“Nationalism? How can you take pride in something you didn’t produce?” They asked.
You didn’t produce your nation when you came to it, but your nation produced you. And then, once you become a part of your nation, you do.
Nations are continually produced by their citizens, great projects of many hands, like civilizations.
The Libs have confused Nationalism for a disease because they witnessed auto-immune dysfunction, but once a nation falls below a certain level of Nationalism, it is indeed difficult to raise an army for its defense.
Nationalism is not yet dead in the United States, but it is aspirationally among much of the Left/Libs.
For those who haven’t been reading my blog long enough to know this:
One of my goals is to invent a new form of Nationalism, adapted to the 21st century, powered by new organizational and information technologies.
Not a racial nationalism, nor what people have in mind with an ethnic one, but a kind of National Technocracy, where the nation is ruled effectively by true experts - not merely the credentialed - for the benefit of its citizens, selected through new forms of republic or democracy.
This is unrealistic, I admit, but then so was the last election, and I can feel how the Overton Window has opened up, and maybe some fragment of it will fall to Earth and improve something, somewhere.
I’m still puzzled by those on the Left who don’t understand the rise in White Nationalism.
What exactly did they expect when they were cheering on “demographic destiny”? When their ideology required them to excuse terror attacks and look away from mass sex crimes? When the rurals were thrown under the bus in favor of corporations and globalization? When governing in the national interests went from an unspoken assumption to ‘chauvinism’? When the woman accompanying Charles Murray went to the hospital after the no-platforming to check on her injuries? When a foreign ideology hostile to LGBTs was excused from all criticism because of the race of who practiced it?
Will it be any mystery if Asians leave the coalition over getting smacked by Affirmative Action? Will it be any mystery if Blacks leave the coalition because tighter immigration restrictions make it easier for them to get jobs, and school vouchers make it possible to send their children to schools with problem students filtered out? Will it be any mystery if those who immigrated legally leave the coalition because it undermines what they managed to do? If centrists leave because of the support for open borders?
There is one movement that will never make white men its enemy and will never attempt to replace them. And they’re flowing towards it and its potential for ultraviolence, while it’s being cheered on by people who should know better.
The potential for damage, including to people who had no part in this, is catastrophic. How can they be demobilized by people that have nothing to offer them? Who are themselves hypocritical sexists and racists? Who excuse the same actions they condemn them for?
I liked pretending the cracks in Liberalism didn’t exist, but, collectively, that might have allowed the situation to get this far.
it’s implicit in mainstream conceptions of nationalism/national liberation that a nation can attain the fullest expression of its freedom as a nation without ‘interference’ from anyone else, i.e. in an ethnically, linguistically, and culturally homogeneous state. like that’s the ideal venue for free expression, cultural flowering, etc.
Not everyone has the same experience as you, and not every Nationalist is a cultural-isolation-maximizer.
The Japanese have managed to remain Japanese while changing, flowing, adapting concepts from around the world, and they have an entire subset of their syllabulary used to represent foreign loanwords.
And yet… the lack of crime, the lack of Islamic terrorist attacks, being able to trust children to ride the train to school, carefully queuing up to receive supplies in the wake of a massive natural disaster… in other, more multicultural places this either isn’t the case, is only the case for the wealthy, or is enforced by the iron hand of a soft authoritarian state.
Culture is a wave, not a water, but that doesn’t mean we have to blur all of them together. Diversity isn’t a terminal value.
The existence of immune system overreactions does not mean that immune systems are a bad thing.
I mean, I agree, but also “immune systems” are bad wrt nationalism. A country is not an organism. A body needs to keep the body safe; a culture does not need to keep itself safe, rather it needs to keep the people in it safe.
The culture doesn’t need to be preserved if “culture” is just hot dogs vs sushi, ballet vs rap, basketball vs rugby. In other words, if it’s just aesthetics. Falling below a certain level of Nationalism makes it infeasible to field an army - but fielding an army to defend sushi would indeed be overkill. However…
Ultimately, culture is not actually individual and not actually escapable at the national level. To keep the people safe, it is actually necessary to keep the culture some level of safe, particularly if that culture involves not becoming Venezuela or Saudi Arabia.
For the record, my conception of Nationalism is multiracial, rooted in a group identity based on culture, ideology, and reciprocal loyalty rather than race.
Each nation has a different immigration policy best suited to it. I don’t consider the racism in various nations good, even if I think restrictive immigration policy is suitable for that country.
Since 2002, the survey has also asked questions designed to tease out respondents’ nationalism, including the degree to which they agreed or disagreed with the following standard measures of nationalist sentiment: “Even if I could choose any other country in the world, I would prefer to be a citizen of China than any other country”; “In general, China is a better country than most others”; and “Everyone should support their government even when it is wrong.”
The paper’s headline result suggests that nationalism among Beijing’s residents has not increased over time. On the contrary, the proportion of survey respondents strongly agreeing with the first and third statements decreased sharply from 2002 to 2015, while the number of those who agreed “somewhat” rose. Those strongly agreeing with the second statement, about China being “a better country,” did increase slightly — perhaps an understandable finding given that personal incomes and infrastructure in Beijing both improved significantly over the survey period.
The results not only show a drop in sentiment resembling nationalism; they strongly suggest that Chinese youth, at least those in China’s capital, are less nationalistic than their elders, belying notions of growing numbers of internet-addled youngsters ready to take the government to task for any perceived failure to defend the national honor. In each instance of the survey since 2002, respondents born after 1978 were markedly less likely to “strongly agree” with any of the nationalist survey prompts than were their older peers. Perhaps most striking, by 2015, the proportion of older Chinese strongly agreeing to support their country “even when it is wrong” was more than twice the proportion of youth who felt that way.
While it often looks like nationalism is ascendant now, sometimes it looks like it’s a last desperate gasp of a vanishing way of thinking. Can nationalism survive a population that grew up in a globally connected world?
As a Nationalist, a last, desperate gasp isn’t the way I’d put it. But then, I wouldn’t call it ascendant, either. Nationalism will fall in and out of favor as the consequences of Anti-Nationalism become apparent and then wane.
For China’s case, though, you have to consider that the PRC is incompetent, corrupt, and authoritarian. In the presence of international information, it’s going to be more difficult to cultivate Nationalism when the state, which is a key organ of Nationalism, is so highly at odds with the needs of the people.
Believing that the Native Americans have some kind of everlasting ownership of America means you believe in racial nationalism.
weirdly enough this is one of the reasons why I stopped believing in racial nationalism
This logic was part of my reason for posting that Ethnonationalism can’t demobilize Ethnonationalism.
Though I guess this is a counter-example.
What’s the plan here for open borders, dissolution of nations stuff?
I mean, let’s stop and think about this for a minute.
Presumably, open borders will still be accompanied by democracy by geographical area. In the interests of fairness, voting will also be extended to migrants.
However, there is no limit on the number of people that can move into an area in a given timeframe, as this would end up being considered some form of discrimination. This means that in any year, the people living somewhere could effectively have themselves replaced with a migrant population that then changes all the laws to suit them.
Since the residents lack the ability to exclude people from the government, they lack the ability to control it, and thus don’t effectively own it, since the ability to exclude is one of the core things that ownership is about.
Which, sure, people have been saying “it’s not YOUR government!” and talking about how people don’t have the right to exclude those of other cultures (while either letting cruelties like FGM off the hook, or pretending it isn’t cultural).
But if they don’t own it, why in the world would they fight for it? Why would they fight to defend a government that doesn’t belong to them, doesn’t care about them, and at any time could be taken away from them and looted by others? In a war, why wouldn’t they just leave the territory? If environmental issues become a problem, why not just contribute to them until it’s unprofitable, and then flee?
Some modern countries are already having problems getting enough personnel to staff their armies as it is, and we’re not even halfway this far into Globalism.
Who will fight and die to protect their access to consumer products? Who will fight to protect the rights of others that don’t care about them or their values at all? For a territory that isn’t even really theirs?
All you’re left with are mercenaries. And mercenaries are a terrible option, known all the way back in the days of Machiavelli.
But there are other group memberships that people might be willing to fight for. Ethnic groups, as have been a source of fighting for dominance throughout the ages. Religions, which promise eternal reward after death. Drug cartels and other criminal organizations, with the promise of great payout for the desperate in this life, regardless of whether it’s true. Right-wing and left-wing paramilitaries that are dedicated to ideology.
And, as this starts spiraling out of control, sub-national organizations that, ostensibly, originated for mutual defense.
Having defeated the nation-state, the monopoly on violence loosens, and the fighting shifts to the sub-national level.
SAN FRANCISCO—In an effort to reduce the number of unprovoked hostile communications on the social media platform, Twitter announced Monday that it had added a red X-mark feature verifying users who are in fact perfectly okay to harass. “This new verification system offers users a simple, efficient way to determine which accounts belong to total pieces of shit whom you should have no qualms about tormenting to your heart’s desire,” said spokesperson Elizabeth James, adding that the small red symbol signifies that Twitter has officially confirmed the identity of a loathsome person who deserves the worst abuse imaginable and who will deliberately have their Mute, Block, and Report options disabled. “When a user sees this symbol, they know they’re dealing with a real asshole who has richly earned whatever mistreatment they receive, including profanity, body-shaming, leaking of personal information, and relentless goading to commit suicide. It’s really just a helpful way of saying to our users, ‘This fuck has it coming, so do your worst with a clear conscience and without fear of having your account suspended.’” At press time, Twitter reassuredly clarified that the red X was just a suggestion and that all users could still be bullied with as little recourse as they are now.
