By Ilya Somin
Monday, July 01, 2024
Many conservatives and libertarians today lament
the rise of “wokeness,” even to the point of believing it to be
the greatest political danger facing America. Some of these fears are
well-taken.
But concerns about wokeness have distracted many on the
center-right from a more serious danger, one far more likely to gain widespread
support and cause great harm: nationalism. Terrible woke ideas should be
criticized. However, their impact is limited by the smaller numbers of their
proponents. Nationalists are far more numerous. And if nationalists acquire the
power they seek, they would implement an agenda that does great harm to the
lives, freedom, and well-being of millions of people.
Wokeness should neither be neglected nor treated as
harmless. But when comparing the two, the nationalist threat should take
priority. It’s long past time for right-leaning critics of both ideologies to
treat nationalism for what it is: the greatest threat to liberal democratic
institutions today.
***
“Nationalism” and “wokeness” are relatively vague terms
with multiple meanings, so it’s important to define them from the outset.
Nationalists believe the main
purpose of government is to protect the interests of a particular ethnic,
racial, or cultural group, usually the majority group within the nation. They
generally view foreigners with deep suspicion, support severe restrictions on
immigration and international trade, and tend to back large welfare-state
programs. Nationalism’s focus on ethnic and cultural particularity
distinguishes it from other ideologies that promote patriotism on
universalistic grounds, such as the idea that U.S. institutions deserve loyalty
because they promote universal values of liberty and democracy.
“Wokeists” hold that the U.S. and other Western nations
are deeply compromised by a history of injustice toward “historically
marginalized groups.” When it comes to race, for example, they treat this
“structural racism” as almost ineradicable. To combat these injustices,
wokeists advocate for state-based racial and ethnic preferences, sometimes even
including reparations. As wokeist icon Ibram X. Kendi puts
it, “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The
only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.” Wokeists also
push for extensive “antiracist” indoctrination and—in many cases—suppression of
what they see as racist and bigoted speech.
For all their mutual hostility, right-wing nationalists
and left-wing wokeists actually have much in common. Both groups treat racial
and ethnic identity as fundamental and largely immutable. Both want the
government to actively promote the interests of some ethnic or cultural groups
relative to others. And most of all, both assume a zero-sum world where gains
for one group can only come at the expense of others.
But though wokeists and nationalists engage in a similar
identity politics, the latter are far more dangerous. Why? In large part,
because an identity politics movement promoting the supposed interests of the
ethnic majority has a much greater chance of political success in a
democratic society than one focused on minority groups. The core potential
political constituency for nationalism in the U.S. is white Christians, a group
that constitutes
a plurality of the population. Many secular whites are also a potential
constituency, which is notable since nonreligious members of the ethnic
majority have been an important base for nationalist movements in Europe. By
contrast, the potential constituency for wokeism—racial minorities and
left-wing intellectuals—is far smaller. While people like Elon Musk may fear
the “woke
mind virus,” many more are susceptible to the nationalist mind virus.
Moreover, most woke policies are highly unpopular. Racial
preferences in education, for example, are opposed
by over two-thirds of Americans, including most racial minorities. Among
women, most oppose woke policies like allowing transgender women to
participate in women’s sports or use women’s bathrooms. Wokeists also have a
knack for antagonizing members of groups they seek to woo, like insisting on
using the term “Latinx,” even though most
Hispanics dislike it.
To be sure, woke ideology disproportionately appeals to
the highly educated, which gives wokeists an edge in the media, academia, and
various bureaucratic institutions. However, nationalists have enough highly
educated personnel of their own to counter. TV networks like Fox News and
“national conservative” think tanks like The Heritage Foundation (which is
planning a wide-ranging nationalist
agenda for Trump’s possible second term) provide nationalists with enough
media influence and brainpower to get by. Wokeist influence over regulatory
bureaucracies is counterbalanced by greater nationalist influence over law
enforcement entities—the government agencies with the greatest power to arrest
and detain people—and their potential to once again control the White House,
which has great leverage over federal regulatory agencies.
History also shows nationalist movements are a menace to
liberal political institutions. Whether in 1930s Germany or present-day Russia,
nationalist movements have subverted liberal democracy and installed brutal
dictatorships in its place. By contrast, not a single wokeist egalitarian
movement has achieved such a result. Racial and ethnic minorities have
sometimes managed to impose dictatorships over an ethnic majority (as in
apartheid-era South Africa). But in those cases, the minority group relied on
military and organizational superiority, not on something like a woke
egalitarian ideology. There is no real chance of wokeists achieving such
military superiority in the U.S. or any other Western nation.
Wokeists have recently suffered setbacks even where their
influence is greatest. Nowhere is the power of wokeists greater than in
universities, where they are heavily represented among administrators and
faculty. Yet numerous leading universities have recently brought
back mandatory use of standardized tests in admissions and dropped
the use of DEI statements in faculty hiring, two measures long supported by
wokeists. Perhaps most visibly, many schools called in law enforcement to crack
down on pro-Hamas protesters who had established “encampments” or occupied
buildings near end of the academic year. While schools should have taken these
steps sooner, the fact so many did so at all is an indication of the limits of
wokeist influence.
There is little doubt that nationalists have far greater
political influence than wokeists. Nationalists have become the dominant
faction of the Republican Party, with Donald Trump openly declaring
himself a nationalist. By contrast, committed wokeists are just one of
several groups contending for dominance among Democrats. The nationalists,
therefore, have a greater chance of leading a political coalition and
enacting a more expansive and harmful agenda.
Severe immigration restrictions are at the heart of
it—and not just cutting illegal immigration, but the legal kind as well. In his
first term, Trump cut
the latter far more than the former, and he and his “national conservative”
allies would do more in a second term. They plan
to gut most types of legal migration, including for family reunification,
economic migrants, and refugees—such as Ukrainians fleeing Vladimir Putin’s war
of aggression under the highly
successful Uniting for Ukraine private sponsorship program—among
others.
Nationalists usually paint these policies as beneficial
for native-born Americans, ignoring evidence to the contrary. Immigration
restrictions deprive Americans of numerous valuable economic and social
interactions with migrants, undermining
natives’ economic liberty more than any other government policy. Moreover,
immigrants contribute disproportionately to
entrepreneurship and scientific innovation that benefits everyone. Mass
deportations supported by Trump and other nationalists predictably raise
prices, severely damage
the U.S. economy, and destroy
more jobs for native-born Americans than they create. Immigration
restrictions also
threaten natives’ civil liberties, because thousands of U.S. citizens get
swept up in the racial profiling, detention, and deportation that are
unavoidable aspects of aggressive immigration enforcement. Nationalist
restrictions on legal migration would also predictably
exacerbate disorder at the border, as desperate migrants would have no
option other than illegal entry. By contrast, expanding legal options is
the best way to reduce illegal entry.
There is also a deep moral problem at the heart of
immigration restrictions. Libertarians and conservatives rightly oppose woke
racial preferences in education and employment because they disadvantage people
based on morally arbitrary circumstances of birth. Yet immigration restrictions
are much the same: They bar people from living and working in the U.S. because
of accidents of parentage and birth. Being born south of the Rio Grande River
as opposed to north of it—like being born black instead of white—is a morally
arbitrary circumstance outside of people’s control. It should not determine how
much freedom and opportunity they have. Indeed, Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration
analyst at the Cato Institute, has rightly characterized these immigration
restrictions as a form of affirmative
action for natives. And it’s a far more severe type of discrimination than
woke racial preferences: Being consigned to a lifetime of poverty and
oppression in Cuba or Venezuela is far worse than being rejected from an elite
university for similar reasons.
The nationalist trade agenda is also enormously harmful.
Trump promises to impose 10 percent tariffs on all imports, which would
severely damage the U.S. economy, exacerbate inflation, and raise prices
for a wide range of goods. The American Action Forum estimates that, after
accounting for retaliation by trading partners, it would cost Americans some
$123 billion per year. Such a trade war would weaken U.S. credibility
abroad and alienate our allies. China, Russia, and other U.S. adversaries would
benefit. Additionally, nationalist legislators like Sens. J.D.
Vance and Josh
Hawley have portrayed industrial policy as a bulwark for the working
class—yet they ignore how it rewards poorly performing firms and can be used to
support the party in power and punish opponents. And of course, nationalist
industrial planning shares many of the flaws
of its socialist counterpart.
Nationalists’ fear of cultural change lead them to favor
government control of the culture, as well as the economy. Thus, they try to
impose speech restrictions on things like drag
shows and DEI
workplace trainings. Even those who are not fans of such programs should be
concerned about the threat to free speech.
Perhaps worst of all, the growth of nationalism poses a
severe threat to democratic institutions. Historically, nationalist movements tend
toward leader-worship and often degenerate into authoritarianism. The
belief that they and they alone represent the true people—the “real Americans,”
as opposed to minorities or “globalist” elites—often leads nationalists to
reject the legitimacy of election results that go against them. Donald Trump’s
effort to overturn the 2020 election based on claims it was rigged against
him—by a combination of illegal immigrants and nefarious elites, no less—was in
part the product of his personal flaws and idiosyncrasies. But it was also part
of a broader tendency of nationalist thinking. A second Trump administration,
or a future president influenced by nationalist ideology, might well take more
systematic steps to curb free electoral competition. By fiat alone, he could
upend not only consequential policies like trade and immigration, but even
democratic institutions themselves.
***
The fight against wokeness should not be abandoned,
especially in places where it enjoys great influence. Academics should do more
to combat racial and ethnic preferences in higher education, for example, and reduce
ideological discrimination in faculty hiring. Moreover, it should be noted
that wokeists are not the only illiberal force on the left; “Democratic
socialism” remains a noteworthy
threat.
But despite such caveats, the threat of nationalism is on
another level. No woke policy that has any plausible chance of enactment in the
foreseeable future is likely to cause as much harm as the nationalist agenda.
No plausible woke policy is likely to consign millions of people to a lifetime
of poverty and oppression, or to massively damage the U.S. economy. And though
they are certainly illiberal, wokeists are also comparatively unlikely to
severely damage democratic institutions or keep in power a president who has
lost an election anytime soon.
Conservatives and libertarians should oppose the excesses
of the woke agenda. But doing so at the expense of countering the greater
nationalist threat is a recipe for disaster.
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