Нациофобия и национал-популизм: взаимосвязь в условиях глобализации

Общественные науки и современность. 2019. № 5. С. 30–46.

Pain E. A.

In the 1960–1970s, in Western intellectual circles the old Marxist dogma about the “withering away of the state”, which has been considerably weakened by that time, suddenly acquired unexpected allies not only in the person of influential post-Marxists like Jürgen Habermas, but also such liberals as Karl Jaspers and Hannah Arendt: They all believed in the advent of a new, “post-national”. By the beginning of the 21st century, the belief in the inevitable decline of the nation-state has become predominant in the worldview of Western elites. However, it is precisely today that the dogmatic and inconsistent nature of the post-national idea, having many signs of a phobia (the “nation-phobia”), seems evident, while national unity as an essential condition for the functioning of liberal democracies becomes ever clearer than before. The rise of populism can be seen as a peculiar proof of this thesis to the extent that it is a response to the erosion of political nations and deepening split between elites and popular masses. The article analyzes he relationship between elites’ nation-phobia and national populism, appealing to popular masses, as that of two closely linked opposites. It advances the hypothesis that the rise of populism in Western societies is caused not so much by new economic circumstances, but rather by long accumulated ideological, political and sociocultural problems, which have been exacerbated in the context of globalization. On the other hand, the peculiarity of contemporary Russian historical circumstances is emphasized. Here, it is not populism, but its alter ego – elitism – which poses the main political problem while producing nation-phobia.

Keywords: популизм, populism, нация, nation, elitism, national populism, национал-популизм, элитизм, nation-phobia, нациофобия