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Declinism is the belief that a society or institution is tending towards . Particularly, it is the predisposition, caused by such as rosy retrospection, to view the past more favourably and the future more negatively. The Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang edited by Grant Barrett, p. 90.
"The great summit of declinism" according to Adam Gopnik, "was established in 1918, in the book that gave decline its good name in publishing: the German historian Oswald Spengler's best-selling, thousand-page work The Decline of the West."
Spengler's book The Decline of the West, which gave declinism its popular name, was released in the aftermath of World War I and captured the pessimistic spirit of the times. Spengler wrote that history had seen the rise and fall of several "civilizations" (including the Egyptian, the Classical, the Chinese and the Mesoamerican). He claimed that they go in cycles, typically spanning 1,000 years. Spengler believed that Western culture is in a decline that is inevitable.
The idea that Western culture is declining has been a common historical constant, often repeating variations on the same themes. Historian Arthur L. Herman, in the introduction to his book The Idea of Decline in Western History, wrote that:
One factor in declinism is the reminiscence bump in which older people tend "to best remember events that happened to them at around the ages of 10-30." As one source puts it, "the vibrancy of youth, and the thrill of experiencing things for the first time, creates a 'memory bump' compared with which later life does seem a bit drab." Gopnick suggests that "the idea of our decline is emotionally magnetic, because life is a long slide down, and the plateau just passed is easier to love than the one coming up." Citing the widespread love of "old songs," he writes: "The long look back is part of the long ride home. We all believe in yesterday."
Another factor is the positivity effect in which "as people get older, they tend to experience fewer , and they're more likely to remember positive things over negative things."
Both factors can lead people to experience declinism but so, contrarily, can negativity bias in which "emotionally negative events are likely to have more impact on your thoughts and behaviours than a similar, but positive, event."
Josef Joffe, on the contrary, emphasizes the fact "that obsessively fretting about your possible decline can be a good way to produce it." Similarly, Robert Kagan has expressed concern that Americans are "in danger of committing pre-emptive superpower suicide out of a misplaced fear of their own declining power."
Barbara McQuade argues that declinism is a central tactic of Authoritarianism, who spread disinformation about a bleak future to then appeal to nostalgia and tradition to build support.
The major political theme of the era was that of revolt against materialism, rationalism, positivism, bourgeoisie, and liberal democracy. The fin-de-siècle generation supported , Rationalism, subjectivism, and vitalism, while the mindset of the age saw civilization as being in a crisis that required a massive and total solution. The themes of fin de siècle political culture were very controversial and have been cited as a major influence on fascismSternhell, Zeev. "Crisis of Fin-de-siècle Thought". International Fascism: Theories, Causes and the New Consensus. London and New York (1998): 169.Payne, Stanley G. A history of fascism, 1914–1945. Oxford: Routledge (1995, 2005): 23–24. and as a generator of the science of geopolitics, including the theory of Lebensraum.Stephen Kern, Culture of Time and Space, 1880–1918 (Massachusetts & London: Harvard University Press, 1983).
"America is prone to bouts of 'declinism,'" The Economist has noted.
In a 2011 book, Thomas L. Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum argued that the United States was in the midst of "its fifth wave of Declinism." The first had come "with the 'Sputnik Shock' of 1957," the second with the Vietnam War, the third with President Jimmy Carter's "malaise" and the rise of Japan, the fourth with the ascendancy of China.
American declinism can suddenly overtake commentators who had previously taken a sanguine view of the country's prospects. Robert Kagan has noted, for example, that the pundit Fareed Zakaria, who in 2004 "described the United States as enjoying a 'comprehensive uni-polarity' unlike anything seen since Ancient Rome", had by 2008 begun "writing about the 'post-American world' and 'the rise of the rest.'"
In a piece which appeared in The Nation on 13 June 2017, the author Tom Engelhardt claimed that Donald Trump was America's "first declinist candidate for president".
The British historian Robert Tombs suggested that the United Kingdom has faced several 'bouts' of declinism from as far back as the 1880s, when German Empire competition in manufactured goods was first felt, and then again in the 1960s and 1970s, with economic worries, the rapid dissolution of the British Empire and a perception of dwindling power and influence in every field. Tombs however, concluded that "Declinism is at best a distortion of reality" and noted that Britain is still considered a great power by modern standards, even with the dissolution of empire. In the 1960s, social commentators interpreted The Beatles as a manifestation of social decline.
According to Alexander Stille, France has had a long tradition of books declaring its decline or death as early as the 18th century. Declinism has been described as a "booming industry" with popular authors such as Michel Onfray writing books and articles exploring failings of France and Western world. French declinism has been related to the counter-Enlightenment of the early 19th century and to the late 1970s with the end of three decades of economic growth after World War II. In modern times, the phenomenon has picked up velocity and cut across the political spectrum with several variations of "déclinisme" emerging from Catholic reactionaries to nonreligious thinkers questioning national identity and political corruption.
Éric Zemmour's 2014 essay The French Suicide, which sold 500,000 copies in France, chronicles the supposed decline of the French nation-state and so has been associated with declinist literature.
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