Nationalism, as I understand it, means something like the exultaion of "the nation" above others. To me, it has always been associated with racism. People who support it get annoyed when this issue is brought up. But racism is a very real problem. Throughout history and today the correlation between nationalism and racism is undeniable.

From The (First) Second Israel Thread of 2003

quote:

---

skdadl: Personally, I think that anti-nationalism is an understandable if naive response to the horrors of the C20. I think it's naive for two reasons. First, we are living in the age of, witnessing, the climax of the American Empire, and I believe that all consciously responsible democrats must continue to defend any structure that resists the essentially anti-democratic nature of imperialism -- which, for the moment, means defending as many perky nation-states as we can. Second: well, that's a long answer. It requires quotes from Northrop Frye, and meditations on love and geography and family.

---

From this I understand that "American Imperialism" is something that should be opposed at any cost, or that any form of nationalism is justified so long as it is democratically supported - even at the cost of human rights. What are your priorities? Is "nationalist socialism" really better than capitalism?

Is nationalism the only way to oppose domination?

In developed countries nationalism became a way to legitamize imperialism, colonisation, mass murder, and mass destruction. In other parts of the world it has become synonymous with corruption, autocracy, and subserviance to colonialist nations.

From Rabbi Lerner BANNED

quote:

---

DrConway: I absolutely oppose the formation of a nationalism on the basis of ethnicity or language. Nationalism is the attachment to the land and to the country that one lives in. It is a deep abiding belief that your nation and all who choose to preserve it should continue as they have, and to thus make your nation the very best it can be for its people.

This form of nationalism is not exclusionary. Even the most recent immigrant to Canada can fit this definition of a nationalist, and by the same token, a person whose family is 9 generations Canadian can nevertheless be an offence to nationalism if he or she chooses to work to destroy this country rather than preserve it.

---

Those are all pretty words, until you start talking about being "an offence to nationalism". This rhetoric is the same used by all nationalists, but what does it mean in real life? "Love, preservation, aspirations, glory, ..." These words are behind some of the worst atrocities in recent history.
Who determines who is a "good citizen" and who is a "traitor"? If the government is the democratically elected representative of the nation then wouldn't nationalism, in practice, mean uncritical support for its policies?

What about the case of American nationalism? Would Canadian nationalism be any different?

[ 18 February 2003: Message edited by: satana ]

To me, there's your mistake.

quote:

---

First, we are living in the age of, witnessing, the climax of the American Empire, and I believe that all consciously responsible democrats must continue to defend any structure that resists the essentially anti-democratic nature of imperialism -- which, for the moment, means defending as many perky nation-states as we can.

---

To me this states the problem and the solution far too broadly. For example, we are also living in the age of the Rwandan genocide and North Korean nuclear proliferation. There are some "perky" nation states which I prefer not to defend.

Obviously, too, the definition of the problem as one of "American imperialism" does not deny the possibly racist element in the response of many nation states; it simply concludes that such racism is a lesser evil.

And that may be so when nationalism is invoked to mobilize people against an invasion. But many nationalisms have numerous targets. For example,
Russian nationalism was mobilized in The Great Patriotic War against Germany, and that was something to be supported. A secondary effect was the denigration of Muslims living in Russia, an effect which is still with us.

Or take Andreas' Papandreou's "progressive" movement, PASOK, the slogan of which was "Greece for the Greeks". It worked well when the main danger was the US; unfortunately it has now been taken up as a slogan brandished against African immigrants.

In general, I am fearful of nationalisms based on "blood" or on superiority of one people to another. Milosevic's Serbia comes to mind as a
"perky" nation threatened to some extent by US imperialism, yet not supportable nonetheless, given how they treated their minorities.

There is a lot of evidence that living in tribes is a natural state for human beings. Our closest genetic cousins - the chimps and bonobos - live in highly tribalized societies, with defined territories and wars. Pre-agrarian humans we have been able to study are the same. With the advent of agriculture humans continued to organize themselves into tribes and eventually nations.

So what makes a tribe? We define our tribe as "us" and other tribes as "them". We emphasize our similarities within the tribe and our differences with the outsiders.

When we fought wars with sticks or steel swords our tribalism wasn't in danger of making us extinct. Now our tribalism, which at one time conveyed an evolutionary survival benefit, works toward our extinction.

I believe we are not bound by our evolutionary proclivities, and can rise above them. I see little evidence of this but I must believe it or I see no hope at all.

If we do not change, nationalism will be the death of us all.

[ 18 February 2003: Message edited by: JimmyBrogan ]

I'm a Canadian. I've never thought of that as a race, not even in the benighted fifties, when I first started learning about these things.

Obviously there is a connection between old concepts of race and the history of the nation-state. But there is an equally important connection, I think, between the revival of democratic aims and the history of the nation-state. I think that is true not only in Europe, although the relationships would have to be carefully described, depending on which regions and traditions we were looking at.

I know that many babblers do not share my interest in the roots of modern thought about democracy. Hostility to the current ruling elites' brutish versions of what "Western" civilization is about misleads many, IMHO, to throw out historical understanding that opponents of capitalism need.

For instance, I find it fascinating, sometimes daunting, to watch how slowly, how very very VERY slowly, unevenly, and yet certainly, democratic understanding has developed in Western countries and elsewhere. One of the reasons you and I sometimes part company elsewhere on the board, satana, is what seems to me your conviction that injustices must simply be righted tomorrow, that all societies can be rejigged instantly according to some ideal scheme as soon as we have seen the light.

To me, that conviction is a mirror-image of what the U.S. tyrants are planning to do right now, and it is, in my terms, idealist and romantic. It is, btw, very much a product of the rhetoric of the American founding documents, a characteristic American way of thinking about democracy, quite unlike other traditions of democratic thought. (I'm not making a personal comment there, satana: I'm not saying that U.S. versions of what democracy is have colonized anyone's mind in particular, although I do think that they have had far too much influence in Canadian popular culture, just as U.S. law'n'order TV shows have misled many Canadians about law and courts here.)

No question: national feeling and zenophobia have been exploited by the elites of the Western nation-states for horrific ends, so horrific by the middle of the last century that it became possible to grow at least the skeleton of a better, supranational organization (the UN). As we all know, though ...

At the same time, within the context of the structure of the nation-state, conditions for educating mass numbers of people, liberating the enslaved, grasping the centrality to democracy of the defence of minority views -- all these things have been made moderately possible.

And for as far as I can see into the future, those nation-states and the fledgling democratic cultures they have produced, slightly different country to country, imperfectly organized as they now are, are our only defence against international tyranny.

To me, it would be a shame if, eg, the British who marched on Saturday were not thinking to themselves, "Hey! Tony! We're the tradition! It all percolated through us!" Because it did, over centuries. And I would say the same of many other nations.

For the time being, anyway, nation-states are democracy's best defence, for themselves, and for other peoples in the world who still can't defend themselves against our ravening elites.

[ 18 February 2003: Message edited by: nonesuch ]

I am an unashamed Canadian nationalist, but as I am wont to observe, if one is a mongrel, then one is a True Canadian.

I believe that race is a valid scientific construct and have plans to revive the thread in which it was argued that it is not, but that will entail what Doug M. described so eloquently in another thread, "some heavy lifting".

In my version of nationalism, race and tribalism are worse than irrelevant; they are impediments to positive nationalism.

I can't speak to the nationalism of the Chinese or the Indians or even the Italians, for example. For me, as one who inhabits a nation-state not yet two hundred years old, my nationalism is idealistic and its foundation is the aspiration to build a country comprising many races and cultures, but whose national identity reflects political and social choices arrived at by a version of what could be universally recognized as democracy.

Of course it is not so simple as that. My glorious nation was stolen from many nations that co-habited the land bounded by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and the Arctic Ocean to the North. Democracy is also new and has been corrupted, or is still with "growing pains" or both.

My nationalism is also a statement of defiance and rebellion against the Imperialism of every nation-state of significance in human history. And particularly of an enemy into whose mouth traitors to the idea of Canada would wilingly leap..

My nationalism is also pragmatic. Ultimately I think the dangers of the tribal impulses that impel most nationalist movements outweigh the benefits, though , in the case of Rwanda, for example, I believe we saw a triumph of tribalism over nationalism as I use the term.

When the world becomes divided into administrative regions, and at least some issues are decided by a global vote, then I (if I am still alive which I doubt) would cast off my nationalism like an old band-aid.

Until then, I want to be part of Canada. Not France. Not the USA. Not England. Maybe Quebec...

[ 18 February 2003: Message edited by: Sisyphus ]

[ 18 February 2003: Message edited by: JimmyBrogan ]

quote:

---

The nation state is just one modern expression of our evolutionary imperitive to congregate into tribes. We will grasp any reason to delineate ourselves from "the other".

---

See, I think that this tendency, real as it is, has little to do with the current manifestaion of nation-states.

In Africa, for example, most of the nation-states are the result of racially and culturally arbitrary partitioning of land, and more to do with the political and economic interests of the colonial powers.

In Western Europe, North, South and Central America and even parts of Asia (Pakistan and Northern India spring to mind), similar considerations (informed by geographical realities as well) hold sway.

I think that for the most part, any racial-cultural homogeneity in nation-states is more reflective of the difficulty of relocating large groups of people than of anything else. For one thing, the original tribes that have inhabited almost every country in the world have been exterminated or at least displaced by immigrants (colonists).

Seen from the nation-state-as-tribe perspective, Israel is an unlikely nation-state and the Kurds should have a country. Hutus and Tutsis would never be countrymen and Bush wouldn't have had to be told by Condoleeza that there is the odd person of African descent in Brazil.

And that's the wedge the demagogues use. They go right past rational and into your r-complex. Today we have Bush and Sadaam pushing the nationalism button hard. Think any other monster in history and you'll likely find them madly thumbing that button. We all have this button right on our chest and those who would be king have known how to push it.

[ 18 February 2003: Message edited by: JimmyBrogan ]

love for or devotion to one's country

Nationalism:

loyalty and devotion to a nation especially : a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other national or supranational groups.

quote:

---

tribalism is independent of nationalism

---

From this, I would say we fundamentally disagree.

quote:

---

I see Bush as appealing to tribalism whereas Michael Moore, for example, appeals to nationalism when he seeks to reaffirm the ideals of America, the Republic.

---

Strangely however, I do agree with this.

Moore's appeal is to the still beneficial side of the human tribal imperative. It was an evolutionary benefit to co-operate. A tribe of 20-25 light fanged, light clawed, primates would do much better than a single family or worse, individual. All of us on the left would like to beleive that we are motivated by that imperative - that the common good is more important than that of the individual.

quote:

---

skdadl: One of the reasons you and I sometimes part company elsewhere on the board, satana, is what seems to me your conviction that injustices must simply be righted tomorrow, that all societies can be rejigged instantly according to some ideal scheme as soon as we have seen the light.

---

I don't believe in "ideal schemes" or that societies can be "rejigged" instantly. I have a conviction that injustice should be recognized for what it is, and that there always better alternatives.

I can't say injustice should be righted tomorrow, or that it must be righted at all. Injustice is a subjective term, depending on your beliefs and values.
This is why I asked "what are your priorities?".

My foremost priority is basic human rights. From my experience I've come to believe that "democracy" is secondary to insuring basic human rights equally for all people.

From your post you seem to value democracy above anything else, including human rights. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with that. I'm saying that by taking such a stance you admit that human rights may be compromised so long as it is the will of the majority. I admit, discrimination even to the point of mass deportations and murder are very effective ways of solving many real problems in the world today. Such actions go against my personal beliefs and I will oppose them as much as I can, but I will respect the right of others to have contrary opnions, so long as they are honest about them.

What really pisses me off is when people say they have certain beliefs and at the same time suppport policies that contradict those beliefs: such as saying you believe in equality but that some people always deserve more rights than others because of their special nature, or that you oppose discrimination except against certain people who don't count because they're different, ...

The reason we part company, skdadl, is that I beleive we have different values. You can justify atrocities in the name of democracy and nationalist aspirations. I can't do that. I'm not saying such actions should be stopped instantaniously. I'm only saying people should be honest about their beliefs. You shouldn't claim to have values you can't really support.

[ 20 February 2003: Message edited by: satana ]

You will have to point out to me where skdadl ever justified atrocities or abuses of human rights in the name of anyone or anything?

I think that is grossly unfair and a misrepresentation of what she believes and supports.

You cannot have human rights and equal rights and a society free from fear and arbitrary abuses without democratic values. To argue otherwise is to ignore history. Democracy, a true democracy as skdadl might envision it, is the very essence of human rights and the triumph of human dignity.

In Canada there is a long tradition of what is commonly known as "economic nationalism." It is not an exclusive or xenophobic philosophy. It merely holds that Canadians, as a people, as a society, as a democratic nation, should control the levers of our own economy and should always have control over the primary aspects of the economy that contribute to quality of life including education, health care, and basic social services.

One of Canada's primary proponents, today, of economic nationalism is Maude Barlow.If you can argue that she is xenophobic or exclusionary, you would be the first.

The word nationalist has been dragged through the mud and often for good reason. Some of the worst abuses in the history of human society has been carried out in the name of nationalism. And maybe those who call themselves nationalists in Canada, but who mean to describe themselves as economic nationalists and subscribe to an open society free of hate, oppression and repression need a new word to describe themselves. But to label them as being tolerant of abuses equivalent to the worst sorts of abuses that we as humans are capable of, is dishonest, unfair, and incredible.

quote:

---

skdadl: And for as far as I can see into the future, those nation-states and the fledgling democratic cultures they have produced, slightly different country to country, imperfectly organized as they now are, are our only defence against international tyranny.

---

Who belongs to that nation-state and gets to vote is another problem.

[ 20 February 2003: Message edited by: satana ]

Women in this country have had the right to vote and be considered persons for less than a century. It was not all that long ago that store fronts had signs that said "No Jews" or "No Catholics." High Park was willed to the city on the condition there never be a Catholic mayor. I suppose, at the time, there was no fear a Jew, such as Lastman, could ever be mayor.

Democracies change and evolve. The change comes mostly from agitation from below and from within.

[ 20 February 2003: Message edited by: WingNut ]

quote:

---

I understand democracy to mean the will of the majority in a nation-state.

---

We do not solve problems by imposing our solutions.

quote:

---

Not all democracies insure minority rights and not all democracies have constitutions. Who determines who is a citizen worthy of rights anyway?

---

Then they are not democracies, satana. You are misusing the term.

I don't care how much Mike Harris or George Bush wants everyone to believe that your definition of democracy is right (majority rules; democracy = voting -- ptui). They are wrong, and I think it's a shame they have convinced you.

Democracy requires the understanding and defence, by all citizens (well, ideally), of the basic structures and principles of democracy. The shortlist of civil liberties (see various Bills, Charters, Declarations) is among those structures and principles, intrinsic to democracy, not a "modern" add-on.

quote:

---

In answer to your last question, satana, let's imagine (this has happened, actually) an enthusiastic leading American feminist (almost unavoidably also middle class and academically sophisticated) suddenly jetting to a country such as, oh, say Iran, and announcing loudly to all that country's women that they are oppressed, that their opposition groups are pathetic and naive and unsophisticated, and that she has arrived to liberate the women of Iran.

---

Always a help, the facts.

I do consider civil liberties an essential part of healthy communities of any kind. I am a civil libertarian, and I will defend them in ideal terms (ie: ideal = out of context, in the abstract, without reference to history or place).

quote:

---

I was running on very fuzzy memory there. No, I didn't read the book. At the time, most of the feminists I knew here were appalled at what she'd done -- but no, I didn't read the book.

---

quote:

---

High Park was willed to the city on the condition there never be a Catholic mayor.

---

Get out! Is that really true?? What happens if a Catholic gets elected to be mayor then?

quote:

---

OK. I'm a Canadian, I've got a Canadian passport, SIN, and pay taxes. Can you get any more Canadian than that? Is it possible to be un-Canadian?

---

It is interesting that we've never had a parallel to "un-American" isn't it? Many would say that's because there's no agreed definition of Canadian, but i'd say it's because the idea of what it is to be Canadian has changed -- the identity has embraced change & (up to a point) diversity -- maybe the result of being based from day one on a binational country. It used to be that most Canadians thought they were British (some Americans still think we are). But Canadian nationalism embraced change and means something different now. In the Pearson and Trudeau years, the country was reinvented in form and in the minds of its citizens. Whereas even secular American nationalism, it seems to me, is grounded in early religious claims of American exceptionalism, its founding ideology remarkably stable over 200+ years.

quote:

---

It is interesting that we've never had a parallel to "un-American" isn't it? Many would say that's because there's no agreed definition of Canadian, but i'd say it's because the idea of what it is to be Canadian has changed -- the identity has embraced change & (up to a point) diversity -- maybe the result of being based from day one on a binational country.

---

Yes, but you could turn it around and say that the US has been so concerned with what's "American" and "un-American" because it's the quintessence of a nation founded on an idea, or set of ideas or ideals -- and rather abstract and romantic ones, as skdadl might say.

And, pace those who believe in American exceptionalism, in that it may only be the culmination of a process with a long gestation in Europe. J.R. Saul argues somewhere that the US is, in that sense, a very "Old World" nation, whereas Canada, not founded on an explicit statement of ideas or ideals, is closer to being a new or unprecedented form of the nation-state. I can't reproduce the argument, of course, but there may be something to it.

Edited to add:

On the subject of something or someone being "un-Canadian": I have a relative of rather right-of-centre views who practically spits when the subject of socialism or social democracy or the NDP comes up. But this is as nothing when compared to his views on the Canadian Alliance. He doesn't use the phrase "un-Canadian," but says, contemptuously, "they have no idea what Canada's all about." And this from a born-and-bred Westerner who can be almost as scathing on the subject of "Central Canada."

[ 23 February 2003: Message edited by: 'lance ]

quote:

---

After all, unlike Canada, the U.S. had an actual civil war. No one was talking about what was "American" in those days.

---

quote:

---

Another difference between the two countries is that Canada was, and technically still is, part of another country's empire.

---

Not so -- at least, I don't believe it's so. There's no British Empire anymore, and while there's a Commonwealth of which Canada's a member, it's not really the same -- all members are supposed to be equal, though you could make the case that the UK is "first among equals." Anyway there's nothing binding us to it. We could quit it at any time.

The high-water mark of Canadian nationalism, to date, was probably the 1960s and 1970s -- and yes, it had much to do with resisting American absorption. Ironically enough, the philosopher George Grant helped to kick-start it by proclaiming it dead, in a book called Lament for a Nation, ca. 1965.

[Edited to add: josh, it's not an empire at all any more. Really. Gibraltar and Northern Ireland, that's it, and nobody back in Merrie Olde cares a toss for either].

[ 23 February 2003: Message edited by: 'lance ]

Although I am quite possibly talking out of my ass here...

Ed. to add: now that I think about it, didn't Richard Gwyn write a book about a post-modern Canadian Nationalism?

[ 23 February 2003: Message edited by: Flowers By Irene ]

josh: yeah, pretty much II. Only quibble I'd have is that the "Americanists" have more often referred to themselves as "continentalists." "Americanists" might be Orchard's more-than-slightly tendentious term for them.

[ 23 February 2003: Message edited by: 'lance ]

David Orchard is fine, but take everything he says with a grain of salt. The Canadian continentalists were nationalist in their own way, trying to use a democratic self-governing US as a check to the British colonial power. This is the traditional stance of the Liberal Party, pre-Trudeau. Those loyal to the empire were nationalists in their own way too -- and that's the tradition that spawned George Grant.

Once upon a time, the standard political terminology was "nationalist" (meaning Liberal, continentalist, anti-British, pro-US, with Wilfrid Laurier as exemplar) versus "imperialist" (meaning Tory, hoping for an empire in which Canada would eventually be the greatest part, anti-American above all, with Robert Borden as a typical figure). The autonomous strain of nationalism that placed Canada first was a minority traditon, confined mostly to Quebec, until relatively recently (take Henri Bourassa as typical).

quote:

---

OK. I'm a Canadian, I've got a Canadian passport, SIN, and pay taxes. Can you get any more Canadian than that? Is it possible to be un-Canadian?

---

Where do you go to get a drive-through coffee?
What brand of beer do you drink?
What hockey team do you cheer for?
Do you wear a toque when the weather gets cold?
Who are Bob and Doug McKenzie?
Do you use the word "Dude" or "Hoser" more frequently as a term of endearment?

paxamillion, in answer to your questions:
I don't drive or drink coffee....depends on were I am: Guiness, Asahi, weizenbeer...used to be the Oilers, but then - y'know...I wear a plain cream winter hatta...oh yeah, but, that was, like, before my time, eh....and I don't know anybody who uses those words anymore.

Is there a democratic nationalism? Of course. Nationalist movements almost always have their origin in an attempt to break away from empires and set up a more democratic system. The first nationalist movements were in the Americas (aiming to replace imperial control by Britain and Spain with local democratic systems) and in France (aiming to replace autocracy with rule by "the nation" which was equated with the whole people rather than the monarchy). Nationalism went hand-in-hand with liberal and socialist movements in 19th C. Europe, and hand-in-hand with anti-colonial movements in the 20th C. You could easily read modern history less as the clash of ideologies than the clash of nationalism versus imperialism, with nationalism (happily) winning out. And local nationalisms as the main check to today's imperial power, to link back to the opening post.

[ 25 February 2003: Message edited by: satana ]

quote:

---

The nationalist movements that come to mind in 20thc. Europe are all undemocratic.

---

What finally prompted me to get onto this was Rebecca West's comment that nationalism on the basis of religion or ethnicity should "be illegal" as well as Jacob Two-Two's postcontinentalism thread.

In any case, the basis for nationalism, as I see it, is a belief that one's nation can be made better than it already is, and that anyone can hold that belief. An example that comes to mind is the Irish; even though the Roman Catholic church perhaps has too much influence in the political process, that does not stop the Irish from loving their country and working to change it as they see fit.

Similarly, Iranians very likely love their country, and would rather not have a religious government.

I think that, for many years yet to come, nationalism will continue to be a potent force in the world, but hopefully it will evolve to a "benign" nationalism, that underscores one's connection with the other people of one's country, and if I may be permitted a slight exaggeration, also underscores one's organic connection to the more abstract concept of the country alone.

I. Am. Canadian. In many ways, Canadian-ness has been woven into my being, and I could no more see myself calling myself any other nationality even after a decade of resettling in another country. This is "good" nationalism, if you will; it excludes no one and invites all other citizens of Canada to join in making this country a better place for all who live in it.

quote:

---

Originally posted by DrConway:
I. Am. Canadian. In many ways, Canadian-ness has been woven into my being, and I could no more see myself calling myself any other nationality even after a decade of resettling in another country. This is "good" nationalism, if you will; it excludes no one and invites all other citizens of Canada to join in making this country a better place for all who live in it.

And that, I think, is what nationalism should be about: not an arrogant belief that your country is "superior", but rather a belief, tempered with reason, that your country can always be made better than it already is.

---

I can see that some people think of nationalism as a sense of community. The problem is what is the basis of that community?

Nationalist movements in Europe at their height were also about making the nation "better". (They still are) Many people benefit from their activities, but at the expense of those excluded from the "nation".

DrConway, you want to make your country a better place. Thats great. We should all do that. But how can you say you exclude no one and then go on to invite only other Canadian citizens to join you. Most of the people in the world are not Canadians and don't live in your country. what is so special about Canadaian citizenship? What about all the people who apply for immigration and citizenship but are rejected? and why do you extend your sense of connection to the entire breadth of the state? and why do you limit it to its borders? is there something sacred about those invisible lines?