There's a debate to be had about the nuance of the term nationalism in a general sense.
But do you think that definition could ever apply here? When it's being used by the leader of the most powerful country on the planet?
But WHY use a loaded term like that!? Why not just use "patriotism"!? And the right-leaning people using "nationalism" definitely DON'T think of it as saying "we just want to stay independent", they definitely think of it as "fuck you, stay out of my great country".
Hmmm yeah that doesn't seem familiar at all.
Because nationalism as a term and concept has existed for a longtime and has multiple meanings and levels of nuance?
considering my comments haven't been about trump's use of it, but rather the idea that nationalism is always, 100% supposedly a net-negative. it has a range of meanings that change person to person, and from the quote in the OP he used it as generically and broadly as possible because then he can get brownie points from as wide of a range of people as possible who identify nationalism in different ways.
Independance from colonisation and imperialist invasion can come without nationalist mouvements.
"Nationalism is further oriented towards developing and maintaining a national identity based on shared, social characteristics, such as culture and language, religion and politics, and a belief in a common ancestry. Nationalism, therefore, seeks to preserve a nation's culture, by way of pride in national achievements, and is closely linked to patriotism"
This is still dangerous and concerning to me. Pride in an completely artificial concept like a nation is dangerous. The concept of shared ancestry is often a complete lie to create a us vs them sentiment towards foreigners, push individuals who are very similar against eachother because they're not under the same flag. Blind cultural pride is dangerous, you should be aware and critical of your cultural biais and your governement.
There's no bigger lie than common ancestries being a point of pride and value. Everyone living today has more in common than anyone who lived two centuries ago. And almost every civilisation before the 20th century were genuinely awful by today's standard. Why would I proud of XIVs century france, where criticising the king would get you tortured to death in the Bastille. Yes, every country was like that, but none of theses nations were good political systems we should celebrate. The only reason we have ok political system now is because we were able to move away from traditionalism and seeing the past of your country as something sacred.
I take inspiration from single individuals who did great things, wherever they come from, not a faceless nation.
except it did not, nationalist movements were key to the independence of nations coming into the 20th century. For example, as someone stated on the previous page, Ghandi is an example of this.
I disagree, taking collective ownership of the past is not inherently dangerous.
If you really want to be semantic, anything cultural or social is "completely artificial" so I don't see that as a useful marker.
I feel like you're blending ultra-nationalism and nationalism here.
who said anything about it being blind? But having a shared background does make it easier for there to be a shared basis for a government.
See what I said above. A shared background and ancestry does make the formation of a national government easier, as it's not someone from a far off land dictating what you should and should not being doing.
While there are certainly commonalities that, for example, I share with other peoples today - there's also a lot that differs. So I don't think that really holds true that "Everyone today has a lot in common". There are certainly threads that people share, but not the whole cloth.
this isn't something you'd find me disagreeing with. I love learning about the past, I'd hate to actually live there.
As far as I'm aware French nationalists tend to distance themselves from the Monarchy, at least historically ;)
Something being a tradition doesn't make it inhernetly good or bad - that's entirely up to whatever the tradition specifically is. Again, I don't hold that the past is something sacred - but that doesn't mean having a common national heritage is inherently a bad thing. Being able to take ownership of that and recognize the wrongs is the true strength of a democracy. A people who can see the wrongs their forebears comitted and work past them. On the same note, I'd rather be governed by my neighbors - who I share a lot in common with, in this nation.
@IlluminatiRex , Nationalism has secondary meanings but nobody in modern political rhetoric uses it to mean anything else than "the superiority of one's nation and culture over others" so you pointing out that it technically has other meanings is completely asinine. Trump is using extremely dangerous rhetoric and you'd rather argue over fucking semantics?
Get your priorities straight, dude.
Do places like Catalonia, Scotland, and the Kurds not ring a bell to you? That supposedly "secondary meaning" still holds a lot of weight today whether you want to admit it or not.
as for your stupid as fuck callout, fuck off. I have better things to do than add another post as to how bad trump is.
As far as I'm aware French nationalists tend to distance themselves from the Monarchy, at least historically ;)
You'd be very wrong, monarchists are a real political party and the far right is very nostalgic of it. The right has a huge boner on the Napoléon period.
Only replying to this because I dont have time right now
I do love learning about the past, it's a genuine passion for me, I just like learning about how things were. But I don't take pride in it, I didn't help achieve great achievements and art we remember from the past, I dont have ownership of the accomplishement of others who died long ago.
You can't just be proud of the great things some people did in your contry centuries ago when you did nothing to contribute to them. That's how I feel.
Whataboutism, of course you would. What an asinine observation.
Neat, although in my slightly jesty comment I was thinking more of the whole French Revolutionary period (pre-Napoleon at least) when the goal was getting rid of the Monarchy. It's a shame there's people who want actual Monarchical powers in this day and age.
The way I see it is that we stand on the shoulders of those that came before us, and the successes should be rightfully celebrated, and the failures and racism and all that should be condemnded, remembered, and worked past because at the end of the day we are where we are because of those things.
That's all true but 1 we're standing on the shoulders of every single great discovery in history, not from just our nation's (an example because that's what i'm researching right now, cathedrals and the whole gothic architectural style wouldn't have never existed if architects from Chartres and Saint Denis didn't copy the arch design from Arab Mosques to spread weight and build higher) and 2 that's the accomplishement of a few individuals in a given centruy, not of a nation. Celebrating accomplishements of individuals and mouvements of ideas all over the world > Celebrating National identity.
Okay so you realize that the term is obviously being used for the one meaning in the context of the thread, but you decided to start an argument about "did you know there's a SECOND meaning" because...?
Like, yeah, nationalism has 2 main meanings and a few smaller ones. Neato factoid. And yeah, people arguing the other definition(s) doesn't exist are dumb.
But it's kind of like if you went into a thread about checks and balances and went "why are you saying checks and balances are 100% a good thing, checks and balances can refer to money too".
okay, true, but that's completely off topic
Considering it's a discussion that had been on-going since the first page and has been a big driver of discussion in the thread, I think this is a really bad contextualization of the discussion.
how is a discussion about nationalism, in a thread about nationalism and its negatives and positives, off-topic exactly? It's not the same as your facetious example because in that case money is not the same as government. Here we are discussing a political ideology in a thread about said ideology.
@Loth I gotta head to work but I'll respond to you later
Do YOU believe Trump is using the term like those movements are using it? You said no earlier so your observations are useless in this context. Nobody is using the definitions you're bringing up in regards to Trump. You're literally just saying "but other OTHER movements arr using it!" Who fucking cares, we're talking about Trump and the USA not Scotland.
I don't see why it is supposed to be bad for a nation's leader to admit that the interests of their own country and their own people and cultures comes first above the interest of other countries.
I am more surprised why people take offence over Trump saying ''I am a nationalist'', especially considering what is probably one of the more well-known quotes of Trump during the primaries:
''Americans must know that we're putting the American people first again on trade, on immigration, on foreign policy. The jobs, incomes and security of the American worker will always be my first priority. No country has ever prospered that failed to put its own interests first. Both our friends and our enemies put their countries above ours and we, while being fair to them, must start doing the same. We will no longer surrender this country or its people to the false song of globalism. The nation-state remains the true foundation for happiness and harmony. I am skeptical of international unions that tie us up and bring America down, and will never enter America into any agreement that reduces our ability to control our own affairs.
I really get the feeling that a lot of people have been whipped up into a hysteric frenzy by the media in the past few years, because that quote seems like a completely reasonable mindset to have for the leader of a country. Which might be a slightly controversial opinion to have here, along with the opinion that sovereignty and national identity must coincide for representative government and the rule of law to exist.
Even if there was no media(who are actively acting like Trump is doing good things, see the recent 60 minutes piece, and the reactions of the media to that) just his use of the word and tightly tied connotations to it, is reason to be suspect, especially when tied to his actions over the last year. A policy of child separation was not exacerbated by the media, it was made as bad as it was by the Trump administration.
You can keep doing this same old song and dance, but really it's just clear how much intentional ignorance is required to do so.
Try that again, dearie. But this time, don't twist other people's words.
Maybe you should read the thread in its entirety and aee that this discussion started on page 1, and someone asked you to qualify what you meant, and I disagreed with your qualification.
i’d rather not circle-jerk about trump because that’s boring, unproductive conversation. It’s not interesting. What is interesting is discussing the nuances of nationalism and your adherence that there is only a single version of it, and that pointing out that there are in fact movements today which encompass other forms of nationalism. That’s not whataboutism, that’s a legitimate counterargument to nationalism meaning only one thing. whataboutism would be an attempt to distract, that’s not what I did. I tackled your claim head on.
and in the future I’d recommend being less hostile in a discussion, it’s usually more productive.
Maybe this is exactly the time that we should be working together instead of tearing each other into pieces over technicalities.
We can all agree that this is bad regardless of whether or not it's fascism, right?
There's nothing wrong with a leader acting in the interests of their country. As Americans, we naturally want our leaders to put our interests before those of other countries. That doesn't make us bad people or bad citizens. In fact, it is what defines us as citizens. The problem arises when a leader claims to be acting in the interests of the country, when in fact acting in their own self-interest, and their interests are diametrically opposed to the interests of the country they claim to serve. Historically, this is what nationalists do: they pacify the public with lavish displays of patriotism in order to distract from their own corrupt pursuits. They expose their people to additional risks and dangers for the sake of profit and power. The convince their people to trade real freedom for imagined safety, and real progress for a sense of identity and belonging.
Consider the president's policies on all of the issues you've quoted. When Donald Trump ignites a trade war with China, he is not acting in the interests of the United States. China has far more to gain from a trade war than the U.S. Trump's trade policies have put put an insane amount of stress on U.S. manufacturing, agricultural, and fishing industries. When Trump vilifies immigrants and tries to waste billions of dollars on an ineffectual border wall, he is not acting in the interests of the Untied States. We suffer as a country when we allow authoritarians to create a culture of fear and suspicion of others. When Donald Trump pulls out of the Paris Climate Accord, the Iran Nuclear Deal, and key alliances with democratic partners in the European Union, he is not acting in the interests of the United States. The European Union is the largest economy in the world, and the most important bastion for democratic values. When these institutions suffer, we all suffer.
Donald Trump opposes wage increases. He opposes pay equity for women. He opposes progressive taxation. He opposes regulating the FIRE sector. He opposes unions. On almost every issue, he acts against the interests of the people. And yet he claims to be acting in their interests. He showers (some of) them with validation and tells them they are doing just fine. He feeds them flattering lies, protects them from imaginary enemies, rescues them from problems he himself created, and talks tough when he can safely do so without being challenged or exposed as the fraud and coward that he is.
What the country needs is living wages, healthcare for all, free and fair elections, and clean air and water.
This is absolutely true, but the people you are referring to are the ones that still like Donald Trump.
what is it with the link between all these underage looking anime girl avatars and nazi apologists lately
When you don't give a shit about anyone else because you're a sociopath and think everyone else exists to literally serve your whims.
If it's obvious yet you're the only one who sees it, it's not obvious. This isn't exactly rocket science. It's very basic logic. The obvious solution is to actually explain in a civil and straightforward manner what people were missing. Not act shitty towards them and continue acting like it's supposed to be obvious.
confirmation bias
It's worth nothing that for most of history nationalism has largely been inseparable from the left (i.e. liberalism and socialism) and democratic movements thanks to the national question and its relationship to the middle class, and only recently in history has a tendency tried to suggest the nation is an antiquated idea. This is largely because of people gambling on the future of power because of the direction of capitalism as an engine of history, although as we all know this is not always desirable. The modern nation-state and the associated solidarity of a people remains indispensable to getting people to respect each other's rights, fund the social welfare of the vulnerable, have faith in institutions, respect the commons, and assimilate newcomers. You do not have civics without nationality.
Therefore, nationalism is part of progress rather than its enemy. Nationalism is necessary for the cohesion of a complex, modern capitalist society whose tendency towards a creative-destructive economy and large government can easily leave people behind, widen divisions in society, and degenerate into either plutocracy or tribalism/sectarianism.
The endpoint of either liberalism or socialism, as middle class movements, is localism, decentralization, and participation. It's about freeing humanity from a history of empires, oligarchy, and central authority while giving them the ability to self-govern, and this is why nationalism was and always will be the ideology of the enfranchised (i.e. property-owning, with a family, active in local government) middle class. That middle class has never existed independent of culture and locality, in contrast to the bottom and top of society it is at the heart of it, and the social consciousness of a people led by this middle class has always been the best way to fight the growth of unaccountable power and secure rights.
We would not have American social liberalism without nationalism (and romanticism). We would not have European social-democracy without nationalism. We would not have had liberal revolutions without nationalism. There would be no colonial struggle without nationalism. We would not have European peace without nationalism, its modern stability being based on proper delineation of borders and abolition of empires rather than nations, where in contrast Middle Eastern strife can tracked to the fracture of Arab nations. There would be no enfranchisement of post-Soviet Eastern Europe without the intersection of liberalism and nationalism, and even Soviet ideology was ostensibly based on respect for national self-determination. The rise of national identity has always been a first step in modern development.
As a result, nationalism remains a fine means of social organization. Especially after the failure and death of labor movements, it is critical to any resistance to atomization and exploitation based on solidarity. It is the best way to lobby for the social responsibility of an increasingly detached elite. It is only going become more, not less, relevant as globalization grows inequality, exposes divisions in our society, and facilitates the rise of an international business class only out for itself.
It's moments like these that make me embrace the idea of #Banime
Not to derail much from the topic, but I it boggles my mind, how many anime watchers would support Nazi's policies. They don't get it, if a very similiar movement was to rise in their country, anime would be one of the things that would be thrown into the pile and burned and all those having anything to do with anime repressed.
It's like those people don't know that Hitler banned Jazz and modernist art, alongside other things.
Ridiculous.
And no, Hitler wouldn't have made an exception for it because the Japanese were "honorary aryans". That was a pragmatic decision in the sea of politics, the nazis were already making plans to conquer their mainland-owned land. They were needed until they weren't, much like Italians.
"Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind." -Albert Einstein.
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