In a recent edition of Foreign Affairs, a number of articles discuss the current shift toward autocratic leaders – leaders who “practice a brutal, smashmouth politics, a personalized authoritarianism.” …
What links all of these nationalist movements? Among other things, a contemporary breed of demagogues who know how to leverage societal divisions and who resort to exaggeration and deception, and worse.
Societies with strong democratic traditions and civil discourse may appear to be partially immune to the worst scenarios of nationalism gone haywire. But reflecting on the history of the United States, and the election of Donald Trump, and the gyrations of Brexit, perhaps democracy itself is more fragile than many of us would like to think. Others have thought so.
Writing in the midst of the Great Depression and reflecting on nationalist movements in Europe and America, Sinclair Lewis warned of a dystopian American future in which a charismatic and power-hungry demagogue leverages fear and nationalism to become president. He promises to return to traditional values and, yes, in his own way make, America great again. CONT.
John Aubrey Douglass (UC Berkeley), Berkeley Blog