“This well-researched essay takes on a contentious subject matter with thoughtfulness and a healthy dose of wit.” Patience Agbabi, poet, author and Orwell Youth Prize 2024 judge
It is one of those big words – the sort that inspires generally heated discourse due to cultural connotations trailing tentatively after an obnoxiously gobby kite. What do you think of first when I brandish cheekily this oh-so-controversial word: nationalism.
Now, it’s out.
Imposing and vague, and phonetically blessed – or cursed? – in that it inspires a certain level of zeal when said aloud. You have to commit to it, it’s unlike park, or dancing or toast in that it is insufferable to say in hushed tones. You really have to enjoy all those syllables, even when they taste like civilised antagonism. B-b-borders, plosives spat out of you as delicate bombs. Or Nazis. Yes, they’re goose-stepping about your mind now, and you are decidedly uncomfortable. It’s the slightly edgy sibling to Patriotism, the golden child who gets festively carted out on a chariot, swathed in Union Jacks, on match days and then promptly abandoned by the average Joe.
Orwell argued that what distinguished the two ideologies from one another is that Patriotism ‘has no wish to force on other people’ and Nationalism is ‘inseparable from the desire for power’. The latter, therefore, is inherently antipathetic and for the gain of one group and detriment of others by extension. Nationalism is ultimately collective clique behaviour, one giant superiority complex shrouding individual insecurities. Being codified into one shared identity reaffirms self-worth and naturally we want that, obviously undeserved, advantage; a convenient podium to boost our confidence.
“We’ve won the genetic lottery! Sure, we’re a bit funny looking – but have you seen our nukes? Sexy.”
Orwell emphasised that nationalism demands ‘self-deception’ and so facts cannot deter the nationalist, for his ideology rejects logic on principle.
Historically, nationalism has been a destructive force, sowing seeds of division whilst posing heroically by evidently uniting some, despite involving the exclusion of Others: Nazi Germany; post-apartheid Afrikaner nationalism; the Cold War. Frequently, it weaponises sentimentalised portrayals of Home, first fabricating these nostalgic images and then artificially endangering them with an foreign threat.
And we fall for it like sitting ducks, riled up with buzzwords, suspicious and Herculean. Stories surrounding the ‘immigration crisis’ perform exceptionally, capitalising on national uncertainty. The Migration Observatory found, in April 2022, 52% of Britons thought migration inflow should be reduced and 32% thought immigration was a very bad or a bad thing. Anti-immigration rhetoric cements immigrants as scapegoats, convenient distractors from issues pervading the country: cost of living crisis and energy crisis. Clinging to identity politics appears simpler than addressing Government failures.
Perhaps promoting nationalism is a desperate attempt at reuniting a fractured country, a pathetic communal plaster over diverse individual ailments. Circling back to the idea that we should be loyal to our country is an effective political tactic, coddling us in a facade of unity whilst dismissing criticism for being dangerously unpatriotic. The survival of this delusion relies on making those who subvert the nationalised identity social pariahs. We are encouraged to graciously excuse oversights out of personal love for our country, as if it were an extension of ourselves and this blurring of the individual and collective identity reduces our agency subconsciously.
Nationalism, although often characterised by aggressive foreign policy, also impairs those it intends on exalting. The pretence of a symbiotic relationship between country and citizen disguises morbid reality. War propaganda regularly uses motifs of ‘King and Country’ when promoting enlistment as if duty to one’s nationality should be a major extrinsic motivation, making valid objections infantile. Accounts from veterans with PTSD have exposed how soldiers have been reduced to appendages of an almost warped Biblical ‘body’, dehumanised seamlessly. In Simon Armitage’s ‘The Not Dead’, his
interviews with survivors made war, a concept often relinquished to history by the West, horribly domestic. ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’, a poem posthumously published by soldier Wilfred Owen, translates to “it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country”, and ironically portrays violence at war in graphic detail. Owen dedicated his crippling account to Jessie Pope, a pro-war poet who produced jingoistic propaganda, and this highlights the conflict between the grandeur and fraudulent positivity of the nationalist identity and the harrowing reality faced by those subjected to their country’s agenda.
It is interesting to see how imperialism, an inherently nationalist practice, has impacted nationalism in commonwealth countries, sparking anti-colonial nationalism: resisting cultural oppression by being empowered by an independent identity after occupation. Deliberately embracing what differentiates your community addresses generational colonial trauma, providing closure. However, nationalism is culpable for said trauma and continues to facilitate ‘postcolonial amnesia’ – a term coined by sociologist Paul Gilroy to describe nostalgia for Britain’s sordid imperial years supported by how, in 2014, 34% of polled Britons would have liked it if we still had an empire. Deep-seated cultural entitlement is casual nationalism in action.
Although nationalist movements like post-emancipation Pan-Africanism emerged from exploitation, rebranding nationalism as liberation perpetuates the same toxic cycle – Herzl’s political Zionism intended to avoid antisemitism by eliminating competition with non-Jews, but has resulted in conflict with native Arabs. The concept of nationalism was paramount as Labour Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion explained: “We, as a nation, want this country to be ours.” British imperialism’s involvement in the conflict reinforces the dangers of nationalism as it was the occupation of Palestine by Britain and the Balfour Declaration which facilitated tensions.
Nationalism is damaging to both individuals and society, incompatible with hybridised human culture. It being traditional is ludicrous when you consider how borders, the magic solution to social issues proposed by many politicians, are a relatively recent, and European, invention, from the late 19th century. We perceive them as permanent, but borders are fundamentally unnatural and based on ephemeral human constructs which conflict with geography. Nationalism is also irreconcilable with our human empathy by suggesting anything other than genuine connection can unite mankind. The diversity of opinions, beliefs and people in a nation are its strength and the nationalist paragon would be, quite frankly, boring.