Beyond bread and butter

Richard Seymour, Disaster Nationalism: The Downfall of Liberal Civilization, (London: Verso, 2024). 288pp., £20.00 hb., 978
1 80429 425 3

Why does the right appear to have been the main benefi- issue] provides a deeper dive into fascist historiography.)
ciary of recent crises, and why do all tributaries seem to Seymour has been circling around the question of fas-
flow into the reservoir of nativist reaction? The more cism in his Patreon blog posts over recent years – many of
uninspiring impulse in left analyses is to see some sort which find their way, reworked, into the text of this book
of neat relationship between the dispossession of the – describing our moment in terms of inchoate fascism,
working classes and the appeal of nationalist revanchism. incipient fascism and not yet fascism. In whichever for-
The solution then is a focus on ‘bread and butter issues’. mulation, the idea that the forces of disaster nationalism
Richard Seymour’s Disaster Nationalism shows just how are pathfinders to a new kind of fascism is as compelling
unsatisfactory such a response is. as it is troubling.
The conditions for the rise of disaster nationalism
It isn’t the economy, stupid. It isn’t even physical survival.
In India, the Philippines, Brazil and the United States, have been largely negative, based on ‘the stalemate of
pogroms, death-squad populism, far-right militias and parliamentary institutions, the declining authority of the
police and paramilitary violence are the driving force old establishment and the breakdown of social life’. It
of nationalist success. They offer not growth, but the is the latter point which most exercises Seymour: so-
chance to destroy a neighbour. Isn’t this what happens cial decay and the attendant psychoanalytic questions
as civilization falls away?
that are raised by the collapse of public sentiment and
Seymour takes the seductions of disaster nationalism democratic possibility. Disaster Nationalism is concerned
seriously, mapping their libidinal force and their vectors with micro-fascisms, which means attending not only
of contagion. to far-right political movements but also to seemingly
Disaster nationalism is not quite fascism. Or, more spontaneous acts of individual and communal violence:
to the point, disaster nationalism, is not yet fascism. As the lone wolf and the pogrom are central themes in the
Seymour explains in the introduction, ‘I think disaster book. His argument is that Trump, Duterte, Modi and
nationalist leaders are pathfinders for a new type of fas- Bolsonaro are symptoms of a wider malaise, one which
cism, because in a manner of speaking we are always runs deeper and which requires a theory of the passions.
pre-fascist as long as the conditions for fascism have not Bread and butter start to look quite plain when you think
been abolished. But whatever emerges will not be cos- seriously about what people are willing to kill and to die
play of the 1920s and 1930s.’ Disaster nationalism makes for, which has always been the question for scholars of
no claims to revolutionary anti-capitalism – as interwar nationalism.
fascism did before taking power – but instead pursues Seymour’s attention to psychology and his reading of
a kind of muscular capitalism unshackled from the con- psychoanalysis proves especially generative. He echoes
straints of liberal international agreements and human Naomi Klein, in her 2023 book Doppelganger ([also re-
rights law. The strongmen at the centre of Seymour’s viewed elsewhere in this issue]), when arguing that call-
analysis – Modi, Trump, Duterte and Bolsonaro – were ing people stupid or disproving right-wing misinform-
voted in by electoral means, not military coups. And with ation misses the psychological power and cataclysmic
the exception of Modi, these leaders have no strong civil appeal of conspiracy, vigilantism and mob violence. The
base; their social and institutional roots are weak. book is concerned with and by the ‘wild and whirling
In any case, Seymour’s comparisons with 1920s and winds of neighbourly hate’ that mobilise the passions of
1930s fascism remain only a sidenote on the way to a millions of people. Building on his 2019 book Twittering
highly original reckoning with the contemporary. (Al- Machine, Seymour demonstrates that our digitally medi-
berto Toscano’s Late Fascism [reviewed elsewhere in this ated world cannot be analysed or even named without a

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series of terms that command psychoanalytic inflection: put in service by political leaders and parties who on
conspiracy, attention, desire, nostalgia, addiction, apo- the whole seek to instigate capital accumulation without
calypse, sex, death, anxiety. The question for Seymour is, the guardrails – from India to Brazil, the Philippines to
‘how do such emotions become politicised by salvific na- Argentina.
tionalism?’, where pervasive anxiety and depression are Seymour’s psychoanalytic flair is most fully realised
fixed to ‘a series of phobic objects (Muslims, communists, in the chapter on sex, where he asks what kind of arousal
globalists, Jews and so on).’ The challenge is to theorise the erotic catastrophe of disaster nationalism produces
how the cruelties and subversive pleasures inherent to in its adherents. He writes, ‘pornonationalism promises
late capitalism feed disaster nationalism. Founding polit- to eroticise social life, not only by reviving repression but
ical appeals in people’s material interests represents a also by liberating sexual violence. It brings disaster and
form of wishful thinking; the perverse desires for repres- death into the mix. And it promises the impossible: by
sion (of oneself and Others), purificatory violence and killing the sexually nefarious and terrorising women and
for the end of the world do not answer to such instru- LGBT people into retreat, it claims to be able to restore
mentalist strategies. an era of glamorous male sexual power’. He sketches
Put simply, people rarely vote with their interests lines of connection between disaster nationalism and
(indeed, Seymour nicely traces how the notion of self- misogyny, but not in a schematic way; this is not about
interest was advanced by liberal philosophers as a means intersections or analogies but ressentiments that are
of advocating the value of greed and avarice against the formed out of the same anomic sludge. The desire for
passions of lust and ambition). In fact, people are an- order, hierarchy and repression relates as much to gender
imated by the things that they love and they love the and sexuality as race and nation. But amidst the incel’s
things they have to make sacrifices for. It is therefore complaint about their unfuckability, Seymour remarks
apposite that the first substantive chapter, ‘Class: Not that it is not sexual gratification that is collapsing but
the Economy, Stupid’, establishes a more sophisticated desire: ‘Something about late capitalist civilization and
analysis of how disaster nationalism thrives on class vi- its diminished sociality is just not very sexy’.
olence and ressentiment. While resentment itself can be This analysis of incels and the manosphere is one
a good thing when mobilised toward the struggle against more example of Seymour’s insights into the online
injustice, that healthy consolidation of class hatred we spaces where reaction is nurtured. Disaster nationalism,
might call consciousness, ressentiment is that kind of then, is fundamentally a story about digitally mediated
resentment which remains enthralled with a sense of nationalism, where cyberwar offers the most concrete
its own powerlessness and victimhood. These feelings case study. While Trump is a kind of one-man troll farm,
have proliferated with the decimation of the left – falling and Modi ‘reward follows’ his most virulent citizen-trolls,
trade union membership, widening inequality, increased Duterte spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a par-
uncertainty and precarity, social atomisation – so that ticularly advanced ‘disinformation architecture’. This
the injuries of class are made invisible and apolitical. architecture was absolutely central to his ascendance,
Interestingly, the evidence suggests it is not the most which relied on hundreds of workers disseminating his
deprived workers who are most vulnerable to the nation- key messages via troll accounts and fake online profiles:
alist contagion but those higher up the class hierarchy –
The trolls did not simply start blasting propaganda.
those who have something to lose, the downwardly mo-
Rather, they worked to establish a rhythm. Those who
bile middle, business and professional classes. It is not seeded Facebook groups based in local communities, for
deprivation, then, but a trajectory of decline that most example, would start by posting regular material in the
predisposes people to disaster nationalism. We are not local dialect without an obvious political slant. They
talking here about ‘a class, properly speaking, but a pass- built up memberships approaching 100,000 each. As the
ively resentful conglomeration of individuals who believe election neared, because Duterte’s issue was crime, they
began posting one news story about violent crime per
they obey the law, respect authority and resent queue-
day. And because Duterte’s specific appeal was the drugs
jumpers and outsiders’. Seymour then shows how this
war, they would usually leave a comment blaming drug
twenty-first-century brand of authoritarian populism is dealers. Then, as the election drew closer, the rate of

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 posting would increase to two news stories per day. Then publicly boasted about killing drug users himself, and
three. Then more. They generated a rhythm of seemingly incited members of the public to take revenge: ‘If you
spontaneous, locally rooted, apolitical ‘concern’. A few lose your job, I’ll give you one. Kill all the drug addicts’.
thousand well-orchestrated accounts with professionally
It is this brazen call to vigilantism and summary killings
built audiences was sufficient to game the algorithms
that seems to characterise disaster nationalism, wherein
by forcing hashtags and ‘trending topics’ up the agenda,
changing what the social industry platforms showed to the only response to social breakdown, in this case mani-
users and forcing media coverage. fest in drug addiction and petty crime, is via recourse to
extreme and unaccountable violence.
Seymour argues that the canary in the coalmine,
as far as this trend in recent history goes, is the ‘Gu-
jarat model’. In 2002, the carnival of violence against
Muslims, in which thousands were killed, raped, tortured
and burned alive in an orgiastic pogrom, catapulted Nar-
endra Modi, Chief Minister of the state of Gujarat, to his
now well-established status as father of the (Hindu) na-
tion. ‘It is in this calculated use of mobs, vigilantes and
lynchings, from Delhi to the West Bank, that disaster na-
tionalism accumulates much of its strategic force, as well
as its “anti-systemic” credentials … the trend is towards
a fusion between legal violence and far-right extra-legal
violence’. In India, majoritarian mob violence would go
on to find legislative voice in India’s Citizenship Amend-
ment Act, which critics worry has made possible the mass
disenfranchisement of a significant number of India’s
over 200 million Muslims. The chapter on ‘the armed
shitstorm’, framed by the ‘Gujarat model’, then opens
out onto an account of disaster nationalism in Israel and
the unspeakable horrors of the last twelve months. The
argument here is that, ultimately, disaster nationalism
spells genocide, because it offers a ‘vision so unrealisably
remote that the desire it expresses can never be satiated
Of course, digitally mediated cultures of ultra-
and can never stop short of disaster’.
nationalism do not stay online (if only). The online shit-
To conclude, Seymour asks how climate collapse – ‘a
storm gets armed and takes to the streets; the social
force multiplier testing the very energetic foundations
media mob materialises in ‘meatspace’; the keyboard war-
of contemporary civilization’ – intervenes in this dismal
rior becomes the lone wolf. Previous tensions between
story. If disaster nationalism erodes democracy through
electoralism and collective violence no longer appear to
its hateful longing for ethnic struggle as a means of
hold; mob violence is not damaging to political leaders,
restoring order, then climate change everywhere places
but rather becomes their chief selling point. In the words
enormous stress on its material foundations. And yet this
of Duterte: ‘Hitler massacred three million Jews … there’s
final chapter is not all doom; it is also where Seymour
three million drug addicts … I’d be happy to slaughter them’.
reminds us that the left has its own passions, however
Duterte’s deathsquad populism has been extremely pop-
embattled: ‘if workers are drawn into struggle by a com-
ular, with 84% supporting his campaign against drugs in
bination of need and hope, pulled into the rhythms and
2020, ‘despite the fact that a similar majority (78 per cent)
contradictions of the historical process with its volatile
were either “somewhat worried” (33 per cent), or “very
upturns and downturns, conceive of themselves as part
worried” (45 per cent) that they or someone they know
of that history and form the radical need for community
could be a victim of an extrajudicial killing’. Duterte

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and universality, then they are to that extent inoculated storm, more likely to collapse into a screened fugue, only
against the paranoid, anti-social and vengeful passions passively dreaming about the nation’s restoration and
of disaster nationalism’. And it is not only organised its promise of order. The point is that Seymour’s impres-
workers but also activists in social movements who know sionistic style can necessarily be critiqued for a lack of
that sacrifice. Communal fellow feeling, love and rage definitional, typological work. Such a critique can be
make it possible for us to do things with and for one an- stale – bemoaning what authors don’t include is much
other. ‘Disaster nationalists need not be the only ones less interesting than working with what they do – but
to benefit from the crisis of liberalism’. here it might raise useful questions about the global con-
Seymour describes our current cycle – defined as ‘a juncture.
period of some decades in which a set of social changes In any case, Seymour is highly original in his at-
or conflicts germinates, develops and matures’ – as one tention to new geographies of the radical right, which
of ‘nationalist revanchism’. Nationalism is therefore the is both a testament to his mode of restless critique and
question for our times, connecting the book to a larger an indictment of much popular critical thought. Identi-
archive of critical work on nationalism. For example, soci- fying synergies between India, the Philippines, the US
ologist Sivamohan Valluvan reminds us that nationalism and Europe is suggestive, although we need more work
always involves self-definition through the exclusion of on how these proto-fascist formations materially relate
ethnoracial outsiders and minorities; the buzzword most to one another and how they travel. Still, there is a lot of
invoked to name our present cycle, populism, therein emphasis on the US context in Disaster Nationalism, es-
becomes a stunted misnomer, distracting from the lar- pecially regarding the disturbing particularities of North
ger and more enduring problem of nationalism, which is American conspiracism (e.g. QAnon), which feels idiosyn-
inherently majoritarian and exclusionary. In the words cratic, even if of undeniable global relevance (especially
of Arjun Appadurai: ‘the road from national genius to in light of Trump’s re-election). Understandably, this
a totalized cosmology of the sacred nation, and further emphasis in the book likely reflects the relative ease with
to ethnic purity and cleansing, is relatively direct’. With which Seymour can access a larger and richer archive
this wider tendency in mind, we might ask some clarific- on US politics – assuming he is reading mostly in Eng-
atory questions. Most crudely, when does nationalism lish – but it is a reminder of the immense challenges
become disaster nationalism? of theorising from the South and East (the examples I
This relates to Seymour’s selection of cases, which is have cited here gently counter that preponderance of US
not supposed to be exhaustive but invites the question as examples, if for no other reason than because I am less
to why some states are included and not others. Russia’s interested in that particular horror show). With that in
omission seems worthy of comment, as does Turkey’s. mind, we might turn to theorists writing from the African
Not unrelatedly, I felt the chapter on Israel-Palestine continent who have provided us with a useful set of pro-
fit somewhat awkwardly, with long sections on the sui vocations. The Comaroffs have made a compelling case
generis history of Israeli state formation and settler co- that the twenty first century requires ‘theory from the
lonial violence that seemed detached from the flow of South’:
the argument, even if Seymour’s desire to situate the
contemporary world historical processes are visibly al-
genocidal war in Gaza within the frame of his argument tering received geographies of core-and-periphery, relo-
is understandable. The point that disaster nationalism cating southward not only some of the most innovative
ultimately leads to genocide is well made, but urgent and and energetic modes of producing value, but the driving
dire circumstances may have rushed the analysis. impulse of contemporary capitalism as both a material
In a very different vein, how do we square national- and cultural formation.

ist revanchism with other characteristic features of our Or note here how closely Achille Mbembe, writing in
time – digitally mediated nihilism, post and anti-politics, 2016, resembles Seymour:
and social dissolution – especially those that don’t feed
Almost everywhere the law of blood, the law of the talion,
nationalist feeling but result in desultory apathy? After
and the duty to one’s race – the two supplements of atav-
all, most people are unlikely to partake in an armed shit-
istic nationalism – are resurfacing. The hitherto more or

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 less hidden violence of democracies is rising to the sur- ations. What is it about the broader terrain which chan-
face, producing a lethal circle that grips the imagination nels so many unfulfilled desires into nationalist longings
and is increasingly difficult to escape. Nearly everywhere for order, and makes hopes for substantive democracy
the political order is reconstituting itself as a form of
increasingly beleaguered, even if this nationalism falls
organization for death.
short of civilisational downfall and apocalyptic longing?
Such resemblances suggest that a fitting supplement to Perhaps this is merely another way of staging my
the terrain already sketched by Seymour is to fold into earlier query: what is the relation between nationalism
the analytic remit, with even more emphatic resolve, the in general and disaster nationalism? Seymour might
events, circumstances and attendant theorisations un- reply that disaster nationalism is not a type that he wants
folding in Asia, certainly, but also Africa. to distinguish from non-disaster nationalism, but rather
Seymour remains extremely convincing on his main a tendency, one defined by a particularly unstable and
point: that we need to think about the reactionary pas- intense set of myths, passions, violent longings and prac-
sions and desires being animated by our current order. tices. This is the best way to read the book, as a theoretic-
That said, I wonder about the link between psychology ally searching text, an attempt to capture something
and culture. After all, it is through cultural analysis that emergent, the character and texture of incipient fascism
the left has built a tradition of critiquing crude material- rather than a new theory of nationalism. All that being
ism while attending to the symbolic and to processes of said, I retain some reservations about the method which
subjectification. Perhaps Seymour thinks cultural studies views lone wolves and the armed shitstorm as portents
approaches are less suited to a digitally mediated world, of what is to come – or maybe I’m just in denial. Either
but it cannot be that he hasn’t thought about it, and it way, this approach can be complemented by attention
would be interesting to hear him reflect on the study of to the ordinary and the mundane – both to observe how
culture today. microfascisms permeate the everyday, and where they
We might also consider the less spectacular ways in don’t.
which popular culture mobilises various forms of micro- This means journeying to the ordinary places where
fascism. Anna Kornbluh’s recent book, Immediacy, or The the rhythms of living with one another mitigate isolation
Style of Too Late Capitalism offers some ways in here, in and anomie, places where the false allure of race and na-
its attempt to read our contemporary malaise through tion lose their hold. There is certainly a point to be made
culture: fitness and wellness culture; the aesthetics of about building institutional power – party, union, state –
Netflix; the gamified paralysis of dating apps; the way which can be phrased in familiar oppositional language,
music is produced for atomised listeners and watchers but Seymour’s attention to desire, passion and subjecti-
on Spotify and YouTube; and the viscerally affecting but fication also suggests the cultural as a terrain of struggle.
always solipsist first-person realism popular in today’s Politically, the fight is always to convince people that
literature. But we also need to track the rhythms of and nationalism is not in their interests, even when they are
in people’s lives; the everyday which is not amenable to being included. But to combat ‘wild and whirling winds
the analysis of online content and large-scale surveys. of neighbourly hate’ we also need cultural resources of
What we discover from such an ethnographic sensibility hope, and it might be through attention to lived, popular
will likely be both better and worse. Better because most and alternative culture that we can best identify counter
people do not join the mob; worse because the nation currents, polyrhythms and sites of sociality and humane-
still retains a hold over their political and cultural imagin- ness in the everyday.

Luke De Noronha

RADICAL PHILOSOPHY 2.17 / Winter 2024 87