Which raises the most troubling question of the emerging globalist-nationalist divide: Is the new nationalism a cloak for ethnic and religious exclusion? Nationalist leaders insist that it isn’t. Ms. Le Pen, for example, says that she is merely defending France’s secular character when she criticizes overt displays of Islamic observance, distancing herself from her plainly xenophobic father. Mr. Trump says that struggling Latino and African-American workers are victims of cheap foreign labor just as much as Rust Belt whites.
Yet the new nationalism often thrives on xenophobia. Mr. Trump has been criticizing free trade since the 1980s, but his candidacy took off when he started attacking Mexican immigrants and Muslims. American Jewish groups heard unsettling echoes of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories when Mr. Trump accused Mrs. Clinton of meeting “in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty.” Germany’s Alternative for Germany started as an anti-euro party, but as an influx of Middle Eastern refugees and migrants has stoked worries about crime and terrorism, the party’s focus on Islam (which its manifesto declared “not a part of Germany”) and its popular support have both jumped.
In short, there is ample reason for skepticism about whether the new nationalists can prove themselves a genuinely secular, democratic alternative to globalism.
If globalists are to regain the public’s trust, they will need to re-examine their own policies. The dislocation caused by past globalization casts doubt on the wisdom of prescribing more. That globalization’s winners can compensate its losers makes impeccable economic logic, but it rings hollow among those too old to retrain or move. Political capital might be better invested in preserving existing trade pacts, not passing new ones. And trade pacts may be a less effective bulwark against China than military cooperation with those worried about Chinese aggression.
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