The Great Betrayal: How the Myth of the 'White Working Class' Revolt Fuels the Far Right

Since the turn of the century, the political ground in the West has been shifting. But 2016 felt like a seismic event. With the Brexit vote in the UK and the election of Donald Trump in the US, what was once the fringe—reactionary, racist, and xenophobic discourse—crashed into the mainstream with devastating force.

In the ensuing chaos, journalists, pundits, and politicians scrambled for an explanation. A simple, powerful, and deeply misleading narrative quickly took hold: this was a revolt of the, "white working class". It was the forgotten man in the rust belt, the left-behind factory worker in the north of England, who, fuelled by economic anxiety and cultural resentment, had risen up to smash the system.

This explanation is comforting because it’s simple. It creates a clear villain and a clear victim. But it’s a dangerous fiction. Not only does this narrative rest on exaggeration and ideological assumption, but it actively serves the very far-right agendas it claims to explain. By racialising class and ignoring the complex reality of who voted for these movements, we are being sold a story that divides the very people who need to unite.

The Making of a Monolith: Racialising the Working Class

The first and most fundamental error is the construction of the, "white working class", as a single, homogenous political bloc. The working class has always been multi-racial, multi-ethnic, and diverse in its political views, according to demographic classifications. Yet, in the post-2016 analysis, this diversity was erased. The term, "working class", became a lazy shorthand for, "white, culturally conservative, and angry".

This populist racialisation does two insidious things:

1. It erases millions: It renders invisible the working-class people of darker skin tones who face the same, if not worse, economic precarity, yet overwhelmingly rejected the divisive discourse of these far-right movements. It also erases the millions of voters who didn’t vote at all.
2. It transforms class into a cultural identity: It shifts the conversation from economic exploitation to one of 'white cultural grievance'. The struggle is no longer about wages, job security, and public services; it's about protecting a perceived white, 'indigenous' identity from the threat of immigration and multiculturalism.

This isn't an analysis; it's an act of political construction. A complex economic group is flattened into a simple racial one, making them easier to blame and easier to manipulate.


A Reactionary Proxy for Revolution

The narrative of a working-class uprising is powerful because it taps into the genuine language of revolt. People are angry about decades of stagnant wages, de-industrialisation, and a political elite that seems indifferent to their suffering. But the far right has masterfully channelled this legitimate anger away from its true source and directed it towards a convenient scapegoat.

This is the creation of a reactionary proxy for revolution.

Instead of a genuine revolution aimed at challenging the economic structures that create inequality—targeting corporate power, demanding wealth redistribution, and strengthening worker solidarity—we are offered a counterfeit version. In this version, the enemy isn't any perceived elite class prone to manipulating speculators, but the immigrant family down the street. The solution isn't unionising your workplace, but building a wall.

This racial sentiment is deliberately constructed to provoke a backlash that doesn't threaten the status quo but reinforces it. It allows the architects of our unequal society to escape scrutiny, while the working class is encouraged to fight amongst itself over cultural scraps.


Was It Even a Working-Class Revolt?

The most glaring problem with this narrative is that it isn't even supported by the data. When we examine voting patterns from 2016, the claim that these were primarily working-class revolts falls apart.

In the US, while Trump was said to have done well with some segments of the percieved white working class, his victory also relied heavily on affluent, suburban, and traditionally Republican voters. Hillary Clinton actually won among voters earning below a specified income threshold.
In the UK, the Brexit vote was not exclusively a working-class phenomenon. It received significant support from wealthy, conservative voters in the south of England, and the working class itself was deeply divided on the issue.

The insistence on framing these events as working-class uprisings isn't based on facts. It’s an ideological choice made to reaffirm the campaigns themselves. It allows the far right to claim the mantle of, "the people's voice", and it allows centrists to blame a group they find culturally alien, absolving their own failed policies.


The Dangerous Consequences of a Flawed Narrative

This isn't just an academic debate. This myth has real-world consequences that reproduce and reaffirm pre-existing power and privilege:

• It Divides the Working Class: By framing politics as a battle between a, "white working class", and a, "diverse, metropolitan elite", it shatters the potential for class solidarity. It tells white workers their interests lie not with their fellow workers of different backgrounds, but with the billionaires who stoke their cultural fears.
• It Lets the Perceived Elite Off the Hook: If the problem is simply the incurable racism of the working poor, then we don't have to address the neo-liberal policies, corporate greed, and political failures that created the economic precarity in the first place. The blame is shifted downwards.
• It Legitimises the Far Right: When mainstream media constantly repeats the idea that the far right speaks for the 'real' working class, they are doing the far right's propaganda work for them. They legitimise their claim to be a populist movement, rather than an astroturfed project funded by wealthy interests.

To challenge the mainstreaming of racism, we must first challenge the stories we tell about it. We must reject the simplistic, racialised caricature of the working class and see it for what it is: a diverse group of people bound not by race, but by a shared economic reality. The real struggle is not one of identity, but one of class. And it is a struggle that can only be won together.