In England, in late 2020, the former “Brexit” party re-branded itself as “Reform UK.” Because of its history as a Brexit party, it already had support, and the new party has attracted formidable extra support since.
We know that they are “against immigration” and are angry about “the small boats” and putting asylum seekers into hotels. But are they united by policy or genuine political goals? What are Reform’s specific policy goals? (How many of its active supporters could list them?)
I doubt if this matters. The people who support “Reform” know one another when they meet. They know who their enemies are. (They could probably name them.) In other words, they are a tribe. A tribe of white working-class xenophobes, hostile to anything which they feel threatens their “real English” traditions, their “own country.” (“Reform” is making ground in Scotland and Wales, but not so far to the extent it has in England.)
Of course, no “influencer” is calling “Reform” supporters a ‘tribe’. And, even when identifying tribes as such helps make sense of events, there is equal reluctance, on the part of news channels and newspapers, to use the word “tribe”—or to refer to actual tribes. We hear or read about “the M23 rebels” in the Congo—not about the Tutsi (who actually make up the M23). In In all the reporting about Zimbabwe, we heard about Mugabe and other politicians, but almost never about the Shona and the Ndebele, let alone about the Zezuru, Karanga, Manyika, Korekore, and Ndau.
Sometimes these ethnic groups are called “clans”, as though that would make them more respectable. The truth is that the history of Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and South-East Asia since (say) 1960, makes no sense unless ethnicity is taken into account. In Eastern Europe there has been murderous “ethnic cleansing”—and ethnic political programmes are now making substantial headway in just about every country in the EU. In Africa, there has been a continuous history of tribal wars. To early Israelis there were no “Palestinians”—only “Arabs.” In Sri Lanka, the Sinhalese (mostly Buddhists) slaughtered the Tamils, who had been favoured by the British. The pacifist ideals of Buddhism made no headway against the power of ethnic affiliation.
Any more than they do in Myanmar right now.
If this analysis is correct, then why, in framing political policies (anywhere on the planet) are we still putting so much emphasis on economic solutions? Shouldn’t we take more account of tribes (in the broadest sense) and what makes them cohere?