ABSTRACT
How do we account for a resurgence in populist nationalism and related angry culture wars? How did this high octane political invective arise, whereby issues of sovereignty and identity manifest in populist nationalism with an authoritarian pose? Outrageous exchange that is indignant and brazen evokes outrage among the affronted. Fears are incited in order to tap into subsequent acrimony. In this way, the new political landscape is deliberately designed to keep discourse off balance by interventions that confuse, distort, and distract. Culture wars, deploying militarist idioms of treachery, coup and surrender, embolden adherents of nativism and nationalism to erect borders and boundaries against their perceived threat of a more globalised world. Amid the general noise different variants of populism must be acknowledged.
