The Notion of Decline in Western Thought: The Impact of an Idea on the Resurgence of the New-Right Movements

While the West has witnessed an unprecedented period of economic, scientific, and military hegemony, a subterranean intellectual trend that questions the continuity of Western progress has been gathering pace since the middle of the 19th century. Optimistic theories of progress, which anticipated increasing human rationality, freedom and modernisation, relied on Western history and suggested the universality of Western experience; they have been challenged by alternative approaches which postulate that Western civilisation has lost its vitality and, like previous great civilisations, is destined to decay (see, for example, Spengler, 1991). Theories informed by this scepticism have associated the West’s decline with moral, demographic, and institutional factors. The research project aims to identify these variables and explore how they inform the discourses of the European populist right-wing parties.

Research on declinism began in the middle of the 19th century when, in England, socio-political debates centred on the declining competitiveness of the British economy in relation to rising industrial powers, principally Germany and France. Concern about this issue, fuelled by Darwin’s publication of “On the origin of species” (1859) and Herbert Spencer’s “Principles of biology” (1864), informed subsequent debates on “social Darwinism” and the “survival of the fittest.” These ideas took practical form in social programmes that worked to alleviate poverty through means that sought to secure distinctions between the deserving and undeserving poor – this binary, often articulated in moral terms, indicates that values, morality, ethics, and character had been identified as factors affecting the nation’s decline.

Debates about declinism have spread throughout Europe and become issues of concern for many European intellectuals. For example, the French scholar and founder of “group psychology,” Gustave Le Bon, argued in his book, The crowd: A study of the popular mind (1895/2002), that the democratization of Western politics would bring about the decline of Western civilization because the crowd, given its characteristics, is more likely to destroy than build a civilization. In this model, the aristocracy is understood to create and maintain civilisation on the assumption that culture demands refinement, perseverance, and adherence to Christian conservative values. Similar ideas were expressed, for example, by the Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset (1930/1993, p. 189), who argued that “The mass-man is simply without morality, which is always, in essence, a sentiment of submission to something, a consciousness of service and obligation.”

These discussions, along with the changing demographic balance between citizens of “good stock” (healthy, cultured, and adherents of conservative values) and the masses, gave rise to the development of eugenics (e.g., Hawkins,1997).

Another potential source of decline was identified in the interactions that colonialism generated between people from the West and other races. This danger was envisaged in various forms, which included fears about Europeans’ submission to dark beliefs, sensual attractions, and animalistic desires that other cultures/races were understood to embody. The concept of race had been mobilised to forestall this type of blurring and cross-contamination. This anxiety was toned down in the light of Western evolutionary theories’ assumption that the less developed races would eventually wither as a result of their encounter with Europeans, a theory that was largely realized during the first wave of colonization. However, in the latter part of the 19th century, Europeans began to be apprehensive regarding the possibility of reverse colonisation. Not only did the colonised nations in Asia and Africa not vanish, but an increasing number of people of colour, including students, had arrived in Europe. This fear was further accentuated by the increasing number of “mixed-blood children” and aliens who could pass as European without possessing European sensibilities and core values. Such people were thought of as dangerous, thanks to the perception that they might have questionable loyalties, harbour malicious schemes, and constitute “an enemy within.” While the construct of race seemed to disappear from sociopolitical debates in the 20th century, it was effectively subsumed into the concept of culture, which has been racialised, and demography continues to play a central role in discussions on race and culture.

Current populist right-wing parties’ discourses regarding migration and ethnic minorities in the West rest on the long history of declinism that this research project aspires to account for. Although this intellectual perspective has been marginalised in European intellectual thought, it has continued to be popularized in European culture and beyond in novels and other cultural forms, through figures such as Dracula and Tarzan, as well as through popular social science books and the mass media. The debates around class and race/religion as causes for decline are not mutually exclusive, as recent claims raised by the new right, especially around Brexit, show. Migrants are often accused, as the undeserving poor were, of sloth, an innate lack of motivation, and criminal tendencies, as well as of draining their host country’s resources through their over-dependence on welfare and putting extra pressure on public services. Immigrants are also suspected of having double loyalties and hidden agendas. In Europe, for example, dark immigrants are frequently accused of aiming to Islamise the continent.

The discourse of declinism is mainly built on essentialised concepts of class and race, and it is often articulated through binaries (we/they; citizens/foreigners; civilised/uncivilised, etc.). Moreover, these concepts are conceived as unchanging throughout time and space. Muslims, for example, are often perceived and described as a homogenous group, despite the great variety of Islamic cultures and divergent interpretations of Islamic scriptures across diverse religious trends (ranging from Sufism to Jihadism).  
Europeans are also essentialised, either as a race or through nationality groups, and their decline is associated with their openness to harmful ideas (such as liberalism and universalism) and to other races. However, this trend could be decelerated and even reversed, according to supporters of the populist right-wing agenda, if the old structures that sustained monocultural European states were reinvigorated and prevailed.

During the last two decades, research on declinism has been gathering pace and gaining popular credibility. For example, a Google Scholar search of “declinism of the West” shows that 148 items have been published in 2023 alone in various European languages. Some of the theories regarding the decline of the West have been fiercely debated in academic circles, such as Huntington’s (2011) “Clash of civilizations”, while others – mainly written for public consumption – have rehearsed deep-rooted prejudices and orientalist notions (see, for example, Murray’s (2017) “The strange death of Europe: Immigration, identity, Islam”).

The research project does not aim to summarise current research on declinism or to provide a critical evaluation of its tenets or its main arguments; instead, it seeks to map the core ideas of declinism, study their history and mutations, look at the internal logic of the declinist perspective, and explore the world of images and metaphors it tends to embed in wider public discourse. In short, it will trace the history and mutation of the declinist perspective and map its main concepts, thus enabling us to illustrate how this discourse is mobilised to sustain European right-wing populist movements and parties.

The research will be conducted in cooperation with Prof. Dr Franziska Martinsen, who specialises in political theory and the history of political ideas.