Ugly side of Nats gives me doubts over nation

EVERY once in a while, a reader writes in to inquire whether or not I am Scottish. Perhaps it’s the surname that foxes people (Cowing is a rare moniker no matter what part of the British Isles you hail from), or maybe it’s because I have a habit of writing about this beloved country in a way that is, shall we say, questioning.

I don’t mind being asked, I ask people things for a living after all, but I always give the same answer: it doesn’t matter. I could be Scottish, English or Martian. What matters is that I live here and I work here. I am as entitled as anyone else in Scotland to an opinion about the place.

I raise the issue because this week, noted Scottish resident and children’s author JK Rowling found herself in the firing line over her remarks on Scottish nationalism. Her point is not a new one, but it bears repeating. Riled up by a columnist calling England the ‘automatic enemy’ in relation to the World Cup, she described the comment as ‘Crunchy Nut Nationalism’ (ha!) a remark that incurred predictable opprobrium.

One Twitter user asked her why she thought Scottish nationalists ‘are xenophobic, racist or anti-English’. Rowling responded by posting a series of tweets highlighting some of the more troubling remarks made on the social media platform by Scottish nationalists, including one from an account supporting the controversial ‘ethnic nationalist’ fringe group Siol nan Gaidheal, and another in which the user declared to someone who had explained that their father was an immigrant:

‘I’m Scots. My ancestors have more bones in this land than you could count. They built this nation. Quelle surprise that the rootless offspring of an immigrant wants to further dilute the genetic heritage of his host nation to make himself feel more comfortable.’

Rowling was chilled to the bone. ‘Some of us are getting mighty tired of Scottish nationalist insistence that their nationalism is nothing like the other, nasty kinds, in the face of considerable evidence to the contrary,’ she said.

She is right. Twitter is a breeding ground for an eerie sort of Scottish nationalism that should make everyone, regardless of nationality, very uncomfortable. A quick, unscientific trawl of my own unearthed a volume of dangerous remarks floating around the fringes of the Scottish nationalist movement, the essence of which can be distilled down to one terrifying declaration: ‘I want independence. But I only want Scotland for the Scots.’

I don’t for a second pretend that this is a mainstream view, nor that it remotely tallies with the views of the SNP. But it’s out there, it’s growing, and it’s getting increasingly noisy.

This, I think, is why nationalism in any form is dangerous. As soon as you instil any sort of political belief system (and it is a belief system) that seeks to divide people along these sort of lines and convinces them that they are somehow better than everyone else, you create a worrying mindset which pushes that idea to extremes.

The Scottish nationalist movement likes to portray itself as open and inclusive, but there are elements of it that are everything but. Pretending they don’t exist helps no one, least of all the SNP.

For what it’s worth, I am Scottish. And it’s attitudes such as this that keep me asking questions of my country.