a project from the political to the identitarian or cultural sphere removes it from ordinary political contestation and places it in a privileged realm where it purports to be immune to counterclaims. A political movement or proposal is always up for debate, but being based on emotions and beliefs (rather than facts), cultural or identarian projects are inevitably beyond discussion.
Tribal and identitarian discourse spans the political spectrum. Some have called populism and nationalism “the identity politics of the right.”6 Then there are hybrid cases, such as secessionism in Catalonia, in which soi-disant progressives often employ the same kind of exclusionary rhetoric favored by right-wing nationalists.
In both cases, when political campaigners use identity to boost their popularity and power, fear, scaremongering, and “us/them rhetoric” are essential ingredients. The purpose may be nationalist or separatist, but the techniques employed are the same. At the same time, it is necessary to deny this is happening. The legitimacy and power of these movements depend entirely on their authenticity.
Contemporary tribalist movements have worked to keep up appearances, claiming to have a substantive and important project while denying their identitarian curse on Spanish unionists, EU elites, or “cosmopolitan liberals” – though Orbán admitted quite openly that he has declared war on Muslim migrants. Identity politics even came into play when Donald Trump cleverly mobilized against “the Washington swamp” in 2016. Creating and sustaining the conflict is crucial to the tribalistic project, but it is at the same time important that it doesn’t look too identitarian to work. We saw it when Brexit campaigners talked about their opponents, the Remainers, as unpatriotic traitors seduced by European federal ideals.7 In their eyes, the European idea is a stab in the back of true Britishness, which would fare much better on its own.
The same emphasis on betrayal has also been utilized strategically by the secessionist movement in Catalonia. Again and again, the discourse of treason and betrayal crops up in characterizations of Catalan unionists’ (who constitute a majority) opposition to independence.
Identity politics and its accompanying tribalist rhetoric make fewer cognitive demands than calls for increased unity and collaboration. It appeals to the stomach, often to blood, history, and territory, rather than asking people to conceive of ways to bridge cultural differences. As Timothy Garton Ash writes:
[T]he populists tell a simplistic story about how pulling up the national drawbridge and ‘taking back control’ will result in the restoration of an imagined golden past of good jobs, happy families and a more traditional national community.8
Though Ash is referring specifically to Brexit campaigners here, the script is the same for the other identitarian projects we discuss in this book. All that is required is slight adjustments to fit the circumstances.
Modern identitarian campaigning has also become much more professionalized. These days, little is left to chance when it comes to luring voters and supporters. Campaigns rely on well-designed storylines produced in corporate headquarters by highly paid spin doctors and professional strategists educated at the best universities. Excluding here professional trolls and the use of algorithms to sway people’s minds, the psychology behind what one might term “modern engineered tribalism” has turned into a “neurological big business,” as Chua describes tellingly in her recent book Political Tribes. Chua discusses the “dark side of the tribal instinct,” with strategists and strongmen developing campaigns designed to play on “group-bonding” fear and on the “dehumanizing” of their opponents.9
This is probably why tribalists often refer to their critics and opponents as traitors.10 Treason and betrayal are strong words, and their repeated employment shows how identitarian references are often carefully designed to obtain specific political objectives. Critique and satire become dangerous because they reveal the absence of a proper essence in these projects, and in this way resemble the Franciscan church’s attempt to suppress laughter and irony in Umberto Eco’s 1980 novel The Name of the Rose. Irony establishes a critical distance, and to the extent that it grades into ridicule, it is dangerous and must be stamped out, whatever the cost. Few tribalists have been able to tolerate ridicule or satire, as we see in authoritarian leaders’ continuous attempts to ban critical media and satiric cartoonists. As when the Chinese leader Xi Jinping seemingly banned Winnie-the-Pooh because an American talk show host made fun of Xi by comparing the two.
Identity as an instrument of mobilization against the enemy has existed in many different settings over centuries – above all in war. And yet there is little discussion of the belligerent tone of identitarian figures from secessionists to Brexiteers. When Brexiteers argue that the UK is too culturally and historically distinct from the rest of Europe to be a mere subject of a European Union.11 Or when they argue (as Boris Johnson has done on several occasions) that the UK would have been reduced to a vassal state if the “surrender bill” of Theresa May – Johnson’s predecessor – had ever been adopted. Secessionists in Catalonia equally make these kinds of allegations. For instance, when they claim that the Catalans’ language, history, and culture are so specific – and so frequently suppressed – that they require not only their own state, but also – in the interim – the near-eradication of the Spanish language from the Catalan schooling system.12 As Nacho Martín Blanco, a member of the Catalan parliament, has put it: “Catalonia has the dubious honor of being the only place in the Western world where the majority of the population do not even have the option of enrolling their children in schools that teach in their native language.”13 Even in the Basque Country, another of Spain’s troubled regions, things have not gone this far.
Replacing politics with identity or culture is an extremely potent but also explosive weapon. Potent because, by putting identity and ethnic/cultural belonging above all, it posits the existence of a deeper, more innocent, purer stratum beyond the political. And dangerous because its proponents refuse to acknowledge the political nature of their positions, which naturally would make them an object of discussion.
The tribalism and ethnocentrism we face cannot, however, be reduced to secessionist movements or radical Tories’ views of the EU–UK relationship. It is far more wide-ranging than that.
Tribal rhetoric and identity politics are systematically employed by illiberal demagogues like Viktor Orbán, who touts Hungary’s cultural uniqueness while attacking foreigners, Jews, LBGTQ activists, and anything that reeks of cosmopolitanism. He presents the liberal elite as the enemy – reckless globalists imposing multicultural values and tolerance on innocent nativist Hungarians.
Orbán presents the nation’s distinctiveness – reinforced with Christianity, to get the older generation on board – as something precious to be shielded from an invasive disease. Hungarian society was full of hope thirty years ago, when it broke free from the Soviet yoke. Under Orbán, it has not only embraced identity politics full force, but even turned its back on the core values of democracy.
The purpose of the identitarian projects I have so far described is to transform identity from a passive, historical sentiment to an active weapon against more inclusive forms of nationhood (such as Spanish unity), Europeanization, or globalization. With Europe’s current immigration debacle, which has called the otherwise successful Schengen open-border regime into question, new walls and fences are again being built and campaigned for.
Notes
1 B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Verso, 1991. 2 Uffe Østergaard, “Why Globalism Cannot Extinguish the Feeling of National Belonging” (in Danish), October 2, 2016, https://videnskab.dk/kultur-samfund/nation (my translation from Danish). See also his Hvorhen Europa?, Djøf, 2018. 3 E. Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France 1870–1914,
