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The U.S Capitol riots at the start of the year following a rally held by former President Trump discredited a common assessment that economic “anxiety” was the reason for his election. However, Dr. Grant Saff, professor and chair of the global studies and geography department at Hofstra University, believes stress brought on by globalization was the justification used for the events of the last four years, which peaked at the Capitol. Like the deep-rooted racial intolerance that exploded at this historic act of rebellion, years of perceived disrespect, anger over a “rigged” system and insecurity was what lit the match. To understand the economic and political reasons for the event, Saff began by first explaining what globalization is and how our society has been affected. 

“It’s a process of change at multiple scales,” Saff said. “But it’s a process that we normally see as a global process of economic, political and cultural change.” He explained that globalization was enabled by policies and propelled by technology. “But I think it’s really important when we think about globalization to understand the geographic concept of scale,” Saff continued. “And that’s the idea that globalization doesn’t just happen globally, but locally. What happens in one place affects another place, and it affects people differently depending on where you are and who you are.” 

In this multilateral process, there have been winners and losers. The world is no longer composed of rich countries and poor countries, but rich and poor people, and a majority are at the mercy of a system that was created for reasons no longer relevant. 

Globalization, though observable, is a theory-based study; therefore, defining when it began is relative. According to Saff, globalization is the period referred to as “hyper globalization,” which he explained as the time period between the end of the 1960s or early 1970s. This period allowed for “the rise of finance capital” and “the opening up of the global system.” After the second World War, in efforts to stop the spread of communism, the United States allowed unilateral trading with susceptible nations. Having avoided the infrastructural damage of World War II, they considered themselves an untouchable economic power that could withstand the competition. However, who got hurt in this process and who has continued to benefit is what has maintained the outrage of middle-class Americans. As income inequality grew in the United States between classes, the “elites” became the enemy, and the former factory and mill workers of middle America elected Trump as their champion. While emphasizing the diversity and contradictory nature of people’s political ideologies, Saff explained that many feel that “there’s one set of rules for insiders and another set of outsiders, and we can’t break in, and Trump is our voice.”

Mr. Trump’s supporters, the “real” Americans in their eyes, are gradually being left behind in a system that keeps corporate America, Wall Street and Hollywood rich, while the work they’ve relied on for generations moves overseas, gets outsourced or gets replaced by machines. Saff feels that not everyone who was at the Capitol riots was economically strained, but they still fall victim to the sense of insecurity common in this globalized world.

“If we look at racial polarization, these things have been there for a long time. I’m not quite sure we can attribute globalization to [its] increase, but I think [what] globalization has done is to create a great sense of insecurity.” Saff, while reiterating that some acts of hatred cannot and should not be explained, believes taking time to understand this side effect is important. 

“Globalization has [allowed] the winners – and the winners are the people in finance, mostly the people in IT, the people in the entertainment industry – those types of professions have done much, much better relative to the people at the lower levels of the service industry, much better than the people who used to be manufacturing. And what we’ve seen with that is a concentration of power in where those types of firms are located.” 

Often society gets caught up in the idea of blue and red states, but Saff explained geography and its relation to globalization is important. The big cities, often located in blue states, are where the businesses thriving because of globalization are located. However, he reiterated the local nature of globalization, because people are also left behind even within these big cities, one of the many complexities of globalization theory.

“For every person making a billion dollars in corporate finance, there are lots of low wage workers delivering their food and cleaning the offices,” Saff said. 

Along with economics, culture is fundamental when understanding globalization, and according to Saff, economics and ideology are undoubtedly linked. “The neo-liberal market based ideology was behind the enabling of the type of globalization that we’ve had and that ideology, which is also about free markets and dismantling the welfare state, has been fundamentally, I think, detrimental to the incomes of many, many people in the United States,” Saff said.

Globalization has also enabled time and cost space compression, which means the time and cost of travel has shrunk. Along with increasing rates of migration and immigration, technology and the media have been influenced by this phenomenon, Saff explained, highlighting how interconnected the world has become. 

“So, when you look at the left behind or the ‘deplorables,’ there’s a genuine sense that they believe their cultural values are lost or under constant threat, and you can argue that that’s fine. [But] then social media feeds that and it becomes an echo chamber and it’s really problematic,” Saff said. 

“And that echo chamber is also in the media and even in academia with a great sense of conformity. Students often expect professors to teach in a particular way and get offended if they don’t want to. So, people have also become so comfortable in their own bubbles … [that they] actually are getting offended when they’re not being reinforced or validated,” he continued. 

The intolerance exhibited by many at the Capitol riots cannot be reduced to a side effect of globalization. However, Saff explains that as our world continues to intertwine, there needs to be a culture of tolerance for disagreement. So much of what people have been fighting for in recent years is the same: peace, justice, equity. However, the conflicting sides prove people define these things differently. 

According to the “elephant” graph by Branco Milanovic that describes global income growth, between 1988 and 2008 the absolute poverty rate has gone from 19% to less than 9%, and this is because of globalization. The wealth being concentrated in a minority population at the expense of the middle class is also caused by globalization. There was a time when unemployed Americans, though still poor, could seek help from the government. However, today, an American citizen can be working and still be poor. The events at the Capitol, along with hate, were created because there is a population of people who genuinely perceive themselves to be victims. In this complex and perspective driven debate, Saff suggests searching for an explanation for the needs, beliefs and actions of others, even when there cannot be an excuse. 

“We can condemn, and we can sympathize, and we can do both at the same time,” Saff said. “And I think we should condemn racism and xenophobia, but that doesn’t absolve us from trying to understand it. Understanding is not the same as forgiving or accepting or saying it’s good. But if we don’t make some attempt to understand, then there’s no moving forward.”