{"id":2724,"date":"2019-08-08T15:23:09","date_gmt":"2019-08-08T15:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/?p=2724"},"modified":"2019-10-28T17:39:43","modified_gmt":"2019-10-28T17:39:43","slug":"who-are-the-optimists-in-a-xenophobic-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/?p=2724","title":{"rendered":"Brexit and nostalgia: Who are the optimists in a xenophobic world?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Britain\u2019s new prime minster, Boris Johnson, berates opponents of Brexit for being gloomy pessimists, unwilling to embrace the golden age that automatically awaits the UK when it leaves the European Union. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is at first sight odd, since a pessimistic nostalgia is often reported to be the prevailing mood among the supporters of Brexit, of Donald Trump, and of the various other xenophobic movements currently on the march in Europe and elsewhere. The paradox can be resolved: xenophobes become optimists after the nation in question has been liberated from its entanglements with foreigners; others are optimists until that point has been reached.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brexiteers object to being lumped together with xenophobic\nmovements; is their slogan not \u2018global Britain\u2019? Is not leaving the EU intended\nto enable closer relations with the rest of the world, making the UK \u2018the\nSingapore of the Atlantic\u2019? In that case they need to explain why the campaign\nfor Brexit concentrated almost exclusively on reducing immigration, ending the\nneed for co-operation with the country\u2019s near neighbours, and on inciting fear\nof Turkey acceding to the EU. These were the things shouted from the rooftops;\nanything about global trade was muttered quietly in the broadsheets. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Intensified globalisation may well be the goal of\nJohnson and other Brexit leaders, but it has not been the basis of their mass\nappeal. It is notable that the young and better educated, those to whom any\nnation has to look for optimism, were the most hostile to Brexit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the UK, as in much of the rest of Europe and\nthe US, xenophobic movements have found their strongest support in areas and\ncities most removed from the dynamic sectors of the post-industrial and high-tech\neconomy, even if their inhabitants are reasonably prosperous. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Philip Manow found that in west Germany the\nAlternative f\u00fcr Deutschland draws its greatest support among older, secure,\nsocially insured workers in the country\u2019s prosperous, traditional manufacturing\nsectors; prosperous, but traditional. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my forthcoming research I have found that across\nEurope, larger cities with either concentrations of high-tech activities or\nsimply an abundance of economic opportunities have almost always resisted the\ncurrent resurgence of xenophobic parties far more than their less dynamic\nsurrounding regions. Similar evidence is reported from the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whatever Johnson may say, the public that has been supporting him and similar nationalistic leaders do not see themselves as being at the vanguard of a dynamic new economy. Their prevailing mood has been one of pessimistic nostalgia, the Brexit vote an expression of regret at the passing of a world when things seem to have been better. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This extends beyond the economic. Several surveys\nhave shown that the outlook of those supporting the new movements often, though\nof course not always, brings together resentment at the growing prominence of\nethnic minorities in national life, at the new place in life being secured by\nmany women, at liberal approaches to child-rearing, together with hostility to\nimmigration or to the role of international organisations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a study of support for xenophobic parties in\nsix western European countries (Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, the\nNetherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland) in 2012 – before the current\nxenophobic wave had reached anywhere near its current level – Eefje\nSteenvoorden and Eelco Harteveld<\/a> found nostalgia and pessimism to be key\nconcepts in making sense of their survey results. In a study of the\nBrexit and Trump movements,<\/a> two Italian scholars, Edoardo Campanella and\nMarta Dass\u00f9 found \u2018Anglo nostalgia\u2019 to be the best way of understanding what\nthey were observing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pessimistic nostalgia is by itself just a rather\nquiet and passive mood. When it is politicised it rapidly changes character. If\nthe future seems likely to be worse than the past, one can at least try to\nsafeguard what one has preserved from the past, resisting invasion by newcomers\nof various kinds, demanding their exclusion and the minimisation of contact\nwith them. That is a noisy and active mood, creating resentment, hatred,\noccasionally violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once pessimistic nostalgics can see their way\nclear to successful exclusions, they can cheer up and become the optimists,\nwelcoming links with foreigners now that these are certain to be kept at arm\u2019s\nlength, taunting as pessimists those who treasured inclusion and openness and\nsee the liberal world they hoped to create darkening. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But however forward-looking the erstwhile\npessimists now seem, their hoped-for future remains anchored in the past. Trump\ncries \u2018make America great again<\/em>\u2019 [my italics]. Viktor Orb\u00e1n, the\nxenophobic leader who has probably devoted most thought to the new ideology,\npresents maps of Hungary with its pre-World War I boundaries. Johnson and\nfellow Brexiteers constantly invoke 1940 when Britain stood alone in the Second\nWorld War as their template for the post-Brexit UK. Jacob Rees-Mogg, an arch\nBrexiteer, started his appointment as Leader of the House of Commons by giving\nhis staff instructions on language use, including bringing back the outmoded\nterm \u2018esquire\u2019 when writing to male persons without titles, and banning use of\nthe metric system in favour of the old British Imperial system of weights and\nmeasures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is \u2018Back to the future\u2019 and \u2018The empire strikes\nback\u2019 rolled into one. It would be comical, were it not for the menace of\nhatred that inevitably lies behind demands for exclusion, and for the hopeless\nnature of an optimism that rejects the outlook of the best and brightest who\nmust make a nation\u2019s future.<\/p>\n<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Britain\u2019s new prime minster, Boris Johnson, berates opponents of Brexit for being gloomy pessimists, unwilling to embrace the golden age that automatically awaits the UK when it leaves the European Union. This is at first sight odd, since a pessimistic nostalgia is often reported to be the prevailing mood among the supporters of Brexit, of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133,"featured_media":2727,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1390,1395,1417,1391],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1599],"class_list":["post-2724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brexit","category-comment","category-europe","category-international-politics"],"amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/cropped-andrew-buchanan-ICrWR34thXA-unsplash.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/133"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2724"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=2724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}