The rise of nationalist populism, although something I still disagree quite contentiously with, really begins making more sense when opinions like this start leaking out.
The problem is how those words have been coopted. While “nationalism” can be associated with nation state horrors of the twentieth century, the true alternative hasn’t really been been examined. The ideal is a global community, but the reality is much more a drift back into tribalism (i.e. company over country, or I and my Brother against my Cousin [1]). Tribalism is apparent in the growing intensity of intra-nation political conflict. Nationalism was an advance despite its flaws. Certainly the right kind of globalism would be best but we don’t seem to be there yet.
And populism can be defined as “support for the concerns of ordinary people”. [2] Is this a bad thing? Would we prefer our politics be for the rich or for the companies? Populism too has an association with reactionary movements, but what is the alternative? A platonic corporate king to rule us all? Democracy is inherently populist. It is ugly. But it is better than all other forms of governance. It feels in general that we “ordinary people” are being divided by those who favor companies over countries and in reality favor their own power and wealth over sharing power with others. Nationalist populism seems a better alternative than corporate oligarchy.
The distinction has to be between exclusive ethno-nationalism and more inclusive forms of civic nationalism. It can't just be for "ordinary people", it has to be for everyone, with a minimum level of rights protected by law. That's how we avoid collapsing back into ethnic cleansing.
> It can't just be for "ordinary people", it has to be for everyone, with a minimum level of rights protected by law.
Nicely put.
Around the Iraq War, I remember some clever cynic pointing out that while we might 'export democracy', it's still democratic for 51% of the people to vote to murder the other 49%. Or perhaps more commonly, to vote for a permanent dictator from the 51%. The fundamental advance of a healthy government isn't (just) democracy, it's a bedrock of inalienable or hard-to-alienate rights.
The recent talk about the 'paradox of liberalism' has been interesting, but it's all felt a bit misguided to me. There's a real question, sure, but the entire fight between "let intolerance go unchecked" and "be intolerant of intolerance" was a false dichotomy. The missing alternative is liberalism within boundaries - setting some threshold of behavior which isn't permitted, and can't be permitted by any minor political swing.
(Arguably what we were having was a debate about where to set those boundaries, but if so I wish we could actually say that.)
Nationalism and Populism are words that are constantly reinvented and reused.
One example is that “Populism” means quite different things in US vs Latin America vs EU. In US it’s always had this agrarian, rights of the farmers, Jeffersonian element to it that distrusts big business. In Latin America, it’s about taking on the permanent plutocracy of the landed rich, and in the EU...it’s often just a euphemism for neo-Fascism-lite.
It goes counter to the idea of a globally connected internet though. Without a degree of oppression of free speech you can't stop the flow of culture and ideas no matter how big of a wall you build.
As it turns out, the actual effect of a "globally connected internet" was to make it easier for the Russian state to exploit its own underemployed citizens to pretend to be Texans and stoke racial tensions in Texas.
Meaningful human connection requires some amount of basic honesty.
> I was one of the first U.S. journalists to report extensively on the St. Petersburg-based “troll farm,”
> I agree with my colleague Masha Gessen that the whole issue has been blown out of proportion. ... if I could do it all over again, I would have highlighted just how inept and haphazard those attempts were. That the Agency is now widely seen as a savvy, efficient manipulator of American public opinion is, in no small part, the fault of experts. They may derive their authority from perceived neutrality, but in reality they—we—have interests, just like everyone else. And, when it comes to the Trump-Russia story, those interests are often best served by fuelling the fear of Kremlin meddling.
Is this only a problem when Russians behave dishonestly, or is it also a problem when domestic media behaves dishonestly, in an effort to stoke divisive tensions?
Yes it makes propaganda easier, but so did the printing press and I still believe that it had a positive net effect on the world.
By coincidence I am a Texan and I've had some really interesting conversations on the internet and have been exposed to a wide variety of viewpoints and information sources that vastly outweigh that of Putin's little troll farms.
How does respecting national sovereignty rather than letting your government be trampled over by international corporations run counter to a globally connected internet?
This sort of attitude might seem like "nationalist populism" now, but it wasn't that long ago that "the left" was on the same page. I still am personally, but there seems to be a disturbing trend where anti-Trump sentiment is being leveraged to promote a corporate agenda.
If national sovereignty overrides everything, one country mandates X, and another mandates not-X - then that's not compatible with a globally connected internet; since each of them will require the "other" thing to be removed from "their" internet, and that leads to segmentation, blocking and separation.
What do you do when country A requires all maps to show that some territory belongs to them, and country B requires the same?
What do you do when country A requires particular data to be stored so that they have access to it, and country B requires that the same data is stored so that country A does not have access to it?
What if country A wants people to be say X without restrictions, and country B wants everyone to be prohibited from saying X?
If you separate everything cleanly into "areas of sovereignty" then you can't really have a single, globally connected, integrated internet, as services/content can't satisfy all conflicting requirements and thus be available everywhere the same; if you do not, then the sovereignty of at least some countries will be limited. For me, the best solution would be if we could come to some agreement about some global, universal rules/principles for the internet, but that inevitably requires countries to hand over some of their sovereignty and abstain from any making requirements contrary to these rules.
You don't need to go that far. Problems already start on the local level, where you have cities and city people ruling over rural people and their interests, totally different lifestyles. There needs to be a way to shrink to homogenous units, and then use technology to organize everything.
The bureaucracy of centralized governments was practical, but it didn't kept up with the diversification of society. The self driving car stuff could effect housing too, think about self driving mobile homes, that cluster and arrange based on your preferences, basically going back to a nomadic way of living, but in a techy way.
This could be a solution to many problems of the static nature of cities, and problems that start perpetuating upwards from there.
I'm not arguing against populism, more so the nationalist aspect of the "nationalist populism".
Particularly the idea that "diversity is the root of our problems" and "immigration is inherently bad". These ideas seem central to most of the nationalist movements in western society recently.
I generally agree. "Nationalism" is often just a euphemism for xenophobia which is not only immoral but counter productive if what you were really concerned about was the national interest. At the same time, I wish we could have a reasonable discussion about what level of immigration, free trade, etc is most beneficial for the people. There are legitimate issues that can arise from these things, but there's far too much toxicity in the debate for any nuanced view to really be politically viable it seems. And the policies that would benefit workers don't really seem to be materializing from either side that claims to represent them.
Absolutely. We need less polarization and more nuanced debate.
It's one of those issues where it appears that party lines have been drawn around it and both sides seem to be drifting more and more extreme.
I don't think that the average person is that polarized on some of these issues, but instead I think party members are afraid of being shunned for not fervently agreeing.
But you can teach people which ideas are toxic, and you can make sure toxic ideas don't get air time. I think people overestimate the power of the Internet compared to schooling/telly/etc.
