Democratic giants, bound together centuries still, America and France seem to share a common fate. Indeed, American founding fathers fought alongside French revolutionaries. They jointly executed an ingenious blockade and siege against British forces at Yorktown, Virginia. Allied troops bombarded redcoats with musket fire, broke defenses, and pressed Cornwallis to surrender. We achieved independence side-by-side, and centuries later find ourselves in limbo. Sure, lady Liberty remains standing atop her pedestal, an etched tablet tucked under arm and valiant torch grasped firmly in hand. Yet we worry, many of us, as her copper skin accrues rust, about ugly sentiments brewing within, fueled by two characters transfixed by nostalgia, yearning to revitalize their respective countries to former glory days.

In this short paper, I examine Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen, conservative figures deterred by almost nothing, determined to scrap intergovernmental institutions against opposition. Using intergroup conflict theory, I demonstrate how they selectively cultivate conservative allegiances by strategically using what I call rhetoric of inclusion and exclusion. Finally, I recommend future social science scholarship more clearly delineate state and individual responses to globalization. To make these claims, I underline my argument with literature fundamental to grasping contemporary geopolitics, works by Benjamin Barber, Thomas Friedman, and Samuel Huntington concerning culture clashes and a renewal of tribalist passions amid heightened fear regarding terrorism. Having outlined my intentions, we should first define and contextualize this pivotal phenomenon.

Defining globalization by time and form

A student like myself would be safe to say that globalization illuminates a mystical aura. So many people wildly toss around this abstract term without particular care. They ignore previous iterations of globalization and theorists tend to discuss globalization using state actors rather than actual people as units of analysis. This condensed writing will attempt the opposite, to focus on human catalysts, their communications strategy, messages, and targeted audience.

Maybe thirty years ago globalization first became a salient talking point in modern academia. And by sheer convenience. After all, usually when writers invoke globalization, they actually mean to speak about a multitude of equally transformational developments rather than some linear process. Uttering a single, bulky buzzword offers talking heads expediency. Nevertheless, since precision is a virtue, we should be more direct. In my case, unless explicitly excepted, I shall define globalization as those twenty-first century processes, propelled by internet connectivity, pulling countries along in chorus, reducing world barriers to communication, business, and diplomacy. Although often pigeonholed as merely an “economic juggernaut,” globalization constitutes much more than multilateral trade agreements, tariff barriers, and foreign direct investment (Steger, 2013, p. 1). While surely worthy of conversation and particularly relevant to my interests, we should recognize that globalization is a multidimensional, layered concept, encapsulating various forms of integration, including political, cultural, and environmental components. Being an optimist, I might contend that globalization entails an inevitable set of forces consistently ushering ahead progress ignorant of current concerns and dispositions. Yet my focus here lies elsewhere. We will soon be evaluating Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen as agents of an anti-globalist international political regime. Preceding that, however, I should briefly elaborate on those earlier waves of globalization mentioned earlier.

Throughout history, specific instantiations of globalization have shifted shape, bent by the powerful to benefit certain civilizations over others. While maybe packaged and branded as something else lately, almost every ideological battle across time pits sides fighting for and against change beside one another. Every character in each social studies textbook collecting dust in your closet, from Julius Caesar to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, faced these same internal quandaries as we face over exerting versus rejecting foreign influence. I guarantee those musty, middle-school textbooks buried somewhere beneath a ratty old sweatshirt, or maybe displayed prominently on a bookshelf, they almost surely cover globalization without even realizing. After hours sifting through literature on this subject, I encountered numerous historical models for globalization. A.G. Hopkins and Christopher Bayly define globalization in terms of stages like “archaic globalization” and “proto-globalization.” I illuminated their conceptualization in a past reflection paper:

Prehistoric forms of globalization gave way to pre-modern developments, innovations like writing and the wheel which facilitated an unparalleled degree of cross-cultural transportation and communication. Empires traversed continents, establishing contact via trade routes. Gunpowder, paper, navigational tools and fabrics were exchanged, shared among people through strategic barter. Indeed, disease and religion transferred alongside commodities like rice and sugar…

Best-selling author and New York Times opinions columnist Thomas Friedman prefers instead a tri-period organizational structure, dividing globalization into three consequential stages beginning with Columbus and running through fiber optics. We will be employing his framework hereafter.

Friedman predicts that Globalization 3.0, the modern-era movement beginning around 2000, will effectively flatten planet Earth, empowering a considerably more diverse array of individuals than previous generations, enhancing marketplace competition and producing new outlets for personal success (Friedman, 2005, p. 11). He advocates an ideology called market globalism, which some social theorists label a “strong discourse,” difficult to resist because powerful print papers, online publications, and influencers accept its assumptions (Steger, 2013, p. 107). We should next ask what these assumptions are and whether reality validates them. Let us begin by answering the former question.

Market globalism, the hard truth

Tom Friedman truly champions this utopian vision of an uber-efficient, vertical supply chain, worldwide production machine. His preliminary foray into globalization, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, advanced a neoliberal program cheekily named the “golden straightjacket” after fiscal-minded prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Really, though, this theory is just quirky branding for an oft-discussed economic paradigm, the Washington Consensus. Intergovernmental organizations like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund incentivized developing countries throughout the nineties implement pro-growth, low-regulation policies favorable to outside stakeholders. According to Friedman, to adorn this golden straightjacket, governments must orient their economies around private-sector job creation, shrink state bureaucracy, relax capital market oversight, and adopt other recommendations (Friedman, 2000, p. 105). While certainly a “one-size-fits-all” garment, most post-industrial economies follow these guidelines and developing nations try to mirror them. In practice, golden straightjacket strategies produced uneven results. Just consider Latin America and Southeast Asia – divergent outcomes. Although I steadfastly believe innovations in computing and manufacturing, such as self-driving cars and machine learning software, drive society forward, in doing so certain people get left behind. To apply a sociopolitical lens, how might these disruptions breed animosity? We should consider this predicament further.

Innocent folks spend careers working intensive, dirty jobs, making barely enough to support the family, only to be replaced by robots and outsourcing. Savvy corporations solely interested in expanding bottom-lines sell your position to factories overseas, places like China and India where lax labor laws cut down costs. Fifty years ago, that described a science fiction prophecy, some Stanley Kubrick pipedream. No longer. These people married young, accepted a job immediately after high school graduation, and expected a fairly worry-free future. Now they get laid off mid-career. Modest paychecks dry up flat. They find a minimum wage job cooking fast-food. These incidents are real, and they create a void in people. Abruptly, apropos of nothing, a blonde-haired, billionaire real estate tycoon enters, promising your old job back, charismatically giving voice to your hardship, vowing to punish corporations shifting jobs overseas, to kill bad trade deals, and fight radical Islamic terrorism. Nobody before saw a character like him in politics. Transport yourself to coal miner country. What would you do when somebody finally takes notice?

A new lingo for nationalist campaign oratory

Liberal communications students like myself fall into common refrains when talking Donald Trump. Like broken records, we overlap each other uttering duplicate conclusions in almost identical ways. We ought to venture a step beyond popular press soundbites. How could Trump, a self-aggrandizing, big-money, New York City insider, a former reality television show host, craft a compelling enough campaign language to win over rural America? That point of inquiry looms large lately as our oldest ally, France, holds a presidential election pitting another nationalist, anti-globalist figure, Marine Le Pen, against a centrist finance minister. To answer this pivotal, looming question, I suggest we conduct a textual analysis.

I have visited the laid-off factory workers, and the communities crushed by our horrible and unfair trade deals. These are the forgotten men and women of our country. People who work hard but no longer have a voice.

I am your voice!

A packed Cleveland basketball arena hosted Republican delegates last July to officially name Donald J. Trump party nominee. Ivanka introduced him. Donald assumed an empty stage, embraced his daughter, and confidently strolled towards a tall, dark podium. Applause roared. Trump proceeded to deliver a grim overture ostensibly about America. His pursed lips, stern brow, and thumbs-up stylistic repertoire were on full display.

Samuel Huntington iconically wrote that civilizational conflict would overtake traditional geopolitical fault lines due to economic regionalism and rapid modernization. As old notions of sovereignty and national identity withered away, certain differences would grow more pronounced, especially history, language and religion (1993, p. 24). In Jihad v. McWorld, Benjamin Barber prospected culture clashes between global and tribal forces. He demonstrated foresight, predicting radical jihadism a deadly symptom of westernization years before 9/11, identifying tribalism within jihad, “an attempt to recapture a world… defined by religious mysteries, hierarchical communities, spellbinding traditions, and historical torpor” (1995, p. 157).

In boldly proclaiming, “I am your voice,” Donald Trump positions himself an ally to working class whites in a culture war against enemies nearby and distant, from incompetent establishment leadership to radical Islamic terrorists. Henri Tajfel and John Turner explain this with intergroup conflict theory (1979). That line entrusts Trump with supporters, perfectly exemplifying rhetoric of inclusion. Meanwhile, Marine Le Pen accomplishes a similar end in France, relying on rhetoric of exclusion, appealing to xenophobic tendencies to stir support for anti-immigrant, anti-Euro measures. Dominique Moïsi describes fear as a “defensive reflex that reveals and reflects the identity and fragility of a person, a culture, or a civilization at any given moment” (2010, p. 92). Whilst espousing fear-mongering messages riddled with logical fallacies and factual inconsistencies, Trump and Le Pen actually fortify strong coalitions. Their “us versus them” messaging deftly employs emotional appeals. Vulnerable individuals, fearful of present and future, jobless and angry, patriotic and proud, unsettled by globalization, endorse them, a dynamic duo of candidates committed to reviving twentieth-century greatness, when America and France stood atop the world.