Neo-nationalism, Identitarians and the Alt-Right

[pbrower2a]

(10-09-2018, 04:31 AM)Teejay Wrote: Neo-nationalism is a political ideology which has spread across the world in this Fourth Turning. I am quoting a Wikipedia article on Neo-nationalism. This ideology started in Putin's Russia and China and has spread in the last decade to about everywhere in the world essentially. It is a lot like Fascism in the 1930's expect usually considerably milder, in formerly Liberal Democratic countries there has been a slide back to authoritarianism. I am not sure if they will be like the Nazis of the Last Fourth Turning, it could be given early last decade I thought the Fourth Turning would centering on how to civilize globalization and the need for more globalization to deal with the challenge of man-made climate change.
 

Quote:Neo-nationalism or new nationalism is a type of nationalism that rose in the mid-2010s in Europe and North America and to some degree in other regions. It is associated with several positions, such as right-wing populism, anti-globalization, nativism,  protectionism, opposition to immigration, opposition to Islam and Muslims and Euroscepticism where applicable. According to one scholar, "nationalist resistance to global liberalism turned out to be the most influential force in Western politics" in 2016.Particularly notable expressions of new nationalism include the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum and the election of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States.

 

Quote:Writing for Politico, Michael Hirsh described new nationalism as "a bitter populist rejection of the status quo that global elites have imposed on the international system since the Cold War ended, and which lower-income voters have decided—understandably—is unfair." Michael Brendan Dougherty wrote in The Week that new nationalism is a "broad nativist revolt" against post-Cold War politics long "characterized by an orthodoxy of free trade, nurturing the service economy, neoliberal trading arrangements, and liberalized immigration policies."
 
The Economist wrote in November 2016 that "new nationalists are riding high on promises to close borders and restore societies to a past homogeneity." Clarence Page wrote in the Las Vegas Sun that "a new neo-tribal nationalism has boiled up in European politics and to a lesser degree in the United States since the global economic meltdown of 2008," and Ryan Cooper in The Week and researchers with the Centre for Economic Policy Research have linked 21st-century right-wing populism to the Great Recession. According to Harvard political theorist Yascha Mounk, "economic stagnation among lower- and middle-class whites [has been] a main driver for nationalism's rise around the globe." According to religion scholar Mark L. Movesian, new nationalism "sets the nation-state against supranational, liberal regimes like the EU or NAFTA, and local customs and traditions, including religious traditions, against alien, outside trends."
 
David Brog and Yoram Hazony wrote in National Review that some conservatives view the new nationalism associated with Brexit and Donald Trump as a betrayal of conservative ideology while they see it as a "return". According to conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg, the nationalism associated with Trump is "really little more than a brand name for generic white identity politics."
 
Writing for The Week, Damon Linker called the idea of neo-nationalism being racist "nonsense" and went on to say that "the tendency of progressives to describe it as nothing but 'racism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia'—is the desire to delegitimize any particularistic attachment or form of solidarity, be it national, linguistic, religious, territorial, or ethnic."
 
Regarding new nationalism, The Economist said that "Mr Trump needs to realise that his policies will unfold in the context of other countries’ jealous nationalism," and called nationalism itself a "slippery concept" that is "easy to manipulate". They also repeatedly contrasted ethnic nationalism and civic nationalism and implied new nationalism could become "angry" and difficult to control, citing Chinese nationalism as an example.

 
I don't believe this ideology is going to win out in the Fourth Turning. Because the second global financial crisis is coming, which is predicted globally to be as bad as the Great Depression was. An economic collapse in both China and Russia, which will result in political revolutions which will bring Liberal Democratic regimes into power. This global financial crisis will need a global approach to solve it and the Neo-Nationalists have only emerged, because the Left did not develop an ideology during the Global Financial Crisis that would have 'tamed globalization' so that it benefits the people rather than the big corporations. Also, there is the need for a global approach to the challenge of climate change which the Neo-Nationalists who are inclined towards being skeptical to man-made climate change are also at a strong disadvantage.

Some clarity is desirable here: the cynically-misidentified Liberal Democratic Party of Russia of Vladimir Zhirinovsky is neither liberal nor democratic.

People in distress, especially economic, want to hear comforting thoughts. That distant events done by people unlike oneself have broken the certainty that one once had allows one to seek comfort in the purported knowledge that others are at fault. The fault can range from the inevitable "getting old", something that went from tempting to horrible, as with "alcohol", to whole groups of people such as "capitalists" or whole ethnic groups. Certainty that many once expected was that one's grandchildren will look something like one, especially if one is white (with lots of recessive genes), or even that one's children will beget or bear children by someone of the other gender is gone.... just imagine what consequences that can have.

We are approaching the end of the industrial era in which people create prosperity by simply manufacturing stuff for the market. That giant industries once renowned for manufacturing have gone from being manufacturers to being importers simply hastens the
loss of work in manufacturing. Manufacturing has gone from making new stuff to excite us to simply replacement of things that go bad, wear out, or go obsolete. The stuff is becoming more durable; cars that used to be scrapped after eight years are now lasting nearly twenty, and a ten-year-old flat-screen TV is more reliable than the color TVs of the 1960s that needed frequent and expensive changes of the picture tube. Although capitalism could make a market out of the proletariat, the proletariat still has nothing to offer but its toil lest it no longer be a proletariat.

Quote:Since the neo-nationalists who reject globalism, just don't have any solutions to this challenge. Also, the internet will undermine any neo-nationalist authoritarian regimes that come to power. An old fourth turning forum user who I chatted to on Facebook said at China's Great Firewall can be circumvented quite easily. Not to mention the neo-nationalists are going to be blamed most likely for this economic collapse. A McCarthyite sort of purge against anybody who is remotely 'nationalist' might very well occur. There are signs of that beginning to occur with social media de-platforming of people seen as racist, sexist, homophobic and trans-phobic. Something Donald Trump has complained about, because a lot of die-hard supporters have been de-platformed.

It's hard to be a bigot without severe rudeness devoid of mitigation. The real cause of globalization is cheap (by old standards) transportation, whether of people or goods.  There is no "slow boat to China" anymore; there is instead a cheap flight (about $450) that takes less than fourteen hours either way between New York and Beijing for persons. The real revolution in globalization comes from containers that can be loaded in China, put on a truck for a seaport, put on a ship from China to either the American West Coast, Gulf Coast, or East Coast (the latter by way of the Panama Canal), and then shipped inland without having to be opened at any point in its long journey with the possibility of breakage or pilferage (for a long time, the latter was a huge cost of shipping to the enrichment of organized crime).

The biggest threat to totalitarian and authoritarian orders is that people start becoming learned enough that they get curious, and the methods of censorship that might keep ill-educated people from learning what the elites do not want them to know are not so effective with people with more formal education... even if such education is strictly technical. Technically-trained people might go this way: they hear a work like this:



 

and recognize that even if it is not from their time and place (J S Bach, the fugue in F from the Well-Tempered Clavier), it is still delightful -- and cause for more curiosity. It's hard to imagine any society except perhaps North Korea or the Infernal State that prohibits access to this music. So someone gets curious, and finds out a little about Bach... and gets curious about German culture, and eventually politics. Germany can be an attractive place for some things even if one has bitter memories of a very bad time in Germany (especially 1933-1945)... but Bach is not part of that bad memory.  The Israel Philharmonic plays much German and Austrian music.

Technically-trained people are especially prone to enjoy music of rich counterpoint and mathematical precision. Dullards might not get it.  Think carefully about the level of education commonplace in totalitarian societies: except in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, the level is bare literacy with a little competence in mathematics and some fervent teaching in hygiene and glorification of the leadership. Stalin, Mao, and Saddam Hussein all promoted that level of education: enough to be competent workers, but not enough for doing any independent thought. The leadership was to do the independent thought, and people were just competent enough to obey orders and heed safety warnings. Reading between the lines? Thence comes heresy and dissent! Nazi Germany and fascist Italy had to reduce the level of learning that it expected of people. The number of people attending college fell under Nazi rule.

Donald Trump may not quite be a totalitarian, but the people most vulnerable to his propaganda are white people of slight education who don't read between the lines. If he does not relate solely to stupid or barely-educated people, he does appeal to the intellectually-lazy who find satisfaction in simple expressions of what they want to believe.

The totalitarian state is good at making stuff characteristic of early-industrial societies without challenging itself with intellectual complexity. Once it tries to make stuff more complex it needs to rely upon educated scientists and engineers. Herein comes the problem: to support such people one needs more intellectual openness, and the contradiction between mindless conformity and
intellectual sophistication becomes increasingly severe. Nazi Germany did not exist long enough to make any attempt at resolution of that conflict except to kill off the Jews and to reduce the number of people attending college. The Soviet Union under Stalin could murder anyone, but the arms race and the struggle of Soviet intelligence against Western intelligence under later Soviet leadership required more intellectual activity just to prepare the defense industries and the intelligence system. The contradiction between obedience and intellect led to the rise of dissidence that weakened the credibility of the system.

By manufacturing sophisticated stuff for the rest of the world, by opening itself to foreign tourists, by doing much engineering, and by allowing people access to ancient texts, China exposes itself to currents that contradict an authoritarian regime. (North Korea is totalitarian; China is authoritarian). It sends people overseas to learn accounting, engineering, and law. Guess what ideas come back? The contradiction between a state that demands rigid obedience in politics and the ability to read between the lines should be evident.

The contradictions between Trump's promises of prosperity (he promised to "Make America Great Again", which I interpret as the intention of returning to the economic principles and cultural patterns of the Gilded Age while maintaining prosperity and modern technology) are already apparent. His government is about winning at all cost -- including creating extreme ill will upon opponents who still have the proclivity to 'read between the lines' (a hint: one possible interpretation of intelligence implies Latin inter (between) and legere (to read)) and will not divest themselves of that proclivity easily. Nobody can recover the institutions (or reduce existing institutions to what they were in that halcyon era of class privilege) without a destructive, right-wing revolution. The technologies that we have make such a return impossible. Ethnic realities, including the rise of non-WASP members of a much-larger middle class than existed even in the 1920s, will create huge obstacles to any return of WASP supremacy.

The people most vulnerable to Trump propaganda are the most gullible -- people who accept statements made with official posturing that those people want to believe. Think of people who accept the pseudo-history of David Barton, the hatred of homosexuality of the late Fred Phelps, denial of global warming, or young-earth creationism.

Quote:The way I see it that the alt-left will emerge that will support an ideology known at Alter-globalization. The British Labour Party under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, along with some 'far-left' parties in Europe are beginning to develop this 'alt-left' ideology. My prediction it will emerge somewhere in the Anglosphere hard to know at this stage.

 Australia and New Zealand (yay) could very be where such an ideology could get started. Both countries have very high percentages of their populations who were born overseas, and neo-nationalism's appeal is likely at its weakest anywhere in the world.  In Australia nearly 30% of the population were born overseas and half the population have at least one parent born overseas. In New Zealand the percentage of people born overseas is 20%.

The statistics of Trump approval and disapproval suggest that except for Cuban-Americans in Florida of white origin, many of whom dream of restoring the pre-Castro order in Cuba -- descendants of refugees from Cuba not from the first years of Cuba are less white and have less connection to the desire to restore the semi-aristocratic, kleptocratic order -- anyone identifiable as a minority by ethnicity or religion has a high likelihood of disapproving Donald Trump. Trump may not say that his ideal world is solely for white Christians only as might be Apartheid, but he is close. Even having a handicap makes one a minority in Trump's America.

  

Quote:There is also the fact both countries since the 1980’s transformed from high protectionist to highly free trade-based economies and protectionism does not have very much electoral appeal in either country. Protectionism in the bigger economies of the United States and the European Union have more electoral appeal.

But this is a consequence of Reagan and Thatcher seeking cheap imports to (1) fight inflation and (2) weaken the political power of organized labor. Donald Trump is no friend of organized labor, associating as he does with a Party that wants ultra-cheap labor unable to protect itself against harsh management and severe exploitation. The old saying that "the tariff is the father or the trust" suggests that President Trump is against free trade because he wants monopoly power to dominate the economy on behalf of economic elites that have no responsibilities except to themselves.

Quote:I believe this wave of Neo-Nationalism will last another 5 years and then recede in the last five years of the Fourth Turning which will be around 2028. Therefore; people buckle up, it is going to one hell of a ride, although given a massive economic crash being predicted the Alt-Right racial identitarians could experience a massive rise in support which makes a McCarthy style purge of anybody who is Ethnic identitarians very possible. I believe the Millennial's will more strongly identify as more 'Global Citizens' as opposed to just solely being members of a particular nation. Indeed the whole identitarian , neo-nationalist and alt-right movements have been born out of a concern that national and ethnicity identities are under threat from globalization.

I am tempted to believe that the Trump regime will itself implode. Trump has created an opposition that utterly hates him as Reagan and Thatcher didn't. He is not a polished politician, and he lacks the flexibility for dealing with any failure. Reagan and Thatcher could at least exploit contempt for Communism but still adapt to a Soviet Union becoming much less of a menace.

Quote:Although given the Middle East has just started it's Fourth Turning which is predicted to one hell of a battle between Islamists and Secularists. A possible final battle of the 'War on Terror' or more appropriately the 'War on Islamism' will probably occur during this Fourth Turning or in the first half of the First Turning. Islamists who are Islamic identarians could be subject to this McCarthyite purge as well.
 
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/10-...86481.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alter-globalization

The struggle involving Islam will be between its fundamentalists and modernists. What I said about the Soviet Union and China also applies in its own way to Iran, whose contradictions between Islam, modernity, the monstrously-corrupt ruling clergy, and its national heritage are among the starkest in the world. If I recognize huge contradictions between Trump's anti-intellectualism and America's legacy of intellectual achievements, his white Anglo nationalism and the reality of American diversity, economic hierarchy and egalitarianism, and his authoritarianism against America's constitutional heritage as doom for his ideology, then think of how badly Iran can implode.