47. How nazist is present populism?

What are the sources of present rightist populism, in the Netherlands, Denmark, France, and other countries? It has been compared to Nazism. How valid is that? From various work (by John Gray, Rüdiger Safranski and Menno ter Braak) I identify the following characteristics of Nazism:

1. Romantic nationalism, with myths of national character and a glorious past, demanding subordination to national culture.
2. Charismatic, autocratic leadership: the leader gives a pure and unmediated interpretation of the will of the people.
3. Demonology: dark forces threaten ‘our’ society and culture.
4. Grievance against the ruling elite of ‘soft’ and ‘cosmopolitan’ intellectuals that ‘denies the problem’ and ‘fails to take action’.
5. An imminent apocalypse, from outside (our race and culture are destroyed), or from inside (we shall eradicate them all).
6. Racism: the demons form an inferior race.
7. Inevitability of violence against the demons to realise a nationalist utopia.
8. A fascist glorification of violence as an existential kick.

The first five points can be attributed to rightist populist movements, but the last three only to an extremist fringe. However, present populism might shape the conditions for them to spread.

Nationalism is romantic in the desire to be absorbed in a higher, organic unity of the nation, as a safe haven from external threat. The rhetoric is romantic in the primacy of feelings and opinions over facts, and in rebellion against cosmopolitan universals that neglect national and individual identity. In present populism the demonology arises in the rabid condemnation of the Islam: the Apocalypse arises in a ‘tsunami’ of Islamic immigrants that will destroy our western values.

We underestimate populism if we disregard the validity of some of its views. Earlier in this blog I criticized universals, but I recognized that we cannot do without them. The resistance to universals should not fall into anti-intellectualism. Reasonableness, with respect for facts and arguments is indispensable for democracy.  But we should demand that universals be tested, corrected and enriched by the individual, the general by the specific. Politics must be inspired by the people, science by practice, and rules must leave room for the richness, diversity, and unpredictability of insights, opinions, practices and initiatives.

Another, deeper source of populism is an innate instinct towards mistrust of outsiders. Outsiders are identified by clear characteristics of difference, in appearance and lifestyle.

This instinct forms a rich vein for populist vampires to sink their teeth into. Particularly if it is attached to deep feelings of religion, race, ethnicity or nation.

So why this populism now? First, present economic and financial crises, with loss of jobs, pensions and property, are attributed to globalised markets that are blamed on the elite that engineered it, for example in European integration. This yields a trigger for retreat into nationalism. Second, problems with integration of Muslim, largely Moroccan immigrants, in several European countries, used to trigger the instinct of xenophobia, yielding the stuff for creating demons and the threat of apocalypse.