This post grew out of a discussion I was having with @LeninWeave that we had to cut short. I decided to expand it into an effort post in the hopes that others might be interested. I will be making the case that nationalism is “bad” and that it has a fundamentally reactionary character, regardless of its particular manifestation. First a few of books of theory I would recommend if you want to dig into this topic. I will be drawing on these here, although from memory and without citation since I don’t have them in my possession at the moment.

1. Ernest Gellner’s Nations and Nationalisms
2. Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities
3. The great Marxist historian, Eric Hobshawm’s, The Invention of Tradition. Here’s one excellent essay from that book on Scottish national mythology by Hugh Trevor Roper.

First, we should understand that most nationalisms (plural because nationalism takes on different forms in different places at different times) begin with some sort of liberatory aim. Even German nationalism, in the form the led directly to the creation of the modern state of Germany, began as a reaction to the occupation of much of the German speaking peoples by Revolutionary France under Napoleon, with people like Fichte (albeit with earlier precursors). As nations began to replace hereditary monarchies in Europe, with nationalism being the key ideological justification for their existence and exercise of authority, peoples looking for liberation then naturally asserted their own national existence to assert their political independence. Croatian nationalism, as an example, began in response to the rise of Hungarian nationalism and the increased push to “Magyarize” the Slavic-speaking peoples under their rule. However, this requires accepting the premises and ideology of nationalism as the fundamental guarantor of political autonomy and method of organizing a political unit, that the world is and should be a collection of sovereign, unified national peoples.

So, why is this bad?

1. Nations are a fundamentally modern creation. Despite earlier proto-nationalist sentiments, nationalism is both a result of the creation of modern, industrialized societies and a key underpinning of them. A premodern French peasant might have thought about their identity in a variety of ways, as part of a religious community of Christians that had universal character, as a member of their particular village or region, a subject of the King, and so on, but the idea of being “French” was not yet conceivable, particularly since many of them didn’t even speak French (Occitan, Breton, et al RIP we hardly knew ye) and those that did speak some form of French might not even recognize what someone was speaking as halfway across the country as being the same language. However, part of nationalist ideology is that the political legitimacy of a people as a nation comes from its antiquity, that it has in some sense existed since time immemorial (or at least as old as you can reasonably make it, if you’re talking about a country like the US) and forms part of the fundamental character of the modern nation. It also is at pains to present the nation as having an objective character and to disguise itself as ideology.

This requires some intense historical fuckery, that comes in many different forms. Many nationalisms look back to earlier political entities that provide a record of their nation’s past glories (Rome for the Italians, Ancient Greece for the Greeks, Charlemagne/Karl der Große, who manages to be both French and German at the same time, etc.). William the Bastard, the Norman aristocrat who conquered England, becomes one in a long line of “English” kings. The US Civil War is imagined as a tragic, “war between brothers,” whose pathos comes from the fact that the Confederates remained in some way Americans despite their secession from the union.

2. What to do with those pesky people who remain within the borders of the nation and yet are not considered to be part of it, who are nonetheless demanding political rights that can only, under nationalism, belong to the members of the nation? Are they even getting a bit uppity and muttering that maybe they should have their own nation? This is, essentially, a problem that only has a few solutions once you’ve organized your political entity as a nation. Do you:

-Kill them? Expel them?

-Assimilate them? Sure, you’ll annihilate their culture, language, and history, but, uh probably better than mass murder.

-Just create a permanent underclass of disenfranchised people? They can exist, as long as they don’t want any rights.

-Grant them limited autonomy. This is actually the least terrible option. Unfortunately, they’ll be at the mercy of a nation-state that they have little influence on, and no control of their political or economic destiny. Better hope that your overlords don’t decide a little bit of option one, two, or three would be in order.

-Big ups to the US for looking at these options and just deciding to do all of them.

And lest we think that postcolonial countries who used nationalism to assert their independence against, are immune to this, the Muslim peoples of India, the Tutsi people of Rwanda, and pretty much everyone in the Balkans would like a word. Yes, a lot of postcolonial violence can ultimately be laid at the feet of the colonizers, particularly in the form that these nationalisms took and the borders created by the European powers, but that does not invalidate the fundamental problems with nationalism.

3. Total war, which mobilizes the entirety of a society’s resources towards victory, only became possible with nationalism. The levee en masse of the French Revolution, one of the earliest national revolutions, was the beginning of the modern era of war, and was only possible when war could be understood as the conflict of one people against another, rather than the territorial wars of the hereditary nobility. Alongside innumerable wars that were fueled or justified by nationalist causes, genocide, and so on, you cannot underestimate the scale and horror of the violence enabled by modern warfare, underpinned by nationalism.

4. We, as socialists, must be opposed to nationalism. If nationalism is anything it is about creating a them and us: we the people of the nation versus the other. If socialism is about anything, it is about recognizing the absolute equality and dignity of all human beings. Any flirtation with nationalism, however tactically important it seems, carries grave risks. Accepting the premises of nationalism requires reactionary and ahistorical thought that is inimical to the project of international socialism. Capitalism was born with and thrives in nationalism. It benefits from a permanent underclass within a country, and the exploitation of othered people outside the nation. Socialism understands that these things must be opposed at all costs. I understand LeninWeave’s desire to stand in solidarity with colonized people who are asserting their independence with nationalism, and I agree with the premise that they deserve our support. However, this does not make nationalism itself in any way good.

TLDR: Nationalism bad, I’m a dork