The Nationalist Revival: Trade, Immigration, and the Revolt Against Globalization

by John B. Judis

Overview

Why has nationalism come roaring back?

Trump in America, Johnson in the U.K., anti-EU parties in Italy, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, and Hungary, and nativist or authoritarian leaders in Turkey, Russia, India, and China—Why has nationalism suddenly returned with a vengeance? Is the world headed back to the fractious conflicts between nations that led to world wars and depression in the early 20th Century?

Based on travels in America, Europe, and Asia, veteran political analyst John B. Judis found that almost all people share nationalist sentiments that can be the basis of vibrant democracies as well as repressive dictatorships. Today’s outbreak of toxic “us vs. them” nationalism is an extreme reaction to utopian cosmopolitanism, which advocates open borders, free trade, rampant outsourcing, and has branded nationalist sentiments as bigotry. Can a new international order be created that doesn’t dismiss what is constructive about nationalism? As he does for populism in The Populist Explosion and for socialism in The Socialist Awakening, Judis looks at nationalism from its modern origins in the 1800s to today to find answers.

“Essential reading.” —E.J. Dionne Jr., Washington Post

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780999745403
Publisher:	Columbia Global Reports
Publication date:	10/09/2018
Pages:	158
Product dimensions:	4.90(w) x 7.50(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

John B. Judis is Editor-at-Large at Talking Points Memo, and author of The Politics of Our Time: Populism, Nationalism, Socialism, The Socialist Awakening: What's Different Now about the Left, The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics, Genesis: Truman, American Jews, and the Origin of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, and The Emerging Democratic Majority, cowritten with Ruy Teixeira. He has written for numerous publications, including The New Republic, The National Journal, The New York Times Magazine,, and The Washington Post Magazine. Born in Chicago, he received his B.A. and M.A. degrees in Philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley. He lives in Silver Spring, MD.

Editorial Reviews

"Excellent and compact.... A person of the left, Judis specializes in speaking truth to liberals, something he also did in his earlier The Populist Explosion. He thinks it's important for progressives to understand why so many are drawn to Trump and the far right in Europe." —E.J. Dionne, The Washington Post

"John B. Judis is the rare left-of-center journalist who takes our populist-nationalist moment seriously. Rather than dismiss the leaders and constituencies of the American and European movements as mere xenophobes, he offers an empathetic balls-and-strikes analysis of the socioeconomic factors that made—and continue to make—such campaigns viable." —The American Conservative

"Concise and indispensable." —Vanity Fair

"John B. Judis does not see a death-match between imperial liberalism on the one hand and nationalism on the other. His book argues that elites have overreached, both in the U.S. and in Europe, in advocating large-scale immigration and trade deals and foreign interventions. As a result, Mr. Judis—a former New Republic editor who has long supported progressive and pro-labor economic policies—calls for a synthesis between liberalism and nationalism." —The Wall Street Journal

"John B. Judis' new book offers a timely reminder that there is such a thing as a nationalist left, and the author himself is a part of it." —The National Interest

"Judis's contrast between 'globalism' and 'internationalism' is a valuable distinction for the left, and rejecting the former is necessary for the survival of the latter. Progressives will have to offer an 'alternative globalism' that can address the extreme inequities of the current system while defending its very real achievements. Nationalism will be the reactionary route of the 21st century, and in the United Kingdom we are already seeing just how chaotic and disastrous this path can be." —Conor Lynch, The Week

"The longtime political journalist limns the rise of Trumpian nationalism in the face of a bewilderingly global world." —Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2018-07-31

The longtime political journalist limns the rise of Trumpian nationalism in the face of a bewilderingly global world.

The word "cosmopolitan" is freighted, but Talking Points Memo editor at large Judis (The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics, 2016, etc.) does not hesitate to put it to work in characterizing the current political rift between left and right not as a battle between nationalists and liberals but as one between nationalists and cosmopolitans, namely metropolitan or college town-dwelling elites who own a passport, have graduated from good schools, and make up the upper rungs of the professions. "When Trump supporters blame America's ills on liberals," writes the author, "they are generally talking about cosmopolitans." The words aside, the central point is that Trump's left-leaning opponents tend to favor open borders, his supporters walls and immigration bans. Trump was able to leverage these worldviews—social psychologies, even, to trust Judis—to present the case that Americans were being robbed of their patrimony. "He had been complaining since the late 1980s," notes Judis, "about America losing out on trade to Japan and then China and being taken advantage of by its allies in Europe." After surveying its history, the author argues that some form of nationalism is useful as a "framework within which citizens and their governments deliberate about what to do—and justify what they have done." In this regard, a nationalist ideology need not necessarily be bigoted or exclusive; Judis argues that nationalism is "an essential ingredient of political democracies" while allowing that it can also underlie authoritarianism and fascism. Against this background, the author proposes that Trumpian nationalism, a zero-sum game in which there are only winners and losers, need not be the only alternative to an internationalism by which nations cede sovereignty, as with the European Union. Indeed, he suggests, international cooperation is best effected by sovereign nations at whose helm is a single great power, as with Great Britain in the 19th century and—well, perhaps China in the 21st.

Wonkish but of broad interest to students of geopolitics, international affairs, and economics.

Kirkus Reviews