Mês: maio 2018

Don’t Fear the New Nationalism   The utopian belief in a globalized world without borders is dying in the West.   Anatol Lieven Jun. 25, 2017   MARRIAGE BETWEEN the Economist and the New Left Review may seem like one of Hieronymus Bosch’s stranger copulations. Liberal capitalists and Marxists have been drawn passionately together over the past few decades in one area: their common utopian belief in the development of a globalized world without nationalism and national borders, a dream now dying in the West. Elsewhere, it never really took root beyond sections of the Western-influenced (and often Western-subsidized) intelligentsia. Nationalism has frequently been described as a form of religion, and as the social scientist Liah Greenfeld writes, Like the great religions of the past, nationalism today forms the foundation of our social consciousness, the cognitive framework of our perception of reality. Seen against the record of the great religions’ historical longevity and continuous vitality over centuries of political, economic and technological change, the recognition of this functional equivalence may give us a more accurate idea of nationalism’s projected life span and pace of development. The strongest states in Asia today are those with strong nationalisms, which are central to the legitimacy not only of the present regimes but of the states themselves. The development of strong senses of national identity is not only a regime strategy; it also...