Anna Zhamakochyan
2016 was
a year of tumultuous change and continuous challenges. It was a year of crisis
for liberal capitalist democracies in the west, which witnessed the rise of
right-wing nationalist political parties and movements. The Brexit referendum
and Trump’s electoral victory in the US are only the most conspicuous examples
of how populist politicians capitalise on people’s sense of economic
insecurity, frustration and the desire to change the status quo. In former
Soviet states, where the rise of nationalism was simultaneously a trigger and
an outcome of the Soviet collapse, ultra-nationalist discourses and right-wing
populism without real politics are all too familiar phenomena.
Of
course, localised political events are immediate factors too. In Armenia, the rise
of the country’s nationalist discourse of “national unity” was strongly linked
with the country’s “united and nationwide” movement for Nagorno-Karabakh during
the 1980s and 1990s. This discourse prevents more direct criticism and the
discussion of alternatives in favour of the national security status quo. And
just as peace talks stutter on, so does the conflict periodically resurge,
fuelling this discourse further.
