What is Globalism?

The word ‘globalism’ gets thrown around political circles a lot, especially in recent months when the headlines have been dominated by Brexit and Donald Trump.

Detractors of the two are on the side that says globalism is a positive endeavour, whereas those who supported the ‘Leave’ campaign or who share sympathies with Trump vehemently argue the opposite.

But what exactly is globalism?

As defined by Google, it is: “the operation or planning of economic and foreign policy on a global basis.”

Dictionary.com presents a more predisposed definition: “the attitude or policy of placing the interests of the entire world above those of individual nations.”

Those who would try sell the idea of globalism to another would argue it is no more than the harmless act of foreign cuisine enriching your culinary options, tourists flocking your picturesque destinations and the proliferation of technology designed to make communication with the global community easier.

If you focus on this docile interpretation of globalism, then you would obviously be inclined to sympathize with it. Who wouldn’t want to experience an exotic culture every now and then, right?

Yet if you knew the full extent of this ideology and become cognizant of consequences of globalist reforms in history then you will realize that it isn’t that tame after all.

Taking that first definition from Google, where globalism is planning economic and foreign policy on a global basis we can see why this would pose problems.

A nation-state first and foremost should design their respective economies to serve the needs of their own populace first. When evaluating policies pertaining to employment, enterprise and foreign policy considerations should be made on the interest of that nation-state.

However, the creed of globalism preaches that your industries need to downgrade or shut down in the aim of mitigating climate change – even though the bureaucrats mandating it come from the biggest polluting countries in the world.

They pay no attention to the number of job losses or the importance of these industries to far-flung, rural towns – their fates come secondary to the assumptions of the suit-and-ties in the big cities.

The internationalists would argue similarly in terms of foreign policy. For them, the world needs to consolidate the same moral values as them. These values include the legalisation of same-sex marriage laws and recognition for transsexual bathroom rights.

Failure to comply with these cultural constructs will result in trade embargos or even an outright severing of all relations with the “offending” party.

Despite these laws are passed by the well-off, elite ruling class the direct casualties of trade embargos are often those on the lowest-rung of society.

Skyrocketing petrol prices, the scarcity of food commodities and other negative socio-economic consequences hound the middle and lower-middle classes while those directly responsible for these sanctions in the first place suffer no more than a dent on their egos.

We saw a similar situation occur just earlier this year in Europe, where the United Kingdom voted in a referendum to leave the European Union.

Proponents of globalism were baffled by this development. How could anyone elect to leave the world’s most authoritarian, supranational union?

Those complaining are the same ones who have no problems with globalism. The ones who are university-educated and often well-connected in society that they do not feel any anxiety having to compete with hundreds of millions of workers from dozens of other countries in the union for the same job.

The ones who do not belong to working-class, industrial families who have been disparaged by the exodus of Britain’s once thriving manufacturing sector – in favour of more lucrative destinations elsewhere in the EU.

In other words, proponents of the EU often belong to the well-off, upper-middle class or even aristocratic backgrounds who have been benefactors of a globalist system.

The reality they are forgetting is that not everyone has enjoyed the reforms brought by the EU, those people voted in droves for Britain to leave.

And the divide between those who voted for “Brexit” and the ones completely confused why those people did so tells the story of globalism: it is supported by those who can afford to weather out the harmful effects brought by it but forget that it is not the case for the majority.

Globalism causes local industries to suffer, the populace to languish in a life of unemployment and culture to decay all for the sake of a “global community.”

While the sentiment is respectable, the reality is that  we do not see a community but rather a competition; and in any competition, there are winners and losers.

The prospect of a global community only raises the level of competition even more and because of it there are a lot more losers and much fewer winners than there would have been otherwise.