Daily Times

In Greek mythology there is a story about Zeus, the father of Greek gods, releasing two eagles, one at each end of the world and commanding them to fly at each other. A sacred stone, called omphalos (the navel of the world), was placed where they met. It enabled communication with the divine.

Following the World War II, the west launched the myth of a new world order and released it in several directions without a sacred stone. Using their imperialistic approach, they tried heuristically to establish an abstract totality but ended up fracturing the new world order within a few decades of its launch.

Today, the world we live in is multi-polar, multi-stakeholder and multi-conceptual. The so-called liberal order is suffering from utter contradictions.

The liberal metaphysics has left people with no ideological option except embracing popular national causes and identity politics.

The far-right nationalism has become the living reality of our times. It is shaping the new world disorder. It is making populist politics the central theme in global affairs

The resurgence of far right populism across Europe and North America in the recent years is a reaction to the failure of the new world order. Popular liberal slogans of globalization, multiculturalism, unipolarity and universalization of liberal values have suffered. There is a huge gulf today between the elite advocacy of multiculturalism and the stubborn mass support for collective identities. The gap between the nationalist public sentiments and cosmopolitan elites is not without its own dramatic impact.

The intensity of far-right nationalism appears to be overcoming the liberal dystopia. Perhaps, this is the fate of the new world order.

The far-right nationalism has become the living reality of our times. It is shaping the new world disorder. It is driving history and making popular politics the central theme in global affairs. It has also become the routine subject of discussions across the world.

Liberalism proposes freedom and rationality as supreme values of life.

For far right nationalism, identity politics has the major role in shaping history. Far-right nationalists hold that liberalism has failed the history and the masses in installing a narrow liberal power-elite which has become the defining symbol of centralization of means.

The rise of liberal power elite has coincided with the fragmentation of power politics into a political order, an economic order and a military order. The troika is the key to understanding the new world order.

The liberal political order has weakened the federal centre and promoted an executive apparatus that favours the power elite. The liberal economic order has cornered the small enterprises and helped a few hundred corporations monopolise the market place. The liberal military order has earned the civilian distrust. The trust gap is today the defining feature of most governments.

As military gains the upper hand among the power elite, the political and economic decisions become subordinate to military imperatives.

The far-right populists are now presenting themselves as an alternative. They are staunchly opposing the establishment and power centralization across west. The new world disorder is giving birth to countertrolling far right nationalism. The sacred stone is still missing and Zeus died a long time ago.

The writer is a postgraduate student of Politics and International studies, and a freelance writer with a keen interest in History, Current Affairs, Geopolitics and International Political Economy