With the rise in authoritarian nationalism across the globe, the question is begged whether the decline in liberalism was inevitable? It seems to be a consequence of the failures of the Rawlsian system. Yet, in recognition of the fatal flaws of that system, one has to wonder if other systems would fare much better? That is to ask whether the flaws were merely ideological or were partially separate from that? First, how Rawls killed liberalism. The flaws in the Rawlsian system are not directly what killed liberalism, rather the great flaw of Rawls was both to kill the civic religion that instilled responsibility, virtue, and honor in citizens and to erode the strength of the institutions that civil society requires. But that just weakened liberalism. Rawls gave us a republic with no citizens and weak institutions but a weak republic and weak institutions are not dictatorships or movements leaning in that direction.
While having a system of all rights and as few responsibilities for the individual as possible in addition to severely restricting needed institutions like science and education with his “thin-good” was certainly weakening to liberalism, it was the immunodeficiency that allowed the opportunistic infections and not the deadly poison itself. Rawls was the Robert Moses of political philosophy as opposed to Aristotle who is the Jane Jacobs, yet it was closer to Robert Moses, himself, and, more importantly, the types of social designs he made which was the most lethal ingredient in the poison. That ingredient was actually three ingredients and while all three lend themselves toward postmodernist crazy, it is only the third one which is lethal to liberalism, using the lesser two supporting it.
Pseudoscience is the most common criticism of the weak institutions associated with Rawlsian liberalism. Rawls’ system gives it protection to create its own reality regardless of who gets harmed because liberalism, according to Rawls, necessitates respecting most cultural practices. A thick institution of science and respect for expert authority is needed to avert anti-vaxxers and the like. Yet, let’s remember, that is merely discussing the lack of institution. Itself, that’s bad because pseudoscience kills people and independent hippies and redneck preppers homeschooling kids leaves them less educated so the void of institution is very bad. However, the decline in liberalism has as much to do with institutions replacing the dying ones as much as the void the dying ones are leaving.
Those institutions arising from the void need three ingredients to become toxic and dangerous: coherence, size, and a reason to be political. The void creates some of those ingredients naturally since sociology abhors a vacuum. A republic without citizens, sense of community, or emotional ritual is going to result in an alienation and want for acceptance that people will find elsewhere. Yet, without strong institutions, that psychological need may be sought from geeky groups, celebrity fandoms, holistic medicine providers, gun enthusiasts, spiritual gurus, and much more. Each with varying degrees of harmlessness or harm. Those groups, however, aren’t forwarding a political cause that threatens liberalism. Liberalism can survive measles outbreaks, it shouldn’t have them, but it can survive them. The last of those three reasons mentioned above is necessary before a group becomes dangerous to liberalism.
Authoritarian nationalism may be undemocratic, it is also very democratic. The trend is explicitly populist and relies on major popular support to exist. It shouldn’t be taken to be merely racism or some arbitrary shock at cultural changes. Mentioned before, it is a part of a natural reaction to the social and cultural void created by Rawlsian liberalism. Yet, it is only a part and many groups that arose from the void didn’t go in that direction. Something had to create the third ingredient. People become Nazis, largely, for the same reasons people join other types of identity community. Largely, because they want to feel special, loved, and be a part of something bigger than themselves. The thin-good of Rawlsian liberalism denies them the traditional means of getting that stuff. It didn’t make the Nazis hateful but it directed their extant hatred in the direction of becoming ritualistic, ideological, and community-like which gave it the ability to organize.
Swifties, foodies, geeks of all types, and many more nations came from the same need for community and ritual contemporary liberalism denied them. The modern rise of fandoms arises from a similar cultural void, just without the sinister content and thus the motivation to become a political movement. If they’re a Turkish nationalist in Turkey supporting their dictator or a Hindu nationalist in India supporting their wannabe dictator, it’s the same story as a skinhead in America. Those people have found a home in a world that demolished the old community. They have people to affirm their value, to have affection for them, and to give them purpose. So, the void created the coherence and some of the size like the other groups but what created the hatred and political motivation? There are economic factors that are well-discussed but I’m going to focus on what is a bigger factor. It’s a bigger factor because it took the mild prejudices and grew them into nationalism.
Nationalism, in its modern form, is rooted in the fact that the physical, electronic, and social infrastructure is engineered to allow people to only interact with who they want to. Peter Singer’s Expanding Circle Theory and Contact Theory say that the less someone is exposed to forms of diversity, the less empathy one will have for the classes one was not exposed to. Not only does this explain nationalism on the right but also the vitriolic nature of identity politics on the left. The internet, the social systems, and the physical landscape are all closer to Robert Moses than Jane Jacobs. If people lived in Jane Jacobs’ type communities where people naturally interact with their neighbors, they would be forced to tolerate people they don’t like because you don’t have absolute choice in who your community is in that setting. Yet, in a world where people can block anyone they don’t like, they do, and they don’t learn to love people when it’s hard to. Furthermore, the range of deviance from themselves they consider still their type shrinks as they become conditioned to interact with only their own kind which means they become offended by ever slighter offenses and differences.
One of the trends I’ve noticed is the decreasing forgiveness. Increasingly, people hold grudges for ever smaller offenses and for longer. That makes sense if they don’t know how to love people they don’t like and can’t tolerate heterogeneity. Forgiveness requires accepting awkwardness and painful humility to mend a relationship out of love. People forgive and love each other when they have to live with each other. Yet, they don’t have to live with each other, anymore. People are disposable because you can block them and retreat to your own tribe. The reason that exes hate each other over a drunk text over a decade after the transgression is related to why nationalists hate foreigners. They live in a world where people are disposable and they have never learned how to love people they don’t like. Conditioned by the homogeneity of a digitally microtargeted and physically atomized world.
Yet, the sources of the degree of hatred were not ideological but a natural result of people having access to almost perfect homogeneity. Postmodernism can make quacks and those quacks can sell pseudoscience and objective and economic hardship can raise ethnic anxieties but ultimately the reason the hatred got as bad as it did and strong enough to give groups the motivation to become political was that people forgot how to love people they don’t like and the causes of that forgetting were caused by technology and the physical landscape and the prophets of liberalism’s triumph like Francis Fukuyama weren’t looking in places like that.