Nationalism vs. Patriotism

My friend Derek left a comment in which he said he feels like the lines between patriotism and nationalism are blurring for him. I have discussed this issue often with friends and it tends to bring out strong emotions, partly because I tend to offend many people’s intuitions when I explain my own position on this. The short version of the traditional story on this goes, of course, that patriotism is a healthy love of one’s country, pride in its achievements, and a natural loyalty to it as a citizen, while nationalism is the dark, often fascist variety that breeds all sorts of evil deeds.

The division, in my opinion is completely political. I never use the word patriotism because I am not satisfied with any definition of it that makes it any substantively different than any useful definition of nationalism I have ever come across. Patriotism is to nationalism as collateral damage is to killing civilians.

Because the debate usually gets heated right about here, I have found it productive to look at things the other way around and show what the two have in common: they both accept the idea that one should (or naturally does) identify with some abstract entity, called the nation, which is somehow different and distinct from the institutions of a political body called the state. They both bestow upon this entity a great deal of legitimacy, moral value, and authority and further hold that this thing generates powerful obligations of loyalty upon its members, who may or may not be the legal citizens of a state to which the nation usually corresponds.

Both of them have at least three major internal tensions or contradictions which I believe can be easily revealed by posing three questions: What is the relationship between the nation to its people (in terms of culture, language, ideology, citizenship, etc.)? What is the relationship between the nation and a state (for example, what about nationalisms which had/have no state like Kosovo or pre-Israel Zionism)? And then there is my favorite: What is the relationship between the obligations to a nation (if one even admits to having them which, for the record, I don’t), and other obligations one might have to one’s morals, some religious deity, or other communities like family, company, town, race, etc.?

Thinking about these questions eventually lead me to all sorts of more radical positions that I still support today. All of this kind of hit me about half way through completing my masters in International Affairs at Columbia University in New York, not long before September 11th—which only cemented some of my new views. One immediate effect this had was that I abandoned any thoughts I had once had of serving in Norway’s foreign ministry or the US state department, but not in time to prevent me from applying to a CIA summer internship (I remember now, with more than a few chuckles, how I tried to convince them in a letter that my dual citizenship wasn’t going to be a issue for me without revealing the fact that I was going through a major shift in my thinking about national identity and loyalty to state interests). It is important to say that I don’t think any of my current positions are necessarily incompatible with serving a state in a competent manner. My change of heart was more because I found myself really wanting to go back to the study of history and further exploring all the issues I had suddenly found so fascinating.

Derek noted in his comment that marrying a non-American (my father did the same) has made him more sensitive to claims of national superiority. I’m very happy to hear this. However, I now believe that such statements, or at least implicit claims of a similar variety, are a necessary component of nationalism. Often times they are disguised as claims of difference or uniqueness, as is very often the case in Japanese nationalism, which may not directly claim superiority. When such claims cannot be easily reduced to a banal chauvinism, they can unfortunately often result in persuasive justifications for exclusion, internal discrimination, and/or forced assimilation.

Even those who can agree with me on most of this will balk at some point and ask one of two of the following questions, “Ok, bad stuff, but why is this worse than any other kind of group identification taken to extremes?” or, “If you say there is nothing like a healthy harmless patriotism, are you going to call everything nationalist? I mean, is cheering for my country’s football team in the World Cup nationalist?” These are great and similar attacks. One makes my claim so broad as to be irrelevant, and the other makes my claim so extreme as to be ridiculous. The answer to both, I believe, is that nationalism is not in and of itself dark, evil, and problematic. Indeed, like any other group identification, it is involves a creative touch of imagination, a dash of raw fiction, and some smoothing out of the rough edges that don’t fit. It is the fact that this particular kind of identification has allied itself, or is perhaps born together with the modern state (and not just totalitarian ones!) that makes it such a potent combination that can result in so much mischief. Nationalism is not, in fact, always spread and nurtured by the state. On the contrary, it is often born out of resistance or amongst literary classes. Once it is reconfirmed and embraced by a ruling regime, however, it has a truly remarkable power. This process is just beginning here in Taiwan, where the roots of Taiwanese nationalism are now tied to a political party beginning its second term of rule. I have rooted for them on the side lines because the movement was tied to the democratization of an island controlled, ironically, by the corrupt Chinese “Nationalist” party. In the next election, however, I would love to see a new opposition party that moves beyond emotional calls for Taiwanization come to power.

The modern nation-state system is incredibly young, only a few hundred years at best, and its story is the story of combining the powerful new ideological cause of nationalism with the state’s monopoly on organized violence. This force of nationalism, we should not forget, was not always associated with the “right” or modern fascism. Like Taiwan’s nationalist movement of the last few decades, it was raised in the same cradle as the wave of leftist or liberal causes against conservative forces of the last few centuries. I’ll give one example from some reading I did on the train today. Here is what the Swedish king (of Sweden and Norway) Oscar II’s ally Otto Ludvig Nyquist has to say in 1886 of an age in which Norwegian nationalism would soon lead to Norway’s final split from its union with Sweden in 1905. He says the times were one in which

“the tendency is towards the breakdown of discipline, morals, and Christendom in order to enthrone the thousand headed hydra of freedom, equality, brotherhood, nihilism, materialism, cynicism, the Goddess of Cunning, free love, and all those terms, whatever they are called.”

(“…hvor den hele Tendents er at nedbryde Disciplin, Moral, Kristendom for at sætte alle tusindhoved Uhyrer – Frihed, Lighed, Broderskap, Nihilisme, Materialisme, Cynisme, Fornuftens Gudinde, den frie Kjærlighed, og hvad alle Stikordene heder, på Højsedet.”) – In a Nyquist letter to Oscar II cited in Agøy, Nils Ivar For konge og fedreland? Offiserer, politikk, unionsstrid og nasjonalisme 1890-1905 p. 56

The evil hydra Nyquist is referring to is embodied in the Norwegian parliament’s Venstre or “Left” forces which were pushing, at various times, for the creation of a democratic republic, the end of the monarchy and an independent Norway. From what I gather in my reading so far, Venstre was a strongly nationalist movement. I’m sure Nyquist would be shocked to see how far Norway’s dedication to freedom, equality, cynicism, and free love has come…