Much has already been written about why 60,350,241 Americans voted for a demagogic, orange-faced billionaire as their next president. Donald Trump brazenly dismantled the conventional decorum and filters attached to the American presidential races and unabashedly echoed the awkward anxieties and annoyances of large segments of white Americans. These were largely ignored in the mainstream because they smacked of political incorrectness and were contrary to a widespread arrangement between two poles of thought.

Ideas such as globalisation and multiculturalism which mushroomed from the 1990s onward were the result of an economic, social and political arrangement between post-Cold-War liberalism and ‘neo-conservatism’. This arrangement saw the strengthening of various liberal ideas such as democracy, racial and religious coexistence, pluralism and gender equality. But, at the same time, due to the arrangement, these ran together with widespread economic liberalisation and the growing incidents of developed countries intervening militarily in countries they believed were threatening their political and economic interests.

The consequence of this arrangement was a rather surreal world in which European countries and the US embraced multiculturalism, encouraged religious and racial pluralism within but followed an aggressive foreign policy abroad backed by military might and economic influence.

The arrangement triggered a gradual erosion of the economics of the old welfare state, the emergence of more assertive forms of capitalism, and the bourgeoning cultural exhibitionism of migrant populations in Europe and the US. This resulted in shaping of somewhat surreal societies where conventional and some rather radical forms of liberalism emerged alongside cut-throat forms of free market enterprise, the rollback of the ‘caring state’, self-imposed ghettoisation of various immigrant groups and rising resentment among local white populations. This resentment was especially strong among those segments that failed to get good education and jobs, and who blamed multiculturism for their misfortunes.

As the white majority abandons its principles, there is a golden opportunity for Pakistan

The cleavages triggered by this surreal arrangement were eventually exploited by extremist groups that till the 1980s had lingered on the fringes. For example, militant and intransigent Muslim outfits swore a violent end to the neoconservative military doctrine of intervention. They promised a pristine albeit action-packed theological utopia to attract Muslim as well as non-Muslim ‘millennials’ who were supposedly alienated by the mainstream rise of radical liberalism, as well as by the proliferation of more assertive forms of capitalism and the consequent withering away of the welfare state.

On the other hand, far-right groups in Europe and the US saw the divisions as being the result of multiculturalism which they thought was marginalising the original white inhabitants of Europe from the economic, cultural and political spheres of ‘their land’. They were perturbed by the rise of radical liberalism and the growing influence of Islam in their countries. The surreal began to be opposed by the paradoxical.

Large mainstream political parties in Europe and the US have been the main custodians of the arrangement struck between post-Cold War liberalism and neo-conservatism. They believe that the arrangement was positively pragmatic in nature and is entirely compatible with an increasingly globalised economy and a world operating through democratic interactions, a pluralistic impulse and more robust forms of free market enterprise and trade. The same arrangement suggested that it is to be sustained through the international proliferation of democracy and (if necessary) through armed interventions.

But, alas, even though such a scenario once seemed impossible, some of these same fringe groups have rather dramatically come to the fore.

The consequence of this arrangement was a rather surreal world in which European countries and the US embraced multiculturalism, encouraged religious and racial pluralism within but followed an aggressive foreign policy abroad backed by military might and economic influence.

Many of them, ironically, are coming in through one of liberalism’s grandest ideas, democracy. Far-right parties in Europe who mix ultra-nationalist ideas with some rather xenophobic and even neo-fascist tendencies have seen a histrionic increase in their tally of votes. And America’s Republican Party pulled out a wild card who even betrayed the party’s own sedate conservative traditions. He did this through a reactive populism not witnessed in the US since the tumultuous years of the great economic collapse of the 1930s. Yet, at the time, Americans had opted to elect a left-leaning liberal (F.D. Roosevelt) who successfully relegated the emergent populist groups back to the fringes. This time, however, a majority of Americans put the standard bearer of a once-supposed fringe in the White House.

Does this mean that all of the 60,350,241 Americans who voted for Trump are enraged xenophobes? No. Theirs was a reactive vote born from a feeling of resentment of not being able to find a place in a world shaped by the aforementioned arrangement. They were scared of being overwhelmed by forces which they could not comprehend or changes they failed to adapt to. Some even refused to, just like those immigrants in the US (and elsewhere in the developed world) who ghettoised themselves after refusing to adhere to the assimilation aspects of multiculturalism. So, in a way, Trump’s main constituency became the mentally-ghettoised white Americans.

Will America suddenly turn fascistic? Let’s look at it this way. Our experience as Pakistanis tells us that though all kinds of bigotries are present in a society, it only truly becomes bigoted as a whole when racial, gender-related or religious prejudices begin to inform state and government policies. This emboldens society’s darker sides which are otherwise kept in check by policies which oppose bigoted, racist or extremist impulses. But when these impulses become gateways to power for politicians or dictators, these not only get legitimised, their exhibition becomes a social and even an economic and existentialist necessity for a society. This was witnessed in Germany after the Nazis came to power.

Pakistan has experienced this, just as India is experiencing it now. But history teaches us that allowing demagogues to use prejudice as a weapon to run the affairs of state and society always ends in a terrible, tragic disaster.

Nevertheless, whereas the US and Europe of the immediate future may be following the irrational and fervent impulse to defy and even reject history that is now offering countries such as Pakistan the chance to actually become custodians of the arrangement which America has had a falling-out with.

Pakistan has gone through all the vicious political and social convulsions which the US and India are now headed towards. Today, Pakistan is slowly but gradually trying to exorcise the demons which its state, governments and people kept fattening through irrational whims and ideological convolutions. The urge to exorcise these demons and the country’s new-found passion to team up with China to become an Asian economic hub provides Pakistan the chance to become at least one of the many developing countries which is now in a good position to fill the spaces left behind by the gradual departure (from the arrangement) of the US and possibly also of some European countries.

The arrangement remains on the right side of history. Countries such as Pakistan should rush towards that side, just as the West’s last white majority lurches towards history’s wrong side like a sulking mob seething with resentment and maybe even self-pity.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, November 20th, 2016