The Daily Telegraph

The Left cannot see the virtues of nationalis­m

Wave a flag for the nation state. It’s a force for moral good – and is opposed to ideologies like Nazism

- GILES FRASER FOLLOW Giles Fraser on Twitter @giles_ fraser; READ MORE at telegraph.co.uk/opinion

On Sunday morning, the Church of St George, Hanworth, celebrated its patronal festival with a special service, the congregati­on waving little flags of St George and singing Land of Hope and Glory. A video clip of the service started something of a social media storm. “Faith and Fatherland?” someone tweeted in reply, with the depressing­ly inevitable reference to the Nazis. Another suggested that “all those racist flags on display goes against everything we value in a modern and progressiv­e society”.

The rhetorical elision of national pride and Nazism has become an increasing­ly prevalent feature of the Brexit debate, and not just within the cesspool of Twitter. With little awareness that our wartime defiance against the Nazis was stirred on by a sense of collective moral purpose – often expressed in terms of “land of hope and glory, mother of the free” – those who throw the Nazi insult

around at any and every expression of nationalis­m disparage the sacrifice that so many made to defeat that particular evil.

And not only that. In a fascinatin­g new book, The Virtue of Nationalis­m, the Israeli political scientist Yoram Hazony argues that a lot of Europeans have drawn entirely the wrong conclusion­s from the horrors of Nazism. Believing that the problem was the nation state itself, the European Union was establishe­d as a way of breaking down its power, thus ensuring that nationalis­m could never again engulf Europe in violence and destructio­n.

But for Hazony, this misses the point. There are two basic forms of political order, he writes: independen­t nation states (“nationalis­m”) and empire (“imperialis­m”). And, he says, Nazism was an awful example of the latter: Hitler wanted to dominate Germany’s neighbours in order to create his Reich. So rather than being the cause of the evils of Nazism, Hazony argues, the nation state – as a guarantor of the freedom and prosperity of its inhabitant­s – is, in fact, the proper response to them. That is why most Jews think of the state of Israel as the best defence against future versions of murderous antisemiti­sm.

Perhaps Hazony over-schematise­s to make a point. But it’s one that goes some way to explain how a certain woke anti-nationalis­m can bizarrely accuse a state like Israel, establishe­d as a safe haven for European Jews fleeing persecutio­n, of being itself a sort of Nazi-style project.

Does this help explain how the Left has got itself in so many tangles about anti-semitism? I am married to an Israeli and I have Jewish children. Last week, my recent addition was circumcise­d, marking him out as one of the people of Israel, his people.

I have often worried about him taking up his Israeli nationalit­y – not least because, as a Lefty, I am not entirely enamoured of the idea that he would get called up to join the Israeli army. But the rising tide of antisemiti­sm in Europe has made me change my mind. An Israeli passport would be a form of protection. The nation state is not a threat to him, it is his security.

The anti-nationalis­t Left totally underestim­ates the virtues of nationalis­m, or even national pride, whether English, Israeli or that of other countries. From the beginnings of the Brexit debate, this generally more privileged group not only lost sight of the fact that for many traditiona­l Labour supporters the nation state is the upper limit of democratic legitimacy, it also missed the fact that it exists for many as a sort of extended family that supports and nurtures them. That is why the National Health Service is so loved. And the clue is in the name. So, too, the British Armed Forces.

Yes, this package of protection and mutual concern must reach out to welcome others. St George was an immigrant from the Middle East, after all. And the nation state is enhanced, not diminished, by being porous to outsiders.

Moreover, flags in church must never obscure the fact that Christian identity is one of universal solidarity. Waving the flag is fine – and hardly controvers­ial for those of us who are members of what is, after all, a national Church. But to worship the flag is idolatry.

Fundamenta­lly, all morality consists of transferri­ng the centre of interest in our lives from self to others. For most of us, the family is the space where this process begins, where we learn to negotiate our place in the world alongside others with competing needs. But – religion aside – it is within the nation state that we learn to develop into morally mature adults, where the needs of the group can take precedence over our individual wants and desires.

In day-to-day life, the nation, where we pay our taxes to help people we will never meet, is the space where the “we” is placed above the needs of the “I”. This is why the nation is fundamenta­lly a moral project. And it is why I, too, will cheerfully wave its flag.

Giles Fraser is the Rector of St Mary, Newington

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