Researchers baffled by nationalist surge

[OKIsItJustMe]

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Researchers baffled by nationalist surge[/font]

[font size=4]Economic woes wrought by globalization are only part of the cause.[/font]

Jeff Tollefson
06 December 2016

[font size=3]Waves of nationalist sentiment are reshaping the politics of Western democracies in unexpected ways — carrying Donald Trump to a surprise victory last month in the US presidential election, and pushing the United Kingdom to vote in June to exit the European Union. And nationalist parties are rising in popularity across Europe.

Many economists see this political shift as a consequence of globalization and technological innovation over the past quarter of a century, which have eliminated many jobs in the West. And political scientists are tracing the influence of cultural tensions arising from immigration and from ethnic, racial and sexual diversity. But researchers are struggling to understand why these disparate forces have combined to drive an unpredictable brand of populist politics.

“We have to start worrying about the stability of our democracies,” says Yascha Mounk, a political scientist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He notes that the long-running World Values Survey shows that people are increasingly disaffected with their governments — and more willing to support authoritarian leaders.

But this has played out in different ways across the West. Austria rejected the extreme-right Freedom Party presidential candidate Norbert Hofer in favour of Alexander Van der Bellen, a former Green Party leader, on 4 December. The same day, anti-establishment forces prevailed in Italy, where Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said he would resign after voters rejected his proposed constitutional reforms.

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[RKP5637]

1. Two things IMO: (1) Uncertainly of the future, hence autocratic rule, no thinking required.

(2) Cultural assimilation, too quickly, therefore drives fear of difference.

[Warpy]

2. It also seems to be cyclical

There was the Nativist movement in the 1830s, culminating in the Nativist Riots in Philadelphia; the meteoric rise of a rejuvenated KKK in the 1920s, culminating in a batch of ridiculously racist Jim Crow laws all over the country; and now there's Trumperism.

I just hope people younger than I am can get the bad law passed during this period overturned more quickly than the other batches were.

[RKP5637]

3. Kind of like a pebble dropped in the center of a pond rippling to the edges until the

entire pond ripples. And cyclic.

[Warpy]

4. More like a sine wave

[RKP5637]

6. Yes! n/t

[zippythepinhead]

5. it's caused by the unequal distribution of wealth

Reagan started it. Now, corporations are people. That's supernatural, man.

The world economy now is like it was when hitler came to power, imho.

[Jim__]

7. Here's a link to the full article in Nature.

I may have missed this in the OP - Nature.