WHY NATIONALISM?
1.
The
definition of nationalism in Encyclopedia Britannica is ”an ideology
based on the premise that the individual's loyalty and devotion to the
nation-state surpass other individual or group interests”.
2.
So why are so many people attracted to nationalism,
given that it is an ideology that puts the state above the individual? It seems
that it happens whenever people – quite naturally - look for a shared identity or
bond with other individuals.
3.
Karl Popper, the famous 20th century
philosopher, coined this desire to bond with other individuals as “the Spirit of the Tribe”. In Popper’s
view, the Spirit of the Tribe is the source of both nationalism and religious
fanaticism. Maria Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian Nobel Laureate in literature, investigates
the concept further in his recent book entitled “The Call Of The Tribe”. He writes,
among other things, that “The tribal
spirit is the
source of nationalism,
which has been the culprit, together with religious fanaticism, of the biggest
massacres in the history of mankind".
4.
The politicians and civil servants in positions of
power, who all have a vested interest in the existence of a state, design the
state as a receptacle for this tribal spirit. Flags, anthems, and national
myths are all being used by politicians, powerful civil servants, and favoured
business corporations to make ordinary people identify themselves with the
tribe, i.e. the nation state.
5.
What
politicians and civil servants want to achieve is that the individual becomes
unable to distinguish between state and country, between state and society, and
between state and individual.
6.
When that
happens, people become nationalists. When the state becomes more powerful, nationalist
individuals feel that they themselves, as persons, become more powerful.
7.
As the
British author George Orwell wrote: “The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and
more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit into
which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.”
8.
This is somehow considered virtuous behaviour by most
people. As John F. Kennedy famously said,
”Ask not what
your country can do for you—ask what you can do
for your country.” That quote is a prime example of nationalism,
where the individual is asked to subordinate his own life to the needs of the state.
9.
But is a
state really a community of willing individuals? The late Benedict Anderson, an
Irish political scientist, did not think so. He described modern nations as “imagined communities” — imagined
because people are drawn together within them who have not met and never will.
In other words, people imagine that they have a lot in common with other people
of the same nationality – but they will never know for sure because there is no
way that each individual will ever get to meet more than a tiny fraction of the
total number of their fellow countrymen. It is the power of such imagination
that allows an essentially modern doctrine like nationalism to feel so deeply
rooted in the past, which it is not.
10. Nationalism increases in line with how serious
an external threat is perceived as being. States make full use of this,
creating or exaggerating external threats in order to increase their control and
power over their citizens. In business parlance, this is also known as
Management by Fear.
11. Perceived external threats from other countries
– which are almost always threats to the state, not threats to the country as
such – are particularly useful when it comes to justifying compulsory military
service, also known as National Service, conscription, or the draft.
12. National Service is, of course, the forced
training of young men to kill for the state. Because that is what it really is,
when you think about it. Did Germany and Japan disappear off the face of the
earth when they lost WW2? No. Apart from some relatively minor losses of
territory, all that happened was that their governments changed. So all the
young soldiers who “died for their
country” did actually not die for their country. They killed and died
simply to prevent a change of government.
13. Obviously, this is not how it is portrayed by
the media or by the state. As you know, the 6th commandment of the
Bible is not “You
shall not kill, except if you kill for the state”. How can the media and the state justify to a
mother who has lost her son in battle that he just died to defend a bunch of
megalomanic politicians rather than the country as such? They cannot. Therefore,
they engage in the fairy-tale make-believe illusions of dying - or “falling” - for one’s country.
14. But nationalism doesn’t just highlight the
differences between countries, it also thrives on the anger within them. Michal
Bilewicz, a social psychologist at the University of Warsaw, explains this
anger in terms of what his profession calls “agency”, by which he means the
power to control your own life. Nationalism is determined not by patriotic
ardour, he argues, but by self-esteem. Men and women lacking in, or deprived
of, agency look to nationalism to reassure them that, in their own way, they
are as good as everyone else—better, even. It’s just that the world does not
give them the respect they deserve.
15. An example of this can be seen in a 2016 survey
done in Saxony, one of the poorest parts of Germany. 18% of the 1,013
respondents fully or partially agreed with the statement that “Germans are naturally superior to other
nationalities.” So this sort of
answer is coming from the poorest Germans, who have little education and who
have poorly paid or no jobs. How can they possibly feel that they are more
successful than, say, the Swiss or the Japanese? Because nationalism provides
them with a convenient and socially acceptable way to claim - and make themselves
believe - that they, as individuals, deserve more respect for no other reason
that they are German. In the words of an Internet meme doing the rounds on
Facebook: “Nationalism teaches you to
take pride in stuff you haven’t done and hate people you have never met”.
16. Interestingly, 29% of the respondents of the
same survey also fully or partially agreed that Germany needs a dictatorship,
39% fully or partially agreed that all immigration of Muslims should be banned,
and 58% fully or partially agreed that foreigners dominate Germany to a
dangerous extent.
17. This ties in with the evidence that people who
vote for nationalist parties are often from relatively poor rural or
post-industrial areas with a surprisingly low number of immigrants. Those areas
voted for UKIP in Britain and for Trump in the US. The same goes for countries
as a whole. Only 1.7% of the Polish population were born outside of Poland. Yet
in Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and other Central European countries
where the actual number of refugees and immigrants is extremely low compared to
Western Europe, migrants are vilified like never before since WW2. The main
conclusion one can draw from this is that the fewer immigrants you interact
with in your daily lives, the easier it is to dehumanise and demonise them.
18. The weird logic that you are better than others
just because you are of a certain nationality is also what is behind the
publicly expressed desire of many European politicians to boost birth rates.
Birth rates are too low, the politicians say – we need to increase birth rates
so that we get more Danes, Poles, Italians (or whatever the nationality is of
the politician saying it) so that we can get more young workers to pay taxes in
order to support the welfare state and the rising cost of state pensions for
older people. This is quiet literally national socialism as the same
politicians deliberately disregard the obvious solution to the problem – which
is to open up the borders! There are masses of fit, young, healthy, people just
south of the Mediterranean Sea who would like nothing more than to be allowed
to do extremely hard work at extremely low wages. These are people who are
ready to work from day 1 in the country. Unlike a new-born Dane or Pole or
Italian, the immigrants do not need to first spend 15-20 years in kindergarten
and school before they are ready to work. What’s more, the International Monetary
Fund calculated in 2016 that each 1% rise in the immigrant share of the
population tends to raise income per inhabitant by 2%. So what’s not to like?
19. Sadly, logic plays no part in the minds of the
nationalists. Several European countries are short of labour. I know for a fact
that this is the case in both Denmark and the UK. Even so, extremely qualified foreigners are
still denied access. Between December 2017 and March 2018, 1,226
IT specialists and 383 engineers were denied visas to take up jobs they had already been offered by UK businesses.
In addition, 1,876 medical practitioners and healthcare workers, 197 teachers,
and 584 from other professions were unable to take up their job offers in the
UK. The reason given is that “the number applying exceeded the monthly limit allowed to enter the UK”.
This insane policy was introduced by none other than Prime Minister Theresa
May in her time as Home Secretary. So just because nationalist Daily Mail
readers want less dark people in the UK, British businesses and the qualified
people who want to work for them, all have to suffer. Needless to say, this
causes damage not only to the parties directly involved, but also to the
national economy and the world economy as a whole, and thereby also to the
racist nationalists who are the cause of such extremely damaging policies.
CONSEQUENCES OF NATIONALISM
1.
Someone
once said: “Nationalism always starts
off with folk-dancing and ends up with barbed wire.” Although this is a
slight exaggeration, there is much truth in that.
2.
Just within
the past 100 years of European history, nationalism – combined with other
collectivist ideologies and religions - has resulted in WW1 in the 1910s, the
Irish Civil War in the 1920s, the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, WW2 in the
1940s, the Cypriot civil war in the 1960s, the Troubles in Northern Ireland and
the partition of Cyprus in the 1970s, the Basque guerrilla war in Spain in the
1980s, the Balkan Wars in the 1990s, the wars in the Caucasus in the 2000s, and
the current conflict in eastern Ukraine, to name the ones that come to mind.
3.
Even now, European
nationalism causes the deaths of thousands of people every year. I am, of
course, referring to the people from Africa and Asia who seek a better life for
themselves in Europe, or who simply try to survive by escaping from war and
conflict. In 2013, 700 people drowned in the Mediterranean Sea, trying to reach
Europe. Since then, the number has risen every year. In 2016 the death toll was
a shocking 5,143 dead individuals, including children. For comparison, the
death toll in the 9/11 attack on the New York World Trade Center was 3,000. But
it gets worse. The U.N. International Organization for Migration estimates that
at least double the number of migrants that drowns in the Med dies in the
Sahara on their way to the Med. That takes the death toll for 2016 to more than
15,000. This number includes many women and children who, as the physically
weakest ones, are more likely victims of not only dehydration and exhaustion,
but also robbery, rape, and murder.
4.
These people
who died needlessly in the Med and the Sahara are people who could simply have
purchased a cheap ticket on Ryanair or Wizz, and who would have been alive
today, had it not been for the European immigration barriers. Immigration
barriers which, in turn, are a direct result of nationalism and socialist
welfare state policies.
5.
Sadly,
all these deaths have not received anywhere nearly as much media attention as
they should have. 10 people killed in a US school shooting gets way more
attention in the European media than 500 people who drown in the Med right here
on our doorstep. But it is a very, very ugly business. One particular sinking occurred
on 19th April 2015 between Sicily and Libya and saw more than 800
people dragged down to their deaths when their ship capsized. Italian coast
guard divers subsequently dived the sunken ship in order to recover all the
dead bodies. Among the horrific underwater scenery of 800 dead bodies, divers
reported how they saw the body of a woman who had been giving birth on the lower
deck of the ship when it sank and she got trapped. The divers saw her
dead baby floating in the current, still attached to the dead mother by the
umbilical cord…
6.
I
have not been able to find a picture of this dead woman and her baby. But if
you take nothing else away from this speech, this is the mental image that I
would like you to remember every time you meet a nationalist who speaks out in
favour of immigration restrictions. Make no mistake, nationalism means death,
blood, and the destruction of innocent lives. Even in this day and age.
7.
The
European indifference to these deaths is caused, as I have suggested, by the
existence of the European welfare states. Because Europeans – with some
justification – expect their welfare state to collapse if an unlimited number
of immigrants are allowed to claim tax-funded social benefits, unrestricted
immigration is perceived as a threat to the national welfare states. So people
just shrug it off and say that these deaths are a necessary evil. But the
welfare state is not a necessary evil – it’s an unnecessary evil - and therefore these deaths are completely pointless
and unbelievably tragic.
8.
The
existence of the welfare state quite clearly dehumanises people. When the media
showed a picture of a small, dead boy in the arms of a Turkish border guard on
a beach in Turkey back in 2016, there was a great outpouring of sympathy in
Europe for the Syrian refugees. Why? Because the foreigners were suddenly given
a human face by the media. A few months later, that sympathy had evaporated
amidst reports of new refugee camps paid for by the welfare state, i.e. the European
taxpayers. This is in spite of the fact that the creation of the European welfare states is entirely the responsibility of the European voters. The prospective immigrants can in no way be blamed for this for the simple reason that they have never had the right to vote in Europe.
9.
The
so-called New Patriotism argues that “modern democratic states committed to a degree of equality rely on the
willingness of citizens to make sacrifices for the common good, be it in terms
of the everyday redistribution of income to meet welfare needs or the provision
of collective goods and services such as education or health care.”
10. My native Denmark is one of the European
countries with the largest welfare state. It is also one of the countries in
which the inhabitants identify themselves most strongly with the national
welfare state. Most Danes will tell you that they are proud of the Danish
welfare state. Most Danes also see immigrants as a threat to the welfare state
and therefore as a threat to Denmark. Thus, I recently read an article by Mr
Munk-Bogballe, a candidate for Parliament for the Conservative People’s Party,
which is generally considered to be only moderately right wing. In the article,
the Candidate proposes to build “Fortress Europe”. As you may know, this term
was invented by Hitler’s Nazi Germany to describe the defensive fortifications
along the Atlantic Coast during WW2. And here we have a so-called moderate
politician who unashamedly uses the same terminology to propose keeping
foreigners out of Europe.
11. Unfortunately, it doesn’t stop there. The
leader of the largest political party in Denmark, Mrs Frederiksen of the
moderately left-wing Social Democrats, says that “non-western immigration is the biggest challenge for Denmark”. This
is obviously completely out of proportion.
Other senior politicians from the Danish main parties speak of “self-defence” when proposing further
immigration restrictions. The terminology has become decidedly war-like.
12. Speaking of defence, a private group of European,
so-called identitarians named “Defend Europe” last
year chartered a ship at a cost of $178,000 in order to prevent private charities from rescuing migrants from drowning in the
Mediterranean Sea.
13. The media backlash against this racist group
has been very modest. The average citizen – and therefore also the media – is
no longer appalled by public displays of hatred against immigrants. What was an
extreme position 20 years ago has now become mainstream. Suddenly it is OK to
be racist, Islamophobic, and nationalist, as long as you are so out of concern
for the preservation of the nation state. Sadly, most Europeans see themselves
as part of the nation state, and perceive foreigners as threats to that state,
both economically and culturally.
14. A clear example of this is the new Italian
nationalist populist government, which in June this year followed in the
footsteps of the “Defend Europe” identitarians by refusing the private charity ship
M/S Aquarius with 629 refugees rescued from the sea permission to dock in
Italy. The result was an instant increase in support for the extreme
nationalists in the governing political party called Liga. This has been
followed by the rejection of several other refugee ships and talk from Liga’s
leader, Interior Minister Salvini, about “defending
Europe”. Much like Mussolini, Salvini also wants to “cleanse”
Italy of Romas without Italian citizenship and create a special register for
the Italian Romas. Next, they’ll probably be made to wear the Roma equivalent
of a yellow star.
15. Unfortunately, nationalism doesn’t stop with
xenophobia. Like Trump, the new Italian government is also protectionist, and
consequently want to repeal the free trade agreement that is currently in force
between the EU and Canada. In Poland, state-owned companies are buying up banks
just to ensure that they are Polish-owned. The Polish government also wants to
re-nationalise things as diverse as shipbuilding, the provision of medicine,
and the publication of newspapers. Although the Polish government is generally
considered right-wing, it favours economic interventionism and expansion, not
reduction, of the socialist welfare state. This is what they call “economic patriotism” and “pride in Polish companies”.
16. So, as Maria Vargas
Llosa says, ”the great danger in our age
is nationalism, it’s no longer fascism, nor communism.”
EUROPEAN NATIONALISM TODAY
1.
These
days, the most successful nationalist parties – in fact, the most successful
parties in general - are not the traditional fascist or ultra-conservative
parties. Instead, a new wave of nationalist populism has been sweeping across
Europe in recent years. This populism is difficult to pin down in the
traditional two-dimensional left/right political spectrum as it borrows views
from both the left and the right. But unlike libertarianism, which combines the
very best traits from the left and the right, the nationalist populism combines
the very worst.
2.
Populist
nationalists are, like the socialists, generally in favour of large welfare
states, and against free trade, austerity, balanced budgets, and globalisation.
Like conservatives, they are in favour of more surveillance, more police, and harder
borders, and are against immigration, immigrants, Muslims, and the free
movement of labour (i.e., people). These are much the same views as those held
by the nationalists in the 1920s and 30s, except that the new nationalists tend
to target Muslims instead of Jews.
3.
As an
aside, I think it is interesting to note to what extent that the aims and goals
of the jihadists and radical Muslims – which, don’t forget, are a tiny minority
of the total number of Muslims in the world – coincide with the aims and goals
of the European nationalists. The fact is that they both want to incite as much
hatred as possible between Muslims and non-Muslims. They both know that this is
the only way they can gain more followers and more support. Every time the
European media overflows with sympathy for victims of terrorism committed by
extremists, both these groups secretly rejoice. The nationalists because people
will flock to their cause, and the jihadists because innocent Muslims in Europe
will henceforth be subjected to even more hatred by the native Europeans. These
hitherto innocent Muslims will hate those native Europeans right back and
therefore become ideal subjects for radicalisation by the jihadists. And so the
vicious circle takes another turn.
4.
Going back
to the differences between nationalists and libertarians, the only point on
which they often – but not always - agree is the need for tax cuts. Thus,
pretty much the only good thing that people like Victor Orban and Donald Trump have
done – both of them typical populist nationalists – is to cut income taxes.
However, left-leaning nationalists like the Scottish and Catalan nationalists
are in favour of raising taxes, and even right-leaning nationalists are often
in favour of raising tariffs, which are, of course, also taxes.
5.
The Italian
national elections in 2018 show quite clearly the breakdown of the traditional
left-right political axis. Right-wing parties proposed higher, state-funded universal income than the left-wing parties
and were happy to propose expanding the budget deficit by increasing public
spending while at the same time lowering taxes.
6.
It seems
counter-intuitive that parties with simplistic policies such as these should
become more popular now that people are generally better educated than ever
before. What has not changed,
however, is that many people devote little time and effort to studying politics
in-depth or to considering the implications of the policies that they vote for.
Most people have busy lives and they know intuitively that their chances of influencing
their lives by voting is infinitely small. According to Jim Messina, a former Barack
Obama strategist, the average voter thinks about politics for four minutes a
week. In such a short space of time, simple tunes do best. Therefore, the
voters tend to go with the slogans that at
first glance seem to accurately highlight problems or provide solutions to
whatever dominates the news. The modern politicians know this and simply tell
voters what they want to hear, whatever the consequences.
7. Another one who knows this is Steve Bannon, the
alt-right media executive who is also a former Chief Strategist of the Trump
administration and probably the
most undesirable American export ever. Since he left the White House, he has
been spending time in Europe actively looking to establish a pan-European nationalist/populist
organisation called The Movement in order to ensure that nationalism and racism
– even more so than now – becomes the mainstream, socially acceptable norm. As he said in a speech to the French National
Front back in March: “Let them call you racists. Let them call you xenophobes.
Let them call you nativists. Wear it as
a badge of honour!”
8.
But how
bad is the situation really right now? It’s pretty bad. The de-humanisation of
immigrants and Muslims goes hand in hand with new trade tariffs against the US,
new immigration barriers against Africa and the Middle East, and the
re-introduction of national service in Sweden, France, and Lithuania.
9.
This map shows where nationalism has, in my
opinion, reached extremely alarming proportions. I have based the map on the
electoral support for those political parties that have, in my subjective view,
recently expressed populist nationalist or extreme nationalist views.
10. I have coloured the map in traffic light
colours to indicate the degree of nationalist fervour across the continent,
with green showing the least afflicted countries. If we look at specific countries,
you will see that some of the very worst are currently Hungary, Austria, and
Italy. In Hungary, just the right-wing nationalists alone account for 68% of
the electorate. This was achieved on a campaign of scare-mongering about
immigrants, of which, as I mentioned before, there are precious few in Hungary.
11. In Austria, the nationalist Chancellor
Sebastian Kurz has recently proposed an “axis”
of Germany, Italy, and Austria to curb illegal migration. And yes, he did use
the term “axis”. Disregarding Japan, these countries were exactly those that
formed the original Axis Powers in September 1940. Hungary joined the Axis
Powers in November 1940. All this may just be a coincidence, but I do find the
historical similarities to the proposed axis of 2018 rather scary.
12. Anyway, when looking at a regional level,
nationalism has also reached high levels in some places, with the Basque
Country, Catalonia, Corsica, and Northern Ireland all at well over 50% of the
vote, and Bavaria and Scotland very close to 50%.
13. Obviously, all these figures do not provide the
full picture since nationalist, anti-immigrant sentiments have also infected moderate right-wing parties and have
even reached deep into left-wing parties that were traditionally more tolerant
towards immigrants.
EUROPEAN NATIONALISM 80 YEARS AGO
1.
The most notorious example of nationalism is, of
course, National Socialism, also known as Nazism. Although I presume that
no-one in this room need convincing that Nazism is bad, I think it is
instructive to compare the policies of National Socialism with the welfare
state patriotism that is on the rise in Europe these years.
2.
According to National Socialism, the nation state is
the most important entity in life, and although businesses and individuals
should be allowed a certain amount of freedom, these should always be
subordinated to the needs of the state.
3.
The German
National Socialism of the 1930s promoted a welfare state that included a
national labour service, state-provided health care, and guaranteed pensions, to
name but a few of their collectivist policies.
4.
Hitler distrusted capitalism for being unreliable due
to its individualism, and he preferred a state-directed economy subordinated to
the interests of the nation state.
5.
Hitler declared that "every activity and every need of every individual will be regulated by
the collectivity represented by the party" and that "there are no longer any free realms in
which the individual belongs to himself".
6.
Reichskommissar Himmler justified the establishment of a
repressive police state - in which the security forces could exercise power
arbitrarily - by claiming that national security and order should take precedence
over the needs of the individual.
7.
Nazi
Germany successfully dehumanised and demonised the Jews, the gays, the romas,
and just about every other small minority you can think of. The new
nationalists in Europe and the US are successfully dehumanising and demonising
migrants and Muslims. Different targets, same principle.
8.
Demonising
groups of people that are unable to defend themselves gives the native voters a
sense of shared purpose and thereby a shared identity. It’s us - the “civilised” European welfare states -
against them - the “uncivilised”
hordes of foreigners from Africa and the Middle East. The migrants – most of
whom have no right to vote – have no recourse and are unable to properly defend
themselves in the public sphere. That makes them ideal scapegoats for the nationalist
populists in the same way that the so-called subhuman Jews were the scapegoats
of the National Socialists.
9.
Interestingly,
even most of the German soldiers in the Jew-murdering Einsatzgruppen on the Eastern Front during WW2 were, in fact,
initially decent people. Many had families and children of their own, and
several of the officers held postgraduate degrees. But like the German
civilians, they were brainwashed into identifying themselves with the German
state to such an extent that they sincerely thought what they were doing was
for the good of the nation – and therefore, by extension, for the good of
themselves.
10. As I said earlier, states aim to make their
citizens unable to distinguish between individual and state, between individual
and country, and between individual and society. So disobeying the nation state
of which they considered themselves an integral part did not seem like an
option to most Germans. It was the German nation against the Untermenschen – the “sub-humans” - and in the minds of the Nazis, killing these “sub-humans” (i.e., Jews, Slavs, Romas,
etc) was unpleasant but necessary in order to defend the nation and, thereby,
themselves and their families. Unfortunately, I see very unpleasant echoes of
this mind-set in the Europe of 2018, where talk of building Fortress Europe and
“defending” Europe against migrants
is generally accepted. The “Spirit of the Tribe” is alive and well.
INDIVIDUAL OR STATE
1.
In the
beginning of this speech, I mentioned the definition of nationalism in Encyclopedia
Britannica, which is “An ideology based on the premise that
the individual's loyalty and devotion to the nation-state surpass other
individual or group interests”.
2. Just from this one definition, it should be
clear that nationalism is the antithesis of liberty. You cannot claim to
support the freedom of the individual and at the same time defend the existence
of a powerful nation state. The concept of individual liberty is diametrically
opposed to the concept of nationalism.
3.
In the
end, it is all about control. Should you control your own life or should the
state? The slogan that probably won the UK Brexit referendum for the Leave-side
back in 2016 was the term ‘Taking back control’. The Brexiteers spoke about
‘Taking back control of our borders’, ‘Taking back control of our laws’,
‘Taking back control from Bruxelles’, etc, etc, ad nauseam. Whichever spin-doctor came up with the term ‘Taking
back control’ probably deserved his bonus as it was extremely effective.
However, I actually agree. I agree that we should
take back control – but by that I mean that we should take back control from
the state! The state, on the other hand, should not take back control of
anything whatsoever.
4.
Nationalism
discriminates individuals on the basis of their nationality, not on the basis
of the qualities of each individual. Given that people have very little
influence over which nationality they have, this amounts to extreme
discrimination. It will happen often that talented people are discriminated
against, and untalented people are rewarded – solely on the basis of their
nationality.
5.
As I grow
older, I have started to notice how utterly unique each and every human being
is, and how difficult it is – or should be – to pigeon-hole any one individual.
Humans are incredibly complex, and if some seem similar, it is only because
they put on a façade that will enable them to interact with their peers more
easily. Go out into the street, choose any random person, and ask for their
life story. Then do the same again, and I can almost guarantee you that one
life story will be very different from the next. In my experience, each life
story – especially those that cover many years – would qualify for its own
Hollywood movie. The deeper you dig, the more fascinating a person becomes.
6.
It is said
that when a person dies in old age, the brain contains data that corresponds in
size to the contents of a medium-sized public library. This combination of
information, feelings, memories, music, opinions, images, and much more is
absolutely unique to each and every individual. Therefore, it is an immense
injustice to collectively judge any individual on the basis of their
nationality, religion, or skin colour. And that is exactly what nationalism
does. It judges people collectively, not individually. That is why the term
right-wing collectivism is so very appropriate to describe nationalism.
CONCLUSION
1.
In
conclusion, I would say that people should satisfy their natural desire for
belonging to a group by supporting groups that are less lethal and less destructive
than nation states. These could be groups with shared interests in languages,
traditions, sports, or any other subject. It is not a necessity of life that
you identify yourself with a nation state, although for the past couple of
centuries we have pretty much all been brought up to do so.
2.
I am a
citizen of two states – Denmark and the U.K. So where does my loyalty lie, you
may ask? Well, I’ll tell you – it lies with myself. The reason that I have two
passports is simply that it gives me more freedom than just having one.
3.
When I am
asked which country I am from – which happens frequently when one travels – I
am sometimes tempted to reply to the person asking, that that is none of his
business. Although I have never actually said that, I don’t really want people
to judge me on the basis of which passport I happen to carry. People tend to keep
in their minds little virtual boxes with the names of countries on them and a
certain set of preconceptions, generalisations, and prejudices about people
from that country. Now, I do not want to be put in a box like that as part of
the very first interaction that I have with a given person. Rather than be
judged on my nationality, I want to be judged on my personal characteristics.
4. There are many different kinds of nationalism,
but they all have one thing in common: The individual is always subject to the
will of the state. That is why nationalism
– even the more innocuous-sounding patriotism – is not, and can never be, a
philosophy of liberty. The single individual, not the collective and therefore
not the state, is - and must always be - the supreme entity!
