One of the marks of contemporary thinking is that we confuse symptoms with causes, and therefore, we miss the correct diagnosis. The riots that have erupted in England and are being labelled—and rightly so—“far-right terrorism” are just one example.
The rioters are being accused of racism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia; and certainly, their behaviour confirms this, and those are probably the main features of their way of thinking. However, to blame this sudden eruption on these particular—and abominable—traits is to miss the point. They, too, are a symptom.
To continue with medical terminology, the aetiology of what is happening is a massive transfer of wealth from the upper, middle and lower economic classes to an unelected elite of financiers and technologists orchestrated by the ever serving political class. Yanis Varoufakis brilliantly shows how we are entering a new age that he calls “Technofeudalism.”
Although overall it is a clear exposition of how a new super-rich class has been created, supported by technological feuds—the Googles and Amazons of the world—at the expense of an ever-expanding poor citizenry due to massive virtual money printing of fiat currency by central banks, Varoufakis—presumptuous as it may be for me to say—misses the most important point.
It is not just that the system is rigged from the start, but that the building blocks of the system are inherently flawed and designed for this to happen; i.e., a fiat currency based on usury. You can try to build an apparently more beautiful and fair construction, but it will face the same structural problems if you use the same building blocks: a constant flow of wealth from the masses to an elite. Regardless of what you call that elite.
Back to the riots. From the end of the 15th century to the end of the 17th century, England underwent a process called the Enclosures. To put it simply, vast extensions of common land, that is, lands that were of free use for pasture and cultivation for the “commons” that, is for the common people, were fenced and privatised for the benefit of a landlord. Essentially this took away the ways and livelihoods of thousands of otherwise freemen in England.
This privatisation of land created a salaried class dependent on a wage and led to the accumulation of capital in the hands of fewer people. It was a major transfer of wealth from the commons to the elites. Together with the legalisation of usurious banking practices this process was instrumental in bringing forth the Industrial Revolution and ushered the age of Capitalism.
But this did not happen without resistance. Throughout the entire country people organised and rebelled against this institutionalised theft. At one point, in 1549, under Robert Kett, they numbered 16,000, defeated a government army, and took Norwich, the second-largest city in England at that time. The main points of their petition were simple, and they did not seek to change the overall system, in fact, they were quite diplomatic about it: to limit the power of the gentry, to restrain rapid economic change, to prevent the overuse of communal resources.
I think that, if those rioting now were capable of clearly articulating their frustration and discontent, their petition would be quite similar to that. Unfortunately, they are not. Partly because during the Enclosure it was quite clear and upfront who they had to oppose. The fences preventing them from using the land were physical and those putting them up, too. Today, those perpetrating the theft are hidden by the illusory magic of banking, technology, and finance. Partly, as well, because the abuse of alcohol and other substances to escape the reality of their miserly lives has coarsened their intellect.
The theft that they and all of us have suffered is more heinous, because although it happens in front of our noses, it is legitimised by the system. During and after the end of the social experiment that was the pandemic the quantities of fiat money virtually printed by central banks to cover the government and commercial banks deficits skyrocketed.
The central banks of the world, such as the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, and the Bank of Japan, injected trillions of dollars into the economy. For example, the Federal Reserve alone expanded its balance sheet by around $3.5 trillion from March 2020 to the end of 2021, bringing its total assets to nearly $9 trillion. The European Central Bank also added trillions of euros to its balance sheet during this period
From $3.5 trillion to $9 trillion. That is almost tripling the amount of fiat money available… to the banks and the super rich while dividing by three -and much much more through fractional reserve banking- the value of what normal people owned.
Yanis Varoufakis argues that this inflated asset prices, deepened economic inequality, and significantly increased public debt, leading to unsustainable financial burdens. He also asserts that this influx of money fueled inflation and primarily benefited financial markets and tech giants rather than the broader economy, further entrenching the power of these elites and creating a new one that he calls Cloud capitalists.
The conclusion of the Greek thinker and economist is that capitalism is giving birth to a new era that he calls Technofeudalism: where technological companies have established digital feuds that we are all serfs of.
Although this is not wrong, I believe this is just partially true. What is clear is that there is a major transfer of wealth happening from the masses to the banking elites through the trickery of fiat currency and fractional reserve banking. These banking elites, after exhausting the resources of a limited earth, have found a new domain to exploit, the digital one. One that is as endless as the imagination goes, but equally unreal. And with it, a new class of “lords of the digital” has emerged that is overthrowing the previous “lords of capital”.
Europe does not play a part in this new game. There is no Meta or Google or Wechat that are European. Neither Apple, Huawei or Tesla. What remains in Europe are the lords of the old capital, the Volskwagens and the BP’s, now becoming subservient to the new cloud capitalist. That means that the flow of wealth that came into Europe -including Great Britain- through banking and the financing of the great corporations and that allowed to maintain a “service economy” -an impossibility when there’s no money to pay for services- is collapsing.
Everyone knows that the social services in England, once famed for their universality and efficiency, are collapsing. Ask anyone about the NHS. With the collapse of the social services and that outward flow of wealth, killing hundreds of thousands of jobs -something that the development of Artificial Intelligence only exacerbates- what was before a middle class in England is now a poor class. What before was poor, is now almost in misery. This is not an exaggeration.
Millions of Britons -of all classes and races- are being converted into impoverished masses with a very dim outlook of the future. The frustration from not knowing what is happening to them, seeing their ways of life—however unhealthy—disappear, and having no one to blame is breeding immense resentment.
This is a powder keg waiting for a spark. When that spark came, as tragically happened with the killing of three innocent girls by a clearly mentally ill person, it exploded. And it exploded with all the filth that sensationalist and opportunist media and demagogues have been fuelling for years.
Yes, these far-right rioters are clearly racist and Islamophobic, but as clearly demonstrated by hundreds—if not thousands—of English men and women entering Islam every year, these behaviours are not necessarily part and parcel of English people.
Rather, it is the frustration and resentment over their disappearing ways of life, caused by the major flow of wealth out of their country, that is impoverishing them. Their racism and Islamophobic behaviours—however heinous—stem from a misattribution of its causes and their inability to identify the right culprits.
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