ABSTRACT
Typical among the new confrontations was the 1960s and 1970s challenge of the New Left, of the 1968 youth rebellion and its issues from antiauthoritarianism to feminism, pacifism and racial (or minority group) equality.1 Another major factor that did not play an appreciable role in the interwar period are the nativist reactions to migrations of refugees, really a manifestation of the inequalities among nations, in particular between north and south. The everswelling ranks of the oppressed, hungry and underemployed of the world that are pushing their way into the small minority of developed societies on earth have triggered extreme and violent responses on the far right of the political spectrum, and considerable hostility from the moderate right. This is quite different from the effect of migrations of the early twentieth century, say in 1917 or 1935, when the flight from communist or fascist takeovers spread the polarization between extreme left and right throughout the West. Finally, the advanced democratic societies have undergone tremendous social change in the last 30 years that obliterated the significance of important old divisions, such as the class struggle, and replaced them with new ones and new problems such as the ‘new individualism’, the information revolution, and the ‘digital divide’. Contemporary movements of the extreme right that draw heavily upon unskilled
working-class youth and on young unemployed obviously owe much to these new experiences of helplessness and alienation. The forces of economic and cultural globalization reinforce the rage of being left behind.
