Background. The main problem the world faces today is the crisis of personal identity. It began with the events of the year 1968 that is considered to be the starting point for the postmodernist worldview and resulted in significant social cultural consequences.

The Objective of the paper is to discuss these consequences, to analyse how the ideas of pluralism, tolerance and the maximum actualisation of personal freedom that lie in the basis of the postmodern society cause radicalism, fanaticism and hypocrisy.

Design. The author examines socially disintegrating and disadaptation-related tectonic societal processes associated with the breakdown of customary values ​​and attitudes, state forms, emergence of radical communities and migration issues, whose consequences are frighteningly unpredictable. It shows that the phenomenon of “escape from freedom” described by E. Fromm was embodied in the rudimentary forms of hyperidentity arising in the technological and information society.

Conclusion. Postmodernism today is becoming a mirror of the permanent crisis, either economic, political, intercultural, inter-ethnic, interconfessional, intergenerational ones. The result of the hopes of the year 1968 was a maladapted post-normal society that lost its ability to invent meanings and constructive models of self-identity further replaced by rigid and rudimentary forms of identity.

The article examines the relationship between the spread of terrorism and the transformation processes of self-identity in contemporary society. On the example of comparing the post"modern world and fundamentalist ideology shows the contradictory nature of changing patterns of identification.

The article is devoted to the interethnic relations which are vital for multi – and monocultural states engaged in search of ways creating favorable conditions for harmonious interaction of different ethnicities living on one territory. Solution of the given issue involves studying stereotypes and personifications reflected in words by analyzing interethnic relations through the perception of different peoples and ethnic groups, and the reflection of these relations in language.