Every day we read more stories and opinion on the rise of and effect of Populism, from populist political parties and populist policy or its effect on so called mainstream politics to the current and future state of global political thinking. However the term itself is very ill defined, nebulous and as broad or as narrow as the user likes, used both disparagingly as a fascist feeder and positively as a badge of true representation. Terms of this kind are of course important. They not only act as short hand for multiple and complex ideas but they also in their choice of particular term inform the arguments themselves. Think of global warming versus climate change, one able to be used to conjure factious images of beach weather for all, the other a much harder to dispute quasi-scientific term less easily disparaged and implicitly inferring actual knowledge.
So what is populism? Well this is where you inevitably run into the issue that no particular ideology, party or country wishes to lay claim to it, all the while with some very much viewing it as a positive. To give it its broad and usual parameters it is a working class ideology of the right, laying claim to a grass roots following of those not represented or abandoned by the standard or embedded political elites. One of these paramount foundational beliefs is Nativism.
Nativism is a much better term than populism when defining many of the key arguments of this so-called movement. Nativism indeed relies on populism as a function of its creation, the forgotten native over run or forgotten by the unpatriotic elite. Nativism is essentially nationalism for a new age, a bottom up renewal of the “national” spirit. Nationalism, as ideology, is tainted by the modern age, no longer functioning due to excessive immigration and a multicultural agenda of the past 50 years. Nations now contain, usually just argued as in excess rather than as exclusionary, those who are not native and therefore the nation is no longer nation.
To understand these views we must understand where they come from and lets be clear these, like almost all political or ideological beliefs, are based upon a rational, if selective, view of human civilisation. Lets also be clear, there exists almost nowhere nativist ideologues who will put their argument down in writing and to the test. These are recycled ideas and, despite a few deep intellectual divergences, have been widely refuted and dis-proven.
Collective will of the local populace – the idea of nation. This is a foundational building block of collective human civilisation. This outgrew the previous mechanisms and systems created out of extended familial groupings, tribal groupings built upon these through to settled populations no longer explicitly remembering the original familial bindings but replacing it with a sense of a local collective “us”. However this collective built upon shared goals, traits and beliefs of a settled local collective has now been outdated for a long period of history. The myth of collective belonging became a foundational necessity of all civilisations, successful or not, from the myth of English sea power to the myth of the promised land of the United States. Fundamental to Nativism is that the nations built by these myths are defined by them and those “peoples” involved, immutable and permanent. This is even one of the building blocks of much of international law, that of the sacrosanctity of the nation and its borders. Thus the EU cannot imagine interfering in “internal” matters.
So where does this leave us? Nativism is implicitly a throw back. Its proponents even agree on this, Bannon and Trump harking back to the 1930s and American isolationism, Salvini lauding an imagined age of Italian pride and cultural independence. Nativism is undermined by itself through its own proponents not being able to define the ideal “native” or national identity. Of course this is obvious given that being “native” is subjective and based upon a myth of shared collective belief and will. It is a “feeling” and therefore has no defined criteria except when playing to racial and extreme nationalist agenda. It is also a pointless endeavour, trying to unwind the current situation, or freeze at its “current level”, such as immigration, is to misunderstand where and how the “native” or nation was formed and the subjectivity and the illusionary nature it has always had at its core.
Nativism is formed based upon the idea that nations, nationalities, countries have always been, give or take, essentially the same as they are now, with the nation-state being the ultimate construct of the human collective. These concepts however have always been evolving. Human advancement, both technological, communicational and philosophical allow for both the spread of national myth and identity but also its undermining. Do you share common beliefs and interests with your immediate neighbours, say, more than people in New York, Paris or Tokyo? What about country members a couple of hundred miles away? Those of differing classes or education or racial type? Human collectives face this strain for shared identity as the cultural evolution of populations has outgrown the initial devices and natural process. This is not to say that local collective identity is dead or in no way beneficial but Nativism merely highlights a challenge for the evolution of collective human civilisation. It provides no answers beyond a head in the sand desire that the world stand still or history be undone.