The much-too-rich and the much-too-poor

"The alliance between capital and mob is to be found at the genesis of every consistently imperialist policy. In some countries, particularly in Great Britain, this new alliance between the much-too-rich and the much-too-poor was and remained confined to overseas possessions. The so-called hypocrisy of British policies was the result of the good sense of English statesmen who drew a sharp line between colonial methods and normal domestic policies, thereby avoiding with considerable success the feared boomerang effect of imperialism upon the homeland. In other countries, particularly in Germany and Austria, the alliance took the effect at home in the form of pan-movements, and to a lesser extent in France, in a so-called colonial policy. The aim of these 'movements' was, so to speak, to imperialize the whole nation (and not only the 'superfluous part of it), to combine domestic and foreign policy in such a way as to organize the nation for the looting of foreign territories and the permanent degradation of alien peoples." (The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt, 1994; page 155).