Maybe I'm not reading your comment right, but do you agree with that point? It's a depressing view of humanity (not unlike Snyder in that regard), but you've said before that drawing parallels between Brexit and Trump is meaningless, which this article essentially does. PS: I read it because b_b recommended it, so don't forget to blame him too. ;)The article makes the point that a rise of ethnic violence is predicted, historically, by a minority ethnic group achieving higher status. In other words, the more blacks in college, the more blacks are gonna get shot by George Zimmerman.
My beef with Snyder is he basically outlines a scenario in which a newly-relevant people get stomped on by WWI and then the Soviet revolution will commit genocide against their neighbors if the authorities say "the Jews' farms are up for grabs to anyone willing to kill them for them" and then turns around and then argues, in no uncertain terms, that genocide can happen anywhere anytime under any circumstances. half the book is useful because it paints the Holocaust not as "and one day the Nazis built gas chambers" but as "If you give someone a powerful carrot and a powerful stick they will do powerfully awful things" but the other half is bullshit because it basically says "no carrot or stick necessary." This article changed my mind about the parallels between Brexit and Trump - partly. Most of the Brexit/Trump articles are some form of "because Brexit, Trump will win" instead of "the same forces that led to the Brexit are the ones that led to Trump." The former is simplistic the same way Snyder is - there's such a rush to shit all over American exceptionalism that cerebral authors fundamentally ignore history. The latter is a discussion I've read and entertained, but the above article is the most convincing argument I've yet read that it isn't about money, it's about racism.