{"id":42867,"date":"2018-10-22T10:33:42","date_gmt":"2018-10-21T23:33:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=42867"},"modified":"2018-10-22T10:33:42","modified_gmt":"2018-10-21T23:33:42","slug":"the-disruptive-power-of-ethnic-nationalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/the-disruptive-power-of-ethnic-nationalism\/","title":{"rendered":"The disruptive power of ethnic nationalism"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

In July, Israel passed a controversial new \u2018nation-state law<\/a>\u2019 that asserted that \u2018the right [to exercise] national self-determination\u2019 is \u2018unique to the Jewish people\u2019 and established Hebrew as Israel\u2019s official language, downgrading Arabic to a \u2018special status\u2019. But the drive to impose a homogeneous identity on a diverse society is hardly unique to Israel. On the contrary, it can be seen across the Western world\u2014and it does not bode well for peace.<\/p>\n

In the last few decades of rapid globalisation, nationalism never really left, but it did take a back seat to hopes of greater economic prosperity. Yet the recent backlash against globalisation\u2014triggered not only by economic insecurity and inequality, but also by fears of social and demographic change\u2014has brought a resurgence of old-fashioned ethnic nationalism.<\/p>\n

This trend is reflected in and reinforced by what some experts call<\/a> a \u2018memory boom\u2019 or \u2018commemorative fever\u2019: the proliferation<\/a> of museums, memorials, heritage sites and other features of public space emphasising links with local identities and history. Rather than celebrating diversity, people are increasingly eager to embrace a particular and exclusive identity.<\/p>\n

In the United States, white people increasingly view the prospect that they will become a minority\u2014a milestone expected<\/a> to be reached in 2045\u2014as an existential threat and often act as if they are a disadvantaged group. US President Donald Trump capitalised on such feelings to win support and his Republican Party is now relying on overzealous purges of \u2018inactive\u2019 voters, stringent voter ID laws and closures of polling places to make it more difficult for minorities to vote.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, support for the European Union\u2019s enlightened values has eroded. Now, somewhat ironically, a grand alliance of right-wing nationalist parties has been established to improve their chances in the May 2019 European Parliament elections.<\/p>\n

Such forces rail against \u2018identity politics\u2019 (while speaking to predominantly white crowds who insist that they are their nation\u2019s true representatives). This rhetoric has gained sympathy from some intellectuals on both the left and the right. Multiculturalism and international cooperation, authors such as Mark Lilla<\/a> and Francis Fukuyama<\/a> argue, turned out<\/a> to be a fantasy of the liberal elites.<\/p>\n

Similarly, the British philosopher John Gray, who has long decried \u2018hyper-liberalism,\u2019 has attempted to turn the Brexit vote\u2014a clear outburst of nativism and xenophobia\u2014on its head. According to Gray, by pushing for a \u2018transnational government\u2019 that most Europeans did not want, the EU was responsible for the rise of the worst kinds of nationalism. Resisting Brexit, he insists<\/a>, would restore a \u2018dark European past\u2019.<\/p>\n

Former British prime minister Tony Blair\u2019s anti-terror laws, enacted after the 2005 al-Qaeda-inspired suicide bombings in London, made him the first Western leader to repudiate so-called hyper-liberalism. Today, such repudiation can be seen across the Western world, from Trump\u2019s administration and the \u2018illiberalism\u2019 of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n and de facto Polish leader Jaros\u0142aw Kaczy\u0144ski to Italy\u2019s populist coalition government.<\/p>\n

Ethnic nationalism like that enshrined by Israel\u2019s nation-state law has long been a staple of politics in Central and Eastern Europe. Blood and religion, not citizenship, was what defined the nation during periods of subjugation. After the devastation of World War II, many of the region\u2019s nations recovered sovereignty through large-scale ethnic cleansing.<\/p>\n

Post-war European integration failed to resuscitate Central and Eastern Europe\u2019s fin de si\u00e8cle<\/em> multi-ethnic dream. Instead, the ghosts of xenophobia and ultra-nationalism have been revived, exemplified in Germany by surging support for the far-right Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland, which rejects post-war Germany\u2019s expiations.<\/p>\n

German Chancellor Angela Merkel\u2019s enlightened refugee policies might thus turn out to be the last manifestation of Germany\u2019s politics of guilt. Similarly, in Austria\u2014which, to be sure, never admitted guilt in the first place\u2014Chancellor Sebastian Kurz\u2019s far-right, anti-immigration coalition is poised to end the EU\u2019s politics of \u2018identity annihilation\u2019.<\/p>\n

Western Europe was supposed to be free of ethnic nationalism. Modern nation-states were shaped along civic, not ethnic, lines and the nation was defined as a community of citizens. Race, colour and gender were never supposed to be obstacles to full and equal civic participation.<\/p>\n

Moreover, Western Europe is largely secular, whereas much of Central and Eastern Europe (not to mention the US) is more likely to link its identity to a religion-based moral order. Given these factors, in Western Europe, the rise of radical ethnic nationalism as a response to fears of terrorism and mass migration represents a more fundamentally transformative crisis.<\/p>\n

This is all the more true of Northern Europe\u2019s traditionally moral superpowers. The rise of the far-right Danish People\u2019s Party and Sweden Democrats, with their roots in Swedish fascism and their nostalgia for the mythic white Sweden of the 1950s, amounts to a devastating blow to the most perfect model of social democracy that Europe has ever produced. The social-welfare state, the nationalists claim, cannot substitute for ethnic identity.<\/p>\n

A recent study<\/a> published in the journal Democratization<\/em> shows that the overall level of liberal democracy worldwide now matches that recorded shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. There has been a \u2018democratic recession\u2019, as Fukuyama calls it, but it is concentrated in the more democratic regions of the world: Western Europe and North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Eastern Europe.<\/p>\n

Given these regions\u2019 importance to upholding the liberal world order, the rise of (white) ethnic nationalism has potentially serious consequences. Unless these countries devise a new way to balance liberal democratic values and people\u2019s craving for a sense of belonging, they will end up paving a path to disaster.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In July, Israel passed a controversial new \u2018nation-state law\u2019 that asserted that \u2018the right [to exercise] national self-determination\u2019 is \u2018unique to the Jewish people\u2019 and established Hebrew as Israel\u2019s official language, downgrading Arabic to a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":484,"featured_media":42869,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[106,2015,2023,804],"class_list":["post-42867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-democracy","tag-domestic-politics","tag-ethnic-cleansing","tag-nationalism"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe disruptive power of ethnic nationalism | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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