“New nationalism” and the issue of nations in the interpretation of American social theorists

The article considers the so-called new nationalism that has been developing in the United States and other Western countries since the last decades of the 20th century as a system of ideas about nations, sovereignty, racial and national relations, and also currents of nationalism. Recent forecasts of the ideologists of globalism about the inevitable departure from the political scene of nation-states, nations and nationalism are opposed by the contemporary nationalism which became a real political factor, primarily in the United States. The authors show the variety of concepts of nationalism, which allows its supporters in the United States to follow both openly chauvinistic ideas and liberal ideas of solidarity that makes up the nation. Among the reasons for the rise of nationalism, the authors consider the interaction of two trends in the public-political life - politicization of ethnicity and ethnicization (or nationalization) of politics. The authors believe that the emphasis on ethnic nation and ethnic nationalism (as opposed to civil nation and civil nationalism) reflects the exacerbation of inter-ethnic tensions in the United States and other Western countries. Based on the analysis of the new nationalism, the authors distinguish its right direction, whose supporters nominally renounce Nazism and racism but promote similar ideas, and a moderate liberal direction which often equates nationalism with patriotism. Representatives of both trends appeal to national interests and values of the nation’s historic core, and criticize migration policy and multiculturalism. In addition to ‘white’ racism and its evolution, the article considers the scope of nationalism and patriotism of African-American movements, in particular “Black Lives Matter” and the results of the study of the dual consciousness of African Americans as combining the concept of ‘nation within a nation’ and a new, completely American identity. Despite many American theorists’ idea of the absence of the American nation as such, the authors consider the concept of a new identity of the American nation, which M. Lind defines as a unity of language and culture, regardless of the racial composition, i.e. as an expression of liberal nationalism and a renewed concept of the ‘melting pot’. Lind and his colleagues believe that the factor of the current split of the American nation is not racial or ethnic confrontation (‘Balkanization’) but the social gap between rich and poor. The authors consider the criticism of the policy of the American ruling class as a means for the sociological study of the racial problem and for the development of ways for solving it.