Liberalism: recreating a hegemony?
Abstract
This essay is a diagnosis of liberalism in the present. Without leaving aside the historical unfolding of the liberal project in the West, our article aims to account for three critical moments in the supposed triumph of liberal democracy after the end of the Cold War. Such moments refer to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the financial crisis of 2008 and the rise of trumpism whose climax became evident in the attacks on the Capitol on January 6, 2020. All of them undermined, according to the thesis sustained in our text, some of the normative foundations of liberalism: respect, tolerance, equality and the very democracy. They were, moreover, the starting point for the best received illiberal criticisms among Western and non-Western societies, directed at the problem of globalization, immigration and multiculturalism. In view of this, we outline the recovery of a liberal nationalism, while proposing the international defense of the values of liberalism through multilateral instances.
Keywords
liberalism, iliberalism, democracy, the West
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