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Back in 2019, I wrote an essay called What is the new Global Politics of Identity? At the time, culture wars were only just beginning, America was divided but nothing compared to today. Fast forward - trans women in sports dominate headlines, political assassinations on both sides as Congresswoman Melissa Hortman and Charlie Kirk both lie slain. Book bans and speech crackdowns have only hardened the battle lines. Six years on, I’ve come to see this runs much deeper, its the void of true spirituality at the heart of western society, it’s Carl Jung’s Modern Man in Search of a Soul in all the wrong places. In the absence of deep meaning, identity becomes a battlefield - a miss-guided attempt to fill the western wound of lack. Now figures such as Steve Bannon and JD Vance twist Christianity into a militant banner that would have Christ turning in his grave, if he hadn’t rolled the stone back. This is the terrain I’ll be digging into in my next book but until then, enjoy this essay.
What is the new Global Politics of Identity? Patrick Watts, 2019
Is the “new global politics of identity”, a reaction to the social, economic and political forces known as Globalization? This is broadly accurate, specifically; technology, communication, and transnational trade. Is this new, or simply a resurgence of existing politics of identity manifesting in different ways? This study will analyse the “new global politics of identity” as 3 subsets ; Ethnicity/Nationalistic, Religious, and Economic and Ideological, examining what aspects of globalization have been most prevalent and what problems have occurred as a result.
Ethnicity and Nationalistic Grounds Nationalism and patriotism are not new phenomena. Individuals and groups throughout History, have nurtured the myth of an ancient attachment to a particular area of the Earth’s surface, and those that were also born within these artificial boundaries, to create nation states and achieve their goals. Empires fall, maps are redrawn, and competing parties jostle for influence and territory in the new landscape. The Wilsonian principle of self-determination for groups with a shared ethnicity, although not unqualified and absolute, has been a prominent feature of International Relations for a century. This principle is not always achieved peacefully, and the conflicts in the Balkans in the 1990s present a recent, bloody, example, not dissimilar to decolonisation in Africa, or wars of independence throughout History.
There is nothing new in manufacturing imagined ethnic histories, seen most devastatingly in The Rwandan genocide. Spurious ethnic differences in others are magnified by those with traditional goals, to create “imagined Identities”, to dehumanise and create the conditions for violence and untold human misery to be normalised.
The only “new” aspect in the area of nationalism is when invoked as a response to the greater power of collective organisations like the UN and EU, framed as undemocratic and stealing national sovereignty by “populist” leaders.
Religious Like Nationalism, but not confined to specific lines on a map, religion is a human construct. A useful fiction that on the one hand allows people to feel part of a larger community and co-operate across vast distances, but on the other, can be corrupted by those seeking power and influence, sewing division via disagreements on the interpretation of these fictions. Whilst religion continues to be of central importance in less developed areas, its influence decreases as countries become more developed and shaped by the modernising influences of globalisation.
There are therefore two aspects to the “new” religious identity. As the influence of religion wanes, those who feel abandoned by this development move toward the extremes, leading to the rise in popularity for the more sanitised, fundamentalist ends of the religious spectrum. Peaceful in the case of Evangelical Christians in the US (the largest Christian tradition in the US), or a more violent interpretation, like Radical Islamic terrorism. Traditionally this would have been centred around a particular region along traditional tribal lines, but the advances in global connectivity resulting from globalisation have created the conditions for the second aspect of “new” religious identity. The Internet now allows ideas, materials and information to be shared globally, and instantly, breaking previous barriers of geography. After censorship by the mainstream, the dark corners of the internet have become hotbeds of intolerance, violence and hatred and offered a sense of community to those that hold these views. Another effect of globalisation is the failings of multiculturalist strategies to fully integrate peoples with different backgrounds and religions, leading to alienation, dissatisfaction and greater susceptibility to extreme, radical ideas and the sense of “belonging” provided by these groups.
Globalisation is not the sole aspect of this “new” identity and the only reason for the push to the extremes, and more traditional factors of power, money and influence are usually evident, and may not be the same in each instance. There is always a dialectic at work between “International and Domestic”; Saudi money has financed the spread of Radical Islam around the middle east, but in Indonesia it has grown as an opposition to systemic corruption in the ruling class.
Economic/Ideological Communism and Capitalism provided two opposite political approaches, and as such, traditional political identity (where permissible), was intrinsically linked to one of these identities. This changed when the cold war ended and the communist economic system collapsed, and with it, the “total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to Western Liberalism.”
Globalisation spread the tenets of the victorious system throughout the states of the former Soviet Union with an ever expanding Nato and EU. Although many states resisted this change,(autocracies in Africa, quasi – democratic states like Russia, single party market Stalinism in China for example) the newly formed industrialised states rushed to embrace the modernising effects of globalisation and the victorious political reality. This march to homogeneity has created the conditions for “new” ideological politics, and although Fukuyama was correct, and there was no longer a “systematic” alternative to liberal democracy, the number of “non systematic, local or particularist alternatives” has increased dramatically.
Without a traditional dichotomy of capitalism and communism, traditional politics has coalesced around the centre ground in many industrialised states, but ironically, as the range of viable political options has reduced, political discourse has become more polarised, not less. In the US especially, stoked by a partisan media with a reducing regard for the truth, there exists a state of permanent distrust and separation; framed as an ideological battle between the right and the left, liberals vs conservatives. The rise of social media, and decline in traditional impartial media has led to online echo chambers where no conflicting voices are heard. This further magnifies the differences, with less interest in compromise and a breakdown of trust. Dangerous Technological advances have made this worse still, with “Fake news” creating a “post truth World”, and the increasing accuracy of “deep-fake” videos could destroy the idea of trust entirely.
Inequality has always existed, and reactions to it are nothing new. However, Globalisation was sold as the vehicle to drive a fairer, wealthier, society, with the spoils shared by all. The failure of this promise, exemplified by the differing fortunes of rich and poor after the 2008 financial crisis, has fuelled this feeling of betrayal, creating a dangerous “new” identity deemed “populism”; a conflagration of the anti-elite traits of Marxism, and protectionist characteristics of traditional nativism. Arguably the most worrying aspect of this “new” political identity is personified most by Donald Trump, valuing opinion over fact, and a flagrant disregard for the truth.
Countless groups now exist to pressure for change on a variety of issues centred around inequality; Racial, gender, sexual to name a few. Brown and Ainley summarise this neatly: “A feature of twenty first century life in many of the advanced industrial societies is the demand for respect and esteem made by groups of kind or another who consider themselves to have been marginalised and undervalued by the dominant, patriarchal, hetrosexualist, white culture”. Globalisation, and specifically, the communication transformation and availability of information provided by the internet has enabled this positive change.
It is only in the advanced industrial societies that conditions exist for these groups to struggle for equality and representation, as those living in poorer societies have to prioritise more basic human requirements like safety, freedom of religion, shelter, and employment. The best example of this would be the continued persecution of the LGBT community, predominantly in Africa, Asia and the middle East, where a staggering 73 countries still declare homosexuality to be illegal.
Technological breakthroughs from globalisation have the potential for good but also could result in huge societal problems. If futurists like Andrew Yang and Yuval Noah Harari are correct and their fears of mass unemployment from automation come to pass, will these various groups cease in their individual struggles? If the exploited become the unneeded and “a useless class” is created, will there occur a coalescing of these groups into one with a more primal and urgent goal – survival?
The effects of Globalisation have created the “new” global politics of identity, often with familiar features, but often evolving in unexpected directions. Humans will always search for belonging and identity but there is potential for calamity if the problems of inequality and distrust are not addressed and overcome.
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