"There are many differences between the places I’ve mentioned, but for now I’d like to focus on one thing that unites them: that the countries which keep producing these shocks are every bit as racist, xenophobic and discriminatory as their voting habits suggest. This is not some new virus; it’s a susceptibility to a chronic illness that has crippled us for years. Ethnic and racial plurality and migration as a lived experience are older than any nation state, but equality is a relatively new idea, and some don’t like it. People forget how recently African Americans couldn’t vote, and that Winston Churchill told his cabinet “Keep England White” was a good campaign slogan.
These electoral victories are, largely but not exclusively, the products of those age-old prejudices: not because everyone who voted for them was racist, but because all the racists who did go to the polls voted for them. The intensity of that racism is now growing, as the victors use their podiums and despatch boxes to amplify their bigotry, giving confidence and licence for people to spread their poison. Take Britain. In January 2016, 64% of people from an ethnic minority said they had been targeted by a stranger. That’s before Brexit, and already terrible. That proportion rose to 76% this year. Things were bad. They are getting worse."