A passionate plea for an urgent change of course – The Irish Times

It’s possible that one day’s news could include the election of a far-right party to power in Europe, racist rants Donald Trump calling immigrants “animals” and “not human”, highlighting sexually explicit images Deepfake images of Taylor Swiftconspiracy theories about Covid vaccines, news about influencer Andrew Tate justifying rapes, mass shootings, massacres in India and the US, and genocide in both countries. GazaMyanmar, Xinjiang or Ukraine. Admittedly, this would be the bad news of the day, but all of this news is depressingly familiar.

Richard Seymour’s genius in Disaster Nationalism: The Fall of a Liberal Civilization is not only to provide a coherent explanation of why such brutal dysfunction assails us at this time, but to explain how these individual pieces of news come together point to a systemic erosion of democracy. and the rise and emergence of fascism. In the “end days” of liberal democracy, Seymour reminds us, such a storm of dysfunction is exactly what we should expect.

Understanding the appeal of disaster nationalism could begin at home by considering the news about Passing drivers shouted insults at refugees camped on Dublin’s Grand Canal. How do we understand such aggression and misunderstanding towards people living in extreme poverty and extreme vulnerability?

Seymour’s explanation lies in what he calls the “falling middle.” He cites research that shows that rising inequality increases perceived threats to income and status, not particularly for the poorest, but for those higher in the class hierarchy. The trajectory of decline and the well-founded fear that we risk being relegated to an inferior position in terms of income and status are generating not solidarity but resentment and aggression towards the less advantaged. The far right, Seymour writes, is a balm for those under threat and on the downward spiral. And after decades of financial crises, a cost-of-living crisis and severe shortages of housing and social services, this potentially covers a lot of people.

While far-right parties that promote disaster nationalism claim to represent the betrayed, the abandoned and the left behind, in reality they receive support from both those who fear it might happen to them and those with who it really happened. Against this fear, catastrophe nationalism offers a therapeutic, violent restoration—the current catastrophic situation can be solved by purifying the nation.

It also creates a real enemy that can be attacked and potentially eradicated, rather than nebulous “systems” responsible for the disease. After all, climate change, inequality and financial crises cannot be prosecuted, caught, kicked out or shot.

In this volatile context, Seymour adds, the shock tactical rhetoric of nationalist “authorities” such as Trump aims to channel this discontent. Trump’s hate speech, he writes, “is programmatic. It is aimed at barbarism of morals. It is aimed at barbarism.”

The context, of course, is not simply the experience or threat of personal economic decline. The current moment is also marked by a series of serious crises that include acute inequality, the erosion of democracy, the rise of autocracy, environmental disasters, war and climate change. Disaster nationalism can rely heavily on people’s fears.

Seymour’s second achievement in Disaster Nationalism is to piece together the desperate dysfunction evident in our news bulletins to show that this is not only what we should expect in today’s “end times” but also how far we already are We are on the road to fascism. Seymour’s focus here is not on “authority” leaders, but on the emergence of conditions within civil society that enable them to act, and pathologies within civil society that mark the path to full-blown state-sponsored violence—the proliferation of single people. wolf killings and mass shootings, a network of vigilantes, conspirators and normalized sexual violence that culminated in brutal pogroms and genocide.

The end point of catastrophic nationalism is clearly visible, writes Seymour, in Israel’s genocidal actions against the people of Gaza and support Benjamin Netanyahufar-right government of the largest Western democracies. His harrowing chapter on the Gaza Strip shows that genocide is happening today and that the conditions for widespread support for it exist in many places around the world. The popular appeal of right-wing politicians once again proves that millions of people will gladly jump at the chance to destroy the enemy in search of “security”, revenge and a purified vision of the nation-state.

Given the circumstances and the trajectory we are on, it would be naive to suggest that our overburdened democratic systems can be stable enough to withstand the current polycrisis. What comes next, Seymour writes, will depend on reviving the model of our society in ways other than simply reinforcing faith in failed systems. The task is to eliminate the conditions that give rise to illusions. Disaster nationalism is a powerful denial of these illusions and a passionate call for an urgent change of course.

Ian Hughes – author Disorder of the mind: how dangerous individuals are destroying democracy