Protesters against Trump's proposed Mexican wall and deportations (Credit: Erik McGregor)
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Notwithstanding all their many differences, the reason Trump and Brexit get lumped together as part of the same phenomenon is that they are both commonly understood to be local expressions of a much larger debate between nationalism and universalism. I say ‘debate’ deliberately, because the reason liberals and progressives find Trump and Brexit so hard to process intellectually is that they presume this was a debate that was over, done and dusted. And they think that universalism won, and won decisively. But they are quite wrong.
Back in December 2016, in one of those excellent Intelligence Squared debates, the brilliant social psychologist Jonathan Haidt tried to explain to a clearly baffled Nick Clegg why universalism contains the seeds of its own demise.
The globalist ethos is to tear down the borders, explains Haidt. His explanation of the globalist ethic continues thus:
“…nation-states are arbitrary, why should the government privilege the people who were born here rather than people elsewhere who are much poorer? You begin to get a denial of patriotism – the claim .. of anti-Trump protesters saying that “patriotism is racism”.
It is the John Lennon position: “Imagine there’s no countries. Its easy if you try. Nothing to kill and die for. And no religion too.”
The difference between globalists and nationalists is that globalists care for all people, and for people in general. And the nationalists care for particular people in a particular place, for ‘our’ people, as it were. The globalists think the nationalists are small minded and parochial. Racist even.
The nationalists think that there is no such thing as caring for others in the abstract. They think that to care for people in general – as the universalists say they do – is not really to care very much for anyone at all. It is more a philosophical principle than it is flesh and blood compassion. More the conclusion of a school debate, than a genuine love for neighbour.
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