NATIONALISM
How It corrupts our souls.
Two thoughts articulated with 75 years or so between them
encouraged me to clarify for myself
the almost always negative ideas of ‘nationalism’.
The first sentence is from the French philosopher, Albert Camus,
“I love my country too much to be a nationalist.”
With his wisdom and experiences in the French Underground during WWII,
he understood the horrors of nationalism,
an irrational but appealing component of populism*.
The second is from a young friend
who, having been to a youth-led European conference,
said he was asked to explain to the others
what the values of the Brits are
and how do they and he identify themselves?
He said he was at a total loss to answer their questions.
It was impossible for him to answer the question
as the concept of nationalism, having been kidnapped by the British right
and some allies in the US to help win the Brexit vote,
described who we are as Brits
by telling us who we are not.
For instance, we are not red, yellow, black or brown,
we do not speak with accents,
we don’t eat funny foods.**
we are born here and do not arrive illegally in small boats.
Those ‘others’ take our jobs and our places in schools, hospitals
and on the housing lists.
They add no economic benefit to the country.***
WHO DOES NATIONALISM SERVE?
It’s clear that it is almost always the political right wing
that uses it to appeal to the under-read, under-educated, often poor people
living in rural areas, left behind by income, technology and culture.
The right wing demagogues,
often financed by rich corporations
and rich individuals,
use the ideas of the ‘other’, those natural enemies who are not like us,
as scapegoats for the massive cover-up of those who are responsible
for poor living conditions, poor education, dead end underpaid jobs
leaving working people**** in poverty.
The right wing demagogues spin tales of ‘a golden past,
unsullied by this new, poisonous blood’.
This racism helps to unite working people who feel under assault
by turning their frustration on other innocent working people.
The right wing demagogues,
never concerned with logic, reason, fact and truths,
concoct cruel political ideas
to lead people towards wanting to commit violence towards the ‘other’
but not towards those who actually oppress them.
And always they enlist God and the nation as reasons why they must defend the faith and the motherland from ‘murdering lazy thieves and rapists’.
Is it any wonder that in the cities,
where there are more educated workers
and where workers of different backgrounds
rub up against each other,
they begin to see the ‘other’ as real flesh and blood human beings
with the same problems and dreams as they have.
Presently 7% of British marriages are now of mixed race.
NATIONALISM’S TRUE INTENTIONS
Nationalism has an appeal to one’s sense of identity.
A Chinese philosopher of the 7th century wrote,
“Nationalism is the memory of the food you ate as a child.”
Food, celebrations, rituals, landscapes, ways of working,
the surrounding arts and culture are all important
in forging our identity and providing a sense of who we are.
What drove the right to use the love of our home, place and country
as a key to winning votes for Brexit?
Supposedly it is so we, (where ‘we’ means ‘the rich’),
could run our own affairs,
could create vast trade deals unhindered by,
our advantage to be a part of the EU’s trade agreements with China and the US.
As it has turned out, having forsaken our trade relations
with the richest trading block in the world,
in the farce of Brexit we now have unhindered agreements
with small nation states in the South Pacific.
But the real aim for the British ruling class
was to escape the jurisdiction of the European Charter of Human Rights
and the European International Courts.
This would allow them to be able to oppress more aggressively
the unions and the working people,
to stifle opposition,
to turn the media into an even more propagandizing tool
for the virtues of totalitarianism.
The right are usually light on solutions
other than those that arise out of non-facts,
as favouritism in tax benefits and making war for the rich.
Historically this leads to the use of harassment,
arrests, imprisonment and assassinations,
of those who resist their lives being made even poorer
by their usually nutty economic plans
in favour of the few
at the expense of the many.
BARBARISM AND NATIONALISM
In the heart of the deepest human conflicts
are repeated struggles between barbarism and rationality
which have led to chaos, tragedy
and a nationalism
often surviving off the militarism of the entire society.
This goes back to the very development of Christianity
with its mystic cults and baffled beliefs in magical births and resurrections.
Within this, Trump and Johnson and their goons become more understandable.
Nationalism does not become an act of love for one’s own,
but rather an act of hatred and intolerance towards others*****.
What then is this about?
Surely it seems to suggest that there is a fatal flaw
at the centre of human culture
which continually generates a conflict
between critical thought, rationality, science,
with emotions, magic and lust for wealth, power,
fame, success and sexual dominance.
I ask myself, “Is this it?
”Is it this simple?”
Are we all made of these two underlying desires
between cultured intellectualism, thoughtfulness and caring
and uncultured emotionalism
with its voodoo explanations of life and its possible meaning?
CLASS AND NATIONALISM
At the heart of this conflict between the cultured and the uncultured
lies the more profound questions of class and wealth.
The chasm between the economically wealthy
and therefore technically more advanced industrialised areas
and those areas of cities and the countryside left behind (underdeveloped)
is inherent to the nature of combined and uneven capitalist development.
Recall that capitalism is not interested in cultural or educational development,
or with equality, justice or fairness except in their ‘free market’
but only with the most efficient way to exploit material and human resources
to the maximum, thus creating greater profits for themselves and their investors.
At the very heart of our existence, exploitative capitalism,
when challenged, will ally itself with nationalism
and populist demagogic politicians
as they attack the arts and the broader culture,
and as they eat democracy.
In all of this they corrode our souls.
NOTES