#Nationalism: the ethno-nationalist populism of Donald Trump’s Twitter communication

In this article, we explore the ethno-nationalist populism of Donald Trump’s Twitter communication during the 2016 presidential campaign. We draw on insights from ethno-symbolism – a perspective within nationalism studies – to analyse all 5,515 tweets sent by Trump during the campaign. We find that ethno-nationalist and populist themes were by far the most important component of Trump’s tweets, and that these themes built upon long-standing myths and symbols of an ethnic conception of American identity. In sum, Trump’s tweets depicted a virtuous white majority being threatened by several groups of immoral outsiders, who were identified by their foreignness, their religion, and their self-interestedness. The struggle against these groups was framed as a mission to restore America to a mythical golden age – to “Make America Great Again.

Na sombra do Vietnã: o nacionalismo liberal e o problema da guerra

Este artigo discute como um grupo de cineastas e historiadores no Pós-Vietnã, buscando recuperar o nacionalismo liberal, procurou celebrar a figura do soldado cidadão no passado dos EUA. Esses esforços foram aclamados e se popularizaram, mas falharam em gerar uma crítica das forças armadas profissionalizadas e da política externa aventureira que esses militares ajudaram a viabilizar

Liberty, Liberalism, Libertarianism and Community Responsibility

Le professeur Gary Gerstle se propose de conduire une réflexion sur l'importance du concept de liberté, conjointement à la confusion de termes tels que « liberalism », « libertarianism », « civil liberties » et « conservatism ». La puissance évocative du terme dit-il est indéniable : voir les paroles de Philip Henry « Give me liberty or give me death » ; ou encore les paroles de l'hymne : « My country t'is of thee/sweet land of liberty ». Le meilleur symbole en étant d'ailleurs la Statue de l..

The Rise and Fall (?) of America's Neoliberal Order

This paper argues that the last eighty years of American politics can be understood in terms of the rise and fall of two political orders. The first political order grew out of the New Deal, dominating political life from the 1930s to the 1970s. The history of this order (the New Deal Order) is now well known. The other order, best understood as ‘neoliberal’ in its politics, emerged from the economic and political crises of the 1970s. This paper is one of the first to elucidate the political relationships, ideological character and moral perspective that were central to this neoliberal order's rise and triumph. The paper's narrative unfolds in three acts: the first chronicles the 1980s rise of Ronald Reagan and the laissez-faire Republican party he forced into being; the second shows how the collapse of communism in the late 1980s and early 1990s accelerated the globalization of capitalism and elevated neoliberalism's prestige; and the third reveals how a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, facilitated his party's capitulation to neoliberal imperatives. Political orders encourage such capitulation, the paper argues, by universalizing their own ideological principles and making alternative ideologies seem marginal and unworkable. A coda shows how the Great Recession of 2008 fractured America's neoliberal order, diminishing its authority and creating a space in which different kinds of politics, including the right-wing populism of Donald Trump and the left-wing populism of Bernie Sanders, could flourish

The Civil War and Statebuilding: A Reconsideration

A favored way of interpreting American political development in the US is to stress the revolutionary effects of the Civil War on the American nation and its state. In this view, the defeat of the Confederacy interred states’ rights and concentrated power in the central government to an unprecedented degree. This central state, this “Yankee Leviathan,” in the words of Richard Bensel, first focused on creating a legal and political environment in which capitalism could flourish. In the hands of the Populists and Progressives, this same central state then developed the political resolve and administrative capacity to remedy the multiple ills that an unbounded capitalism had generated. By the time of the New Deal, big government, conceived in the tradition of European social democracy, had tamed big capitalism. What this account leaves out is how deep remained the commitment in the North across the Civil War years to keep intact the government that the Constitution had ordained. Many of the new powers assumed by the federal government during that time were justified by war emergency and thus understood to be legitimate only so long as wartime lasted. Even the profound movement during the Radical Republican era to move beyond circumstances of emergency and change the conception of governance permanently via constitutional amendment changed the balance of power between the states and the central government less than is commonly thought. The Civil War and Reconstruction may therefore have been less of a pivot in the history of the American state than many believe them to have been.Non

L’Amérique rencontre les immigrants : passé, présent, futur

Afin d’éclairer les récents débats autour de la gestion des flux migratoires vers les États-Unis, Gary Gerstle propose une interprétation de l’histoire des politiques de l’immigration américaine sur la longue durée. Le « pacte » révolutionnaire à l’origine de la nation a fait des États-Unis une terre d’immigration ouverte aux peuples du monde – bien qu’excluant d’emblée une partie de sa propre population selon des critères raciaux. Les Américains, par principe autant qu’en raison de considérations pratiques, lui sont restés fidèles durant le premier siècle de leur histoire (1776-1882), avant d’adopter le comportement des nations comparables et de céder à une logique restrictionniste (1882 à nos jours). Cette remarquable stabilité des politiques de l’immigration s’explique par la grande difficulté à mener toute réforme à son terme, qu’elle prône la limitation ou l’ouverture : tout changement d’envergure nécessite la formation de coalitions politiques entre des groupes habituellement en désaccord. C’est à l’aulne de cette configuration structurellement défavorable qu’il faut comprendre les blocages de la période récente. L’auteur achève sa réflexion en esquissant ce que devrait être, s’il se révélait possible pour l’administration Obama de s’engager sur ce terrain, une approche progressiste de la réforme en la matière