Bulgarian scholar Ivan Krastev, in an interview with the Asahi Shimbun published in March, compared the restless discontent of the 1960s with that of today. Fifty years ago, he said, disgust with the status quo fed hope for the future. Today it feeds nostalgia for the past.
Fifty years ago, "the past" meant World War II. No one wanted to go back to that. Forward, then — damn the reactionaries — into the future: a kingdom of freedom, justice, peace, prosperity and love.
Today, the globalized, technologized future is more apt to appear menacing than beckoning. The 1970s, the '80s — how could we have let them slip away? Their stability, comparatively speaking, contrasts with our flux, their security with our fears. The Cold War wasn't all roses; there was anxiety enough to go around, but in the neighborhood and the workplace, at least, if not in the world at large, the ground felt firm beneath our feet. It would still if not for the globalization that diminishes nations and the technologies that, with scarcely a backward glance, render so many once useful and proud workers redundant. So it seems, at least, to the "populists" whose mood Krastev is analyzing.