingly vulnerable to falling below it. Everyone with a stable and sufficient income, including those who are from traditionally marginalized identities, is far less vulnerable to discrimination.
The wealth gaps are growing wider, with the wealthy getting wealthier, and the major corporate interests posting record profits. The working class is struggling, and these trends are fuelling a rise in conservative populism, which has stalled progress in social and environmental justice. The political centre has presided over these negative trends, and trust in its institutions has fallen to the lowest level in the post WW2 era.
The centrist leaders in North America and Europe, despite their rhetoric, have not shown themselves to be authentic social and environmental justice advocates, and equally troubling, have abandoned the working classes in favour of the corporatists and the warmongers of the U.S. Empire. Wages have fallen in relation to the cost of living, and the environment is increasingly degraded while the climate crisis has worsened.
The consolidation of corporate media to a handful of powerful interests, including governments, has shaped the dominant narratives, many of which come unravelled upon a closer scrutiny. Moreover, it is conspicuous what isn’t reported, or which views remain absent in public discourse, and where corrections to misinformed mainstream reporting do not appear, or are difficult to find.
In more closed and authoritarian societies, there is less need for propaganda, because it is understood that speaking up has severe consequences. In more open societies like ours, there is a far greater need for relentless propaganda to shape, coerce, and control public opinion, and to put up guardrails on what can be debated in polite society. Dissenting voices are characterized as extremists, or conspiracy theorists.
We have an economic, social, and environmental crisis, and few of us ever ask why, never mind attempt an explanation. Our societies keep repeating and doubling down on failed policies, while governments and corporate legacy media normalize these realities as though history has taught us nothing, or pretends that we’ve reached the end of history, and late stage crony capitalism is the best we can do, however “flawed.”
For most of the population, we’ve entered the “let them eat cake” era of corrupt and repressive policies in a revolving door of hollow left-right partisanship, when it has become obvious that our societies are run by a small group of oligarchs and their subordinates in the professional managerial class, regardless of their performative rhetoric. There are few authentic advocates for the working class remaining.
The solution proposed by conservative populists is more trickle down economics, tax cuts for the rich, and cuts to programs that serve the common people, and once again the working classes will be asked to carry the painful burden of paying for the subsidies to corporate interests, and their thirst for endless growth. Now is the time to reject any government that prioritizes profit over people, whether liberal or conservative.
We can no longer tolerate any government that gives billions of dollars in subsidies to ever growing energy extraction industries, while promoting climate change mitigation and asking the working class to pay for all of it with increased taxes on our carbon footprint. These same governments build pipelines and bring supertankers into coastal ports, often through First Nations’ territories, all while feigning concern for the climate crisis.
Should we have the time and the privilege, we need to organize and educate, and come together around the issues we have in common, regardless of our smaller differences, and reject the idea that because things may be less free in far away places, we should be satisfied with the status quo of our own society. Our job is to create economic justice for the working class to a level where social and environmental justice can flourish.
Yawn.