I am currently working on a larger article, tackling the ‘ideological war’ that is going on underneath all the current events, from Ukraine, to Covid, over the 2020 elections, to the transgender activism and grooming we see everywhere.
During that preparation, I came across an earlier article I wrote before I had this Substack, and I think it is an important primer to tackle the notion of ‘world citizen’ and ‘nationalism’. Better do it separately, and properly, than try to shoehorn it in a much wider and broader article where some of the points made here would get lost.
I apologize, but this is going to be a long article again, but, I think, one worth sifting through. It is a very deep and much written about topic, so I might have overstressed some aspects, or have been quiet of others you might deem vitally important. My aim here is to sketch an outline, a baseline, not an exhaustive and authoritative study/definition.
We all are told how ‘nationalism’ is bad, and that woke people are actually world citizens, aware that humanity knows no borders.
As with so much of leftist rhetoric, it has a nice ring to it. You almost wish it to be true. But can we really embrace that?
No, we can’t.
As a first observation, before I begin: the left has a weird love-hate relation with the concept of nationalism. The propaganda we hear daily tells us that communism is as opposite of nationalism as one can get, as it purports to be a global movement that does not recognize borders.
But in the 2 largest communist experiments, we see that their idea of ‘global communism’ is nothing short of a pax Romana: peace under THEIR hegemony.
How much more ‘nationalist’ can you get? Look at the USSR: Russia and Russians was where the power resided, they had a step up. Just as their struggle against ‘the rich’ meant that they wanted to replace ‘our rich’ with ‘their rich’.
I once stayed in a resort in the absolutely beautiful Zakopane region of Poland (not that long after the fall of the Iron Curtain), the mountainous South, where the springs of the stunning Wistula river (Wisła) are. This resort was built for the Party Leaders, my local friends told me. And what an amazing and opulent place it was, unlike the drab concrete hotels and apartments in the other areas of Poland. Some pigs really are more equal than others.
And one other observation, this one on ‘open borders’. We see a messaging war (part of the Cognitive Warfare I’ve been chronicling), aimed at normalizing the constant influx of immigrants from all over the world. For many well-meaning activists, they really believe the mantra of ‘world citizens’, that humanity knows no borders. But if you go a few levels up, it becomes about replacing populations, and adding voting blocks. Or, more cynically, about destroying national identities by diffusing it through a constant influx of other cultures and languages, which are given equal status and concern. This decreased national identity in turn makes it easier to control the population.
Through a concerted media effort, we see for example how we are told that Latinos are supposed to vote Democrat, as the Republicans are the party of hatred and bigotry, aimed not just against blacks, but ALL people of color. Recent election results show this to be a severe miscalculation, or a completely failed effort, by the DNC and their media apparatus: Latinos are openly and in increasing numbers voting for Republican candidates. Down to that special election in District 34, that has always been blue (a border district, with a very strong Latino population): a mere week ago, Mayra Flores pulled of an incredible upset, and became the first Republican congresswoman from that district, with 51% of the votes.
A very strong signal. Both that Latinos are not robots who will vote simply based on their ethnicity, and because they are told to, and also that immigrants can and DO adapt and take their place in their new countries. As an immigrant myself, I can testify to that, as well.
Anyways. Nationalism, and nationalists.
In a proper understanding, you have concentric circles in a society. The individual, the core family, the extended family, the town/village, the region, the province/state, the country, the international group of countries, the world.
Each level has their own place and role to play, and the nation/country is one of them. Any attempt to take one of those concentric circles and promote that at the exclusion of the others is unworkable in this day and age. The level of our civilization is so complex, that we need the larger groups to make it all work.
(One could suggest that each step represents a subsequent step in civilization, from individual, core family of hunter gathers, extended family of farmers, the sibbe, the clan, the village, the city, the small kingdom, the larger kingdom, the empire, as the necessities of each level could no longer be acquired within each level.)
The nation is one step in that. A required step, even, as it groups people with broadly similar cultural and social and economic interests together. (Yes, I know you can cite specific counter-examples, but generally, this holds, even if one has to define culture as a shared acknowledgement of citizenship).
It is the modern equivalent, or better: successor, of the kingdom/empire idea. Successor, as it requires a much more complex structure for its inner workings to be done efficiently enough to survive.
What makes the US different from Canada, for example? They share very similar populations of migrants from roughly the same European countries, arriving at roughly the same times, but they have clearly different cultures and identities.
Nationalism, then, is simply the understanding of the importance and role of one’s own nation, and a certain level of love for it.
But if you look at google, you see this:
“identification with one's own nation and support for its interests, especially to the exclusion or detriment of the interests of other nations.”
Catch that last part?
No, that is NOT what nationalism is, any more than ‘marriage’ is the “identification with one's own woman and support for her interests, especially to the exclusion or detriment of the interests of other women.”
For some marriages, that last part might hold true, perhaps, but not all, nor for nearly enough to justify making that last qualification part of the general definition. The first part, however, is fundamental.
Wiki shows a long list of different types of ‘nationalism’. This term has become so bendable as to mean whatever you want it to mean. What is common, however, among all those different types, is this: “identification with one's own nation and support for its interests”, where nation could be group, ethnic group, region, culture, region, etc., but the main idea remains. It is, therefore, in essence, simply a positive identification and support. No trace of that negative second part, surprised?
Now any movement that refers to their ‘nation’ can be called ‘nationalist’, even ‘national-anarchists’, or eco-nationalism.
Most definitions only refer to that first part identification with one's own nation and support for its interests, however, and describe the identification with and support for one’s nation (however ‘nation’ is subsequently defined). It is by necessity broad.
And if you dive into history, you see that ‘nationalism’ even got a theological emanation, where people looked to ‘divine election of nations’.
The people in the Dutch empire in the 17th century, for example, had a strong awareness of the links between ‘The Netherlands’ and ‘Israel’. This analogy became a political leitmotiv, as they attempted to cleanse their nation of enemies within and without, fighting Catholic Spain, Anglican England, or the pagan Indians.
Or people like the American Edward Bellamy, for who ‘nationalism’ was a form of ‘nationalization’, where the state would take upon itself all tasks, from education, employment, planning, even feeding the people.
He wrote in 1871, for example: “The great reforms of the world have hitherto been political rather than social. In their progress, classes privileged by title have been swept away, but classes privileged by wealth remain.”
Yet, interestingly, he was candid enough in a letter to a literally critic to admit that he used ‘nationalism’ only to avoid having to talk about socialism.
“In the radicalness of the opinions I have expressed, I may seem to out-socialize the socialists, yet the word socialist is one I never could well stomach. […] It smells to the average American of petroleum, suggests the red flag, and with all manner of sexual novelties, and an abusive tone about God and religion, which in this country we at least treat with respect. [...]
Whatever German and French reformers may choose to call themselves, socialist is not a good name for a party to succeed with in America. No such party can or ought to succeed that is not wholly and enthusiastically American and patriotic in spirit and suggestions.”
And that, already back then, illustrates how this term ‘nationalism’, in several definitions, has nothing to do with nations, but with politics and deception. One must be very careful NOT to pin ‘nationalism’ down to a single definition with clear boundaries, rather than a ‘stream’, much more broad and vague, as an emanation of the developing social and political structures and the emergence of democracy.
When looking at what scholars write about nationalism, such as Historian Aira Kemilainen, a deeper picture emerges. She studied ‘nationalism’ extensively, and distinguishes several meanings of that term, but when dealing with it as an idea, she sees two main concepts:
“namely the nationalist idea, which especially belongs to the cultural field, and the national principle, which is almost identical with the principle of national self-determination and belongs to the area of political thought and activity.”
For the nationalist idea, she describes the attitude that “considers the individuality and peculiarity of a human group called a nation or nationality very important. In this case “nationality” is identical with the German word “Volkstum”, which means a nation formed by a common language and other common characteristics like common origin, manners and institutions, without any political connotation.”
For the national idea, she describes that as the tendency to establish a nation state or at least to obtain autonomy.
Interestingly, Kemilainen connects the national principle, as a theory of self-determination, as an extension of the enlightenment born principle of democracy, the idea of popular sovereignty, where the right to decide questions concerning government to the whole population, commoners as well as nobility. (Keep this in mind, as it will return in my article on ideologies!)
Near the end of her article, she wrote a very deep line:
“History was also connected with this starting-point, and in reality history seems to be the only unifying element which is necessary for national consciousness”.
This, I think, runs to the core of what nationalism is, and isn’t. We see modern day efforts in nation building. We see the old efforts, such as in Africa and the Middle East, all equally disasters. Why? Because the essence of a nation/demos (or people/Volkstum) was misunderstood.
Even ‘ethnic’ nationalism. How often isn’t that simply a misunderstood label that only means ‘common culture and language’?
(And how can you read that line, without thinking about the many efforts to destroy statues, paintings, and thus, our shared history? This is on purpose, to destroy our national consciousness, and thus, cohesion.)
This brings to mind a brilliant quote by Gustav Mahler:
It is pertinent to our discussion of ‘nationalism’, as it shows that a healthy nationalism, borne by a shared history, or tradition, is about passing on a fire, handed down from those before us. It implies a living link to our past, our shared history, and portrays it as a valuable thing that impassions us. It is not, as it states, a worship of the ashes, of the external tangible things, something static.
World War I, followed by WWII, has destroyed a lot in Western civilization, much more than people realize. As did the subsequent increase in wealth and technology, leading to general ownership of cars, and thus, mobility, starting to eat away at the ties on the local level. Flag waving and folklore is seen as ‘burned’, because the Nazi’s used it, too, in their propaganda. So was a focus on the core family, which now reeks of ‘Lebensraum’ and such programs. This left the door wide open for the idea of the ‘world citizen’, pushed by certain elites.
Here is a key concept to understand: In order to better ‘sell’ their idea of globalism, they needed a suitable ‘enemy’ that was opposite to it, and thus the left discarded their own openly national(ist) attempts to reach their goals (a tactic as we saw earlier with Bellamy, but used by him only to sell his book), and declared ‘nationalism’ the enemy. With they themselves, the anti-fascists, as safeguards…
And since they were ‘the left’, they parked their own ‘nationalist’ experiments under ‘the right’, as it was the opposite from their new stated goal. Simple, and brilliant. And we all fell for it, and many still do.
Back to globalism, then. Not love for your own culture, but love for ALL cultures (at the detriment of your own, it seems, for bonus points). That is the woke mantra. Summed up by the word ‘multiculturalism’.
I remember going to this world music concert, with bands from all over the world performing. Black Africa, Peru, Mexico, China, India, name it. Some of my fellow students, of leftist stripe, would love going there. Dread-locked, with their didgeridoo in their patchwork bag at their side, ‘jamming along’ all those different music styles and dances and songs.
Then I asked one of my lefty friends this simple question:
“If any of those performers would come down the stage, and approach you, and would ask if you could teach him a song and dance from your culture, too, could you?”
Stunned silence.
He would not have gotten further than singing Lennon’s Imagine, and perhaps some crude imitations of folk dance, hopping around like a fool.
I could have. I know the traditional songs and dances of my culture, and some of several other European cultures. I can recognize what those different groups on the stage were singing about: the joy about a successful hunt, a successful harvest, a successful voyage and return, all conveying the same relief that they brought food back to their families. That is a shared human emotion, one that I recognize from my the dances and songs of my own people.
I can teach something back. I have something to give and share. But to those same leftists, I would be the fascist, the bigot, the hater, because I insisted to learn and practice my own traditional culture and songs and music. “YOU NATIONALIST!”
And the rich irony is that those ‘world citizens’ are the actual leeches, consuming the traditions of other people, without ever sharing anything back. Again, those so quick to see and condemn exploitation everywhere, are the worst examples of *actual* exploitation. Color me shocked.
You cannot have a proper multicultural society unless you have individuals who uphold, maintain and share their OWN culture, and KEEP doing that. Otherwise, you have a monoculture within a single generation, where everything is the same: a drab grey of mixed elements, nothing unique about unique people and circumstances left. One size fits all. And suddenly, we’re back in the reality communism’s hellish utopia as we’ve observed so many times.
A nation that honors the different parts of the heritage of the different groups that make up its citizens, will manage to do so, even if those expressions of ancestral heritage will start leading a live of their own, away from that of the actual region or country of origin. We have Little Italy, China Town, Dutch/Flemish regions in Chicago and surrounding areas, quaint German towns that bank in on their picturesque Christmas flavors, proud African-American identities, name it. The American identity is in the shared history of having a mixed heritage, working together to survive and tame the Wild West, and to put shoulder to shoulder to overcome any obstacle, building bridges, roads, sky-scrapers, or aircraft carriers. True, also of slavery, and anti-Irish and strong anti-Catholic sentiments, to name a few of the negative pages of that shared history. But also a civil war, an emancipation declaration, and a civil rights movement to mop up lingering distrust and hatred.
Some people chose to erase that history, and return focus on the points that divide us. Ironically, that only sets us back on the path to division, contrary to their stated aims. We need not ‘forget’ or ‘ignore’ those negative parts, but we need to ALSO look at the good, and keep going into that direction. (Just think about how you best encourage a child: by continuously beating it over its head with its failures, or by highlighting their strong points and guiding it to keep building on those?)
Which shows why groups like the 1619 project are so dangerous: they aim at our shared history, to distort it by selectively highlighting the negatives, ignoring the positives, to suit their own narrative of a ‘racist’ country that needs to offer reparation and needs to step down from the international stage (which will come back in my upcoming article on ideologies, as well). Doing so, it alters our shared national consciousness and identity, but not in a positive way. It follows the outlines of nationalism described earlier in this article, showing the value of that understanding.
Before we can analyze today’s events, we need to understand the context and framework in which they take place, and the events and words/concepts upon which they were founded or from which they flowed.
And before we can talk about the ideologies behind those events, we needed to dissect this concept of ‘nationalism’, as well. I hope this article was helpful to get started on this topic, or to move further along in our understanding of it.
All is well.
What is nationalism?
Shouldn't the core of nationalism be about if it gives or takes away from social cohesion? For example, Chinatown is cool. Lovely food. Neat decorations. When the people buy in to the country, it's good for nationalism and can be part of it. If it were to be filled with CCP agents and those who comply with foreign law over US law, not so much.