When and Why Nationalism Beats Globalism

And how moral psychology can help explain and reduce tensions between the two.

 .. Globalization and authoritarianism are both essential parts of the story, but in this essay I will put them together in a new way.
..I’ll show how globalization and rising prosperity have changed the values and behavior of the urban elite, leading them to talk and act in ways that unwittingly activate authoritarian tendencies in a subset of the nationalists. I’ll show why immigration has been so central in nearly all right-wing populist movements. It’s not just the spark, it’s the explosive material, and those who dismiss anti-immigrant sentiment as mere racism have missed several important aspects of moral psychology related to the general human need to live in a stable and coherent moral order.
.. first, as they industrialize, they move away from “traditional values” in which religion, ritual, and deference to authorities are important, and toward “secular rational” values that are more open to change, progress, and social engineering based on rational considerations.
.. Second, as they grow wealthier and more citizens move into the service sector, nations move away from “survival values” emphasizing the economic and physical security found in one’s family, tribe, and other parochial groups, toward “self-expression” or “emancipative values” that emphasize individual rights and protections—not just for oneself, but as a matter of principle, for everyone.
.. the existentially stressed state of mind is the source of discrimination and hostility against out-groups.
.. The word “cosmopolitan” comes from Greek roots meaning, literally, “citizen of the world.” Cosmopolitans embrace diversity and welcome immigration, often turning those topics into litmus tests for moral respectability… Monbiot’s claim that patriotism is indistinguishable from racism illustrates the universalism that has characterized elements of the globalist Left in many Western nations for several decades.

.. But as many defenders of patriotism have pointed out, you love your spouse because she or he is yours, not because you think your spouse is superior to all others. Nationalists feel a bond with their country, and they believe that this bond imposes moral obligations both ways

.. The trick, from this point of view, is figuring out how to balance reasonable concerns about the integrity of one’s own community with the obligation to welcome strangers, particularly strangers in dire need.

.. But the globalists are concentrated in the capital cities, commercial hubs, and university towns

.. On closer inspection, racism usually turns out to be deeply bound up with moral concerns. (I use the term “moral” here in a purely descriptive sense to mean concerns that seem—for the people we are discussing—to be matters of good and evil

.. Her core finding is that authoritarianism is not a stable personality trait. It is rather a psychological predisposition to become intolerant when the person perceives a certain kind of threat. It’s as though some people have a button on their foreheads, and when the button is pushed, they suddenly become intensely focused on defending their in-group, kicking out foreigners and non-conformists, and stamping out dissent within the group. At those times they are more attracted to strongmen and the use of force. At other times, when they perceive no such threat, they are not unusually intolerant. So the key is to understand what pushes that button.

.. So authoritarians are not being selfish. They are not trying to protect their wallets or even their families. They are trying to protect their group or society. Some authoritarians see their race or bloodline as the thing to be protected, and these people make up the deeply racist subset of right-wing populist movements

.. But more typically, in modern Europe and America, it is the nation and its culture that nationalists want to preserve.

.. When they read that Americans are changing in ways that make them more similar to each other, authoritarians were no more racist and intolerant than others. But when Stenner gave them a news story suggesting that Americans are becoming more morally diverse, the button got pushed, the “authoritarian dynamic” kicked in, and they became more racist and intolerant.
.. Status quo conservatives are not natural allies of authoritarians, who often favor radical change and are willing to take big risks to implement untested policies.
.. Muslims don’t just observe different customs in their private lives; they often request and receive accommodations in law and policy from their host countries, particularly in matters related to gender.
.. But as soon as you speak up to voice those concerns, globalists will scorn you as a racist and a rube. When the globalists—even those who run the center-right parties in your country—come down on you like that, where can you turn? The answer, increasingly, is to the far right-wing nationalist parties in Europe, and to Donald Trump
.. She contrasts her theory with those who see an unstoppable tide of history moving away from traditions and “toward greater respect for individual freedom and difference,” and who expect people to continue evolving “into more perfect liberal democratic citizens.“ She does not say which theorists she has in mind, but Welzel and his World Values Survey collaborators, as well as Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” thesis, seem to be likely candidates.
.. The kind of intolerance that springs from aberrant individual psychology, rather than the disinterested absorption of pervasive cultural norms, is bound to be more passionate and irrational, less predictable, less amenable to persuasion, and more aggravated than educated by the cultural promotion of tolerance [emphasis added].
.. First and foremost: Think carefully about the way your country handles immigration and try to manage it in a way that is less likely to provoke an authoritarian reaction. Pay attention to three key variables: the percentage of foreign-born residents at any given time, the degree of moral difference of each incoming group, and the degree of assimilation being achieved by each group’s children.
.. When immigrants seem eager to embrace the language, values, and customs of their new land, it affirms nationalists’ sense of pride that their nation is good, valuable, and attractive to foreigners.
.. But whenever a country has historically high levels of immigration, from countries with very different moralities, and without a strong and successful assimilationist program, it is virtually certain that there will be an authoritarian counter-reaction, and you can expect many status quo conservatives to support it.
.. we can best limit intolerance of difference by parading, talking about, and applauding our sameness…. Ultimately, nothing inspires greater tolerance from the intolerant than an abundance of common and unifying beliefs, practices, rituals, institutions, and processes.
.. nothing is more certain to provoke increased expression of their latent predispositions than the likes of “multicultural education,” bilingual policies, and nonassimilation.
.. globalists could easily speak, act, and legislate in ways that drain passions and votes away from nationalist parties, but this would require some deep rethinking about the value of national identities and cohesive moral communities. It would require abandoning the multicultural approach to immigration and embracing assimilation.

Of Duterte & Trump

Although there is no “smoking gun” that proves that the DDS operates as Duterte’s hit squad, he often speaks quite favorably and enthusiastically of summary executions and extrajudicial killings, and documents published by Wikileaks even reveal that U.S. State Department personnel believe that Duterte is “clearly behind” the vigilante group.

Duterte’s signature method of fighting crime with crime had been the most prominent issue of his presidential campaign. He has promised to kill hundreds of thousands of those he deems criminals, and to make the fish of Manila Bay fat from feeding on their corpses.

.. On the matter of the free press, I should first explain that the Philippines is considered one of the world’s most dangerous country for journalists. It is common for journalists who do investigative work into the corrupt dealings of politicians and businessmen to end up as victims of assassination, and the bulk of those murders go unsolved. When asked about this problem, Duterte responded that if you’re a journalist and you get offed, it’s probably because you were doing something wrong!

..  His reputation as a strong man who can get things done has made him a hero to many of his supporters, and thus to many average Filipinos, having such a savior lead their country to the promised land greatly overweighs any concerns about human and constitutional rights, the rule of law, or the due process of law.

.. Thus, as bad as having Duterte occupy the Philippine presidency is, his popularity is merely a product of a breakdown in Philippine politics and society as a whole.

.. Some dismiss his extreme rhetoric as just the hyperbole of a flamboyant politician who is simply intentionally projecting a caricature of himself, and his spokespersons often defend him by saying his controversial remarks are just jokes or cases of the press taking his words out of context. I, however, believe that the man is a psychopath who probably suffers from delusions of himself as a “Dirty Harry” type who can clean up the streets simply by slaughtering all the bad guys. Such a person obviously has no business being the head of state of any nation.

.. However, even if Duterte is successfully defeated, or even ousted, the societal and political climate that produced him will remain, and the country could go simply back into the hands of the corrupt oligarchs.

A Lesson From ‘Brexit’: On Immigration, Feelings Trump Facts

For people who are already destabilized by economic strain, those social changes contribute to a feeling that something precious is being lost, that their country is turning away from the things they value and toward a new and unfamiliar future.

.. In Australia, rising anti-immigration sentiment has focused especially on refugees from Southeast Asia, often disparaged as “boat people.” The country’s leadership, under growing popular pressure, created a system of offshore detention centers to warehouse refugees indefinitely rather than allow them onto Australian shores. These centers have been accused of abuses including rape, assault and child sexual abuse.

.. A relatively new body of social science research portrays a group of “authoritarians” who are dispersed across demographics but desire conformity, order and social norms. These can be “activated,” as the scholars describe it, when they feel threatened by social change, and then will seek harsh, punitive policies that target outsiders and restore the status quo.

.. “It’s as though a button is pushed on their forehead that says, ‘In case of moral threat, lock down the borders, kick out those who are different and punish those who are morally deviant.’”

.. In other words, social change and economic stress — exactly what many pro-Brexit communities have been experiencing in recent years — often lead to a rise in anti-immigrant sentiment.

Who Blames the Victim?

IF you are mugged on a midnight stroll through the park, some people will feel compassion for you, while others will admonish you for being there in the first place. If you are raped by an acquaintance after getting drunk at a party, some will be moved by your misfortune, while others will ask why you put yourself in such a situation.

.. the more strongly you privilege loyalty, obedience and purity — as opposed to values such as care and fairness — the more likely you are to blame the victim.

.. the more strongly you identify with individualizing values, the more likely you are to be politically progressive; the more strongly you identify with binding values, the more likely you are to be politically conservative.

.. Proponents of individualizing values tend to see a dyad of victim and perpetrator (a victim is hurt, a perpetrator does the hurting). Proponents of binding values, however, may see behaviors as immoral even when there is no obvious victim — for example, the “impure” act of premarital sex or the “disloyal” act of flag burning — and may even feel that doing the right thing sometimes requires hurting others (as with honor killings, to pick an extreme example).

.. we explored whether nudging people to focus on perpetrators versus victims could affect people’s moral judgments. We did so by placing either the perpetrator or the victim in the subject position in a majority of sentences in descriptions of sexual assault (e.g., “Lisa was forced by Dan” versus “Dan forced Lisa”).

.. For those looking to increase sympathy for victims, a practical first step may be to change how we talk: Focusing less on victims and more on perpetrators — “Why did he think he had license to rape?” rather than “Imagine what she must be going through”