Making sense of hateful ideologies: grad's challenge

In shadowy parts of the internet, views that wouldn’t wash in more mainstream spaces can ferment and gain traction.

This is what University of Auckland graduate Nils Makauskas discovered when he started spending a bit of time on platforms like 4Chan and was horrified at what he was reading.

Nils, who is graduating on 7 May with a PhD in Sociology, completed his thesis on the rise and fall of the US as a world superpower, the growth of neo-fascism, particularly in the US after the first Trump administration, and subsequent shifts in the world order.

When he started thinking about a PhD topic back in 2019, he couldn’t have imagined how relevant it would be, he says.

“After my masters, I’d been thinking I’d take a break from study, but what happened on 15 March in Christchurch (the Mosque terror attacks) profoundly shocked me.

"However, I also felt it was a product of something that had existed in our country for a long time, some deeper, darker rot. So I started my PhD earlier than planned to try to make sense of it.”

He says he initially focused on the appeal of far-right ideologies, trying to explain their growth and their belief systems to work out what was radicalising people.

“I wanted to know how irrational belief systems sometimes have a rational basis that needs to be accounted for; in other words, people think strange things but sometimes for good reasons.”

And those ‘good reasons,’ in the case of the US, turned out to be globalisation and what happened to US industrial power, and jobs, particularly in areas like the ‘rust belt,’ in US states that used to be dependent on manufacturing.

“That coincided with the rise of East Asian industrialisation and cheaper labour, which meant that American capital was less competitive on the world stage.”

So instead, powerful US players moved into areas like banking and financial services (Wall Street expanded) and moved production offshore, where wages were cheaper and margins were greater.

This also led to the shrinking of the welfare state and social spending, and cutting taxes, so rich people got richer and the poor got poorer, which left a lot of people behind and angry; fertile ground for far-right ideas to flourish, says Nils.

“So those sorts of workers that previously could have relied on a stable and growing wage to raise a family, suddenly found themselves either unemployed or accepting low wages.”

Enter Donald Trump, but also left-wing politicians like Bernie Sanders.

“You did see a rise in support for people like Sanders, people went to the left and the right, because the politics of the centre, the Republicans and Democrats, largely left the status quo of globalisation unquestioned.

“But then Trump started voicing things that very few others had ever said, without caring at all about any Republican norms, including limits to ‘acceptable’ xenophobia and racism, which appealed to quite a lot of people.”

And because the financial world still turns on the US dollar, the US had been able to run massive deficits with the rest of the world borrowing from it and accepting high interest rates, and now of course, high tariffs, he says.

Then there’s the rise of China.

“As a Communist state, China was able to industrialise under a different system, with its pattern of state-led development enabling it to take advantage of foreign direct investment to advance its locally owned industry.

“Unlike other countries, it didn’t let itself be reduced to a source of cheap labour for industry owned by overseas investors, so it’s become extremely economically powerful.”

Nils says he feels “not completely pessimistic” that the ascent of China might mean quite good things for the rise of the developing world, and the BRIC States (middle powers), particularly as it’s the single biggest driver of green energy.

“China has delivered nearly two-thirds of all new global solar and wind capacity in recent years, but it’s also the largest emitter.”

With China’s star on the rise, that also means a global ‘decoupling’ from the United States, which Nils believes is currently “the biggest bully on the block”.

But that also leaves small, trade-reliant countries like New Zealand “crushed between a rock and a hard place,” he says.

“China is our biggest trading partner, but we’re also traditionally a friend and ally of the US.”

Of Lithuanian decent, Nils was brought up by his mum in Auckland and went through “some traumatic family problems” during his PhD, and says his earlier life also had its challenges.

He is hugely relieved to finally be graduating and “looking for a job outside of academia” where he feels he’s spent more than enough time.

“I actually wondered about becoming a community newspaper reporter for a change of pace and a regular income, if they’ll have me without any experience!”

His mum will be attending graduation and is very proud of his achievements, as is his PhD supervisor Dr Ciara Cremin.

Read Nils Makauskas’s PhD on ResearchGate.