Defending Identity: Its Indispensable Role in Protecting Democracy

Overview
Natan Sharansky, a former Soviet dissident and Israeli politician, examines the tension between universal rights and particular loyalties. He contends that national, religious, and cultural identities are not merely private attachments but civic foundations that sustain democratic life. Globalization, mass migration, and a certain strand of liberal multiculturalism have weakened these bonds and opened space for illiberal impulses to take root.
Sharansky frames identity as a public good: a set of shared narratives, institutions, and loyalties that orient citizens toward common rules and responsibilities. Without some agreed core, social cohesion frays, trust declines, and democracies become vulnerable to authoritarian or sectarian movements that exploit alienation.

Central Thesis
The central claim is that democracy cannot survive on abstract rights and economic interdependence alone; it requires living frameworks of identity that bind people to the state and to one another. Sharansky argues that denying or downplaying collective identity in the name of liberal neutrality produces moral vacuums. Those vacuums are often filled by illiberal ideologies that reject democratic principles.
This argument aims to reconcile two impulses: a commitment to individual liberties and an insistence that collective belonging matters. Individual rights remain paramount, but their practice depends on social institutions that cultivate civic duties, shared history, and a common public culture.

Identity and Democratic Resilience
Shared identities provide the emotional and moral capital necessary for public cooperation. Sharansky highlights how schools, civil society, religious communities, and national narratives teach citizens the habits of democratic participation and mutual restraint. When those channels weaken, democratic norms erode: political discourse becomes transactional, solidarity collapses, and the rule of law is harder to sustain.
He warns that ideological absolutism on both the right and the left can weaponize identity. On one hand, exclusive ethnonationalism can marginalize minorities and corrode liberal institutions. On the other, doctrinaire multiculturalism that refuses to uphold a minimum of shared civic values can permit enclaves to operate by non-democratic norms. The viable path, he suggests, preserves cultural plurality while insisting on the basic rules of democratic life.

Policy Implications
Sharansky proposes practical steps to defend democratic identity without sliding into xenophobia. Societies should cultivate civic education that emphasizes constitutional values and common responsibilities, integrate immigrants through language and civic instruction, and ensure public institutions reinforce rather than ignore shared cultural touchstones. Legal protections for minorities must be maintained, but not extended to practices that contravene universal human rights or the core norms of democratic citizenship.
On the international level, he urges support for nation-states that seek democratic consolidation and cautions against policies that elevate abstract cosmopolitanism over the reality of national self-determination. The goal is a liberal nationalism that anchors democracy without negating diversity.

Reception and Stakes
The argument has resonated with readers concerned about social fragmentation and the rise of populism, offering a framework to think about how democracies remain cohesive. Critics worry that elevating identity risks legitimizing exclusionary politics and that the boundary between defending identity and promoting assimilation can be thin. The book sparked debate about how to balance respect for minority cultures with the need for a shared civic culture.
Ultimately, the work reframes identity as a democratic resource rather than a purely cultural or private matter. It asks democracies to be intentional about the forms of belonging they cultivate and to recognize that preserving freedom may depend on protecting the institutions and narratives that make collective self-rule possible.