Nationalism is in the air
I see lots of obscure foreign films that most people don’t watch. I recall one B&W film from the 1960s, which took place in Uzbekistan. I was struck by the “1960s feel” of the film. It could have been French. Then it hit me that the 1960s were everywhere, even places that you might have expected to be closed off from global fads. It was sort of “in the air”, like a global flu pandemic. Later I read about young women in Kabul walking around during the 1960s wearing miniskirts:
That made me think that what’s going on today in the “Islamic world” isn’t really about Islam at all. After all, Afghanistan was an Islamic country in the 1960s. Alternatively, women in Saudi Arabia often covered their faces before the Islamic religion was even founded. Don’t confuse cultural changes, with the supposed justifications offered by proponents of those cultural changes.
Recently we’ve see nationalism sweep across Europe, Asia and the US (Canada and Latin America have so far avoided the bug.) One explanation is that it’s a backlash against globalization. I’m not so sure. I wonder if it’s not just something in the air. Consider this recent story from the Economist, describing India:
In India ethnic nationalism, never far beneath the surface, is worryingly resurgent. Since 2014 the country has been ruled by Narendra Modi of the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The party seeks to distance itself from radical Hindutva (Hindu nationalist) groups, which criticise it as “soft” on Pakistan, Muslims and those who harm cows (which are sacred to Hindus). And Mr Modi is urbane, pro-business and friendly towards the West. But he is also a lifelong member of the RSS (National Volunteer Organisation), a 5m-strong Hindu group founded in 1925 and modelled loosely on the Boy Scouts.
Members of the RSS parade in khaki uniforms, do physical jerks in the morning, help old ladies cross the street, pick up litter—and are occasional recruits for extremist groups that beat up left-wing students. And last year Mr Modi’s minister of culture, Mahesh Sharma, said that a former president was a patriot “despite being a Muslim”. The minister remains in his job.
Hindutva purports to represent all Hindus, who are four-fifths of India’s population. It promises a national rebirth, a return to an idealised past and the retrieval of an “authentic” native identity. Its adherents see themselves as honest folk fighting corrupt cosmopolitans. They have changed India’s political language, deriding “political correctness”, and calling critical journalists “presstitutes” and political opponents “anti-national”. The RSS also exerts huge sway over education and the media. Some states and schools have adopted textbooks written by RSS scholars that play up the role of Hindutva leaders and marginalise more secular ones.
The BJP has made a big push to control the judiciary by changing rules for appointments, but has met strong resistance. It does not control most states in the east and south. Many of the educated elite despise it.
Hmmm; national rebirth, idealized past, anti-Muslim, anti-PC, anti-press, anti-cosmopolitan. Seems kind of familiar somehow. [Let’s hope there aren’t any nationalists reading this post. I fear that the same low-IQ alt-righters who think “cuckservative” is a clever putdown will also latch onto presstitute.]
India faces many problems, but this is obviously not about “globalization” or “trade” or the “rust best” or “stagnant incomes”. Or perhaps I should say if it is about globalization, it’s about the cultural aspects, not the economic aspects.
So my theory is that nationalism is some mysterious force that is sweeping the planet (like the freewheeling 60s did earlier), and it manifests itself in different ways in different countries, depending on local conditions. Those local conditions don’t cause the nationalism; they shape it in particular ways. Thus nationalism in the UK is not anti-trade, because the UK is a trading nation. That’s its heritage. If someone were to talk about making Great Britain great again, they would be referring to a time when Britain dominated international trade like a colossus.
Even in the US we tend to overstate the importance of trade in the election, as Trump actually lost Mahoning County, Ohio. That’s the home of Youngstown, and often cited as the perfect example of Trump country. But perhaps I’ll put that issue off for another post
PS. I’m no expert on India, but based on what I’ve read, Modi is actually quite similar to Trump. The Congress party is like the Democrats in America, a coalition of minorities and educated elites.
PPS. I see that the right wing nationalist candidate in Austria got 46.7% of the vote in yesterday’s presidential election, and lost. Trump got 46.2% in America and won (vs. Hillary’s 48.2%). I suspect the Austrian lost because they don’t have an electoral college. Perhaps someone with more knowledge of Austria (mbka?) can tell me if the nationalist did better in thinly populated rural areas, and might have won with an electoral system that reduced the influence of big cities like Vienna.
PPPS. I enjoyed this FT.com article:
Last week, UBS released a survey of 1,200 of its American clients and their attitudes towards the US election. It revealed some striking insights — after the election, for example, the proportion of investors who were bullish about US stocks jumped from 25 per cent to 53 per cent, while those who were bullish about growth rose from 39 per cent to 48 per cent. There was, however, an even more important detail: 36 per cent of respondents said that they did not tell their friends and family who they voted for, because they wanted to “fend off arguments or avoid judgment”.
Yes, you read that right. Among these wealthy and (presumably) educated UBS clients, more than one-third were apparently too nervous or embarrassed to reveal their election choice. Call it, if you like, a plague of squeamish silence.. . .
As I criss-crossed the US this past year, I often heard middle-class, professional people tell me — with slightly embarrassed smiles — that they “understood” the appeal of Trump’s promises about change. Yes, their comments were typically laced with distaste for his aggressive persona and words — you only have to look at his outburst against Saturday Night Live to see why his tweets make people wince. But what struck me on my travels was that people voting for Hillary Clinton were rarely embarrassed to admit to it. Instead, they were resigned or dutiful. In political terms, a vote for Clinton seemed akin to eating spinach. A vote for Trump, however, was more like eating ice-cream laced with whisky for breakfast — something that establishment people did not want to admit to. . . .
It is striking, for example, that the one poll that was more accurate than most was conducted by the right-leaning political consultancy the Trafalgar Group. Early on, it decided that people were lying about their voting intentions. So it started asking questions such as how respondents’ neighbours were likely to vote. Not only did this deliver a different result but it enabled Trafalgar to predict the result in both Pennsylvania and Michigan.
The author calls these “shy voters”. But it’s clear that the emotion being described is shame, not shyness.
Tags:
5. December 2016 at 10:28
Interesting post. What’s your take on the vote in Italy?
5. December 2016 at 10:29
A useful analysis of the “new veiling movement”.
http://qje.oxfordjournals.org/content/128/1/337.abstract
Non gated version here
http://www.wiwiss.fu-berlin.de/forschung/veranstaltungen/rse/Past_Programs/Winter_2010_11/RSE-Carvalho.pdf
It is about the dynamics of male-female social interactions within Islam. Not “nationalism” in any useful sense. It is being spread by globalisation, but is not a reaction to it in any useful sense either.
5. December 2016 at 10:33
(Canada and Latin America have so far avoided the bug.)
The reasons people lionize a failure like Fidel Castro evidently go over your head. Amused to hear that the acolytes of Messrs. Chavez, Correa, Morales, and Kirchner have manifested no ‘nationalism’.
5. December 2016 at 10:42
“The author calls these “shy voters”. But it’s clear that the emotion being described is shame, not shyness.”
It’s not shame or shyness, it is a simple decision to avoid arguing with morons.
5. December 2016 at 10:44
“I fear that the same low-IQ alt-righters who think “cuckservative” is a clever putdown will also latch onto presstitute.]”
-I’m not low-IQ. “Cuckservative” is a very clever putdown. “Presstitute” is both obvious and less clever.
“Even in the US we tend to overstate the importance of trade in the election, as Trump actually lost Mahoning County, Ohio. That’s the home of Youngstown, and often cited as the perfect example of Trump country.”
-Hillary won it by less than three points. Obama 2012 won it by over 28 (even larger margin than he did in 2008). It takes more than four years for 60%+ Dem counties to go for the GOP. Patience is warranted. Mahoning even went for Hoover in 1932 due to the Dems being the party of free trade, as I’m sure you are aware. Even the Great Depression could not make it switch longstanding political affiliations by itself, and America is in no Great Depression.
“can tell me if the nationalist did better in thinly populated rural areas, and might have won with an electoral system that reduced the influence of big cities like Vienna.”
-Yes and yes.
5. December 2016 at 10:44
Headscarves and veiling are about signalling female virtue. In polygynous societies, they are more likely among elite women because (1) elite men with multiple wives and concubines have a bigger monitoring problem and (2) elite women have a bigger reputation issue, are more likely to be not personally commercially active and less likely to be embedded in high kin neighbourhood. (You might consider the dynamics of foot binding in China.)
Oasis pastoralism (Middle East) allows continued monitoring of women and men are not likely to be systematically absent. Steppe pastoralism, men are more likely to be systematically absent, so women have to be expected to deal with a wider range of activities. Including much more likely to be taught to use weapons, as last ditch defence of campsites and children.
As Sharia effectively denies women any legal defence against rape (women are not accepted as equal witnesses to men, rape particularly was usually regarded as requiring male witnesses to substantiate, a failed accusation was an admission of illicit fornication), Islam developed a high chaperone culture. The period of Westernisation and secularisation from 1920s to late 1960s saw the adoption of Western clothing by Muslim women who still mostly stayed in local neighbourhoods.
But the secularisation urge lost steam (economic failures, defeat by Israel). As, from the 1970s onwards, women have taken up education and employment opportunities away from their local neighbourhood, veiling has become a way to signal commitment to religious norms when so away in cultures which have weak norms for dealing with unaccompanied women among strangers.
Yes, the advent of religious signalling helps the Islamic religious revival. But said revival’s closest analogue is not nationalism, but Pentecostalism, the most successful social movement of our time (a few hundred adherents 1900, somewhere around 300m now).
5. December 2016 at 10:51
I heard this this morning: you might like Scott: https://twitter.com/OnPointRadio/status/805793332966359040
5. December 2016 at 10:55
“Not only did this deliver a different result but it enabled Trafalgar to predict the result in both Pennsylvania and Michigan.”
-No. The Trafalgar polls were accurate in PA in and of themselves. The neighbor voting question systemically overrepresented Trump support due to its obvious rural bias. My guess is Trafalgar just got lucky, as there was a substantial unpollable segment of Trump voters.
5. December 2016 at 11:00
“might have won with an electoral system that reduced the influence of big cities like Vienna.”
I’m sure you realize this…but just to be clear, the electoral system does not reduce the influence of big cities, it reduces the influence of areas that vote overwhelmingly in one way or the other. Like the Southern states voted in reconstruction. Only in this election was there an advantage for the Republicans, Obama was advantaged in the previous two elections.
It would be very different country if we had a European type system. In the election of 1860, for example, Lincoln would have never been elected (he received less than 40% of the popular vote in a four way election). The civil war would have been prevented at the cost of keeping slavery around for at least another 50 – 100 years…
5. December 2016 at 11:09
I’ve been reading “Money and the Early Greek Mind” and one thing that is noted is that the covering of women is originally from Ancient Greece and was in part a response to the development of money. One of the things money enables is prostitution, so society impressed upon women to cover up so that they weren’t confused for prostitutes.
I always take these explanations of ancient cultures with a grain of salt, but it is true that headscarves originate in Greek culture.
http://magic-maths-money.blogspot.com/2014/08/nectar-for-gods-how-money-made-western.html
5. December 2016 at 11:09
@Harding: agreed, a 96 IQ is close to average not low
5. December 2016 at 11:18
“The civil war would have been prevented at the cost of keeping slavery around for at least another 50 – 100 years…”
-True, Lincoln could never have won the popular vote. But slavery was due to end by the late 1880s, as in Brazil.
You are right the EC does not in itself reduce the influence of big cities. New York was a key swing state between 1856 and 1896. California was the tipping-point state in 1916 (in which election the rural areas narrowly swung the state and the presidency to Wilson.
5. December 2016 at 11:20
*won a majority of the popular vote.
5. December 2016 at 11:33
“But slavery was due to end by the late 1880s, as in Brazil. ”
Brazil is a totally different society. Slavery was an institution would have never been given up so easily only 25 years later. Views had hardened to the point of taking generations to unwind. It is very possible that war would have happened anyway if a compromise was not possible.
That is a typical southern defense that is still alive today…passed on from generation to generation. That the south would have gotten rid of slavery on their own, they just did not want northern interference. Just like the myth that interracial offspring were not common, when we know from DNA testing that the average African American is 25% European…
5. December 2016 at 11:45
“Hmmm; national rebirth, idealized past, anti-Muslim, anti-PC, anti-press, anti-cosmopolitan. Seems kind of familiar somehow. [Let’s hope there aren’t any nationalists reading this post. I fear that the same low-IQ alt-righters who think “cuckservative” is a clever putdown will also latch onto presstitute.]”
Sumner idealizes Muslims, political correctness doctrine, and the press while espousing anti-nationalism, anti-tradition, alt-right-phobic bigotry and thinks that “low-IQ” is a clever put down and has recently latched on “innumeracy” as well.
5. December 2016 at 12:13
@engineer,
– Slavery was practiced worldwide and was mostly abandoned and abolished on a largely voluntary agreeable basis in most nations. It isn’t that unreasonable to think that this global trend would have continued and the US would have followed suit without a war.
– Confederate leader and icon, Robert E Lee vocally spoke and wrote against slavery and said that slavery would die out with southern independence. He didn’t own slaves. He had no interest in maintaining slavery. He said he was fighting as a loyal son to the sovereign state of Virginia. I don’t see why it’s so hard to take him at his word.
– “Northern interference?” Abraham Lincoln ordered armies to burn entire southern cities to the ground, burn down civilian homes, burn down farms and have broad populations starve to death and suffer horrors. Of course they didn’t like Lincoln and wanted independence. And even before Lincoln started all these terrible acts, southerners were very justified to be untrusting of him and defensive about the bloody massacre that awaited them.
– This is a typical common southern defense, just like you are giving a typical northern defense.
5. December 2016 at 12:27
“Just like the myth that interracial offspring were not common, when we know from DNA testing that the average African American is 25% European…”
-How do we know this is not largely from the modern era (post-1960)?
I don’t live in the South and the closest I’ve ever been there for even a second was a few days in NoVa and DC (which is as far from Old South as you can get South of the Mason-Dixon line). I’m just being reasonable.
Lee did apparently own (or at least manage) slaves, but he freed them in 1862.
5. December 2016 at 13:33
“Nationalism is in the air”–“but it means different things in different countries”—“the 60s were the same in Uzbekistan (from a “black and white” unnamed movie no less) as in the US and France. “Austria “right wing” got similar percent of votes as Trump. “Hmmm–idealized past, anti-PC… seems kind of familiar somehow”
Come on Scott, say what you really want to say—you know you really really want to. Danger is in the air—-it is almost like the……. THIRTIES. It’s as if the ghost of Hitler “is in the air”.
IQ red warning light flashing extreme danger—You need to stop.
——————————–
(Below From B-52s—probably had a similar song in Uzbekistan in early 80s)—
“Keep off the path, beware of the gate
Watch out for signs that say “hidden driveways”
Don’t let the chlorine in your eyes
Blind you to the awful surprise
That’s been waitin’ for you at
The bottom of the bottomless blue, blue, blue pool
You’re livin’ in your own Private Idaho, Idaho
You’re out of control, the rivers that roll
You fell into the water and down to Idaho
Get out of that state
Get out…”
In other words, you are beginning to —-how else to say it?–seem extremely paranoid
———————————————
5. December 2016 at 14:09
when we know from DNA testing that the average African American is 25% European…
—
I think it’s 17%. About half the slaves were imported prior to 1780 and half after. So, a typical black American could conceivably trace his ancestry back about 7 generations to reach a point where half his pedigree was born in Africa and half here. The disreputable Mr. Sailer has suggested that the addition of European genes might have occurred at a steady pace, so that white men would be the sire for about 2.5% of the children born into the black caste in a typical generation.
5. December 2016 at 14:12
-How do we know this is not largely from the modern era (post-1960)?
Grew up here. Light-skinned blacks were atypical in 1970, but common enough. Look at the creole population of New Orleans for a concentration of same.
5. December 2016 at 14:40
Tom, No surprise, voters are in a “no” mood. Renzi’s mistake was to not ask what voters thought of keeping the current system–they’d vote no on that too.
Lorenzo, I agree about Islam not being the same as nationalism. I was using it more as an analogy, as how something might not be “about” what it appears to be about.
Art Deco, My point is that those sorts of people are becoming increasing unpopular in Latin America, the mood is swinging against that sort of nationalism, toward neoliberalism. Latin America did have the nationalism bug, but it was about 15 years ago.
Engineer, You said:
“I’m sure you realize this…but just to be clear, the electoral system does not reduce the influence of big cities, it reduces the influence of areas that vote overwhelmingly in one way or the other.”
Actually both.
Jason, Interesting.
Massimo, You said:
“Sumner idealizes Muslims, political correctness doctrine,”
Congratulations on the dumbest post of the day. I’m an atheist who hates PCism. Maybe I should just call it the “Massimo award” from now on.
Michael, You said:
“Come on Scott, say what you really want to say—you know you really really want to.”
That’s why my commenters keep writing such moronic comments. They make the mistake of assuming that I don’t say exactly what I want to say. Indeed I do not think this is the 1930s, and do not see any danger of another Hitler.
But heh, go ahead and keep writing dumb comments, misrepresenting what I say. It’s a free country.
5. December 2016 at 14:44
The term “Presstitute” has been around for a long time. A quick google search shows it was used by bloggers at least as far back in 2003, to described journalists who enabled Bush’s claim of WMDs.
5. December 2016 at 14:45
raja, I taught in a college for 34 years, and had no trouble telling silly Marxists that I was a neoliberal. So what if they think that makes you a bad person? Why should you care?
5. December 2016 at 15:25
Art Deco, My point is that those sorts of people are becoming increasing unpopular in Latin America, the mood is swinging against that sort of nationalism, toward neoliberalism. Latin America did have the nationalism bug, but it was about 15 years ago.
That’s what they said in 1995. Hugo Chavez was elected 3 years later.
You don’t seem to be able to distinguish between dismantling mercantile controls, local particularism, and chauvinism. The immigration laws which so enrage the Mercatus crew can be a manifestation of the 2d or the 3d. A devotion to the second does not logically entail the 1st.
All manner of silliness is prevalent in Latin America and it’s stoked by Americans who fancy themselves the tribunes of Latin America in this country. They’ll likely be less of it in places which have palpable accomplishment (e.g. Chile).
5. December 2016 at 15:27
Congratulations on the dumbest post of the day. I’m an atheist who hates PCism.
Which is perfectly congruent with leapfrogging loyalties. Hence the emotional upsets over DJT suggesting we should have a moratorium on Muslim immigration for an interim period.
5. December 2016 at 15:28
Scott, how about “The Golden Massimo?” I’m pretty sure I can take it from him one day if I keep at it. And “Golden Massimo” sounds way better than “Golden Brown” (although the latter does sound more delicious).
This guy has a similar award he calls “The Golden Crocoduck”
5. December 2016 at 15:58
“Art Deco, My point is that those sorts of people are becoming increasing unpopular in Latin America, the mood is swinging against that sort of nationalism, toward neoliberalism. Latin America did have the nationalism bug, but it was about 15 years ago.”
Quite right. One of the ironies of Evo Morales’ presidency is that a substantial voting bloc of his, the miners, turned out for him because he never rescinded the privileges afforded to them through agreements made under his neoliberal predecessors. And now he’s having what could gently be described as “problems” with the miners because he’s refusing the miners to expand their rights for futher private contract seeking.
Explained better than I could here: http://nacla.org/blog/2016/11/23/what%E2%80%99s-behind-bolivia%E2%80%99s-cooperative-mining-wars
As far as 15 years ago, and this is me being nitpicky, I’d say it was indigenous assertion more than nationalism.
5. December 2016 at 16:02
Canadians in Vancouver just enacted a 15% tax on foreigners buying homes there.
That’s the sort of nationalism that makes Trump look mild.
5. December 2016 at 17:03
Scott,
It’s not shame. It’s intolerance by “progressives” of opposing ideas.
For me it’s a little different….I don’t discuss my vote much with friends and colleagues because I don’t like having to tell them that I think they are either stupid or evil. Silence is sometimes better than honesty.
5. December 2016 at 17:06
Scott,
It’s not nationalism. It’s just plain old tribalism. And it’s rise in the U.S. is entirely a function of its embrace by the Democrats under the euphemism of identity politics.
5. December 2016 at 17:55
“white men would be the sire for about 2.5% of the children born into the black caste in a typical generation”
Mr. Deco….I think you are mathematically challenged. I don’t mean that 25% of African Americans have a white ancestor…I mean on average African Americans have 25% European DNA, meaning one out of 4 of their ancestors are European.
For example…Barack has 50% European DNA and Michelle has around around 10% European DNA (from what I understand) so on average, the first couple has around 30% European DNA…and they don’t seem too much more “light skinned” than the average African American.
The house slaves where mostly 50% European DNA…Thomas Jefferson’s second family was 25% African DNA…and some passed for white and some looked very black. I think there was a lot more racial mixing during the slavery era than the 100 years afterword.
As for Slavery dying out by 1890 in the south…I still think that is extremely unlikely. If anything the victory by the north in the American civil war helped lead to an abolition in Brazil.
Going to college in Virginia 30+ years ago, I was always surprised by how fresh in the minds the American civil war was to my friends from the Georgia and Tennessee and how vigorously they would defend the south’s position in the war…the wounds from that war last until today and hardened opinions ever since.
So back on topic, Nationalism in the form of allegiance to the state of Virginia led Lee to lead the confederacy, even though he stated a dislike for slavery. Poor whites from all over the south rushed to defend the rights of the privileged class of plantation owners that they had little in common with…all for the name of southern pride. All pretty stupid.
5. December 2016 at 18:10
Mr. Deco….I think you are mathematically challenged. I don’t mean that 25% of African Americans have a white ancestor…I mean on average African Americans have 25% European DNA, meaning one out of 4 of their ancestors are European.
I understood that quite well, and indicated nothing different than that in my remarks. My remarks concerned the rate at which the European share was augmented.
5. December 2016 at 19:19
Scott,
“Perhaps someone with more knowledge of Austria (mbka?) can tell me if the nationalist did better in thinly populated rural areas”
Oh I can tell you that. Yes, in the extreme. See graph below. It was as stratified as it gets. Geographically, the green areas (left-liberal winner) are islands of big cities in an ocean of blue (nationalist right wing loser). The urban centres where nationalists lost house the vast majority of foreigners. The rural areas where nationalists won don’t see that many foreigners, save as skiing tourists. The wealthy ski tourism areas in Austria’ West also voted against nationalism btw. But this need not be a surprise, since this is about a perceived threat to identity. The identity of Vienna or Salzburg, and the ski heavens, is already cosmopolitan. No threats here. They depend on foreigners. The identity of the small towns is the one that is perceived as under threat.
Austria has a pure majority vote system for the presidency. With a regional chamber system a la electoral college, this might have gone the other way, but it all depends how you would have set it up.
The mail-in votes, an important component, are also larger majority green. Mail in votes tend to come from people who travel a lot or who own second homes. In the graph below they are not yet represented.
http://derstandard.at/2000048751925/Bundespraesidentschaftswahl-Erste-Ergebnisse?ref=rec
By SES, workers voted over 80% nationalist. White collar college educated folks voted under 20% nationalist.
Btw, oddity or part of a trend: Austria’s nationalist/socialist party calls itself The Libertarian Party of Austria.
“Lorenzo, I agree about Islam not being the same as nationalism. I was using it more as an analogy, as how something might not be “about” what it appears to be about.”
Actually, Benedict Anderson in “Imagined communities” argues strongly that nationalism is what fulfills the function of religion in modernity, i.e. an abstract community of people you do not know, yet assume to have shared values. In this light, the spread of aggressive religion and aggressive nationalism would be two symptoms with quite similar sociological causes.
5. December 2016 at 20:03
If Sumner is anti-nationalist then surely he is anti-national banks.
The BIS showed that central bank inflation is the primary cause of wealth inequality:
http://www.bis.org/publ/qtrpdf/r_qt1603f.pdf
5. December 2016 at 20:51
“Btw, oddity or part of a trend: Austria’s nationalist/socialist party calls itself The Libertarian Party of Austria.”
I think the usual translation if “Freedom Party of Austria”, not exactly the same thing.
The name has a long historical root – during the revolutions of 1848, in german principalities the liberals are also pan-germanists, defending a Germany with a constitutional government against the small absolute monarchies of the Germanic Confederacy; in the end, Germany (or what we now call “Germany”) was unified by the Prussian conservatives; but in Austria pan-germanism continued to be associated with liberalism (while “austrianism” was defendend by the throne-and-altar Christian Social Party, the ancestor of the modern Austrian People’s Party, the mainstream conservative party). After the ascension of Hitler to power, and the instauration of an one-party-state in Austria by the Christian Social government, there was, for all effects, a fusion between liberals and nacional-socialists (the parties of the pan-germanist middle class).
After WW II, the FPO was created with these roots: a party combining a classic liberal program and a grassroots militancy of former (?) nacional-socialists; in the first decades (in spite of being leaded by former SS officers) they remain in the liberal field, but, in the 1980s, they make a turn in a nationalist direction (now with a language sufficiently broad to accommodate both “pan-german” and “austrian” nationalisms – both are anti-immigration, after all), creating the current version of the party
5. December 2016 at 21:09
Dr. Sumner,
I generally support the hypothesis of this post, but the afghan example is a travesty. Please don’t use it as an example. You’re inferring a lot from an extremely unique modernization attempt period of afghan history, the backlash of which overthrew the government. You’re a brilliant economist and academic, but please stay away from using Afghan or Islamic culture as bullet points for your theories. You don’t understand the life or culture of these people, and although I know your heart is in the right place I’d ask that you use different examples. Your support of Islamic culture is enough to put you on the right side of history. Please don’t try to extrapolate from highly unusual periods of Islamic nations’ histories, especially when they were immediately confronted by a violent insurrection as a result. If you want to research Deobandi Islam and Salafi theory then sure, post and we can have a discussion.
Bottom line it shouldn’t matter if a culture requires the Burqa. The Hijab requirement is not something for us to debate. It is their culture, not ours, and we have no right to interfere.
And sharia law is for them to debate, not us. Let people have self determination and determine their own way of life. Even in the West. We gain nothing from demanding obedience. Read Sayid Qutb.
5. December 2016 at 21:31
Hey Scott,
Do you think a pro-business/economic leader can also have a progressive social policy or are they mutually exclusive?
It seems to me that right now the conversation is heading in an either/or format between the two. I would like to believe that they are not mutually exclusive but in the recent years all of these ‘controversial’ leaders (Modi, Trump, etc.) are lacking on the social policy front. What do you think?
Thanks
Viral
5. December 2016 at 21:47
From Yardeni
Ed Yardini: We Are All Populists Now
“(1) Exhibit A China. In researching the causes of the productivity slowdown during the current economic expansion, I ran a chart of the Fed’s indexes for manufacturing industrial production and capacity. They both are available monthly since the late 1940s. Both have been on uptrends since the start of the data until about 2001, when both started moving sideways. China entered the World Trade Organization (WTO) on December 11, 2001.
While manufacturing production reflects the ups and downs of the business cycle, manufacturing capacity has a long history of relatively stable growth. In fact, on a year-over-year basis, the former tends to turn negative, while the latter had remained positive until it turned slightly negative for the first time from September 2003 to October 2004, and again from August 2008 to November 2011. Capacity growth averaged 3.9% from 1949 through 2001. From 2002 through 2015, it averaged just 0.4%.
If we were all populists now, I would argue that this is Exhibit A confirming that US companies stopped expanding their capacity in America ever since China entered the WTO. Instead, they invested in factories in China or outsourced to Chinese factories to produce goods that now are imported into the US rather than made here by American workers.
(2) Smacking productivity. If we were all populists now, I would challenge the argument made by Globalists that Americans have lost jobs as a result of labor-saving technological innovations, rather than the migration of jobs to Chinese workers. I would counter that this notion isn’t supported by the flat trends in manufacturing production and capacity since 2001. Technological innovation should expand manufacturing capacity and boost labor productivity. Yet nonfarm business productivity growth has been extremely weak during the current economic expansion. Over the past 20 quarters (five years), it is up only 0.7% per year on average. It has never been this weak during an economic expansion!
Not surprisingly, there does seem to be a good correlation between the growth in manufacturing capacity on a y/y basis and the five-year growth trend in productivity. The latter tends to grow fastest during or soon after a period of fast growth in capacity. This makes sense to us. If companies aren’t expanding capacity at home, then domestic productivity is likely to suffer.
—30—
Yardeni also posits it is weak aggregate demand that is hampering US productivity.
Why invest in new plant and equipment is the demand is not there (also labor is cheap due to the Fed’s 5% to 10% unemployment target, depending on how you define unemployment)?
Maybe Yardini is wrong. But I do not think he can be easily dismissed as “stupid” or a “Neanderthal.”
The topic of “free trade” (actually, negotiated trade agreements) may not render itself to glib platitudes, well-grounded theoretically, but weak on a practical level.
5. December 2016 at 23:30
Miguel Madeira,
great perspective and historical overview. Just a few comments,
“I think the usual translation if “Freedom Party of Austria”, not exactly the same thing. ”
I used “libertarian” because the usual translation is a bit sketchy sounding to me. Freedom = Freiheit, but the “F” in “FPO” and its German counterpart the “FPD”, stands for “freiheitlich”. Technically this means “freedom-minded” so I thought “libertarian” as the latinized version actually fits better.
As for the classical-liberal element, as you point out, this is all a bit confusing. Let me give some more detail where where the Austrian party is concerned. 1970s FPO leader Friedrich Peter, formerly SS, supported Bruno Kreisky’s social democrat minority government. Chancellor Kreisky, himself Jewish and in exile during the Nazi times, defended Peter against accusations by 1970s Nazi hunters. In part, he did this because he wanted to keep and use the FPO to divide the conservative bloc. And in the 1980s the FPO even became a formal coalition partner governing with the social democrats.
As Jorg Haider overtook the FPO in the 1980s, he made it properly xenophobic-nationalistic, yet kept expressing his admiration for social democrat Kreisky! And estranged former FPO protege of Jorg Haider, Heide Schmidt, left the FPO to lead the truly libertarian “Liberales Forum”, as the FPO veered so much into nationalism / occasional Hitler apologism that even Peter, the former SS man, distanced himself from Haider. Haider eventually fell out with the rest of the FPO and died in a car crash.
And today, in 2016 we have presidential candidate Hofer who used the campaign Slogan “So wahr mir Gott helfe”, which is the old emperor’s pledge to God! It can’t get any more convoluted and at this point I believe we are very, very far from the spirit of 1848 and the freedom-minded classical liberal pangermanists. The FPO truly is nationalistic, socialist, and hardly freedom minded.
6. December 2016 at 04:27
Off topic, but have you seen this?
https://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/economic_brief/2016/eb_16-11
It would seem to be grist for your “have to convince economists in order to get the Fed to change policy” line.
6. December 2016 at 04:57
Scott,
this graph with the final results in Austria, including mail-in votes, is weighted by population. It nicely shows that the split is not by region, but urban vs. rural:
http://derstandard.at/2000048833453/Warum-das-Land-nicht-mehr-nur-blau-ist
Even so, only Styria and Carinthia are clearly nationalist in rural areas in this second vote.
The most interesting part for me in Austria’s vote is that the first annulled (tight) vote came before Trump and Brexit. In the rerun it’s as if the voters had been given a chance to reconsider (“are you sure you want this?”). The split between liberal and nationalist widened from about 50.03% to 54 vs 46% at 74% turnout.
6. December 2016 at 05:38
Note to Lorenzo:
Fascinating paper.
I have long felt Arthur Burns has been roughly treated. Few ever mention that real GDP expanded by 20% in the four years coming out of the 1975-6 recession. Oh, that. Burns only gets credit for double-digit inflation (on the PCE, a scant 10% btw).
Compare the Burns recovery to the Bernanke-Yellen recovery from the 2008 recession.
Moreover, Burns faced a 10-fold spike in oil prices, before the economy adapted and used less oil. Unions were stronger too. Plus, people wore bell-bottom pants and big hair, and drove AMC Pacers around. And this was not only pre-Internet, but pre-fax! If you wanted to place a detailed order of some type, you mailed it in.
BTW, I can not quite decipher the chart. Does it indicate the Fed has been getting consistently tighter since 1980?
https://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/economic_brief/2016/eb_16-11
6. December 2016 at 06:46
Just a random observation on the concentration of the “populist” vote in rural areas. Such a correlation has also been observed in Switzerland, were I live. But because of frequent referenda, we can also measure the *change in the populist vote. Well, the largest swings occurred in the suburbs, rather than in rural areas. Rural areas have leaned more favorably towards populism for a long time. The new (?) phenomena is the populist suburb, encircling an uniformly liberal city
6. December 2016 at 07:03
The BIS showed that central bank inflation is the primary cause of wealth inequality:
That’s a bit of fanaticism on your part.
6. December 2016 at 08:50
Massimo, my understanding of the Civil War is that the precipitating event was the westward expansion – if the new states had been half free, half slave states, the South would not have seceded, at least not at that time, and if the South had agreed to accept that all the new states were free states, the North would not have attacked, at least not at that time.
It might well be that some Southerners were no fans of slavery and saw it ending in its own time, but they definitely weren’t willing to allow the North to gain enough power to end it ahead of that time.
6. December 2016 at 09:11
You are correct that “shame” is more accurate than “shy”, but in pollster world “shy” has been a term of art for some time. In Britain, the phrase “shy Tory” goes back to the early 90’s, and the adjective has stuck on both sides of the pond.
In general, “shy voter” is the last excuse of partisan pundits who don’t want to admit they’re side is losing (it was hyped as a theory in 2012 for Romney), so and so within pollster-world there’s usually a lot of eye-rolling and skepticism when someone brings up the topic (somewhat ironic that there’s a double-level ‘shy voter’ phenomenon- not only voters who are reluctant to give their voting intention but pollsters/pros who are reluctant to take the phenomenon seriously). In their defense one ought to be skeptical of it in general- there is very little evidence that it happens systematically and predictably. Whenever it occurs, it is in some sense sui generis. It’s also hard to predict because for any particular voter, “shame” is also relative to their perception of social acceptability, which is itself highly variable. In order to predict it on a theoretical level, you not only have to specify what is the “shameful” option but why a specific voter or voter demographic would perceive that option as shameful.
It’s quite interesting to read Trafalgar’s explanation (can’t find an easy link, but it’s on the web somewhere if you google it) as to how they discovered the phenomenon this time around. The “ask about your neighbor” was the solution but not how they discovered it. They discovered it during primary season by noticing repeated, systematic differences between their robo-calls and their human-operator calls, with people being more willing to tell the automated system they were voting Trump than a person. That difference is one that pollsters could repeat and test for in the future in any particular contest.
6. December 2016 at 10:53
Swissie: “Well, the largest swings occurred in the suburbs, rather than in rural areas. Rural areas have leaned more favorably towards populism for a long time. The new (?) phenomena is the populist suburb, encircling an uniformly liberal city”
In Switzerland, who lives in the suburbs? The upper-middle class, like in the USA, or the working class, with some council housings, like in Portugal?
6. December 2016 at 11:06
Ben, You said:
“That’s the sort of nationalism that makes Trump look mild.”
No it isn’t.
dtoh, You said:
“I don’t discuss my vote much with friends and colleagues because I don’t like having to tell them that I think they are either stupid or evil.”
Why not just say you happen to have different political views? That’s how things used to be done when I was younger and people were less crazy. Why is everyone today (not you) becoming such a drama queen? It’s just politics, no different from religion or sports or any other area of life where people have different views. People disagree—so what?
mbka, Thanks, and interesting comparison of nationalism and religion.
Anon39, You said:
“Your support of Islamic culture is enough to put you on the right side of history.”
Please don’t comment here if you don’t understand my posts. I do not “support” Islamic culture; to claim I do is absurd. I’m an atheist. I tolerate all religions, but I don’t support any.
And please don’t assume that I know nothing about Afghanistan, if you have no evidence. I knew an Afghan refugee back in 1980, and had lots of discussions about what was going on in the country at the time. I’ve read a number of books about Afghanistan. I’m not as ignorant of their history as you might assume. I remember quite well what happened to the country after 1979.
Viral, You asked:
“Do you think a pro-business/economic leader can also have a progressive social policy or are they mutually exclusive?”
Yes they can. Some “liberals” in Europe combine the two.
Ben, Actually that Yardini quote is a perfect example of innumeracy. He’s not even looking at the right data.
You provided this quote:
“Smacking productivity. If we were all populists now, I would challenge the argument made by Globalists that Americans have lost jobs as a result of labor-saving technological innovations, rather than the migration of jobs to Chinese workers. I would counter that this notion isn’t supported by the flat trends in manufacturing production and capacity since 2001. Technological innovation should expand manufacturing capacity and boost labor productivity. Yet nonfarm business productivity growth has been extremely weak during the current economic expansion.”
Sorry, but that’s simply moronic, there’s no other way to put it. He’s citing total productivity, whereas his argument requires the (dramatically different) manufacturing productivity.
Lorenzo, Thanks, I did a post on that at Econlog.
6. December 2016 at 13:07
This seems disturbingly off brand, Scott. To know whether nationalism is a economic problem, don’t we need to know something about whether India’s monetary policy has been too tight (I have no idea)?
Obviously, what’s happened across Europe and the US has been sluggish growth caused by too-tight monetary policy, leading to rising nationalism.
(Only mostly kidding)
6. December 2016 at 17:56
This rural vs. urban thing always reminds me of Ibn Khaldun’s concept of “asabiyyah”. One of the oldest concepts of tribalism (and nationalism) I know of. If Ibn Khaldun is right than the urban people got no chance in the long run. Maybe we are seeing the early signs of this development already. Maybe this is what brought down the Roman Empire (and other empires) as well.
Another point:
Nationalism according to Gellner is a necessity and I tend to agree. I think the main problem of the anti-nationalists is that they got no convincing substitute. Criticizing nationalism is the easy part, the hard part is finding a substitute.
Another point:
When you look at the history of nationalism you will soon find out that nationalism was actually progress. It might not be progress today but the problem of finding a substitute remains. Instead of condemning nationalism I would do they opposite and take nationalism simply one step further. That’s what people did when they moved forward from regions (and hundreds of principalities) to nations.
6. December 2016 at 21:54
Christian List,
“Instead of condemning nationalism I would do they opposite and take nationalism simply one step further. That’s what people did when they moved forward from regions (and hundreds of principalities) to nations.”
Zou realize that you are making the point of moving from individual states to the United States of America, and to move the individual states to the EU and eventually, the United States of Europe? This, I don’t mind at all. Count me in.
6. December 2016 at 22:14
Christian List,
I do take exception though with the idea that nationalism was necessarily progress. It was progress to unite smaller administrative units (say prinicpalities) into a larger unit, especially with Germany. But historically, nationalism goes hand in hand with a forced homogeneization of the newly formed nation. The nation needs symbols, a language etc. and whoever doesn’t fit in is coerced to conform. France the kingdom tolerated basque and breton and provencal languages. France the nationalistic Republic did not. e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_policy_in_France , read and weep. The Republic even came up with plans for a mandatory national costume for the French person.The first casualty of nationalism is internal diversity.
Then, take another example. The Danubian monarchy was a conglomerate of nations, a proto-EU, that never imposed German on its people, nor was it a nation in the modern sense, right up to 1918. Its nation state successors were not particularly successful, including initially the germanic leftover “Austria” that threw itself into Germany’s arms soon enough. 80-odd years later, in the biggest irony of them all, they all had happily joined the EU, and had it not been for the Soviets this would have happened in the 1980s.
There is a herartbraking scene in a WWI play, the source I cannot recall, it might have been out of Karl Kraus or Musil. When the war is over, all men of a military Austrian monarchy unit go home to their newly formed nations. Except the commander. He now has nowhere to go, because he was the only real “Austrian”, a person who belonged to the whole melting pot and not to any specific nation. Ironically, US president Wilson helped break up Austria into many nations while the US had formed through a combination of nations, and immigration, into the same kind of melting pot that Austria had already been.
Nationalism is an illusory comfort that plays to tribalism. Not all our natural tendencies should be encouraged.
6. December 2016 at 23:54
America and its sidekick, Europe, were winning in the 60’s and so places like Afghanistan emulated a winner. But recently the US has been losing ground economically vis a vis China and before that Japan. The Great Recession exposed debt as the Achilles heel of Western economies, and mismanagement of war and peace in the Middle East exposed America as an incompetent ally.
As the Western cosmopolitan culture led and championed by America loses its luster, other cultures–Russian, Chinese, Islamic, Pentacostalist, Know-Nothings–fill the growing void. I don’t see it as a spreading contagion but instead as an unleashing of competitors.
7. December 2016 at 04:48
I review the new Richmond paper on Arthur Burns.
The rehabilitation of Arthur Burns has begun!
Seriously, an important paper, especially for what it says about Fed policy for the last 40 years. Very plausible.
http://ngdp-advisers.com/2016/12/07/fed-getting-mostly-tighter-40-years/
7. December 2016 at 06:01
Christian, The US got along quite well for 240 years without nationalist presidents. I can’t see how it’s essential.
Carl, So Afghanistan is now emulating China?
Even more absurd, China is now “winning”? What exactly are they winning?
Ben, The rehabilitation of Burns ended with my recent Econlog post.
7. December 2016 at 07:21
There is a herartbraking scene in a WWI play, the source I cannot recall, it might have been out of Karl Kraus or Musil. When the war is over, all men of a military Austrian monarchy unit go home to their newly formed nations. Except the commander. He now has nowhere to go, because he was the only real “Austrian”, a person who belonged to the whole melting pot and not to any specific nation. Ironically, US president Wilson helped break up Austria into many nations while the US had formed through a combination of nations, and immigration, into the same kind of melting pot that Austria had already been.
Nationalism is an illusory comfort that plays to tribalism. Not all our natural tendencies should be encouraged.
You’re a dog howling at the moon. The Hapsburg monarchy was in precarious shape from ethnic cleavages for 70 years before it fell to pieces. Emperor Karl was a fine character, but the various components of his empire seceded quite spontaneously and rapidly in the last weeks of 1918. In none of those components was he recalled to the throne and Hungary adopted a constitutional provision specifically debarring a Hapsburg restoration.
The US is a society of migrants. The Hapsburg monarchy was not. The U.S. has, for most of its history, had a uniform language. The Hapsburg monarchy did not. This isn’t that difficult.
7. December 2016 at 07:40
Art Deco,
given its alleged dysfunction, you might want to carry on to explain why the Austrian empire under the Babenbergers and later the Habsburg, lasted for just shy of 1000 years. All things will have an end but they must have done some things right, and the empire famously was a multinational conglomerate. The Habsburg started out in Switzerland fer crying out loud.
“Hungary adopted a constitutional provision specifically debarring a Hapsburg restoration. ”
Dear, you are really fishing from the internet. Much more relevant: even AUSTRIA itself barred the monarchy from restoration, abolished titles of nobility, and confiscated the crown lands for the Republic. Losing WWI might have had something to do with it. Yet: Germany was not dismantled into its warring nationally distinct constituents (catholic Bavaria vs protestant Prussia comes to mind). Austria was.
Off topic, I am genuinely curious: Why do half the English language sources use the spelling “Hapsburg”? I have only ever seen it spelled “Habsburg” in German, that includes their original residence in Switzerland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habsburg_Castle
7. December 2016 at 08:32
Dear, you are really fishing from the internet.
No, junior high school history, nearly 40 years ago.
7. December 2016 at 08:35
Yet: Germany was not dismantled into its warring nationally distinct constituents (catholic Bavaria vs protestant Prussia comes to mind). Austria was.
Funny thing about that.
While we’re at it, IIRC the only intra-German warfare to be had in the previous century had been between the Hapsburgs and Prussia, and not much of that.
7. December 2016 at 08:38
that plays to tribalism.
While we’re at it, tribes are lineage groups. Nations are not. Tribalism’s a problem in the Arab world. That’s not why people are voting for immigration control in France and Austria.
7. December 2016 at 09:04
Art Deco,
“While we’re at it, IIRC the only intra-German warfare to be had in the previous century had been between the Hapsburgs and Prussia, and not much of that.”
If you look up the Austrian-Prussian war of 1866 you’ll see that half the German provinces sided with Austria, including Bavaria. Prussia won, and unified Germany under itself into the first instance of Germany as a nation in the modern sense. Germany, which for most people stands as the poster image of nationalism, is one of world’s youngest nations.
Italy too of course unified around this time and to this day the North isn’t sure if it even wants to be in the same country as the South. Belgium is a synthetic nation state of culturally, linguistically, and ethnically vastly divided groups. Switzerland is a multi language conglomerate. Spain. The sometimes dis-United Kingdom. I could go on and on. None of your cherished nations are exactly self-evident units that “belong together” by force of nature. Most are barely a couple hundred years old, much much younger than the multicultural Austrian Empire had grown. You could almost make a case that multicultural and polyglot empires, think Rome, Byzance, the Ottomans, were the norm of old and lasted far longer than ethnically “pure” nations of the past. Why, because they allowed their constituent parts to remain culturally distinct and did not try to homogenize people the way the modern nation state does.
And, of course nations are not tribes. See above. Nationalism is make-believe tribalism – the pretense that your fellow citizen is somehow ethnically related and that hence you “belong”.
7. December 2016 at 09:45
ationalism is make-believe tribalism – the pretense that your fellow citizen is somehow ethnically related and that hence you “belong”.
You’re multi-episode complaint is that people do not have the loyalties you fancy they ought. That’s pretty silly.
7. December 2016 at 10:02
to this day the North isn’t sure if it even wants to be in the same country as the South.
The Northern League is a decentralist party, not a secessionist one. It commands around a quarter of the electorate in Lombardy and Veneto and 3-11% elsewhere in the North. This is supposed to be a refutation of Italian nationhood?
7. December 2016 at 10:03
Belgium is a synthetic nation state of culturally, linguistically, and ethnically vastly divided groups.
It has been remarked…by Flemish secessionists. Your point is what?
7. December 2016 at 10:26
“The US got along quite well for 240 years without nationalist presidents. I can’t see how it’s essential.”
-Read the 1876 Republican platform some time. You are too stupid to live.
7. December 2016 at 10:44
None of your cherished nations are exactly self-evident units that “belong together” by force of nature. Most are barely a couple hundred years old, much much younger than the multicultural Austrian Empire had grown.
Except for Belgium, all of them are linguistically delineated. France emerged from the Carolingian realms in 843 ad, 80% of what is today Britain was assembled by 937 AD, Spain was assembled by 1492, Sweden by the beginning of the 16th c. The Hapsburg dominions in 1492 were confined to what is today Austria and a modest slice of Slavic and Italian territory adjacent, and acquired and lost a large mass of territory before assuming it’s ultimate form around 1775. Your ‘multicultural empire’ existed for shy of 400 years.
7. December 2016 at 10:48
The US got along quite well for 240 years without nationalist presidents. I can’t see how it’s essential.
And Teddy Roosevelt called his programme…
7. December 2016 at 10:49
@ssumner
So… it’s absurd of me to speculate that the rise of nationalism around the world is due to receding US soft power and is not the result of a mysterious force permeating the world?
7. December 2016 at 11:00
@mbka,
I thought this was interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K46xhuyDNX8
He brings up multi-lingual Switzerland as an example.
7. December 2016 at 11:05
“You’re (sic) multi-episode complaint is that people do not have the loyalties you fancy they ought. That’s pretty silly.”
Peak Art Deco hypocrisy there LOL.
7. December 2016 at 15:24
You realize that you are making the point of moving from individual states to the United States of America, and to move the individual states to the EU and eventually, the United States of Europe?
That’s indeed the substitute I have in mind but you need to do it correctly. You don’t do it correctly by attacking nationalism. As you correctly point out nationalism is just make-believe, it’s about uniting smaller administrative units through a story that is mostly made up. Forming a United States of Europe is simply repeating the same trick all over again, which means that you will never be successful when you keep attacking the actual trick. I assume anti-nationalists will never get that.
The Danubian monarchy was a conglomerate of nations, a proto-EU, that never imposed German on its people
I know people like to idealize the Danubian monarchy (especially Austrians; I assume they want to be great again, well they won’t). I don’t think the decline of Habsburg is a good example of how things should be done. The Danubian monarchy was brutal against its minorities, just ask the Serbians and the Hungarians if you really want to know. People also seem to forget the rather fast ending of this monstrous undemocratic conglomerate. How did it end again? Oh yes, I remember, it ended in a catastrophe of epic proportions.
I will never really understand why people would pick this monarchy when they could simple move a little bit west and pick the very first nation on earth, and a democratic one as well, it’s a success story until this very day, I thinks it’s called the United States of America. It’s a very nationalistic project, no matter how often ssumner keeps denying that.
@Carl
Very good points. Pretty much exactly my view, too. Obama disengaged big and the other nations (mostly thugs) are filling the void.
7. December 2016 at 15:31
@ssumner
One more point. My theory that the status of US power affects other cultures’ activities purports to explain both phenomena you write about: mini-skirts in Kabul in the 60’s and the surge of nationalism today. Your theory of episodic pan-global cultural contagions requires two independent causes. You may be right, but I don’t think you can arrive at that conclusion using the principle of Occam’s razor.
7. December 2016 at 18:27
Christian List,
The creation of an European identity was under way and this is what the nationalists in the various member states that have fought against it very hard. The strategic response of the pro EU camp was not always the emotionally intelligent, on this I agree with you. To me it is not hard to find common European ground, I find it pretty self evident. I suspect for most young people it is much more self evident too than nationalists a la Farage believe. I have always believed the EU is a political project and should be about more freedom in a larger space, for everyone. Unfortunately it was sold as an economic project that promised cheaper TV sets. I have never understood why it was presented this way. I would have been pro EU even if it was economically neutral. Even if it came a net cost.
Either way kudos to your first paragraph, makes complete sense to me.
As for the Danubian monarchy I disagree that it was particularly horrible in context. Its nationalistic neighbor to the North did far worse in 12 years than Austria did in 1000. We know there’s nothing grand about Austria today, and Hofer running under “So wahr mir Gott helfe” is as ludicrous as it gets. That being said, the only people who bring up grievance with the Danubian monarchy today today are Hungarians. It’s usually in the context that in their own eyes they were cheated out of their own vast and richly deserved empire. I always found this a bit rich considering that Hungary was a near equal partner and since the 1500s (it was Austria-Hungary properly in name since 1867, K & K standing for Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary). Budapest and Vienna, and only them, had their own parliaments. Hungary for centuries had their own border controls, customs, was fiscally independent. If you ever go to Budapest, their parliament is larger than the Austrian one, it’s a proper copy of Westminster. Next, Franz Ferdinand’s plan for the monarchy was to create another parliament for the slavs (to make it less dominated by Austrians and Hungarians) and to transform Austria-Hungary into a proper federation, very modern and EU-like in concept. He was assassinated because slav nationalists did not want this. They wanted their own nations. The result were such raging political successes as Yugoslavia.
As per Scott’s post title, Austria-Hungary attempted to become a federation of nations a century too soon, at a time when nationalism was in the air. It failed in part because of policy mistakes, but to a large extent, it failed because of the nationalistic spirit of the times. This nationalism got us WWI and WWII with 70+ million dead plus the holocaust. Contrast this with the thinking streams withing the Danubian monarchy in terms of economics and liberalism: Bohm-Bawerk, Mises, Hayek, Schumpeter, all emerged from the K&K monarchy.
7. December 2016 at 18:36
Carl,
I think you completely misread nationalism and ethnic resurgence. Yes people follow fashions and Scott’s post precisely was about that, that certain things are “in the air”. But this “winning” vs Obama’s “losing” or disengaging is just silly. People use, copy, implement the “West”‘s ideas and fashions whenever they make sense to them. Go to Indonesia and watch hundreds of millions of muslims, men and women, wear blue jeans, as American a cultural icon as it gets.
Nationalism is not about copying someone else’s stuff because they are “winning”. Nationalism is about identity. And as Scott pointed out, who is copying China now, how is China even “winning”? Islamic resurgence and radicalism started in the 70s and early 80s, it has been a very long time coming. The resistance in Afghanistan was islamic. The revolution in Iran was islamic. The civil war in Algeria (90’s) was islamic. Wars in SE Asia were nationalistic (postcolonial wars, e.g. Vietnam – Cambodia – China, 3 varieties of communist countries going to war). India – Bangladesh – Pakistan, all nationalistic / ethnic / religious components in wars well before the US suddenly “lost its luster” with Obama. I mean, you haven’t got the slightest point here.
8. December 2016 at 00:06
@mbka
Now I’m lost. You’re in agreement with Scott that I have no point because I’m agreeing with Scott that there is a surge in nationalist activity but disagreeing with him on it’s cause whereas you’re assuring me that there is, of course, no surge in nationalism. If your point is that the world is a complex place and America never had absolute power then I agree with you. If your point is that there is no surge in nationalism, then why are you arguing with me and not Scott?
By the way, I didn’t say people were now emulating China because America was losing its luster. I said they were emulating America less because we were losing power. Note my use of the terms “filling the void” and “unleashing” of competitors. I didn’t say Afghans were trading in their mini skirts for cheongsams.
And regarding your blue jeans comment. Can you point to a mass adoption of Uzbeki fashion or the Peruvian political system or Chadian team sports somewhere that shows how countries are equally likely to adopt cultural attributes of non-powerful foreign countries.
And what’s up with your Obama defense? I never mentioned him.
8. December 2016 at 02:47
Carl,
where did you get the idea that I argued that there is no surge in nationalism? It’s in the air, that’s Scott’s claim, I agree, and it’s about identity, that’s my claim to you.
You said people were emulating America less because it is losing its power. This whole line of thought is hokus. My point was, the surge in nationalism somehow predates the current decade, and the beginnings of renewed religious extremism easily go back to the 70s. So how could nationalism have been caused by the US losing some power recently, presumably under Obama (as Trump would say). Or was it already losing power when it invaded Iraq and Afghanistan? Or did it lose power when it won the cold war? When did the whole power loss start? And how come Indonesians still wear those powerless blue jeans?
8. December 2016 at 07:58
just ask the Serbians and the Hungarians if you really want to know.
Serbia proper was never a Hapsburg realm. It was an Ottoman component. There was a Serb population in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but they weren’t under Hapsburg rule until 40 years before the empire disappeared, and were so during the Hapsburg’s constitutional period (1857-1918). I doubt the Germanophone elite in Austria compared unfavorably to the Magyar elite re ill treatment of subject peoples.
8. December 2016 at 08:13
This nationalism got us WWI and WWII with 70+ million dead plus the holocaust.
No, it didn’t. German revanchism got you Hitler and Hitler’s idiosyncratic obsessions (implemented through hierarchical German bureaucracies and by kindred fanatics) got you the Holocaust. A concatenation of events got you German revanchism, among them the terms of Versailles. Do you honestly think that Gen. von Schleicher or Gustav von Kahr or Hjalmar Schacht would have gone to war in 1939 under those circumstances, or ordered the slaughter of Jews in six digit job lots? Or is it your contention that these men were Davos-style cosmopolitans? Is it your contention that Tsar Boris, King Carol, Franco, Salazar, Dollfuss, and Schuschnigg were not nationalists? Or that they’d have conquered Ruritania and slaughtered the Jews if they’d had the ammo? Is Soviet Russia, with it’s 8-digit pile of corpses, your idea of a ‘nationalist’ regime?
As for the 1st World War, machtpolitik was the source of that, along with certain rigidities in modern military planning. Gavrilo Princip et al were certainly nationalists, but large countries do not face security dilemmas because you have freelance assassins running around. Aldous Huxley did complain that nationalism prevented a brokered armistice, but his complaint was primarily directed at the British establishment, you eventually did have a brokered armistice, and the tactic of defending against machine guns with young men’s chests is not of ‘nationalist’ origin.
8. December 2016 at 09:27
Art Deco,
you realize the mess did not start with Hitler, right? That nationalism was “in the air” everywhere, right? That’s the whole point. It’s well known that Bismarck unified Germany on the back of foreign wars 50 years earlier. WWI was the continuation, this time involving a bunch of competing gung-ho nation states, some newly-minted like Germany and Italy, some older but still virulently nationalistic, like France. France had the revanchist part in 1914 still seething from 1870. That plus the more hapless (in the context) old fashioned empires of Austria-Hungary and Russia. WWII was the end of what nationalism had started. As you point out, WWI started with Gavrilo Princip, a nationalist terrorist. None of these details matter in particular because they’re all just specific instances of a general nationalist mood all over Europe that affected nearly every country. Post WWII the European Community and its successors were started to prevent this from happening again which worked out fine until idiots like Farage came on the scene with their pet projects of national purity yet again.
In comparing Germany and Austria-Hungary, two germanically-dominated empires, we have a nice natural experiment of what nationalism can do. One was rapidly becoming a modern nation state, the other remained a traditional empire / conglomerate. It was the nation state that birthed the vastly greater tragedy. This was my second point. And you might realize too that the holocaust was just the most extreme consequence of the neurotic desire for national “purity”: killing internal diversity. The Armenians in Turkey, same story, nation building on the back of inconvenient minorities. It’s always the same story. That was my next point.
8. December 2016 at 10:49
you realize the mess did not start with Hitler, right?
mbka, you’re trying to stick nationalism with the bill for two sets of death happenings. With regard to the 2d, it certainly did start with Hitler and is inconceivable without his very peculiar passions.
It’s well known that Bismarck unified Germany on the back of foreign wars 50 years earlier. WWI was the continuation,
It was nothing of the kind. Bismarck had discrete objects in 1864 which were fulfilled with circumscribed commitments.
You seem to fancy that politics among nations is just Georgia peachy keen without ‘nationalism’ clouding everyone’s viewpoint and that ‘nationalism’ accounts for large death tolls without regard to technologies available, tactics made use of, how well matched are the combatants, and the pride and professional interests of senior officers. Your example of nefarious nationalism is World War I, which had the vigorous participation of three multi-ethnic empires and a fourth country which has been more immune that any other to pathological passions in its political life (the most nationalistic figure in British politics was Winston Churchill, whose maxims of political life included “In Victory, Magnanimity”). Serbia suffered a double-digit loss in population at the hands of the military of the doddering Hapsburg dynasts.
Political life and political competition does not stop dead when principles of action are written by dynastic considerations. Countries retain their interests and anxieties, and the Hapsburgs had plenty. And you’re not likely to find principles of action written by dynastic considerations when you have a population that has something to do with itself above and beyond struggling with the elements.
The response of Davos twits to this regularity of social relations has been to construct a bureaucratic architecture immune to popular control and devoid of popular loyalty, all the better to keep the peasants in their place. Well, you can look at the economies of southern Europe or the consequences of the hag-chancellor’s rapefugee policy and you can see how that’s working out for you. Your response is annoyance that people want to retain and govern their own countries.
8. December 2016 at 21:30
@mbka
The answer to most of your questions is yes. US power was at its apex in the 50s and 60’s and has been slowly declining since. I didn’t think this was a radical opinion, but maybe it is.
And you can stop rushing to rescue Obama. I never mentioned the guy. I’m no fan but nor am I a fan of Trump.
And Indonesians may wear blue jeans because America is still very powerful and influential. Our power is waning. It has not disappeared. Or maybe they just like blue jeans. Blue jeans are, in my opinion, the greatest invention in the history of pants.
8. December 2016 at 22:25
US power was at its apex in the 50s and 60’s and has been slowly declining since. I didn’t think this was a radical opinion, but maybe it is.
You’re confounding the relative with the absolute. The relative position of the United States was at its peak in 1945. Much of Europe and Japan was in ruins and Soviet Russia had lost about 20 million people. The only parts of the world richly endowed with human capital that hadn’t seen their physical capital pummeled were North America, the Antipodes, the Southern Cone of South America, and some European neutrals like Switzerland and Sweden. The American advantage was bound to diminish as Europe and Japan reconstructed their public works and industries. There has actually been only modest change in the share of global product contributed by the United States since 1980. What has changed that China’s contribution has grown so large.
9. December 2016 at 07:20
@Art Deco
Yes, I am talking about America coming down from a post war high water mark.And, yes, the absolute matters when it comes to power. But, the relative matters more than the absolute. The Belgian army of today could have wiped out the entire Roman Empire. And small steady changes in the US debt level, decreasing share of world GDP, mishandling of foreign wars and the rapid rise of China add up.
11. December 2016 at 15:16
O/T: https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/807987340941684736