ABSTRACT
The political decisions of 2016 will influence our future for many years, if not decades, to come and yet they were primarily influenced by the past. From Nigel Farage's "We want our country back" in the British EU referendum to Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" in the US presidential election, the emphasis was on a glorious past, sold as the blueprint of a magnificent future. This is the politics of nostalgia, which informs the main challengers of Western democracies today, from the radical right to the radical left. Surveys find broad support for this type of nostalgia, particularly when it is not phrased in ostensibly racist terms. But the politics of nostalgia is not limited to the radical right. Two of the main beacons of the so-called "radical left", Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, also find inspiration for their future ambitions in a slightly less distant past.
