Authoritarian nationalism and social work

Abstract

Despite predictions that liberal democracy was ascendent as a paradigm for governance in the contemporary era, the world has witnessed an alarming rise in authoritarian nationalism. A seeming preference for open and transparent models of plural democratic government has been challenged by the global advance of despotic and repressive regimes that are organized around racial, religious, and nationalist themes. Social work, grounded in the practice and pursuit of human rights, stands in stark contrast to authoritarian nationalism and is called to act through public diplomacy and soft power to counter emergent neo-fascism.

The democratic ideals of tolerance, diversity, and inclusion are disputed in current reactionary narratives that are anti-immigrant, anti-elite, anti-intellectual, and authoritarian. Contemporary populist themes, which stress national identity, are rooted in anger, racism, nativism, and isolationism. The re-emergence of right wing nationalism in the 21st century is fueled by class resentment, racial entitlement, and strident appeals to unite around national, religious, and ethnic identities. From the dramatic rise of White nationalism in the United States to Hindu nationalism in India and the post-imperialist aspirations of China and Russia, the globe is being swept with the most excessive forms of authoritarianism seen in the post-colonial era. The cases of Hungary, Turkey, Poland, El Salvador, the United States, China, and other nations illustrate variants of ethnic nationalism, racial supremacy, and post-imperial recolonization. Likewise, we see increasingly right-wing authoritarianism remerging in African states such as Niger, Burkina-Faso, Guinea, Mali, Gabon, and Chad, which has led to civil unrest and violent government repression. Evident is a resurgence of reactionary governance based on ethnic identity, fear-mongering, racial paranoia, and class warfare. Globally, democracy is in decline as fewer than a fifth of the world population reside in free and democratic countries (Morgan, 2021).

Although it is manifested in various forms ranging from the destructive and genocidal policies in the Amazon of the former Bolsonaro Regime to the aggressive assault of the Proud Boys and other lumpen Trumpists on the US Capitol, authoritarian nationalism is the alloy of national impulses to organize around an ethnic group, nationality or cultural identity, and the consolidation of power into an anti-democratic platform that represses individual freedoms of thought and action. The unity of nationalism and authoritarianism is often centered on a charismatic leader, a political party or a small elite group, with each form demanding loyalty and a commitment to an ideology of identity that sees itself under threat. Nationalists resist cultural change and view institutions such as government, universities, and the press with skepticism and distrust (Summer, 2021).

Some features of authoritarian nationalism include a widespread perception, particularly among non-elites, that the government and economy are not working to their benefit. The view is that government responds to the interests of elites, gives preferential treatment to minority groups, cares little for the working class, and erodes national character with permissive immigration policies that threaten jobs and dilute national identity. Rapid social and cultural change associated with globalization is seen as harmful to traditional values. The sense that accelerated cultural change diminishes local traditions and sets the stage for a society in which traditional views of the family, masculinity, religion, regional identity, and ethnic pride are anachronistic relics of the past is profoundly unsettling for people who see their way of life being swept away while elites look on with condescension.

Large segments of the population in Western nations have seen their standard of living erode as globalization has led to offshoring industrial production and slashing well-paying manufacturing jobs. Technological innovation has created a new economic geography that is related to the imbalance between central cores of power and expertise and the marginalized periphery where economic integration is limited (Krugman, 2011). Globalization advantages cities where educated workers and centers of knowledge such as universities and high technology firms are clustered, and capital is readily available (Collier, 2019 [2018]). Government responses to a series of national and global financial crises have favored bank bailouts and protections for high technology firms staffed by well-educated urbanites and specialists, while manual workers are in a downward spiral and well-aware of it, but in their despair, turn to authoritarian nationalism as a panacea that will bring back a blissful and imaginary past. Such a restoration of their ‘rightful place’ of the newly disenfranchised has a magical appeal in that it encourages contempt for education, science, diversity and rationalizes violence, racial aggression, religious repression, misogyny, and autocracy.

Social workers know that politics and economics interconnect as the public arena merges with the personal. In the case of authoritarian nationalism, the intersection is with the nexus of the authoritarian personality, toxic masculinity, and sociopathy with the alienation, injured pride, demoralization of the working class. This is on full display with many of the leaders of these noxious nation states and their associated narcissistic ideologies – Trumpism, Bolsonarismo, and so on, as well as in the factions and tribes of disgruntled misfits that inhabit the ranks of nationalist militias, racist hate groups, and neo-fascist vigilantes.

The global rise of authoritarian nationalism

In a reversal of class consciousness as traditionally described, the new authoritarians are constituted largely of racial and ethnic majorities that perceive themselves as victims of willful elite persecution and maltreatment and seek to rectify this subjection by attacking the institutions that have traditionally worked to preserve the modern nation state. Although there are a wide range of expressions among nation states in the manifestation and performance of authoritarian nationalism, the common themes are evident in an array of current regimes.

United States

The nation that is largely seen as the world’s leading democracy is increasingly challenged by widespread authoritarian, ethnic nationalism, and a decline of liberal democracy. Right wing extremism has long been an element of American society as evidenced by the emergence of a bizarrely named ‘Know-Nothing Movement’ under the nativist, anti-Catholic American Party which flourished in the mid-1800s (Ramet and Hassenstab, 2013). A century later, similar extremism was manifested during the Red Scare in the infamous McCarthy hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee in the US Congress.

White nationalism, racism, xenophobia, and intolerance have grown remarkably since the War on Terror was declared after the 9/11 events of 2001. The events of that fateful day altered the United States’ position toward the world that was increasingly based on a military posture, which included protracted and unsuccessful wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with a consequent loss of the nation’s international credibility and lowered global opinion of the United States and its values. The American posture also entailed a domestic adoption of an ‘America First’ narrative and the enactment of laws and policies that were anti-Islamic, anti-immigrant, and protectionist (Rhodes, 2022).

Hope, optimism, and an unflagging belief in the idea of progress are no longer the core ideas that drive the American way of life. Challenged by foreign policy failures abroad and by accelerating economic and social inequality at home, Americans are deeply divided about the future and more inward looking and isolationist on issues such as immigration, human rights, and foreign policy (Mordecai and Fagan, 2021). During the pandemic, the nation saw an alarming rise in anti-science as evidenced by low vaccine uptake along with enthusiasms for pseudo-medicine and phony panaceas. The past decade was shaped by the dramatic rise of Trumpism and the full expression of White grievance against ‘liberal elites’, resentment politics, conspiracies, antisemitic marches, radical militias, and a violent and deadly assault on the US Capitol. It is a tale of a large swath of citizens who feel that their quality of life has declined and that the country has let them down and abandoned their interests and made them feel like ‘strangers in their own land’ (Hochschild, 2018).

Activated by their anger and nostalgia, the core base that now dominates the Republican Party actively seeks a radical restructuring of American society based on authoritarian populism through voter suppression, court packing, media intimidation, and armed militias (Gorski, 2017). Recognizing the erosion of democratic institutions, coupled with efforts to subvert elections, a mob attack on Congress, growing disparities of wealth, and harmful policies on immigration and asylum seekers, Freedom House (2023) lowered its ranking of the United States on its Freedom Index. Similarly, the Economist Intelligence Unit lowered its ranking of the United States on its influential Democracy Index. Noting that as a result of challenges to elections, the decline of social cohesion, concerns about civil liberties, and the weakening of political culture, the United States was designated as a ‘flawed democracy’ (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2020).

Brazil: The Bolsonaro effect

Bolsonaro is gone, but Bolsonarismo is not. The forces that brought him to power and which subsequently led to the further destruction of the Amazon Basin, the uncontrolled spread of coronavirus disease (COVID), and normalized oppression and torture, are alive and well in contemporary Brazil, where he lost the election by a mere 1.8 percent of the vote (Porter, 2022). As with his American mentor, Trump, Bolsonaro too refused to accept the outcome of the election. Like his compatriots Victor Orbán of Hungary, India’s Narendra Modi and Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Bolsonaro spent his presidency dismantling liberal democracy in Brazil. A former military officer who celebrated the military dictatorships of Brazil, Bolsonaro, consolidated executive power and cut civil rights in his attacks on indigenous groups, feminists, journalists, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society. With a now familiar diatribe against ‘globalists’ Brazil adopted a form of Brazil First policy that prioritized relationships with far-right governments in Poland and Hungary and was critical of the European Union (EU) and multilateralism (Stuenkel, 2020). Egged on by Trump advisor Steve Bannon, Brazilians stormed the Congress and Supreme Court in Brasilia after Bolsonaro lost the election (Nicas and Spigariol, 2023). Under Bolsonaro, declines in electoral process, pluralism, and civil liberties placed Brazil at 49th among nations on the Democracy Index where it is classified as a ‘flawed democracy’ (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2020).

United Kingdom: Toryism and the retreat from Europe

Driven by lost economic opportunity and rising immigration, the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) claimed that Great Britain’s woes were due to faceless bureaucrats in Brussels, the seat of the EU. Consequently, UKIP vowed to leave the EU, to gain ’ ‘economic independence’. As UKIP’s election fortunes blossomed, former London mayor, Boris Johnson, advised by Brexit extremist Dominic Cummings, seized on the opportunity, bringing Brexit under the umbrella of the Tory Party. In effect, Johnson was playing Sancho Panza to Trump’s Quixote. British social critic David Goodhart distinguished ‘Anywheres’, highly educated cosmopolitans pursuing policies of free trade, open immigration, and alternative lifestyles, from ‘Somewheres’, the less educated Brits embedded in a local community oriented to family, flag, and faith. ‘The people from Anywhere in Britain – including the metropolitan elites – have dominated the political agenda whichever party has been in power for the past twenty-five years and have failed to distinguish their interests from the general interest’ (Goodhart, 2017: 10). Looming in the background was resentment about the meritocracy, as one Briton later recalled, ‘What I try to explain to globalists is that the people from my hometown – it isn’t just they feel they’ve been left behind, they feel that the one percent did a deal to “. . . deliberately screw them”’ (Rhodes, 2022: 55–56). Populists subsequently voted for Brexit in early 2020, leaving the EU behind.

Brexit engulfed the United Kingdom in controversy. Johnson’s attempt to prorogue Parliament antagonized many Tories. Within months of Brexit, long lines of trucks at the Chunnel signaled increasing paperwork and inspections. The vexing issue of Northern Ireland surfaced as its leaders expressed alarm about lost trade; when Scottish politicians threatened to leave the United Kingdom, Johnson found some respite, ironically, by supporting Ukraine, having been invaded by another authoritarian nationalist Vladimir Putin, but his days as a Prime Minister were numbered. His successor lasted only 6 weeks in office before being dumped. As the standard of living for Britons fell, Labour leaders relished national elections scheduled for 2025 as a reset for more democratic governance.

Poland: Non-interventional state in the embrace of authoritarianism

Poland has been under the Law and Justice Party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS) for 8 years, which has brought on Polish citizens authoritarian rules that severely restrict media freedom, discriminated against sexual minorities, subjected the legal system to political pressure from the ruling party, and restricted women’s rights. In 1990, as part of the neoliberal paradigm, Poland launched ‘shock therapy’, known as the ‘Balcerowicz Plan’, and instituted authoritarian regimes. Polish social programs have been presented in the public media as a needless burden rather than an investment that supported socioeconomic progress. The prevailing belief was that social issues could be solved by switching from ‘welfare’ to ‘workfare’. After shock therapy and 30 years of neoliberal policies, economic frustration has triggered populism and neo-authoritarianism as dominant political stances in Poland. The Gini Index (The World Bank, 2023) shows that there is dramatic increase in socioeconomic inequalities, which contributed to the growth in poverty, where more than half of the people lived below the poverty line (Gdula, 2018). Polish society reacted by electing an undemocratic administration, which resulted in a populist and authoritarian political and ideological change. The Law and Justice Party wins in the 2015 parliamentary elections, and the presidential elections of Andrzej Duda solidified the emergence of the populist, authoritarian, and tribalistic political complexes. The attacks on democratic order began with the judicial system (instrumental abuse of the Constitutional Tribunal that eroded the rule of law) the media system (attacks on media freedom and bills to silence government critics), women’s rights (restrictive abortion laws), and civil society (threats to independence based on a counter-elite populist logic). At first glance, Polish right-wing populism appears typical, but closer examination reveals that it is a more complex political phenomenon than the situation in Western Europe or the United States. Following 2015, Polish politics shifted toward authoritarianism, resulting in the unprecedented position of the Constitutional Court, judicial system, media, reproductive rights, NGO’s, education, and welfare state being subordinated to the political goals of the ruling party (Baranowski, 2023).

Countries as disparate as India, Myanmar, Russia, El Salvador, Serbia, Rwanda, Thailand, and Argentina exemplify the emergence of authoritarian nationalism. The task of opposing authoritarian nationalism is truly global.

The challenge of authoritarian nationalism

Meritocracy versus populism

The populist reaction to a burgeoning meritocracy explains much of the rise of authoritarian nationalism (Judis, 2016). Whether illiberal democracy, soft authoritarianism, or hard repression – the response of those perceived to have been left behind has been a politics of revenge. Often scapegoating minorities who are alleged to have illegitimately claimed resources and opportunities, authoritarian nationalists pine for a past when lines of authority were clear, people adhered to traditional norms, and prosperity was redolent. By nature, authoritarian nationalists worship a strong leader, who is dismissive of legislature and the courts, skeptical about science, but prone to corruption, while being xenophobic about non-native immigrants. Nostalgia is evident in Donald Trump’s MAGA movement (Make American Great Again), but also Boris Johnson’s Brexit. Despite populism’s embrace of authoritarian nationalism, a romance with the past has encountered turbulence in a global economy where trade and finance subvert economic independence (Stoesz, 2022).

An increasingly tenuous financial base and metastasizing misinformation led some populists to violence, conspicuous in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. But authoritarian impulses were not confined to the United States. The increasing polarization of politics in Western and Central Europe and elsewhere challenged regimes based on democratic capitalism not only because of the disruption of the political economy by enraged populists but also because elites failed to relinquish opportunity and power. Conservative populism became enamored of leaders who embraced authoritarian nationalism by feeding off the disillusions of many who had lost income, property, and self-respect, thus posing an existential threat of democracy.

As developed nations recovered from World War II, a network of institutions was established for purposes of economic integration: the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement chartered the International Monetary Fund as well as the International Bank for Development and Reconstruction; in 1948, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade evolved, becoming the World Trade Agreement in 1994. These organizations catalyzed unprecedented economic growth while also encouraging nations to adopt regional consortia, such as the North America Free Trade Agreement. These networks required the talents of legions of economists, financiers, and diplomats to function smoothly, which prominent universities were eager to supply. By the end of the 20th century, a global economy continued to expand; however, the shift from manufacturing to services resulted in the offshoring of millions of well-paying blue-collar jobs from industrialized nations to developing countries. Meanwhile, immigration from developing countries abetted by European integration, and abject poverty in the Global South introduced unskilled workers who were perceived to be taking jobs from native workers. Together, offshoring and immigration fueled authoritarian nationalism. To the hard right, liberal elites were responsible for their dislocation from the national culture insofar as they managed the political and corporate institutions degrading working class prosperity.

Deindustrialization and immigration were complemented by other changes brought about as a highly credential meritocracy came to dominate national institutions, including the polity, the media, and higher education.

Most contemporary democracies in Western Europe are governed by a select group of well-educated citizens. They are diploma democracies – ruled by those with the highest formal qualifications. University graduates have come to dominate all relevant political institutions and arenas, from political parties, parliaments and cabinets, to organizational interests, deliberative venues, and internet consultations. (Bovens and Wille, 2017: 1)

Social analysts identified meritocracy as a source of polarization (Frieland, 2012; Mandler, 2020; Markovits, 2020; Reeves, 2017; Rothkopf, 2008; Sandel, 2020; Wooldridge, 2021). While institutions in open societies were once governed by an array of people representing the clergy, small businesses, veterans, and teachers, organizations came to be managed by graduates of elite universities. Unlike corporate titans of the industrial era, meritocrats were professionals.

Even though the top earners are managers who work for their income, they are a new class of rentiers both because their high incomes come from economic rents their firms are earning (including pay in the form of shares and options that most workers do not receive, plus other forms of corporate compensation, including retirement, healthcare plans, corporate jets, and other perks) and because they themselves are extracting rents (by ‘earning’ much higher pay than their multitude of coworkers). (Boushey, 2019: 129)

Aside from populist resentment about their unwarranted success, meritocrats invite contempt for their role in mismanaging cataclysms that injure millions of compatriots, but for which they are rarely held to account: the Great Recession, military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the COVID pandemic.

And, as elite universities provide access to the meritocracy, populating corporate executive suites and boards, special interest organizations, and political parties, an undemocratic cycle emerges wherein well-credentialed elites choreograph policy according to the priorities of their sponsors, leaving the public as an afterthought. The consequence of attaining an effective monopoly on policy formation is perceived by the public as programs scripted to be inaccessible, complex, and expensive (Stoesz, 2020).

As exclusive credentials have become essential for admission to upper chambers of the meritocracy, a college degree becomes a norm for stable employment, even at lower stations of the labor market. If an undergraduate degree is comparable to yesteryear’s high school diploma, then a graduate degree is comparable to yesteryear’s baccalaureate degree (Tough, 2019). Since higher education is the pathway to good jobs, the opportunity costs for a college degree loom large for the working class, and increasingly the middle class (Koch, 2019). In gaining control of major institutions, including higher education, elites have in effect required a college credential for a decent job, but at such cost as to be beyond the reach of many families (Bunch, 2022). As critics of liberalism are quick to point out, higher education is overwhelmingly liberal, and the conservative appeals to the working class resonate deeply, contributing to populism’s lurch to the right. Once the engine of upward mobility, higher education is perceived by the working class as affordable only for upper-income families, thereby engendering resentment. And as universities promote a worldly view of humanity, which includes foreign languages, overseas study, and respect for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender/transsexual and queer or questioning (LGBTQ+) students, the Right objects vehemently and discounts social progress as Wokeism, dismissing gains made by feminists, gay people, and marginalized populations – an agenda much abetted by the pervasive use of social media.

Global economic inequality and elites

A driver of authoritarian nationalism has been rising economic inequality. Reviewing income inequality, Piketty (2014) tracked a U-shape through the 20th century, when inequality was highest before World War I, plummeted mid-century, then rose again to approximate that of the earlier period. The trough in income distribution was accounted for through high rates of taxation and massive investments in the population mid-century. Later, Piketty (2019) would implicate a ‘Brahmin left’ in populist resentment to the welfare state, as well-educated elites hoarded opportunity, resources, and power at the expense of their compatriots. While many factors contribute to the rise of authoritarian nationalism, the yawning chasm between the ‘have-nots’ and the ‘have yachts’ is illustrative.

The poverty gap, the ratio of the mean income of the poor below a poverty line of half the median household income, is associated with rising authoritarian nationalism. Declining prosperity for many citizens, accompanied by an increasingly affluent elite, breeds resentment expressed in the form of radical populism, or authoritarian nationalism. The implications of this are clear: countries with egalitarian economies are less likely to spawn authoritarian nationalism than those in which the distance between elite meritocrats and the rest of the population has been narrowed (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2023).

Identity politics and the decline of liberal democracy

While accelerating global capitalism has created unprecedented inequality of wealth and opportunity and challenged people’s sense of security, new technologies of information have transformed the way people see the world and has divided people into secluded tribal walls that allow for the promotion of disinformation and foster paranoid narratives of oppression and conspiracy theories (Rhodes, 2022). Magical thinking colors memories of the past in which people (‘my people’) held their ‘rightful’ place at the top of the racial, ethnic, religious, and cultural pyramid. The tribal instincts of self-interests rebelled against pluralist global democracy to be replaced by retrograde nationalism alloyed with a growing lust for social order and control.

This convergence of forces has consolidated around nationalist leaders and political parties that have seized the opportunity to turn regional variants of nationalist malaise into powerful reactionary authoritarian states that by furthering the themes of victimization could consolidate nation states around ethnic, racial, and cultural identity politics ordered by autocratic rulers.

Nationalists trying to dismantle the EU and other globalist international institutions and those organizing around a majority or state religion have sought to advance their cause by excluding religious minorities, immigrants, and ethnic groups. Examples include the subjugation of the Rohingya by Myanmar’s Buddhist nationalists, India’s Hindu nationalist oppression of that country’s Muslim minority or the secular religion of the Chinese Communist Party’s ethnic cleansing and cultural genocide of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang and the Buddhists of Tibet.

Motivated by fears of ‘invading’ migrants and the challenges of globalism, the United States has been swallowed by a moral panic of xenophobia and religious intolerance. Given the unbridled takeover of the establishment wing of the Republican party, evangelicals and White nationalists have ascended to the centers of political power with key positions in Congress, where they are giving legitimacy to fringe QAnon type irrationality about a child-molesting cabal of Democratic elected officials, Hollywood power brokers, George Soros, liberal elites, and the ‘deep state’ nonsense about a left-wing coup d’état. Replete with antisemitic themes, these fantasists contributed to the violent assault on the US Capitol in an effort to hang the sitting vice president and speaker of the house and overturn the results of a national election. A set of paranoid delusions of the ‘you can’t make this stuff up’ variety would have been unimaginable a mere 20 years ago. Part of this has to do with the Dunning-Kruger Effect such that when muddled thinking is coupled with narcissism, it drives policy to the lowest possible denominator.

This movement, which is global in nature and evident in countries as diverse as Hungary, Poland, Myanmar, India, Brazil, Russia, El Salvador, Sudan, Mali, Syria, Turkmenistan, and Philippines, presents a formidable challenge to human and civil rights, democracy, pluralism, and freedom at a global level. And well-established advanced democracies have felt the growing pressures of right-wing nationalist movements in France, Germany, Austria, and Sweden (Freedom House, 2023).

Soft power: Social work at the global level

While governments have the tools of hard power to leverage foreign and defense policy with military and monetary assets, citizens and civic groups do not. Yet, people can have profound effects through the instruments of soft power by engaging and encountering with other citizens in public diplomacy and a global network of resources, tools and technologies that can change national and international relations toward positive and constructive engagement in support of peace and international cooperation and development. Because authoritarian nationalism is fundamentally ideological in nature, it can best be confronted by using soft power that persuades citizens to think and act democratically, fairly and inclusively by seeing the folly of despotism rooted in dominance and aggression and unbending, heavy handed callousness. Authoritarianism is ultimately toxic and relentlessly austere and ruinous of public well-being and corrosive to the social relations and trust needed in an open, progressive democratic society. Society in general and social workers in particular have access to the tools of civil society that can make steps forward in the critically important challenge of countering the global rise of authoritarian nationalism.

Soft power is traditionally understood as an instrument of foreign policy in which a state exercises power through diplomacy and the effort to influence other nations through persuasion as opposed to hard power which uses coercion in the form of military or economic force (Matteucci, 2023). However, soft power has also come to be understood as public diplomacy, including educational and cultural exchange, people-to-people relations, and the collaborations of NGO’s and institutions of civil society, independent of any government sanction or influence. In this respect, public diplomacy can be an effective means by which the global population can engage in mutual collaboration and cooperation to foster understanding and build civic institutions free of the profit motive or governmental ambition. The challenge of the global rise of authoritarian nationalism can be met when people understand each other and appreciate differences instead of joining narrow tribes of similarly minded people who exist in closed information systems that isolate them and foster aggressive in-group behavior. While it is unlikely that a Putin or a Bolsonaro will be influenced in any way by soft power, sectors of Russian and Brazilian society over which they have exercised a form of tyranny can be shaped by the cultures, ideas, and values of free people who strive to live in an open society. Professional organizations in medicine, social development, and social services can be decidedly persuasive on issues of conscience and the public good. The detention and separation of immigrant children from their parents in the United States provides a textbook illustration. Beginning in 2018, the Trump administration enacted a ‘zero tolerance’ immigration policy that intentionally resulted in the incarceration and forced separation of migrant children from their parents. Thousands of children were forcibly separated and relocated to child detention centers while their parents were also placed in detention, typically separated in distant locations where they were effectively lost to each other (Dickerson, 2022). One of the cruelest policies in recent memory, the policy inflicted irreparable harm on countless innocent boys and girls. The American Academy of Pediatrics issued a formal statement in May 2018 opposing the separation of children and parents at the border, calling for a cessation of the practice (Kraft, 2018). Separately the academy has described the policy not only as causing irreversible injury, but also as a form or torture, particularly in light of the conditions in which children were housed, fed, and treated by their jailers (Oberg et al., 2021). Similarly, the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) (2018) condemned the policy as malicious and unconscionable. The outcry from the pediatric academy and the national social work association was followed by official statements by other professional societies in health, mental health, as well as by religious and civic organizations, forcing the administration to backtrack and reverse the policy, but only after more than 5000 families and children were split up. This dramatic turnaround of a blatantly cruel use of authoritarianism was the result of people speaking truth to power!

The tools of soft power can be used by social workers and their professional organizations to inform, mobilize, pressure, and advocate for political and social changes to confront the threatening trend of rising authoritarian nationalism. Among the tools at their disposal are public diplomacy, reframing social work education, and antifascist social work.

Public diplomacy

The tools of authoritarianism are to promote fear, disseminate disinformation, identify scapegoats at which to direct hostility, to promote ethnic and cultural tribalism with themes of victimization, and to repeatedly propagandize the political base by promoting false narratives. The single most effective global strategy to counter authoritarian nationalism is public diplomacy, which can counter the instruments of authoritarians. It is the engagement of the international and domestic public to enhance global communication and international relations. While it is used by governmental foreign affairs agencies to advance international cooperation, it is also the promotion of mutual international understanding by non-state actors and networks to enhance international collaboration, foster citizen to citizen projects that increase mutual understanding, and promote the peaceful resolution of disagreements and conflict (Meissen et al., 2023). Operating under the assumption that peaceful international contact with other cultures, ideas and peoples defuses nationalism, cultural imperialism, ethnic intolerance, racism and extremism, public diplomacy is a powerful means of engaging in positive multi-lateral dialogue to advance a democratic position. Social workers, already well trained and versed in communication, de-escalation, and conflict management, are ideally suited to engage domestic and foreign publics and professional societies in building democracy, inclusion, and collaboration. This can be done through advocacy, publication, public engagement, service projects, study abroad, and professional exchange programs via professional associations, human rights commissions, and international development and community development projects.

Recalibrating social work organizations and institutions

National level social work associations are highly domestic in their focus. They emphasize professional development, licensure, and the regulation and protection of areas of practice. While most have some link to human rights organizations and other national social work societies, few address major international issues such as global climate change, migration, economic injustice, or the rise of authoritarianism. An importation link is to vigorously engage entities such as the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW) (2023) and the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) (2023), both of which focus to some degree on human rights and environmental and social justice. Professional associations in each country should engage these organizations in addressing the tide of authoritarian nationalism. More broadly, social work must become far more engaged with entities within the United Nations, such as the national, regional, and global offices of the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) (2023), which focuses on the global migration crisis, and UNESCO (2023), which fosters mutual understanding and the intellectual and moral solidarity of humanity.

Anti-fascist social work

As examples of the ambiguous nature of the connections between anti-fascism and social work, consider the history of social workers in Nazi Germany who supported the ‘fascist welfare state’ (Lorenz, 1993), on one hand, and resistance tactics or the case of Warsaw social worker Irena Sendlerowa who smuggled Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto, on the other. It is worth remembering that social work was not only about charity and professionalism but also ‘to become full citizens in democratic anti-fascist and anticommunist states’ (Waaldijk, 2011: 244). Since the extreme right is continually evolving into groups like autonomous nationalists, white supremacist networks, homophobic organizations, defense leagues, and NGO’s that reject the concept of human equality, the threat of violence associated with fascism has expanded significantly in recent years. The European Social Survey, which reveals rising dissatisfaction among millennial respondents in the EU, confirms the concerning trend of ‘democratic apathy’ among the young population (Foa and Mounk, 2019). Fascist and authoritarian attitudes are encouraged by the current political climate, which also fosters anti-immigrant sentiment, feeds anti-multicultural movements, and permits the presence of far-right politicians as spokespeople – who are actually heirs to the fascist movements of the pre-war period (Fekete, 2014). In this setting, social work’s role should be reevaluated in terms of engagement with anti-fascist and anti-racist movements and coalitions, and it should not be seen as neutrally ‘professional’, pretending that social work is depoliticized profession. Levine (2013) claims in the context of anti-fascism that along with anti-racism, there is a ‘need for an equally uncompromising approach in fighting for social justice and the human rights of oppressed groups’ (p. 109).

Robert Paxton (2004) describes fascism as a system in which the rights of the chosen group to dominate others without restraint and privileging the needs of a one group over the rest who are excluded by race, ethnicity, culture, religion, citizenship, and identity. It is based on a contempt for reason and intellect, rejects the ‘decadence’ of selected out-groups, and seeks the restoration of a stylized authoritarian patriarchy. That the source of so much pain in the 20th century is being revived in the 21st is an anachronistic nightmare that deflates Fukuyama’s (2006) notion of the seeming consensus that liberal democracy had conquered rival ideologies. Indeed, Fukuyama himself has acknowledged that the weaknesses in Western democracies, particularly since the financial crisis of 2008, have given rise to identity politics and populist leaders throughout the world (Fasting, 2021).

From Mussolini to the present, citizen groups have demonstrated and mobilized peacefully against fascism, racism, hate speech, and nationalist authoritarianism (Stout, 2020). Yet social workers have largely engaged in the politics of protecting their professional status and habitually practice their profession in the microcosm of the therapeutic model. Human rights and social justice become important tools for combating discrimination and prejudices that can help in preventing extremism and radicalization. In this respect, social work education needs to use critical reflection on ‘political context, identity . . . and collective action framing . . . to help social workers meet the complex plethora of movements and protests in late modern welfare states’ (Zaidi and Aaslund, 2021: 10).

The future project of anti-fascist social work education should, first of all, expose fascist, nationalist, racist, and populist policies that contribute to the oppression of minorities and strengthen repressive identities such as whiteness and masculinity. The question to be answered is about the nature of contemporary fascism. In his 25 Theses on Fascism, Burley (2021) contends that today’s fascism operates on the level of metapolitics:

The values set by fascists enable them to use methodologies traditionally associated with the Left, including mass politics, postcolonialism, anti-imperialism, and anti-capitalism. Fascists employ the power of the marginalized classes and redirect their anger against systemic inequality and alienation against other marginalized people, thus reframing the source of the crisis. (p. 34)

Given this, the response should focus on fostering a culture of anti-fascism which means popular resistance against fascism and authoritarianism at local land international levels. Other fascist characteristics, including the desirability of human inequality as well as the promotion of social and economic hierarchies (Lyons, 2018: ii), demand worldwide anti-fascist solidarity that is capable of confronting the global emergence of international fascism. This solidarity would entail wider coalitions as well as escaping nationalism in professional development, for example, joining or creating international anti-fascist trade unions, developing global definitions and understanding of social work using decolonized approaches, building international solidarity as the global rise of fascism and authoritarianism could drive nations into a massive confrontation that will result in worldwide conflict.

Conclusion and recommendations: A path forward

The times call for social work organizations to mobilize the tools of soft power to turn the tide against authoritarian nationalism. Social work education can embrace a broader critical role in teaching about populism and authoritarianism and advance public diplomacy and anti-fascism as tools of macro practice. In addition, social work associations must reassert the importance of social work ethics, which are being disrupted by the challenges of social media, information technology, climate change, migration, and economic disparities (O’Leary and Tsui, 2023). Schools of social work must reform their curricula to include more specific content on decolonization theory and practice and to teach the methodology of antifascist social work. Social work education must decolonize itself by evolving from a primary emphasis on micro practice to policy practice that includes and engages the most vulnerable and marginalized on all aspects of curriculum, research, and administration. Given the rapid and relentless advance of authoritarian rhetoric and populist narratives, professional social workers in all specialties must constructively engage domestic and international publics on behalf of community, democracy, and transparency through educational and cultural exchange, public diplomacy, civil society, and professional organizations. The challenge of the global rise of authoritarian nationalism can be met when people understand and appreciate differences instead of joining narrow tribes of like-minded people who exist in closed information systems that isolate them and foster aggressive in-group behavior.