Join the panel for a debate on The New Nationalism in America and Beyond: The Deep Roots of Ethnic Nationalism in the Digital Age.
Our speakers, Sophie Duchesne and Cynthia Miller-Idriss join the authors, Robert Schertzer and Eric Woods, for a debate on their book which analyses the social media campaigns of Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, and the Brexit campaigners, showing how today's new nationalists are cultivating support from white majorities by tapping into their history and culture.
Across the West, there has been a resurgence of ethnic nationalism, populism, and anti-immigrant sentiment - a phenomenon that many commentators have called the "new nationalism." In The New Nationalism in America and Beyond, Robert Schertzer and Eric Taylor Woods seek to understand why the bastions of liberalism are proving to be fertile ground for a decidedly illiberal ideology. To do so, they examine the social media campaigns of three of the most successful exemplars of the new nationalism: Donald Trump in the US, Marine Le Pen in France, and Brexit in the UK. Schertzer and Woods show how today's new nationalists are cultivating support from white majorities by drawing from long-standing myths and symbols to construct an image of the nation as an ethnic community. Their cutting-edge and multidisciplinary approach combines elements of political science, sociology, history, and communication and media studies, to show how leaders today are updating the historical foundations of ethnic nationalism for the digital age.
The book can be purchased in physical format via online bookshops such as Book depository: New-Nationalism-America-Beyond.
Meet the speakers and chair
Eric Kaufmann is Professor of Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is the author of Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities (Penguin 2018; Abrams 2019); Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth (Profile 2010), The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America (Harvard 2004), The Orange Order (Oxford 2007) and Unionism and Orangeism in Northern Ireland since 1945 - with H. Patterson (Manchester 2007). He is co-editor, among others, of Political Demography (Oxford 2012) and Whither the Child: causes and consequences of low fertility (Paradigm 2012), and editor of Rethinking Ethnicity: Majority Groups and Dominant Minorities (Routledge 2004). An editor of the journal Nations & Nationalism, he has written for New York Times, Times of London, Financial Times, Newsweek International, Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines.
Sophie Duchesne is a political sociologist at CNRS / Centre Emile Durkheim, Sciences Po Bordeaux. Her research is in citizenship and individualism, and national and European identities. She published Citoyenneté à la Française (Paris, Presses de Sciences).
Robert Schertzer is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Political Science at the University of Toronto and UTSC. His research and teaching focus on the intersections of three areas: federalism, judicial politics, and ethno-national diversity, with a tendency to look at Canada from a broadly comparative perspective. He is the author of The Judicial Role in a Diverse Federation: Lessons from the Supreme Court of Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2016) and The New Nationalism in American and Beyond (Oxford University Press, 2022, with Eric Taylor Woods). His work has been published in Nations and Nationalism, Ethnic and Racial Studies, the Canadian Journal of Political Science, Publius, and the International Journal of Constitutional Law. He is also the founding co-editor of The State of Nationalism, an open-access portal for review articles on the study of nationalism.
Eric T. Woods is a Lecturer in Sociology, School of Society and Culture at the University of Plymouth. His research and teaching examines the intersections of politics, culture, and media - with a particular focus on how these phenomena relate to nationalism. His most recent book (co-authored with Dr Robert Schertzer) is entitled, 'The New Nationalism in America and Beyond: The Deep Roots of Ethnic Nationalism in the Digital Age' (Oxford University Press, 2022). He also researched the cultural politics of Britain's imperial past, and he has published extensively on Christian-Indigenous relations in Canada, including the 2016 book, 'A Cultural Sociology of Anglican Mission and the Indian Residential Schools in Canada' (Palgrave, 2016). He has also edited several multi-author volumes on these topics, including on the role of rituals in the forging of nations; the potential for cultural sociology to shed new light on nationalism; and on nationalism and conflict management. Alongside his scholarly publications, he is keen to contribute to public debates through venues such as The Conversation and LSE Blogs.
John Breuilly is Emeritus Professor of Nationalism and Ethnicity at LSE. His academic interests are in interdisciplinary study of nationalism and the history of modern Europe, especially that of Germany. He was until recently President of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN), and is one of the editors of ASEN’s journal Nation and Nationalism (N&N).
More information about the event
This event is hosted by LSE IDEAS
Event hashtags: #LSENewNationalism
LSE IDEAS (@lseideas) is LSE's foreign policy think tank. Through sustained engagement with policymakers and opinion-formers, IDEAS provides a forum that informs policy debate and connects academic research with the practice of diplomacy and strategy.
Nations and Nationalism (@nationalism) is published on behalf of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN) in partnership with LSE IDEAS. The journal is published quarterly by Wiley.