What Have We Done (original) (raw)
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Aspen Review Central Europe, 2019
2016 has led to the renewed political popularity of the verb " to happen, " especially in the indefinite passive voice. Politicians, commentators, and social scientists reacted as if a meteor had stricken the global body politic. Nobody quite understood what hit them. Nobody was responsible. Everybody became anxious. A telling example is Hillary Clinton's electoral self-postmortem, entitled What Happened? Two kinds of responsibilities have been missing from the discussion of post-2016 politics: political responsibility for policy mistakes that led to unintended consequences and moral responsibility for the guilt of nations. In comparison, in the aftermath of the far greater tragedy of the Second World War, Western leaders recognized that they made a series of economic and political policy mistakes that deepened the Great Depression and encouraged totalitarian aggression. They devised policies and institutions, the infrastructure of the liberal world order, to preempt a recurrence and prevent the expansion of the form of totalitarianism that survived the War victorious. Philosophers like Karl Jaspers and Benedetto Croce, though they had little to be ashamed of personally, explored the guilt of their nations to try to understand the moral failure that carried their nations from Kant to Hitler and from Renaissance humanism to the black shirts. Americans have hardly faced the question how a nation weaned on Leave it to Beaver and The Brady Bunch ended up tearing children from their parents and bringing a toddler in front of an immigration judge to answer for his crimes. Denial of responsibility assumes two historical inevitabilities: Obviously, the watershed that led to the current political crisis was the economic recession of 2008 and the unemployment, austerity and very slow recovery that followed it. This primary cause affected different societies through different paths and to different degrees. But arguably there was no antidote against this lethal economic poison. When policy makers attempted to regulate the banking sector in the aftermath of the recession it was too much too late. Secondly, there are disturbing similarities between the map of populism in Europe today and the map of the authoritarian regimes allied with the Axis powers in the Second World War (minus NorthWestern Germany and plus Poland that was authoritarian but did not ally itself with Hitler), just as there is similar disturbing similarity between the map of the Confederacy in the American Civil War and the map of states that gave Trump the presidency (plus Pennsylvania, minus Virginia). Perhaps political cultures that change very slowly are destiny. Democracy happens there rarely, usually during economic peaks between economic recessions. Authoritarianism may resemble alcoholism. An alcoholic may abstain with great effort and social assistance and pressure when everything goes well, but an alcoholic never really bits the addiction. We may bemoan that the American south failed to overcome its native racism and legacy of slavery and that Austro-Hungarians beyond the cosmopolitan Vienna and
West European Politics, 2019
The electoral performance of right-wing populism also depends on the type of re-elaboration of countries' national past and their collective memories. Complementing socioeconomic and political-institutional factors, the article analyses cultural opportunity structures. Given the link between fascist and populist visions of power, it shows that different collective memories of the fascist past and World War II may open up or close down the space for right-wing populist parties. Theoretically, the typology includes four types of re-elaboration: culpabilisation, victimisation, heroisation and cancellation. Results of a comparative analysis of eight West European countries based on a novel measurement method point to (1) culpabilisation and heroisation as types of re-elaboration limiting right-wing populist parties' electoral performance, (2) cancellation as a type having an undetermined effect, and (3) victimisation as a type triggering the success of right-wing populist parties.
Journal of Scientific Papers «Social Development and Security», 2020
The paper focuses on the political position populism occupies in representative democracies as an inclusionary pylon for fascism, with the analog review of the Balkans and its global security lessons. Populism implies a constant conflict between elite, establishment, alienated structures linked to interests contrary to the public or members of other ethnoreligious backgrounds. Both left and right populism aim at a particular political and social homogeneity. The phenomenon of increased countries with developed democratic institutions and standards with authoritarianism leads to a closed circle of global "legitimate-democratic" violence, in which democratic institutions and standards, human and minority rights, and freedoms will be a danger. The Balkan's lessons in dealing with similar individuals and movements that promote the "cleansing" of Europe and preserving an "identity" artificially tailored to others' hatred are proactivity. The Balkans' (un)-successful fight against the historical forms of right-wing extremism in more current circumstances have become like an overflowing foundation of global right-wing networks. Humankindʼs great concern stems from the increasingly aggressive foreign policy, xenophobic sentiment, and the growing inclination of the autocratic populist government to stop the transition of violence to democracy in the scientifically-technologically and culturally-spiritually objectively connected global community. Solutions based on opportunism and manipulation do not offer anything concrete that could improve the socio-political-security-economic situation. When a liberal sees that certain elements use coercion to regulate social relations according to their desire, to force the whole of society on acceptable socioeconomic behavior, the liberal should feel a personal responsibility to stand up for freedom.
Almost 25 years ago, American political scientist and economist, Francis Fukuyama in his book boldly titled as, "The End of History and the Last Man" put forward the claim that the end of the Cold War had once and for all settled the great global struggle regarding the future of human political and economic organization. He argued that the ideas of liberal democracy and free market capitalism had trumped their Marxist counterparts and this, for Fukuyama marked "the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government" (Whitaker). Fast forward 25 years and one can easily observe that the balance of the scales is, slowly but surely, titling. Liberal democracies have come under threat from a sudden upsurge of right wing populism, neo liberal economic ideas so readily accepted until very recently are being questioned and revolted against. The electoral success of Donald Trump in the US, Brexit vote in the UK, the rise of Le Pen in France, raging nationalism in mainland Europe and the success of Modi in India all indicate that the World order is showing rapid signs of change. History-contrary to Mr. Fukuyama's claims-is far from over and while Liberalism, Democracy and Market Globalism still remain ideas of formidable importance they are being challenged by their right wing counterparts more seriously than ever seen in recent times. While this resurgence of right wing populism is a global phenomenon, for the purposes of this essay however, my primary focus will be on the resurgence of the right wing populism in Europe and the US. Throughout the essay, I will write about the failings of Neo liberalism and Globalism (both market and cultural), elaborating upon the linkage that these failings have to this recent resurgence of the Right. The essay would also contain a brief analysis of the difference between right wing in Europe and The United States. In the last few years considerable scholarly work has been aimed at understanding the linkages between Right Wing resurgence and Economic Globalization. A study conducted by Italo Cortalone and Peiro Stanig (2017) suggests that Populist voting and appeal is largely driven by a backlash against economic globalization, particularly regions with a declining manufacturing sector have come under increased pressure because of increased competition from countries like China. The researchers have used ofcial election results at the district level and individual-level voting data, combined with party ideology for 15 European countries over 1988-2007 and have concluded that economic globalization might not be suitable in the long run Khawar, 1
The Role of Historical Memory: The Development of Populism in Germany and France
2017
This dissertation intends to explore possible reasons for the observed discrepancy between the popularity and electoral success of right-wing populist parties in France, from 1980 to 2017, and the relative failure of similar parties in Germany during the same period. To this end, the effects and persistence of populist parties in both countries will be compared, and it will be argued here that the main determining factor in the success of populist movements will be due to each nation’s historical context, the nature of each nation’s dominant historical discourse, and the manner in which national identity is constructed. In the extant literature, the rise of populism is generally attributed to either economic or sociological factors. By utilising Mill’s method of difference, this dissertation aims to show that neither of these previous explanations are useful for understanding the varying popularity of right-wing populism in two countries where the underlying economic and sociological conditions are essentially similar. In this dissertation, the method of process-tracing will be applied to these historical factors, in order to understand how the trauma of Nazism in Germany has come to stigmatize populist discourse, and how such stigmatization is absent in contemporary France. In contrast, the positive image that the French hold regarding the country’s colonial legacy, as well as the white-washing of the actions of the fascist Vichy Regime, have allowed right-wing populist movements to gain a far stronger presence in French politics, especially when compared to the situation in neighbouring Germany. In addition to this, an in-case comparison between the states of former East and West Germany, will be conducted in order to strengthen our understanding of the importance of common historical narratives for the rise of populism.