Nationalism in the 21st Century: A Brief Look
When looking back on the 20th century, it’s difficult to overlook the impact of nationalism. A root cause for both world wars and, arguably, the cold war, Nationalism may have been the most important political ideology in a century characterized by numerous global conflicts between nations of differing political systems. Yet by the 1990s, many thought that nationalism was done for. David Held believed that the “sovereign nation-state would, in due course, wither away.” With the end of the cold war and the increase in globalization, many believed that the 21stcentury would herald an era defined not by an international system of competing nation-states, but of a global community, where people saw themselves not as members of a nation, but as citizens of the world.
The consensus thinking was that in a world more interconnected than it had ever been, the necessary feelings for nationalism would be unable to germinate. Yet, seemingly inexplicably, the opposite became true. Despite unprecedented levels of global interconnection, the 2010s have born with them the rise of new nationalist movements throughout western Democracies, such as the AFD, Donald Trump, Jair Bolsanaro, and numerous others across Europe. What none had been able to predict was that increased movement of people, capital, and jobs brought on by liberal foreign and economic policies would rapidly change the world, sowing the seeds for feelings of remorse and betrayal amongst those who no longer understood the world in which they lived. These feelings precipitated the rise of nationalist movements in the form of right-wing populism.
Cas Mudde and Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser define populism “as a thin centered ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic camps, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite,’ and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people.” In other words, populism isn’t truly an ideology, but rather can best be defined as a rhetorical style that pits the people against the elite. Nationalism, on the other hand, is an ideology that centers around the promotion of the interests of a nation, or group of people who share some common descent or culture. Brubaker writes on the traditional understanding of the two that, “although both populism and nationalism invoke ‘the people’, they do so on this view in radically differing ways: populism invokes the ‘people as underdog’ on an up–down axis, nationalism the ‘people as nation’ on an in–out axis.” However, as he points out, this distinction has largely disappeared in the 21stcentury, as nationalist parties seem to make use of both rhetorical axes.
Nationalism, as it appears in the 21st century, seems to invoke both of these axes. In a recent interview, Emmanuel Dupuy, president of L’Institut Prospective et Sécurité de L’Europe, spoke about the rise of the right in France. Per Dupuy, the French National Rally, considered to be France’s right wing and nationalist party, utilizes traditional populist rhetorical devices, portraying the common French people as having been betrayed by a government more committed to globalist ideals than to the people (a classic people vs. the elite argument). He noted that the party relies also on fear of external threats, portraying increasing immigration, especially from Muslim communities into France, as not just a threat to French security, but also to the French identity.
Arlie Hochschild wrote about this phenomenon in the American case in her book, Strangers in Their Own Land. Hochschild believed that by ignoring the normal political and moral aspects to an analysis of the American right, and instead seeking a better understanding of how they perceive their lives, she could produce a more complete analysis of the new shift in American politics. Through a series of interviews with voters across the American South, she came to understand that globalization, and more specifically liberal policies, had not only produced rapid changed in the world economy, but also drastic changes in the social orders of those countries affected. The disappearance of industry thanks to automation and outsourcing, combined with the larger shift to a service economy in the US, had produced, what could be considered, a whole new country, leaving many to feel confused and left behind. As she wrote, the increase in immigration, especially from Mexico, produced challenges to the American identity via the ‘American Dream,’ and also paved the way for this horizontal rhetoric, painting immigration as an external threat to America, alongside the vertical betrayal of American people by a liberal state run out of control.
As a whole, it seems as though the 21st century has, ironically, come to be defined by the ever present nature of nationalism. However, 21stcentury nationalism looks and sounds a little bit different than it did in previous times, given the nature of nation states in the modern world, it’s less focused on sovereignty and war and instead far more on the protection of national identity and the betrayal of people.
[This article is adapted from a paper written over the course of the author’s bachelor studies. For the full paper, please send a message.]
