In the latter decades of both centuries, there was still some faith in internationalism. The general narrative of the benefits of liberal trade was still dominant. Even social movements, labor unions, and environmental activists still believed in working across borders for a larger cause. However, by the early part of the new century, internationalism had almost entirely receded. The faith in economic progress and interstate cooperation had been replaced by anti-liberal movements, in which right- and left-wing politicians propagated defensive nationalist discourses.
This section will show how the golden age of international commerce produced reactionary defensive nationalism. This is what Polanyi describes as “spontaneous” forms of resistance against transnational liberalism. But Polanyi’s language is too indefinite and elusive to pin down precisely what he means by this, or how his conceptual framework can be used methodologically. The following two chapters examine how “society”—understood as a wide swath of classes and interests—resisted internationalism and battled to protect itself from the dislocations created by hyper-globalization. It will do so by examining left- and right-wing defensive nationalist movements that arose in both epochs.
The analysis of defensive nationalism is divided into two parts. Chapter 10 will trace the birth of defensive nationalism on the right and the left in both periods. It will cover three key aspects. The first section will analyze the genesis of these movements in the United States and Europe. It will identify what factions of society headed the movements and what the rhetorical differences were in the way in which “the people” and “the nation” were defined by the right and the left. The second section will examine the rise of economic nationalism in the guise of state protectionism. The third section traces how growing wealth disparities shaped the way in which the global enemy was defined on both the right and the left. In Chapter 11, the focus will be on the turn toward nativism and fascism in both periods. The first section will examine how anti-immigrant backlashes manifest as nativism, and the different forms that took. The final section will discuss the rise of anti-liberalism and anti-rationalism that came to characterize the right-wing movements in both periods (see Table 10.1).