Far-right nostalgia expresses class bewilderment at losing the world

Evidence

The scene in which Bates regales his wife and Martin with a desperately unfunny Irish “joke” is excruciating. Elliot renders Bates’ typical expression as a grimace — of irritation, suppressed rage, bewilderment. It is the expression of a whole class, a whole generation’s, incredulity that the world no longer belongs to them, if it ever did. Bates’ political pathology is rooted in a bewildered and misconceived nostalgia, a bleary and inarticulate longing for the world to be like it used to be. He’s a bit like the average Britpop fan would be twenty years later. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 303

Categorization

• XREF: Resonates strongly with today’s analyses of reactionary politics as a grief over lost centrality, bridging 2004 Potter criticism to present-day Trump/Brexit commentary. — connects to: Nostalgia for a monocultural past masks contemporary white insecurity. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 130; Old moral panics about community loss breed reactionary nostalgia rather than constructive reform — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 1445; Nostalgia for an imagined golden age drives resistance and fear — Andrew L. Whitehead, American Idolatry, 199 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Nostalgia for a monocultural past masks contemporary white insecurity. #expands (0.85) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 130
• Left-wing identity labels push abandoned working-class whites into the far right #expands (0.82) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 413
• Nostalgia for an imagined golden age drives resistance and fear #expands (0.80) — Andrew L. Whitehead, American Idolatry, 199
• Nationalism paired with populism breeds nostalgia and resentment politics #corroborates (0.80) — Andrew L. Whitehead; Samuel L. Perry, Taking America Back for God, 785
• Old moral panics about community loss breed reactionary nostalgia rather than constructive reform #expands (0.78) — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 1445
• Alt-right politics inverted sixties counterculture by recasting progressive institutions as oppressive #exemplifies (0.72) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 451