In recent years, the rise of populism has in many ways brought the question of human identity to the political forefront. Either positively, i.e. through the spread in mainly western democracies of the issue of defending the right to identity of individual social groups (racial or based on gender or sexual preferences), or negatively, in the logic of the feeling of insecurity of the threatened socio-racial majority of a country, political upheavals and readjustments are caused.
When strong movements are created for positive rights and the question of social identities of minorities, reactions are usually caused by the traditionally large majority of citizens due to the fear of marginalization or bypassing. The liberal ruling classes are accused of disregarding the sensitivities and concerns of the more popular strata and of a sophisticated cosmopolitanism.
A sense of alienation of the political elite of the countries is created from the real problems of ordinary people who are usually focused beyond the issues of economic survival and well-being to issues of respect for traditional social and moral values and issues of patriotic defense of national identity and cohesion. The root cause of the rise of extreme populists to power or near the top of the political hierarchy is not so much economic hardship but a sense of contempt for national popular concerns by the elites of the big urban centers and the care that the political system seems to offer to immigrants and in minority or marginal social groups.
The most typical example of a popular reaction to the identity crisis with strong elements of national insecurity was seen in the USA with the election of Trump to the presidency. With slogans for America’s exit from decline (“make America great again”) and caressing the ears of the white – still – majority with promises to restore their diminished, in their opinion, social status and restart those shaken by the crisis and the Asian competition of industrial firms in the predominantly Midwestern states, Trump mobilized large masses of predominantly white males under the banner of robust leadership.
In their excellent book “Social Identity” (Princeton, 2018), professors John Sides, Michael Tesler and Lynn Vavreck found that the reason most Americans voted for Trump was not because of their bad financial situation and how their jobs had been lost, but how they had lost them because of the minorities! “Discrimination against whites had become as big a problem as discrimination against blacks,” believed two-thirds of the electorate. Something that Bolsonaro in Brazil, Orbán in Hungary, Duterte in the Philippines and many others elsewhere have done, almost always with success.
It was the promise of dynamic solutions, and outside the usual American politics, that moved the voters who preferred Trump. Aggressive on immigration, religion and maintaining racial homogeneity, Trump has shown a determination to break taboos. The popular strata turned against the liberal elite by electing a person determined to bend the rules in order to serve their interests and beliefs.
What is crucial for one to understand from the electoral results that bring to power leaders or parties ready to violate traditional moral rules is the following: when confidence in the objectivity and fairness of the system is lost and, above all, when it is enshrined with measures of special protection the political influence and power of minorities, then faith in democracy will begin to shake.
