The neo‐nationalist ascendency

March 2020. On the borders of EU Europe, with the Covid pandemic threatening human lives, sociality and welfare everywhere, Syrian refugees on the ‘Balkan Route’, bombed out of Idlib, are being beaten in the forests with wooden clubs by Romanian border guards before they are thrown back onto Serbian territory for further humiliations.11 This episode and the other ones related in the next three paragraphs are a selection from reports in the Financial Times, The Guardian and NRC Handelsblad (the Netherlands) in the last week of March and the first days of April 2020. Thanks to Oana Mateescu for pointing out discussions on Romanian social networks. Romanian return migrants, fleeing the Italian and Spanish Corona lockdowns en masse, are being told over the social networks that they should never have come back, contagious as they are imagined to be and a danger for a woefully underfunded public health system for which they have not paid taxes. Further South, the Mediterranean is once again a heavily policed cemetery for migrants and refugees from the civil wars in the Middle East and North Africa – collateral damage of Western imperial delirium and hubris – as Greece is being hailed by the European President for being the ‘shield’ behind which Europe can feel safe from the supposedly associated criminality. Viktor Orbàn, meanwhile, has secured his corrupt autocracy in Hungary for another indefinite stretch of years after the parliament gave him powers to singlehandedly fight the Covid pandemic and its long-run economic after-effects in the name of the Magyars and in the face of never subsiding threats from the outside to the nation. Orbàn will also continue, even more powerfully so now, to fight immigrants, gypsies, gays, feminists, cultural Marxists, NGOs, George Soros, population decline, the EU, and everyone else who might be in his way. Critique from the EU is in Budapest rejected as being ‘motivated by politics’. Vladimir Putin, too, has just been asked by the Russian parliament to stay on indefinitely in his regal position, so as to safeguard Russia’s uncertain national future. Erdogan of Turkey is sure to be inspired and will not renege from his ongoing and unprecedentedly brutal crackdown on domestic dissent and ‘traitors to the nation’ while his armies are in Syria and Libya. Turkish prisons will continue to overflow. All these, and manifold other events not mentioned here, are part of processes in the European East that have been continuous (as in ‘continuous history versus discontinuous history’) for at least a decade, all with a surprisingly steadfast direction. They appear to be diverse, occasioned by ethnographically deeply variegated and therefore apparently contingent events. Anthropologists, professionally spellbound by local fieldwork, are easily swayed to describe them in their singularities. But that singular appearance is misleading. These and similar events are systemically rooted, interlinked, produced by an uneven bundle of global, scaled, social and historical forces (as in ‘field of forces’) that cascade into and become incorporated within a variegated and therefore differentiating terrain of national political theatres and human relationships that produce the paradox of singularly surprising outcomes with uncanny family resemblances. These forces can be summarily described as the gradual unfolding of the collapse of a global regime of embedded and multi-scalar solidarity arrangements anchored in national Fordism, developmentalism and the Cold War, into an uncertain interregnum of neoliberalised Darwinian competition and rivalry on all scales, with a powerfully rising China lurking in the background. Neo-nationalism appears from within this unfolding field of forces as a contradictory bind that seeks to enact and/or re-enact, domestically and abroad, hierarchy and deservingness, including its necessary flip side, humiliation. That is one aspect of the argument I have been trying to make since the end of the nineties (for example Kalb 2000, 2002, 2004), when such forces began to stir in the sites that I was working on and living in: The Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Hungary and Poland. That universalising argument is easily corroborated by events in the west of the continent, which paint a similarly cohesive though phenomenologically variegated picture.22 This paper was written just before the Covid pandemic and the worldwide lockdowns, and before a major shift in EU politics towards collective EU debts and the distribution of grants and cheap loans in particular to the financially most stretched nations and the periphery. This strategic (temporary?) shift in EU architecture is already generating important changes in the national political landscapes (without undoing the forces described in this paper). In the wake of the assumption of the Italian premiership by Mario Draghi, the former President of the European Central Bank, the Salvini neo-nationalist right in Italy has abandoned its anti-EU stance and is fragmenting. It also silenced Le Pen’s critique on the EU, and seems to disadvantage Hungary/Poland in their intricate nationalist bargaining for ‘domestic authoritarianism’ with Brussels and Western Europe. This sudden shift within EU governance was conditioned of course by the need for a collective EU response to the ongoing Covid crisis. But its condition of possibility was also based in Brexit (the UK would have vetoed it) and by the Trump attack on EU/NATO speeding up the fracturing of ‘the Western alliance’. Together with the Covid experience, it also prefigured a shift towards a more leftist and Green politics in most other EU countries, including in the key EU-naysayer, the Netherlands, often implemented by the right though. With Black Lives Matter keeping pressure on Western social imaginations (often in highly culturalist ways though), the narrow loss of Trump in the US elections, and the unprecedented Biden stimulus coming in, the latter overwhelmingly supported among ‘broadly working-class populations’ in the USA, the right-wing ascendency seems to have been given at least a temporary blow. What can be concluded above all is that Western capitalist governance has learnt from its failures in dealing with the financial crisis; just have a look at ongoing IMF and OECD recommendations. Marine Le Pen and Matteo Salvini are still credibly threatening to democratically overthrow liberal globalist governments in France and Italy on behalf of the ‘people’ and ‘the nation’, and against the elites, the EU, immigrants, the left and finance capital. Dutch politicians, in the face of the global coronavirus calamity, still believe one cannot send money to Italy and the European South lest it will be spent on ‘alcohol and women’. Anonymous comments in the Dutch press on less brutal newspaper articles often echo the tone of the one that claimed that Southern countries were mere ‘dilapidated sheds ... and even with our money they will never do the necessary repair work’ (NRC 30 March 2020, comments on ‘Europese solidariteit is juist ook in het Nederlandse belang’). Until its impressive policy turn-around in April/May 2020 in the face of the Covid pandemic and the fast-escalating EU fragmentation amid a world of hostile and nationalist great powers, the German government did not disagree. It was Angela Merkel herself who set up the Dutch as the leaders of a newly conceived right-wing ‘frugal’ flank in the EU under the historical banner of the Hanseatic League to face down the federalist and redistributionist South. That Hanseatic banner suggested that penny-counting, competitive mercantilism and austerity, and its practical corollary, an imposed hierarchy of ‘merit’ and ‘successfulness’, must hang eternally over Europe. Britain, meanwhile, has valiantly elected to leave the EU in order to ‘take back control’ on behalf of what Boris Johnson imagines as the ‘brilliant British nation’ (The Economist 30 January 2020). It would like to refuse any further labour migrants from the mainland, and seek a future in the global Anglosphere, beefed up by a revitalised British Commonwealth where hopefully, when it comes to ceremony, not juridical equality but imperial nostalgia and deference will rule (see Campanella and Dassu 2019). Anthropologists working on the European continent have in retrospect done profoundly anticipatory, indeed uncommonly predictive, work on the rise of neo-nationalism long before it broke the global liberal hold (Holmes 2000, 2019; Gingrich and Banks 2005; Gingrich 2006; Kalb 2009; Kalb and Halmai 2011), and a younger generation continues to build on that.33 For example (without a claim to completeness, excuses to those left out): Buzalka (2008, 2018, 2020); Cammeli (2017); Keskula (2015); Koch (2016, 2017); Makovicky (2013); Pasieka (2016, 2017); Scheiring (2020); Stacul (2014, 2018); Shoshan (2016); Szombati (2018); Teitelbaum (2017); Thorleifsson (2017, 2019). See also: Bangstad et al. (2019). As in all similar work in other disciplines, there is an alternating and overlapping use of terms and focus from ‘far right’ to ‘populism’ to ‘illiberalism’ to ‘neo-nationalism’. I single out neo-nationalism over and above currently competing terms such as authoritarian populism or illiberalism because it produces less confusion and covers more cases.44 Stuart Hall’s notion of ‘authoritarian populism’ has become very popular in particular in the English-speaking world. However, the present context is decidedly different from the early 1980s when that notion was coined. Authoritarian populism overlooks the anti-cosmopolitan capital/anti-elites component, which is just as essential for the present context as the xenophobia and racism. Authoritarian populism ignores the nature of the deep contemporary trouble for the liberal left. Neo-nationalism, it is essential to emphasise, is not seen here primarily as the sum of mere individual opinions. That is the baked in misconception of much political science and sociology research anchored in the methodological individualism of survey methodologies and poll outcomes.55 Hence also the tendency among political scientists to attribute the rise of the right to immigration, xenophobia and ‘white shift’, rather than broader political economic transformations (see Mudde 2019; Kaufman 2018). Their surveys simply repeat what people think they know about themselves at this moment in time, but what they know and don’t know is an effect of hegemonic push and pull. We should see it the other way around: neo-nationalism is a public social and cultural context, a conjuncture if you like, generated within a structured and knowable field of social forces that undergirds it. While Holmes, Gingrich, Banks, myself and others may have evinced an years this is not because were by Anthropologists working in the of the continent were early and in ways to processes for those working on see The Italian Austria, the Netherlands, and Hungary were all for the neo-nationalist It was from within sites that see the amid the of what was These processes were up by the political and in the of the financial but it was in with the rise of Trump and the Brexit that our an of global or and began to be among in the years the rise of neo-nationalist in the EU with a to historical and on the not such liberal those was the often and they would at with cultural and social in the world. The was that the on the continent popular processes long before they at the of the In the British and US with in the latter did not similar to out before they would become In it was with the political of a that the hold of the would be In the it not a in and – not not not the and – coming from outside the political to down the globalist within the In the of of working in the (the the the as and others have towards a right was as it been in Europe. This the of and working to for are an important part of the of hegemonic are there was an on the part of their former to the left liberal because there left to be This was not what in with the in Europe. In were the of a This as a the social and left in the In the such as and et al. have described working in been and and the political of long before the Brexit in the global working in particular the over the last of as to a once again European continent, by the political in the and the UK for as long as that at once in The as a and and with a a world historical to have come to a that they to people who they and and that they in the They also that they of and indeed of ‘the working This was the here, coming out of the to the right in (see in particular for a next of the and 2020). The are I of neo-nationalism as what our What have seen in the last three is not the liberal of that an of on in and history was on and These are by national of imagined and that were or but are to be to be to come back by the of national will and are often by a of as as at the of imperial EU liberal and the and or by human and of including the East European ones and but also the Dutch and in and as the (see also 2020). These are a of the popular the public and the rising Brexit its of in the and its in and political In its and the historical in Hungary the and order of and of the of which it imagines the historical The Dutch still believe that is they are one of the most in Europe. They are also back to a imagined to be in the architecture of the and their and have about the produced by to it as one of the last nations in the as as about the for the of their competitive from their with less and more See Kalb for a more of Hungary and the Netherlands, within their In early the Dutch also that the against and which was after to the of a that the was a welfare but a Hungary a to the all but of of on of them See Kalb 2020 for the historical relationships of the and are but in the context they have to be and out (see also Campanella and Dassu 2019). but not of at least national Hence the confusion on the left. political often social and for national working and of national a of them have an feel the important of the which I have to on The historical context within and against which they up what they are They are by the of the of the last But they are not the of and they therefore and them in not just in the – in a that – but as in, and the of that often in and ways for of was being by liberal political and governance a of for is and was into governance and of singularly on national and of This and into the nature of the are was the of the political I and were in of of see also Kalb 2019). of of the are being over and over again by and liberal who or for all this before for In the this was a and important and is that it was not that of Europe were among the first to it. were further for this and a was a of on Budapest and the Central European and working on political and economic in European Budapest was a and for the of in Europe. much in that would be from a Hungary by a neo-nationalist This is a moment to the and that the of and at in the of from which it has been been all those We should all they can it in their We a towards the transformations that were working themselves over a in the sites in and Western Europe that were from 2011), Budapest 2011), 2011), and 2011), to the and the in and Italy 2011), were generating right-wing popular before our very These were often by neo-nationalist right-wing labour and The further for in the by of global which was in and the work from the to the early a notion of by the of as a of in the including the of national welfare and the collapse of the behind it. it is also this than and with a of the right-wing rather than political and has With has into the neo-nationalist right an from his The may have been by his his focus on and on national of on and his of as as the For a critique see focus on and related in and political as were was a way to of global back on the and make it in ways (see also Kalb is the and the present behind the ascendency of the neo-nationalist often and et al. the not among but among and people in the that I have with this as those sites are in I do have a though with Their in the global is simply I a of populism here and I must I towards in that historical on the of the in the present context (see working seems to their relationships of social as as that because this is not a mere for the for the In of of did that the people being behind neo-nationalist were ‘broadly working While this was for the that were in the this was not to be a or an the was to do but while also a We were not just about that the working even though were to them for the that were in even and of course We also that their may often have been less than temporary and rather than and amid the transformations that were was just about or and lives, including their was what were We were in a to the of of people and who to or or highly in that were part of the of the in who be as the people against the (see also Kalb The was that while or of people might have to see themselves as a and as as a social deeply into the capitalist the was that those imagined too, were the and often of the of in of their and Kalb and Kalb see for the German of a similar research of for this ‘broadly working even though in the and the UK the Trump and Brexit did on right-wing with and financial the for the and the were about and in which ‘broadly working were being and in that would not become working-class were never even though they might be a for ‘the France This was 2019). already a that working in labour younger and might be less to the neo-nationalist than those in the the the and which were events have this to be a The of in of and are an essential part of the that is The for the the and the their and ways of against the and and in and the never claimed that the political on any should be of working-class That would be an of what the should be argument was simply that working-class for the the latter would not the liberal would have to the social in order for the right to shift the That been in for a long The right often for them that the by left an at least cultural hopefully, economic has at the of economic by cultural in the of the right as the and European were the This out to be a was an to the people in the for a a to an world of and and the latter of for of and in a capitalist world. the was in a that to their See the set of in and (2019). is among those inspired by and who to populism to and is a and out on the of the and since their cultural in the see and The on populism as a political and is for liberal for which can as a that at the very least a of national long – to political – and this of the was heavily working people of all and political with the right at the over in one The of a politics of in the produced of within a politics of the As has this was the return of the in and In the early on to a of what of and such as his has never its We need more work on an to as against the and of sociology and We need a and as I a see also and to describe and a contradictory and field of and for social while generating and to social processes in and that and have been for an notion of I cannot more and 2018). This must be a rather than a in its to that the of and all of in contradictory and is a structured and contradictory not just into this as within the of economic social and cultural and and (see also Kalb and such such a and notion of can be into a for and historical in the and indeed for and historical once that need a of labour rather than a labour of That overwhelmingly In an where the of social seems to be to a under (see and 2018, also need a for social as a including a of unfolding and popular We might even need a of with politics written all over it. I to for the on the right at the and that to this of the present paper were in a of and discussions on illiberalism at in for which I in and as a at a on – the politics of by the of and of the in for which I and I to and over the years for a and necessary on the in politics and that have been and all know who you The has been a for all key that out of our that I of of was first in a at the in and as in the

Epistemology · Nationalism · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Statistics · Law · Mathematics · Philosophy · Populism, Right-Wing Movements

• Introduction

  Open Access•Halvard Vike, Anette Fagertun et al.•The Political Economy of Care•2024

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• Geographies of nationalism

  Open Access•Natalie Koch•Human Geography•2023

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• Never again

  Open Access•Dominik Želinský•Memory Studies•2025

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• Losing one’s place in the world

  Open Access•A Lems, Danaé Leitenberg et al.•Inter-Asia Cultural Studies•2025

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• Introduction

  Open Access•Annabelle Dias Félix, M J L De Carvalho et al.•Etnografica•2025

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• PC Worlds

  Jonathan Friedman•PC Worlds•2019

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• Democracy's Paradox

  Bruce Kapferer, Dimitrios Theodossopoulos•Democracy's Paradox•2019

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• The Global Rise of Populism

  Benjamin Moffitt•The Global Rise of Populism•2016

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• Nations and Nationalism since 1780

  Open Access•E J Hobsbawm, Eric Hobsbawm•Nations and Nationalism Since 1780•1992

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• After Europe

  Ivan Krastev•After Europe•2017

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• Nations and nationalism in a global era

  Anthony D Smith•Nations and nationalism in a…•1995

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• Qué pasa con Kansas?

  Mireya Hernández Pozuelo, Slavoj Žižek et al.•¿Qué pasa con Kansas?•2008

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• Ethnicity and Nationalism

  T H Eriksen•Ethnicity and Nationalism•2010

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• Class

  Open Access•D Kalb•A Companion to Urban Anthropology•2014

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• Post-Socialist Contradictions

  Open Access•D Kalb•The Social Question in the…•2019

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• Global systemic crisis, class and its representations

  Open Access•Jonathan Friedman•Anthropologies of Class•2015

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• Introduction

  Open Access•D Kalb•Anthropologies of Class•2015

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• The Revolt of the Provinces

  Open Access•K Szombati•Revolt of the Provinces•2018

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• Universal Alienation and the Real Subsumption of Daily Life under Capital

  Open Access•D C Harvey, David Harvey•tripleC Communication Capitalism…•2018

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• The Multiplicities Within Capitalist Rule and the Articulation of Struggles

  Open Access•Michael Hardt, Toni Negri•tripleC Communication Capitalism…•2018

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• The Invention Of Tradition

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• Nations and Nationalism

  Howard Wollman, Philip Spencer•Nations and Nationalism•2019

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• Anglo Nostalgia

  Edoardo Campanella, Marta Dassù•Anglo Nostalgia•2019

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• Lions of the North

  Benjamin R Teitelbaum•Lions of the North•2017

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• The Cultural Economy of Protest in Post-Socialist European Union

  J Buzalka•Cultural Economy of Protest in…•2020

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• The Management of Hate

  Nitzan Shoshan•Management of Hate•2016

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• Headlines of Nation, Subtexts of Class

  Don Kalb, Gábor Halmai•Headlines of nation, subtexts of…•2011

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• Durable Inequality

  Charles Tilly•Durable Inequality•2019

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• The Production of 'Local Culture' in Post-socialist Poland

  Open Access•Jaro Stacul•Anthropological Journal of…•2014

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• Disposable strangers

  Open Access•C Thorleifsson•Social Anthropology•2017

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• Post-peasant Memories

  Open Access•J Buzalka•East European Politics and…•2018

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• Hollowed out Heartland, USA

  Open Access•M Edelman•Journal of Rural Studies•2019

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• Europeanisation and post-peasant populism in Eastern Europe

  J Buzalka•Europe Asia Studies•2008

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• Imagined communities

  Benedict Anderson•Imagined communities•1991

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• The Retreat of Liberal Democracy

  Gábor Scheiring•The Retreat of Liberal Democracy•2020

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• Reenacting ethnic cleansing

  Open Access•A Pasieka•Nations and Nationalism•2016

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• The Saffron Wave

  Thomas Blom Hansen•Saffron Wave•1999

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• What's the Matter with Kansas

  Open Access•Stephen Duncombe•WorkingUSA•2004

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• Capitalism

  Open Access•James A Chamberlain•Contemporary Political Theory•2019

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• Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism

  Anthony Reid, Benedict Anderson•Pacific Affairs•1985

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• Fascism at eye level

  Open Access•Douglas R Holmes•Focaal•2019

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• The politics of affect

  Open Access•Bangstad, Sindre Bangstad et al.•Focaal•2019

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• Redeveloping history in postsocialist Poland

  Open Access•Jaro Stacul•Focaal•2018

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• Work pays

  Open Access•N Makovicky•Focaal•2013

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• PC worlds

  Open Access•Anne-Christine Trémon•Anthropological Theory•2021

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• Marxian value theory

  Open Access•Terence Turner•Anthropological Theory•2008

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• Relational origins of inequality

  Open Access•Charles Tilly•Anthropological Theory•2001

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• Peasants, academics, populists

  Open Access•Tom Bra, Tom Brass•Critique of Anthropology•2015

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• Conversations with a Polish populist

  Open Access•D Kalb•American Ethnologist•2009

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• Trump's election and the "white working class"

  Open Access•Christine J Walley•American Ethnologist•2017

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• What's in a vote? Brexit beyond culture wars

  Open Access•I Koch•American Ethnologist•2017

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• From Brexit to Trump

  Open Access•Hugh Gusterson•American Ethnologist•2017

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• Bread-and-butter politics

  Open Access•I Koch•American Ethnologist•2016

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• Financialization and the capitalist moment

  Open Access•D Kalb•American Ethnologist•2013

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• Emancipatory rural politics

  I Scoones, M Edelman et al.•The Journal of Peasant Studies•2018

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• Taking Far-Right Claims Seriously and Literally

  Open Access•A Pasieka•Slavic Review•2017

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