Reflections on Populism and Nationalism

I recently read Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West by R. R. Reno (2019). It gave me quite a lot to consider. What follows are some reflections – not a book review, nor even a single cohesive idea, but general thoughts from the reading.

Preventing World War Three

Much of the book is devoted to describing how we ended up in the situation that we are now in. Tracing political and social theory from the end of the Second World War, Reno shows that western leaders were terrified of another calamity like World War Two. Their solution was to engineer cultures that wouldn’t follow someone like Hitler. But how were they to create such cultures?

They ended up doing so by going after everything that binds culture together. It was the ‘authoritarian personality,’ with its strong sense of loyalty, culture, and patriotism that was seen as the number-one enemy. Get too many of these people together and they will follow a brazen dictator into unimaginable evil.

The solution they advocated was to prevent such personalities by breaking apart every social and culture institution. This includes the concept of ‘truth.’ Cultural institutions should be rebuilt so that individuals can focus on their own individuality, rather than the cohesiveness that traditional culture provides. Because no one will have anything that causes them to relate to others on a deeper level, they won’t all mindlessly jump into tyranny together.

Oh, and it’s almost impossible to change adults who have developed such a personality. The only way that personalities can be changed is by going after the youth. Children. Get them at school and university, before they have accepted the evil ideas of patriotism, loyalty, and tradition.

If all of this sounds like a lot of conspiracy theory, it’s not: Reno’s book provides an immense mountain of evidence, working through the writings of many of the most prominent social thinkers of the post-war era. Indeed, the reader nears boredom because the book is so meticulous in providing these details.

Culture Remade

With this understanding, it becomes a lot easier to understand our society. Businesses celebrate diversity and inclusion because they have to create the most non-cohesive culture imaginable (supposedly, we will all unite around the idea that there is nothing to unite around except our celebration of differences). The political elites (like the Clintons, Bushes, and Obamas of the world) will gain trust while also subtly weakening the old loyalties. Any traditional institution that creates cohesion (especially marriage and religion) will be slowly chipped away at. The ultimate goal is a world where everything is tolerated except the idea of objective truth – the idea that there is right and wrong:

“The political imperative has remained constant. We must drive out the strong gods from the west. We do so by relativizing them, putting them into their historical contexts, critiquing their xenophobic, patriarchal, cisgender, and racist legacies, and showing how they are products of a socio-biological process that produces in us a reptilian tribal mind. The post-war consensus promises that these therapies of disenchantment will deter the citizens of the west from renewing their fealty to the strong gods.”

“The cultural imperatives follow. Artists need to cultivate transgression. Corporations must celebrate diversity. At every turn, strenuous effort is put into weakening consolidating institutions and convictions. Religious faith, patriotism, the marriage covenant – responsible establishment people believe that their duty as citizens in an open society is to problematize these traditional loyalties. Educators and cultural leaders cannot always succeed. The less educated tend to ‘cling to their guns and religion.’ But we need not despair. The ruling class, educated in how meanings are produced, and sensitive to historical and cultural context, will manage these loyalties with techniques of disenchantment. Trained in the production of meaning, they will use multicultural themes and diversity talk to draw the sting out of potential contexts, drive old loyalties to the margins of respectability, and otherwise advance the cause of an open society and open minds.”

According to Reno, the solution has not only completely remade culture, but it has also been moderately effective in preventing the sort of World-War-Three scenario that post-war thinkers feared. But only moderately: because these ideas only work when people don’t truly think through, or believe in, the solution. As long as people are content to believe in general aphorisms like ‘truth is subjective,’ or ‘don’t be dogmatic,’ while entertaining themselves, society remains in a live-and-let-live mode.

It becomes a problem when people become dogmatic about not being dogmatic. When you start to deeply believe in these ideas, like an ideologue, then you become intolerant of anyone who doesn’t hold to your beliefs in tolerance. You become what you are trying to avoid. And that, Reno argues, is what has begun to happen. The original post-war thinkers knew this danger, and they tried not to think too hard about their philosophies. They were non-dogmatic about being non-dogmatic. But today, the left has become dogmatic about being non-dogmatic. They are aggressively intolerant of intolerance.

The other problem is that we’ve created a culture with no sense of inherent meaning or value. Everything is pragmatic and utilitarian. Because we discount the idea of ‘truth’ or ‘purpose,’ we are remarkably good at managing society, but very poor at providing deep solutions. People are starving for purpose, as evidenced by the levels of drug addiction, suicide, depression, and general apathy in society:

“But we are not living in 1945. Our societies are not threatened by paramilitary organizations devoted to powerful ideologies. We do not face a totalitarian adversary with world-conquering ambitions. Insofar as there are totalitarian temptations in the west, they arise from the embattled post-war consensus, which is becoming increasingly punitive in the face of political populism and its rebellion against the dogmas of openness. Our problems are the opposite of those faced by the men who went to war to defeat Hitler. We are imperiled by a spiritual vacuum and the apathy it brings. The political culture of the west has become politically inert. Winnowed down to technocratic management of private utilities and personal freedoms. Our danger is a dissolving society, not a closed one – the therapeutic personality, not the authoritarian one.”

Different Solutions

It’s remarkable to notice the difference between post-war thinkers and the founders of America. Both groups were terrified of tyranny, but their solutions were radically different. While the post-war thinkers feared cohesive groups of people who would mindlessly accept dictators, America’s founders wanted to create cohesive institutions (like state governments) that would bind people together. Recognizing that individuals aren’t able to effectively stand up to bad governance, the founders wanted a cohesive society. Group individuals together and they will stand up to oppression with a chance of defeating it. De Toqueville commented that,

“the strength of free peoples resides in the local community. Local institutions are to liberty what primary schools are to science; they put it within the people’s reach; they teach people to appreciate its peaceful enjoyment and accustom them to make use of it. Without local institutions a nation may give itself a free government, but it has not got the spirit of liberty.” (Democracy in America)

I would not describe myself as a populist. I think that, in general, populism is degraded conservatism: an intellectually lax approach to agreeing with the crowds. But this book laid out the best case I’ve heard of for populism. In its best form, populism is a desire to recreate the cohesive social institutions of the past. It’s not about creating tyranny or mindless political movements. Rather, it’s about remembering that we as individuals have a deep need for belonging, and we aren’t meant to go through life disconnected. The idea of truth, morality, and a binding past and culture are good things, not bad – even if they have, on occasion, been manipulated by evil dictators.

Finally, it’s also important to realize that Reno’s argument isn’t just about what should be – it’s about what will be. As the book title indicates, the ‘strong gods’ are returning. Reno is less interested in informing you that populism and nationalism are good. He is more interested in letting you know that, whatever you think about them, they are resurgent. People are fed up with the way that things are. They recognize the need for cohesive social institutions, and this movement is on its way up. At the end of the day, like it or not, this is the future of the West.