Nothing wrong with the right kind of nationalism
It was an unusually sombre group of world leaders that gathered in Paris this weekend to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War. Any November 11 is a solemn occasion, of course, in remembrance of the millions of dead, not only in that terrible war but in wars since.
But one ghost in particular haunted the leaders this time out: nationalism — the nationalism that drove the world into war, not once but twice, the nationalism those wars were supposed to have extinguished, the nationalism that, 100 years later, is again on the march.
Across Europe, powerful nationalist movements demand an end to the European Union, the expulsion of immigrants, and more. Dictatorships in Russia and China have emerged as exponents of an increasingly strident nationalism. And at their side is the self-proclaimed “nationalist” president of the United States, whose predecessors would have been expected to lead the defence of the international order, but who is instead doing his utmost to tear it apart.
So there was a particular poignancy to French President Emmanuel Macron’s remarks at that Paris ceremony. “Old demons,” he warned, “are rising again.” He singled out nationalism, which he noted was “the exact opposite” of patriotism — in fact a “betrayal” of it.
“By putting our own interests first,” he argued, “with no regard for others, we erase the very thing that a nation holds dearest, the thing that keeps it alive, the thing that makes it great: its moral values.”
At first this may seem hard to swallow. The nation-state is, after all, the basic constituent unit of that international order. It is the nation-state that commands the loyalties of peoples, and supplies governments answerable to them: supranational states, like the EU, have proved failures at both. Surely it is not only reasonable that national governments would put the interest of their own peoples first, but responsible.
Put like that, of course, it is. It is the interpretation of those interests as necessarily being at odds with participation in the international order — trade agreements, military alliances, co-operation on issues that transcend national borders like refugees and climate change — that is wrong. Or rather, it is the idea of nation that underpins it.
The argument, that is, is not with nationalism, as such, but with a particular version of nationalism. Some kind of nationalism — not just patriotism, or love of country, but identification with its people, as members of the same nation — is not just inevitable, but necessary, even valuable. It is the glue without which democratic self-government is impossible, for people will not submit to be ruled by those they consider others, alien to themselves.
And, on occasion, it has proved essential to liberty. The liberation of the nation-states of Eastern Europe from enslavement by the Soviet Union would not have been possible without some consciousness of themselves as Czechs, or Poles, or Hungarians, and the unity in the face of oppression that helped to sustain.
Where does nationalism go from being a friend to democracy, freedom and the concert of nations, to being their enemy? At the point that its concern turns from unity to division: from We Are Us to We Are Not You. Difficult as it may be to believe amid the narrowness and nastiness of so much of today’s nationalism, there is a another kind of nationalism, one that is about inclusiveness, rather than exclusion; co-operation with other nations, rather than conflict.
The distinction between the two lies in how the nation is defined, that is in what is asserted as the basis for identification between its members. Today’s nationalists tend to assume there is only one kind, the “natural” ties of race or ethnicity, or their proxies, language or culture.
But of course there is nothing “natural” about it: it is just one way of organizing people into groups, and a particularly arbitrary one at that. It is just as possible for people to form ties between themselves based, not on who they are, but on what they believe. A nation is itself no more than a belief, an idea shared among a group of people that they are, in fact, a people. That belief may in turn be inspired by other beliefs: in democracy, say, or freedom, or other basic ideals on which there is a broad consensus.
This kind of nationalism is commonly called “civic” or “political” nationalism, as opposed to the ethno-cultural kind. If it sounds abstract, it is the basis of one of the most successful nations, and nationalisms, the world has ever seen: the Americans’. It was also intended to be the basis of our own: the Fathers of Confederation were explicit in their desire to create a common “political nationality” that would transcend our ethnic and religious divisions.
What is worth noting about this kind of nationalism is that it is rooted, not in sublime contemplation of itself, but, as Macron suggested, in moral purpose. Nations, like any other subdivision of humankind, have no prior validity in themselves: they may claim it only so far as they serve the interests of the individuals of which they are composed, or of humanity at large. The existence of a nation called Canada, for example, with the powers and resources of a nation-state, has proved to be of incalculable benefit both to its own citizens and the world’s. Such a nation can make a moral claim for itself that more arbitrary nationalisms cannot. As such, it is freed from the debilitating obsession with differentness — with what makes its citizens different from those of other nations, or (as often as not) with creating differences where these are in short supply.
A civic nation does not have to be different from others. Indeed it does not care if it is or not. It challenges its people not to be “true to themselves,” but to be the best exemplar of ideals it hopes one day to share with all humanity.
WHEREDOES NATIONALISM GO FROM BEING A FRIEND TO DEMOCRACY, FREEDOM AND THE CONCERT OF NATIONS, TO BEING THEIR ENEMY?