The past 15 years have been turbulent times, have they been the beginning of a crisis or were they merely hiccups? The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny (1997) by Neil Howe and William Strauss predicted a time of crisis between 2005 and 2025, based on generational conflict and four different archetypes, each representing a generation. Given that generations have become longer with an average age of first reproduction around 30 now, we can shift the timescale slightly, say, 2007 (economic crisis) to 2030.
The past 15 years have certainly been easy times, but how do we know if they have marked a real crisis? I will argue here that there is one certain sign of a crisis and it's when people vote massively for populist politicians like Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen (who recently won 42% of French voters).
I am not a political expert, but I dare say that Trump would never have won the American presidency in 1993, when Bill Clinton, a Democrat was elected. Like Hilary Clinton, Bill Clinton would have had a hard time winning in 2016, when Trump was elected. Trump in 1993 would have been as ridiculous to Americans as he was to the rest of the world in 2016. Why wasn’t he ridiculous to (most) Americans then? The answer is a crisis, real or perceived, it doesn’t make much difference. Trump won because of the perceived threat, and this is exactly where he trumped. In 1993, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it was all about building bridges, not walls. Trump would have been declared mad for building the Great Wall of the USA. The world in 1993 was much more open and optimistic. The USA in 2016 (up to now) wasn’t.
What changed this atmosphere? The most significant event after the fall of the Berlin Wall was probably 9/11 and it changed a lot.
The threat of terrorism has been shown to shift societal norms toward authoritarianism. Research published in Political Psychology analyzed data from the 2017 British Election Study (BES) and found that terrorism threat shifts libertarians toward more conservative attitudes. On the other hand, normative threats (i.e., perceptions of dissatisfaction with established authority) widen the gap between authoritarian and libertarian attitudes.
Bush, who had been an unpopular conservative (tendency towards authoritarianism) president and some of his absurd policies (war on weapons of mass destruction that didn’t even exist) suddenly became popular in the US. Around the same time, Putin, who Russians distrusted as a former KGB agent, became popular. Why? A serious of terrorist attacks (some of which were rumoured to have been staged by the FSB, the secret service, itself) happened and as a result Putin came out as the popular strong leader people would have totally mistrusted in happier times. And Puntin remained popular, even as he started breaking one rule of democratic leadership after another: croynism, control of media, discriminating against diverse people (normative threats).
The populist playbook works like a charm during times of crisis. Name your enemies, Chinese, Mexicans, Southern Italians, Muslims, etc. and people will listen to you. The origin of populism can be found in Social Dominance Orientation (SDO, we are the superior group). The recipe: we need to get stronger against our common enemy, and really, we don’t give a s*** about any other people. America to white Americans (supposedly the only real Americans), France to French people.
I have argued before that SDO (oligarchy) and authoritarianism come from food-producing herders and farmers, respectively. Food producers had much more inter-group competition than egalitarian (anarchist and communist) foragers. External threats increased internal solidarity for herders and farmers, and internal breaches of rules, norms and conformity also increased the internal need for stronger authority in farming populations.
Returning to The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny we can conclude that there are indeed four, often opposing political forces.
The 1950s in America were a period of farmer paradise with farmer values towering high: material well-being, suburban family bliss, conformity and security (culminating in a communist witch hunt). Too much conformity mobilised hunter types who played an important role in the late 60s counterculture. Too much “looseness” (Michele Gelfand) opens up ways for deviance and herder SOD. Social inequality again mobilises gatherer types (egalitarianism) and farmer types (conformity).
In relaxed times political orientations tend to be moderate, in times of crises they become more polarised. That is how we ended up having an ugly WOKE movement on the egalitarian left and ugly supremacism on the conservative right. The only kind of radical political orientation we need right now to restore a balance is radical centrism.
So, how do we know that we are living in a time of crisis?
- Preference for authoritarian and populist leaders
- Polarisation of society
When do we know the crisis is over? When people and politicians become more moderate again. Let’s hope it will be sooner rather than later.
For more, check out my new book: Cracks in the Fabric of Reality
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