The Tribalization of Europe. Marlene Wind
who need to blur their activities. Tribalist rhetoric is rearing its head in the old, well-established democracies as well. In a desperate attempt to regain support from lost voters, the political mainstream relies on tribalistic gesture politics exemplified in everything from intensified border control to laws prohibiting burkas and taking away refugees’ jewelry, as has been legislated on in Denmark.8 It also relies upon the belief that identity politics is the only strategy left “in town” when trying to hijack voters at national elections in a global, European time. For example, a recent study found that in many Western democracies, rival political blocs agree and vote together on the large majority of issues in parliament, making identity politics and harsh rhetoric against foreigners (and the EU) the only thing left to catch voters’ attention. Of course, this does not mean that identity issues cannot be significant; for example, problems of the integration of immigrants (which is often the locus) can be very real. Of course such problems have to be addressed. The point here is merely that in many contexts, identity (posturing as real problems) has become the central focal point of modern politics – even in those parts of Europe that on the surface appear more peaceful.
The question is now: how will all this affect the future of Europe? What consequences will tribalization have for the Union’s survival? I will try to answer these questions by looking at three cases that, in my view, are emblematic of the tribal tendencies overtaking Europe in these years. Each is different and has its different features, but all are symptomatic of the present epoch of disintegration. The Catalan independence campaign, the anti-European Brexit crusade, and the animosity-ridden democratic backsliding in Central and Eastern Europe epitomize Europe in the year 2020. In the pages that follow, I will try to unravel the dynamics behind the smokescreen, and even more, our strange unwillingness to forcefully counteract it.
My overall argument is that after Trump, Brexit, and the rise of populism in numerous European countries, we face a fundamental lack of confidence in the values and institutions we have built since the Second World War. Rather than insisting on our common principles and ideals, many erstwhile defenders of the liberal world order have become apologetic and therefore complicit cheerleaders for tribalism. To understand the severity of the transformations we are witnessing, we need to reconsider how the shift toward identity politics has also influenced our way of understanding democracy. In the book’s second half, I argue that both populism and tribalism have helped undermine our former awareness that democracy is more than just elections, referenda, and parliamentary majorities. In the age of populism, where the “the people” have taken center stage, democracy seems to have atrophied to just that: majorities (also in referenda) without the rule of law, absent an open and critical exchange of views. One today rarely gets sympathy for insisting that independent counter-majoritarian institutions like courts (sometimes even supranational!) should be strengthened to uphold basic principles. Attacking counter-majoritarian bodies as well as law beyond the state has become part of the tribal spirit.
Democracy in the age of populism has thus become unconstrained majority rule, with political debate reduced to fake news and cultural fundamentalism. Equating democracy with an extreme version of majoritarianism, in which the rule of law and judicial institutions (inside as well as outside the state border) are readily questioned and even sometimes dismantled, is an extremely dangerous path to go down. And when this is wedded to crude campaigning centered on identity politics, with greater stress placed on getting the message across than on it being true, then the original meaning of liberal democracy is long lost.
In contemporary Europe, leaders also seem hesitant to insist that the European Union must embrace fundamental democratic values and ideals and make these the focal point of the community. Or rather: they insist on it in their speeches, treaties, and laws, but when push comes to shove, when it truly counts and action is needed, the courage vanishes. And yet our values need defending, now more than ever. In a world where we as Europeans are surrounded by non-democracies and regimes that fundamentally question and suppress the ideals of the Enlightenment, there can and should be no cherry-picking – no compromise when it comes to standing up for our values and ideals. We must insist on all those aspects of democracy that secure our right to speak up against the government, to hold free and fair elections, to host free universities and a free press. If we do not insist on this and if European leaders cease backing this up, in my opinion, the EU has signed its own death warrant. What is Europe meant to defend, at home and abroad, if not these values? If we fail to go on the offensive and actively oppose the tribalist forces we currently face, democracy in its true conception may soon become a thing of the past.
Notes
1 See A.M. Slaughter, “A Real New World Order,” Foreign Affairs, 76 (1997). 2 F. Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, Free Press, 1992. 3 The Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project is directed by Staffan Lindberg from Gothenburg University in Sweden. Through its V-Dem index, it examines the state of democracy in the world, using seven different democratic forms. The data I refer to here are from the 2018 report. See a summary of the findings in S.I. Lindberg, “The Nature of Democratic Backsliding in Europe,” Carnegie Europe, July 24, 2018. 4 See W.G. Sumner, Folkways: A Study of Mores, Manners, Customs and Morals, Dover Publications, 2002, p. 13. 5 The Economist, “The New Political Divide: Farewell, Left Versus Right. The Contest that Matters Now Is Open Against Closed,” July 30, 2016. 6 See the revealing coverage by Selam Gebrekidan, Matt Apuzzo, and Benjamin Novak in “The Money Farmers: How Oligarchs and Populists Milk the E.U. for Millions,” The New York Times, November 3, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/03/world/europe/eu-farm-subsidy-hungary.html. 7 See E. Rosenbach, “The Catalan Independence Referendum is a Smokescreen for Other Issues,” Independent, October 1, 2017. 8 Harriet Agerholm, “Denmark Uses Controversial ‘Jewellery Law’ to Seize Assets from Refugees for First Time,” Independent, July 1, 2016, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/denmark-jewellery-law-migrants-refugees-asylum-seekers-unhcr-united-nations-a7113056.html.
Imagined Communities and Identity Politics
“We have made Italy. Now we must make Italians.” This now famous statement appears in the unfinished memoirs of Italian statesman and writer Massimo d’Azeglio (1798–1866). He played a fundamental role in the unification of the Italian peninsula – a process that was officially completed in 1870. By stressing that the creation of a unified state with formal authority was only the first step, d’Azeglio was conceding that the most difficult part remained to come: the creation of an Italian people – and of a common identity. What provoked many later nationalists (and scholars) was d’Azeglio’s claim that identity isn’t “just there” to be dug up from the ground, but must be created – often by elites, and often from above.
The British historian and political scientist Benedict Anderson1 picked up on d’Azeglio’s points in an important work of his own, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Here Anderson systematically demonstrates the so-called “thesis of modernity,” which points to how national identities and history are products of narratives that only gain meaning as remembrance, and thus a sense of unity, when used in stories and encounters from one generation to the next. Communities and their corresponding identities have always been “imagined” and created by people. They are not “naturally given” in the sense that they have always been there, as the so-called primordialists would otherwise claim. As the Danish historian Uffe Østergaard puts it, the thesis of modernity has never been repudiated by historians: “the thesis of modernity, that nations and national identities are largely the result of relatively few intellectuals’ conscious efforts to ‘construct’ or ‘invent’ these, only becomes real later when a great majority starts acting as if the identities were ‘real.’”2
In Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, national identities were created and nurtured by elites, often with an explicit personal