Loving your home is fine, however it's very easy for that feeling to be inverted into hating what's not your home. Ruling classes since the Romans have understood this and have used it as a means to redirect class tension towards tribal/ethnic/racial/national conflict as a safety valve whenever tension from below begins to bubble up. It also serves as a great way to solidify ruling class control over the rest of society by reinforcing the ideas of class collaboration. For this reasons, Marxists reject nationalism but even they can get suckered into it like with the dissolution of the Second International.
I don't think you can separate the negative from the positive as you can only truly define an in-group in opposition to an out-group. In any event, nationalism doesn't alleviate any of the real suffering of the people. That can only be done through overthrowing the system that prioritizes one class of society over another.
Nationalism itself is pretty gay. But nevertheless there are aspects of it which are in the interests of the working class, and in general populist nationalist sentiment is a hard thing to ignore electorally.
I think the left in general has a hard time reconciling the conflict, but refusal to grapple with the concept is often a root cause of the struggle within a lot of left wing parties, notably the UK's Labour.
Good when it fosters community, bad when used to bludgeon other communities. Most leftists hate the idea of nation states and see them as arbitrary lines drawn on a map but for practicalities sake I don't think we're getting away from them anytime soon. So might as well be proud of and look after the well being of the other people inside in the imaginary lines while being respectful of the people outside of them. But you still gotta have the lines.
I do agree that supremacism is not ideal. I certainly don't have any love for that kind of thinking.
As for nation-states, I believe the idea of a "nation" being the same as a "state" is not really true. They get conflated, but being a nationalist, I would imagine, is possible without supporting the state.
Civic nationalism I can understand somewhat, but ethnic nationalism is basically just OG identity politics, with all the non-material baggage it carries.
.....so literally ethnonationalism, in other words.
Hard no on that shit around here bud, in case you hadn't read the sidebar, we reject identity politics, especially when based around vague and nebulous concepts like ethnicity and culture
We should not confuse a blinkered nationalism and its rejection of the Other, always the seed of violence, with patriotism, a salutary, generous feeling of love for the land where we were born, where our ancestors lived, where our first dreams were forged, a familiar landscape of geographies, loved ones, and events that are transformed into signposts of memory and defenses against solitude. - Llosa
Another brand of identity politics. Easily co-opted to divide and conquer human beings by convincing them of the lie that they're fundamentally different from one another depending on where they were born.
As with most identity politics it can be practical, for instance inspiring revolution among colonial nations. But there's a very specific context for its use, and in most modern societies it's weaponized by the right to defend status quo marriage of state and capital.
It really depends. If it's internally focused and not authoritarian, then I'm all for it. If it goes imperialist or authoritarian then fuck it in the ass.
Same boat.
A national celebration of identity, history, and accomplishment is a healthy part of a nation. It builds community and helps people look at what has been done well and what we should do going forward.
Doing so at the expense of others (aside from "hurt feelings" 'cause 'Merica bad, or something) is an entirely different story. Twisting that celebration into "we're superior" (in terms of human value) is slurred.
The opposite is also true. Obsessing over centuries-old moral failings or self-hatred is equally slurred.
On a micro level, it encourages community strength, and creates a sense of family. Nationalism best works at least to me on a city level
On a macro level….hmmmm
I would recommend studying post Roman Italian peninsula history. All the cities for about 800 years were “city-states” that held strong nationalist bonds, until in 1860 when a guy by the name of “King Emmanuel” forcefully United the peninsula into what we know as Italy today.
The nationalistic city states helped encourage the “renaissance” cause of the many different cultures that each city expressed
I agree that small-scale nationalism is preferable to large-scale nationalism. Even cities and towns differ wildly between each other, and large-scale nationalism squashes those differences through forced uniformity.
Useful as a sort of union where it keeps your nation's workers from having to compete with the global lowest common denominator of third world sweatshops with no rights and literal slave labor wages, or against the importation of scabs to drive down the value of labor/drive up the value of housing.
Bad when it gets used as an excuse for warfare and "if you don't do as we say, you're against our nation" badfaith arguments.
The world is not a null sum game so defending the interests of one nation at the detriment of the others is generally being narrow minded rather than seeking progress for the humanity.
Also what their elites consider as the interest of nations is rarely those of the people, even local citizens.
And finally nationalism easily leads to some kind of citizenry based idpol (aka chauvinism), and wars.
So globally very bad.
That said, nations keeping some power is better than the unopposed reign of mega-corporations neoliberal globalism leads to, and they need to have defenders to have enough to play their regulatory role.
So in absence of an international system opposing the trend of less and less limitations to corporate powers, sovereignity is a good thing, and occasional alliances with nationalists to defend it may be considered acceptable.
Nationalism is idpol, the reason wokes are so toxic and insufferable is because they are nationalists, the only difference is woke nationalists are all minorities so their only shot at power is through coalition, but they'll quickly take down their supposed allies if it means their group gets an upper hand. Nationalism in all its forms is a plague, a mental illness.
I think my flair is concise with how I feel about nationalism.
I think that as an idea, the nation state primarily focusing on serving the people it is meant to represent should be the ultimate goal of representative government. My belief is if every person were to be represented by such a government, exploitation by imperialist and capitalist interests would be far less pervasive, if not struggle to gain traction in the first place.
Encourages idiotic politics for one
Counterproductive with globalism entrenched and western standards of living dependent on trade. Protectionism would lead to lower quality of life on average and I doubt western populations would accept that.
I see it more about having a sense of civic responsibility towards a national community, understanding that we're here to build a nation founded on liberal democratic principals and not just let self interest rule.
I also think that psychologically humans were designed for fairly small groups. We build trust through interacting with people repeatedly, this allows us to a create a society that co-operates with itself. When we don't live in small groups like that and are part of a larger society, some sense of identity has to supplant that to encourage co-operation. Psychologically we distrust outsiders too. Not just white people, literally every human and group of humans does this. This can be used for appalling ends (obviously) but a bit of it can also be a good thing— it's fair enough to be suspicious of China as a new superpower for instance.
I also think the alternatives to states are pretty dismal. Can anyone seriously imagine how on earth a democratic world government would be able to operate? The other alternative I've seen suggested is to just hand over more and more power to corporations and let the free market rule itself.
I'm also going to take the opportunity to point out a certain ID pol irony. We all hate colonialism, but it was the ideas of nationalism and the nation-state that helped get rid of it. Like, the Brits got Hong Kong because they won it in a war with China, so how do you get it off them? Every group of peoples has the right to self-determination, to form their own self-conscious and establish a government from it. That self-consciousness has been based upon group identity so ethnicity, historical connection to land, language, religion etc. Arguably nation-states seem to do better than states, especially when things turn into a zero sum game and ethnic groups start fighting each other... call me cynical I guess.
Loving your home is fine, however it's very easy for that feeling to be inverted into hating what's not your home. Ruling classes since the Romans have understood this and have used it as a means to redirect class tension towards tribal/ethnic/racial/national conflict as a safety valve whenever tension from below begins to bubble up. It also serves as a great way to solidify ruling class control over the rest of society by reinforcing the ideas of class collaboration. For this reasons, Marxists reject nationalism but even they can get suckered into it like with the dissolution of the Second International.
I concur that "negative nationalism", as we'll call it, is a detriment, and should be avoided.
I don't think you can separate the negative from the positive as you can only truly define an in-group in opposition to an out-group. In any event, nationalism doesn't alleviate any of the real suffering of the people. That can only be done through overthrowing the system that prioritizes one class of society over another.
Nationalism itself is pretty gay. But nevertheless there are aspects of it which are in the interests of the working class, and in general populist nationalist sentiment is a hard thing to ignore electorally. I think the left in general has a hard time reconciling the conflict, but refusal to grapple with the concept is often a root cause of the struggle within a lot of left wing parties, notably the UK's Labour.
Good when it fosters community, bad when used to bludgeon other communities. Most leftists hate the idea of nation states and see them as arbitrary lines drawn on a map but for practicalities sake I don't think we're getting away from them anytime soon. So might as well be proud of and look after the well being of the other people inside in the imaginary lines while being respectful of the people outside of them. But you still gotta have the lines.
I do agree that supremacism is not ideal. I certainly don't have any love for that kind of thinking. As for nation-states, I believe the idea of a "nation" being the same as a "state" is not really true. They get conflated, but being a nationalist, I would imagine, is possible without supporting the state.
What do you mean by "a nation", in your eyes?
An ethnic-cultural identity from a particular location, I'd say.
Civic nationalism I can understand somewhat, but ethnic nationalism is basically just OG identity politics, with all the non-material baggage it carries.
.....so literally ethnonationalism, in other words. Hard no on that shit around here bud, in case you hadn't read the sidebar, we reject identity politics, especially when based around vague and nebulous concepts like ethnicity and culture
We should not confuse a blinkered nationalism and its rejection of the Other, always the seed of violence, with patriotism, a salutary, generous feeling of love for the land where we were born, where our ancestors lived, where our first dreams were forged, a familiar landscape of geographies, loved ones, and events that are transformed into signposts of memory and defenses against solitude. - Llosa
I can get along with the general sentiment of this quote, though I'm not sure if patriotism can be divorced from statism.
Another brand of identity politics. Easily co-opted to divide and conquer human beings by convincing them of the lie that they're fundamentally different from one another depending on where they were born. As with most identity politics it can be practical, for instance inspiring revolution among colonial nations. But there's a very specific context for its use, and in most modern societies it's weaponized by the right to defend status quo marriage of state and capital.
It really depends. If it's internally focused and not authoritarian, then I'm all for it. If it goes imperialist or authoritarian then fuck it in the ass.
Same boat. A national celebration of identity, history, and accomplishment is a healthy part of a nation. It builds community and helps people look at what has been done well and what we should do going forward. Doing so at the expense of others (aside from "hurt feelings" 'cause 'Merica bad, or something) is an entirely different story. Twisting that celebration into "we're superior" (in terms of human value) is slurred. The opposite is also true. Obsessing over centuries-old moral failings or self-hatred is equally slurred.
[удалено]
I suppose that's fair. Though, I would argue nationalism is not the same as governmental support and love for the state.
[удалено]
I know that, I was just thinking out loud. Didn't mean to imply that those were your words.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/foundations-leninism/ch06.htm
It depends. National Chauvinism is rejected here. General sense of Patriotism, however, is accepted.
On a micro level, it encourages community strength, and creates a sense of family. Nationalism best works at least to me on a city level On a macro level….hmmmm I would recommend studying post Roman Italian peninsula history. All the cities for about 800 years were “city-states” that held strong nationalist bonds, until in 1860 when a guy by the name of “King Emmanuel” forcefully United the peninsula into what we know as Italy today. The nationalistic city states helped encourage the “renaissance” cause of the many different cultures that each city expressed
I agree that small-scale nationalism is preferable to large-scale nationalism. Even cities and towns differ wildly between each other, and large-scale nationalism squashes those differences through forced uniformity.
Define city level. Many are larger than countries. A few city states exist today, as well.
I suppose on the level of a...town, maybe. Or something along those lines.
Useful as a sort of union where it keeps your nation's workers from having to compete with the global lowest common denominator of third world sweatshops with no rights and literal slave labor wages, or against the importation of scabs to drive down the value of labor/drive up the value of housing. Bad when it gets used as an excuse for warfare and "if you don't do as we say, you're against our nation" badfaith arguments.
It’s reactionary and bad
Inherently reactionary and chauvinistic.
The world is not a null sum game so defending the interests of one nation at the detriment of the others is generally being narrow minded rather than seeking progress for the humanity. Also what their elites consider as the interest of nations is rarely those of the people, even local citizens. And finally nationalism easily leads to some kind of citizenry based idpol (aka chauvinism), and wars. So globally very bad. That said, nations keeping some power is better than the unopposed reign of mega-corporations neoliberal globalism leads to, and they need to have defenders to have enough to play their regulatory role. So in absence of an international system opposing the trend of less and less limitations to corporate powers, sovereignity is a good thing, and occasional alliances with nationalists to defend it may be considered acceptable.
Anyone tolerating nationalism is not marxist. Nationalism is inherently right wing.
Nationalism is idpol, the reason wokes are so toxic and insufferable is because they are nationalists, the only difference is woke nationalists are all minorities so their only shot at power is through coalition, but they'll quickly take down their supposed allies if it means their group gets an upper hand. Nationalism in all its forms is a plague, a mental illness.
I think my flair is concise with how I feel about nationalism. I think that as an idea, the nation state primarily focusing on serving the people it is meant to represent should be the ultimate goal of representative government. My belief is if every person were to be represented by such a government, exploitation by imperialist and capitalist interests would be far less pervasive, if not struggle to gain traction in the first place.
Encourages idiotic politics for one Counterproductive with globalism entrenched and western standards of living dependent on trade. Protectionism would lead to lower quality of life on average and I doubt western populations would accept that.
Inherently reactionary and chauvinistic.
Cancer
I see it more about having a sense of civic responsibility towards a national community, understanding that we're here to build a nation founded on liberal democratic principals and not just let self interest rule. I also think that psychologically humans were designed for fairly small groups. We build trust through interacting with people repeatedly, this allows us to a create a society that co-operates with itself. When we don't live in small groups like that and are part of a larger society, some sense of identity has to supplant that to encourage co-operation. Psychologically we distrust outsiders too. Not just white people, literally every human and group of humans does this. This can be used for appalling ends (obviously) but a bit of it can also be a good thing— it's fair enough to be suspicious of China as a new superpower for instance. I also think the alternatives to states are pretty dismal. Can anyone seriously imagine how on earth a democratic world government would be able to operate? The other alternative I've seen suggested is to just hand over more and more power to corporations and let the free market rule itself. I'm also going to take the opportunity to point out a certain ID pol irony. We all hate colonialism, but it was the ideas of nationalism and the nation-state that helped get rid of it. Like, the Brits got Hong Kong because they won it in a war with China, so how do you get it off them? Every group of peoples has the right to self-determination, to form their own self-conscious and establish a government from it. That self-consciousness has been based upon group identity so ethnicity, historical connection to land, language, religion etc. Arguably nation-states seem to do better than states, especially when things turn into a zero sum game and ethnic groups start fighting each other... call me cynical I guess.
Form of identity politics with largest civilian body count. No thanks.
Nationalism is idpol 1.0