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A review by mburnamfink
Disaster Nationalism: The Downfall of Liberal Civilization by Richard Seymour
3.0
Disaster Nationalism is so close to being an excellent analysis of the current political moment that its retreat into the hoary and well-trodden halls of Theory is all the more frustrating. Seymour's goal is to understand the failures of the liberal centrist consensus of the early 21st century and the rise of inchoate proto-fascist politicians across the world. Bolsonaro in Brazil, Duterte in the Philippines, Modi in India, and of course, America's own big orange multiply convicted twice-impeached fraudster rapist Donald Trump.
The core of Seymour's thesis is that these movements are all part of a broad disaster nationalist trend, which seeks the reinvigoration of the nation through a cataclysm of violence. Riven through with intellectual contradictions, the main binding tie of the movement is a division of the world into friends and enemies, and the urge and ability to do violence to enemies. Moreso than any coherent class analysis, this is rooted in a psychology of decline, especially white male decline, a basic Freudian penile anxiety that links individual setbacks to broad trends in a paranoid web.
Are you scared yet?
The frustrating thing about this book is that as a keen observer of current events over the past decade (Christ, almost 10 years since Trump came down his escalator in 2015, announced he was running for President, and called Mexicans rapists), it's basically correct. But rather than present a particularly well-organized account of a whole lot of shit that's happened, or novel social theory along the lines of Max Read's "Zynternet", it's more Freud and Marx, again.
A few key things I think are worth pay attention to in the book. The central goal of disaster nationalism is to do a pogrom. Everything else is window dressing. What is at the center of this movement is an escalatory cycle between elite leaders and followers on the street, heading towards mass lynchings of a despised group. In Modi's India, it's Muslims; in the Philippines, drug addicts; Europe targets migrants; and in America, it's bring your AR-15 to school day. Law enforcement will of course aid and abet the pogrom, since the police fundamentally approve.
A second useful point is the centrality of what Baudrillard called the simulacrum. Reality is no longer what you see and feel, but rather the mediated experience of the 24 hour news cycle and the constant feeds of social media, all optimized for attention. If Benedict Anderson's Imagined Community of the nation required the newspaper, and the break of time into then-now-tomorrow, disaster nationalism takes place in a single smear between nostalgia, future greatness, and present despair, an ever-flickering cascade of images.
Third is the rise of stochastic terrorism. Organized Brown Shirt groups are rather rare in disaster nationalism. Rather, the frontline fighters are alienated individuals polishing their manifestos, and then attempting to go out in a symbolic blaze of mass murder. Essentially impossible to stop (well, not that cops even try, but I imagine the false positive rate of reports would be very high), lone wolf shooters are both a symbol and a symptom of the disease of disaster nationalism, a reminder not to attract attention by protest or difference, unless you're willing to die.
As for the rest of us, the people who rely on government services, I am personally fond of air traffic control, well, we can get fucked. Welfare will be cut to the bone, and what remains privatized and run by incompetent ghouls. Disaster nationalists are utter failures at delivering real benefits, even to their supports. Yet somehow Duarte and Modi maintain exceptional approval ratings, and America decided to get back on the Trump train.
If there's any consolation, it's that through incompetence and incoherence disaster nationalists are not very effective at carrying out their proposal. However, each day they're in office or on TV is another day we as society slide towards barbarism. I also suspect that they're so vehemently against gender studies and critical race theory because those two academic disciplines tread on their space of linking personal barriers and violations to broad intangible social constructs (invert white supremacist patriarchy and you get globohomo, and vice versa).
The introduction to this book is sharp and fantastic, the rest is a trudge.
The core of Seymour's thesis is that these movements are all part of a broad disaster nationalist trend, which seeks the reinvigoration of the nation through a cataclysm of violence. Riven through with intellectual contradictions, the main binding tie of the movement is a division of the world into friends and enemies, and the urge and ability to do violence to enemies. Moreso than any coherent class analysis, this is rooted in a psychology of decline, especially white male decline, a basic Freudian penile anxiety that links individual setbacks to broad trends in a paranoid web.
Are you scared yet?
The frustrating thing about this book is that as a keen observer of current events over the past decade (Christ, almost 10 years since Trump came down his escalator in 2015, announced he was running for President, and called Mexicans rapists), it's basically correct. But rather than present a particularly well-organized account of a whole lot of shit that's happened, or novel social theory along the lines of Max Read's "Zynternet", it's more Freud and Marx, again.
A few key things I think are worth pay attention to in the book. The central goal of disaster nationalism is to do a pogrom. Everything else is window dressing. What is at the center of this movement is an escalatory cycle between elite leaders and followers on the street, heading towards mass lynchings of a despised group. In Modi's India, it's Muslims; in the Philippines, drug addicts; Europe targets migrants; and in America, it's bring your AR-15 to school day. Law enforcement will of course aid and abet the pogrom, since the police fundamentally approve.
A second useful point is the centrality of what Baudrillard called the simulacrum. Reality is no longer what you see and feel, but rather the mediated experience of the 24 hour news cycle and the constant feeds of social media, all optimized for attention. If Benedict Anderson's Imagined Community of the nation required the newspaper, and the break of time into then-now-tomorrow, disaster nationalism takes place in a single smear between nostalgia, future greatness, and present despair, an ever-flickering cascade of images.
Third is the rise of stochastic terrorism. Organized Brown Shirt groups are rather rare in disaster nationalism. Rather, the frontline fighters are alienated individuals polishing their manifestos, and then attempting to go out in a symbolic blaze of mass murder. Essentially impossible to stop (well, not that cops even try, but I imagine the false positive rate of reports would be very high), lone wolf shooters are both a symbol and a symptom of the disease of disaster nationalism, a reminder not to attract attention by protest or difference, unless you're willing to die.
As for the rest of us, the people who rely on government services, I am personally fond of air traffic control, well, we can get fucked. Welfare will be cut to the bone, and what remains privatized and run by incompetent ghouls. Disaster nationalists are utter failures at delivering real benefits, even to their supports. Yet somehow Duarte and Modi maintain exceptional approval ratings, and America decided to get back on the Trump train.
If there's any consolation, it's that through incompetence and incoherence disaster nationalists are not very effective at carrying out their proposal. However, each day they're in office or on TV is another day we as society slide towards barbarism. I also suspect that they're so vehemently against gender studies and critical race theory because those two academic disciplines tread on their space of linking personal barriers and violations to broad intangible social constructs (invert white supremacist patriarchy and you get globohomo, and vice versa).
The introduction to this book is sharp and fantastic, the rest is a trudge.