We warned you. We -- socialists, Marxists, anarchists, leftists of all stripes, warned that neoliberalism was not a sustainable ideology across the globe. Liberalism allowed Guatemala to elect Jimmy Morales, a buffoonish bigot; Brazil has been seized by far-right forces led by corrupt officials; Marine Le Pen is gaining ground in France’s nationalist politics, and now England’s Trump-esque Boris Johnson stands at the foreground of a populist, white nationalist vote for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union even as Labour MP Jo Cox was murdered by an openly avowed neo-Nazi. With the success of England and Wales dominating the #Leave vote 51.9 percent to #Remain’s 48.1 percent, Johnson looks forward to upcoming elections to head the newly sovereign United Kingdom as its Prime Minister, now that David Cameron has officially resigned. Echoing the specter of Lenin, many now ask, “What Is to Be Done?” in the wake of a truly monumental decision.

For American liberals and leftists, #Brexit represents the success of the politics of fear and heightening of anti-immigrant sentiments. However, lest we be mistaken, this victory is not because our British comrades across the pond were lax and allowed literal Nazis to trample on them -- the split between #Leave and #Remain is, like many things, one that cuts across age and class lines. No, what should be highlighted is the ideology behind the policies of the UK that allowed white anxiety and reactionary politics to surface in the first place -- neoliberals in the Labour Party for one (who are as of this moment attempting to blame their leader Jeremy Corbyn for failing to mobilize #Remain voters in order to oust him from democratically elected power). Neoliberalism has long dominated the capitalist West for the past 30 years, ever since Thatcher and Reagan popularized deregulating the private sector and allowing businesses to obtain labor overseas without any notable tax increases. But with tax cuts comes a loss of public revenue, which is made up for by slashing services, the fiscal policy known as austerity. We saw this occur in Greece where money printing halted and the working class took the brunt of the blow, as well as young people’s unemployment skyrocketing. Our own President Obama engaged in this with bailing out Wall Street in 2008 and continues to enact neoliberal trade with the new Trans-Pacific Partnership. And for a time, this paradigm of handing control of society over to Big Business and transnational corporations has continued with little consequence for the elite, right and left-wing.

#Brexit is illustrating, to both the politically educated moderates and the radical left, that the old saying “It’s the economy, stupid,” can’t be ignored. Neoliberals around the world have abandoned poor whites and uplifted a few hyper-visible people of color (engaging in tokenism) in order to preserve a system of power that rewards the private sector at the expense of the taxpayer. #Leave has taken advantage of this situation with racist, bigoted, white supremacist campaigning in order to line its own pockets (ironically enough, this decision is financially disastrous) and no longer having to answer to the regulations of the European Union. No leftist was happy about this decision -- Corbyn, who was notoriously lukewarm on voting #Remain, having criticized the neoliberal aspects of the EU, but like many of us, saw a #Leave victory as something based in hatred and bile, not principles. As Trump’s aggressive, hyper-masculine, toxic rhetoric shows, white supremacists and nativists are crawling out of the woodwork to pounce on what they see as their opportunity to seize a perception of legitimacy through electoral politics. After all, liberals cite “voter turnout” as an excuse for their failures, yet the #Brexit referendum was over 70 percent. What now?

Trump, Le Pen, Johnson, and all their global counterparts have an advantage constantly overlooked by the smug mainstream liberal elite -- incoherent as it may be, their campaigns claim to stand FOR something, rather than merely in opposition to a thing. Granted, these fascists and far-right wingers are positing authoritarian White dominant visions of society a la V for Vendetta, but to the uneducated, desperate, elderly racist voter, this vision remains clear in absence of any clear alternative. An impotent Left suffering sabotage at all sides in addition to neoliberals salivating to punish anyone who fails to kowtow to their corporate hegemony has led to petty revolt from the worst kind of human instincts. Imperfect as radical leftists have been in the past century, we can point to a continually developing dialectic and many differing programs offered by queer theorists, theorists of color, and have worked always with the international in mind.

Still with me? I understand this news is troubling to many, particularly my immigrant comrades and people of color (especially black folx who are on the front lines of oppression as always), but we cannot retreat into a defeatist mindset. #Brexit is not the end. It is a beginning. And it has revealed the enemy.

The strategy remains: Agitate. Educate. Motivate. Organize. Militantly, if need be.

Americans should offer their hearts and resources out to immigrants, for we have always said we are exceptional. We are not. I believe if we chose to, we could be. The coming months will decide whether we continue to embolden fascists by allowing neoliberals to dictate our conversations and our policy actions at all levels of society. Karl Kautsky, a man intimately familiar with being betrayed by liberals to fascists in the Weimar Republic, put it best when he said:

“We must either move forward into socialism or fall back into barbarism.”