The British Conservative Party has long boasted of being the most successful political party on the planet. The unimaginable scale of its defeat on July 4, when it won the fewest seats in its history, looks like the downfall of moderate conservatism. It appears to be the final straw for the center-right parties offering pragmatism, prosperity and opportunity that have dominated Western politics since World War II. Almost everywhere conservatism’s brash rivalzodiacbet, nationalist populism, is on the march: already in power with its colorful leaders in Hungary, Italy and Argentina; on the brink of it in the United States and France; and eroding the old-style conservatives in Germany, the Netherlands and now Britain. The rivalry on the right is in danger of becoming a rout, with the senior, steadier force swallowed by its insurgent challenger.
These shocks to our established ways of thinking are so violent that we immediately assume that this must be a unique apocalypse, the product of unprecedented social and economic forces. This, I think, is a temptation to be resisted. The reality is that something similar has often happened or nearly happened before, at different times and in different places. Nationalist populism, my umbrella term for the smorgasbord of hard-right forces, always sings the same song. The circumstances that gain it a sympathetic hearing are usually much the same, too: decline of old industries and loss of well-paid jobs for men, undercutting by rising nations and, of course, fresh waves of immigrants from new places. It’s when mainstream conservatism visibly flounders in dealing with the challenge — as it has so clearly done in recent years — that such movements can hope to surge.
The upshot is both concerning and consoling. Conservatism has been here before — and it can get through it again.
Nationalist populism is not a weird deviation from the natural flow of history. Since the dawn of the nation-state, it has been an ever-present threat, sometimes lurking in the shadows, sometimes derided as a throwback, but never quite disappearing from view. The possibilities for its success are often visible well in advance to keen observers, at times when most people are thinking about something else. In 1922, when the rest of Europe was convulsed by the threat of Bolshevism and Adolf Hitler was still a nonentity, the German chancellor declared “There is no doubt about it: The enemy is on the right.” In 1994, when all of Europe was still celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of history, Edward Luttwak foresaw a “space that remains wide open for a product-improved fascist party.”
It’s in the United States where the most stunning example of something like that has taken place. But the Trump phenomenon did not come out of a calm blue sky. Donald Trump’s discarded guru Steve Bannon saw in his master echoes of earlier populist orators, such as William Jennings Bryan, who could rage against bankers to rural audiences for hours on end. Mr. Bannon prepped Mr. Trump for his inauguration by telling him tales of his predecessor Andrew Jackson, whose inauguration had drawn to Washington thousands of obstreperous supporters who drank the capital dry and outstayed their welcome — echoing what was to come four years later, on a more violent and terrifying scale.
Mr. Trump’s critics, and his fans too, preferred to think of him as a unique irruption into American history. But Mr. Bannon was right in thinking that most of his instincts and his policies have roots going way back. Before the aviator Charles Lindbergh helped lead the America First Committee to keep the United States out of World War II, Woodrow Wilson had used the slogan “America First” in his doomed 1916 pledge to keep America out of World War I. The press baron William Randolph Hearst used it in his campaigns almost as often as he played up the threat of Chinese immigration. (Orson Welles’s “Citizen Kane,” based on Mr. Hearst, is Mr. Trump’s favorite film.) In the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan took up the slogan, and as recently as 2016, David Duke, a former leader of the Klan, ran for a Louisiana Senate seat as an “America First” candidate.
We are having trouble retrieving the article content.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.zodiacbet