Nationalism’s Modern Face
Nationalism can be defined as the ideology, or discourse, of the nation. It’s an historically specific principle, by which collective nation-building action was co-ordinated and mobilized via belonging to the nation as a primary collective identity. It helped to achieve the political project of the fusion of state and nation. In the 21st century, it is resurgent again — but with different faces and repercussions.
John Judis traces the recent rise of US and European far-right populist nationalism. The “left-behinds,” victims of the uneven development of global capitalism, became prime candidates for an exclusionary nationalist appeal. Their resentment and fear over immigration, fused with a fear of Islamist terrorism, loomed as the single greatest precipitant of this new nationalism. Thus, Judis argues, “today’s conservative nationalism is a complex of attitudes and sentiments about economic, social and moral decline that has been catalyzed into a nationalist politics by the economic, social, and moral issue of immigration.” He suggests that “internationalism,” under which nations cede some sovereignty to international or regional bodies to address problems they could not solve alone, can lead the world’s nations, the great powers in particular, to learn to co-exist in peace and co-operate to meet natural, environmental and economic challenges.
Judis traces the recent rise of US and European far-right populist nationalism.