I think they’re words with subtly different meanings. But, you’re correct when you say “…first define what a “nation” is.” Is a nation a group of people in a tribe such as various ‘tribal nations’ in a given area? Is a nation the territory that’s home to a majority of people linked by language, religion, and/or culture? Is a nation a political entity, wherein living in an area have agreed to be regulated under one general set of laws? I’m not sure there’s a really definitive answer.
Certainly, the US can’t be described as an ethno-nation; e.i., a huge tribe of people; nor are we really ‘linked’ by anything other than language and ‘custom.’ Our customs and culture come from other ‘nations’ since we’re a Nation of Immigrants. Does that make the US solely a civil nation? (I’m not talking about manners, here. )
Before I can talk about my perception of the differences between patriotism and nationalism, I’m going to have to switch from typing as I think to Word–that’s going to have to be tomorrow.
In the meantime, I’d really like to know what you think comprises a ‘nation.’
Bob, do you consider yourself an ex-pat or an ex-nat?
Gimme a break, Bob. The symptoms listed there for xenophobia are just a generic list you'll see for any phobia on the same site... They also have nothing to do with how people actually use the word. When you accuse somebody of being xenophobic, you're not commenting about their shortness of breath. Do you really think all the Nazi leadership and so on experienced these symptoms when confronted with Jews and Gypsies and so on?
And anyway, it's not an attack on you, it's just a simple observation that these words are too politically immersed to have any rigorous meaning.
What I was showing you is that xenophobia isn’t a cuss-word but a diagnosis and symptomatic of the people who fear foreign influences or what they deem to be “strange”. You don’t accuse people of being xenophobic, that would be a diagnosis, hopefully from people who are qualified to do so. Note that I differentiated between people who are patriots, nationalists or xenophobic and didn’t bunch them together.
The Nazi-Leadership were another kettle of fish, who promoted xenophobia for their means, although their prime target was the Jews and they used different means (e.g. accusations about the Jews collaborating in setting up of the Treaty of Versailles after WWI) to get people angry at Jews, who already were on a sticky wicket. But there were the numerous victims, like the Gypsies you mentioned, who were murdered for just being different. In a country and time when everybody is behaving xenophobic, fear has a different appearence, and so it was when racism caused a holocaust. Remember, soldiers who have been decorated for bravery have often said that they had wet themselves (and worse) - so fear has many apparitions.
You really have to differentiate on this kind of behaviour. It is very often very different deep down than it appears on the surface and even the brute is often behaving out of a conviction that the victim he is slugging is in some way dangerous to his way of life. The Nationalist (of the type mentioned in the quote) is fearful of the influence of the foreign or strange - perhaps even rightly so. Nationalists are ultra conservative, trying to protect their heritage at all costs. But it cannot be a fanatical militant hatred in a cultivated country where civil order is mandatory.
If you've spent any time in political discussion, it's clearly both at the very least, and the former a great deal more often than the latter. Again, I don't know what your website demonstrates- all they seemed to have done was copy/paste the same list of symptoms into every word with the 'phobia' suffix. Yes, I imagine there are some people out there that get sweaty palms and butterflies when they encounter somebody with a funny hat or an unknown accent, but when we're talking about xenophobia and nationalism, are we really talking about [i]them?[/i] If by 'xenophobia' you seriously only mean people who have a mental disorder where they react to foreigners like I react to needles, then fine- just know that I have[i] never[/i] heard the word actually used in that context, and it's not for lack of listening.
Now see, case in point. Nationalism and patriotism (granting that they are different for the sake of argument)I get, but how do you promote a phobia? Can radio broadcasts and moving speeches really give people a phobia, of say spiders, open spaces, or Jews? I don’t think so, and if you don’t think so, it seems you’re using “Xenophobia” as an ideological criticism and not a diagnosis already.
I don't disagree with any of the above, except to say that it really does look like you are using xenophobia in the way you defined nationalism - as a dangerous, bad ideology, not a medical condition. As you defined xenophobia, I don't think we have much evidence that many Nazis or people in Nazi Germany were xenophobic.
The poster, who lives in US, maintains - in order to hide her nationalsim - that a foreign person is „nationalistic“. She implies there are „taboos“ that keep foreigners, especially male foreigners, from admitting the dominance of US nationalism, feminism, and imperialism over one age named US-Dollar-Empire. I believe that’s her US Nationalism showing - and also her try to hide it.
I believe that Lizbethrose is nationalistic and tries to hide her nationalism behind a presumpted nationalism of anyone and everyone - except herself. (Cp. Uccisore’s post here and Bob’s post here and here).
The poster she mentioned is not guilty for her ignorance of nation, of nationalism, of history, of language, of speech (and it is very ridiculous, that she with English as her mother tongue doesn’t know the difference between „language“ and „speech“), of Nietzsche, of Nietzsche’s sister, of anything and everything.
According to Lizbethros there are currently still three nations / states / countries with nationalistic, imperialistic, fascistic names:
1.) „United States of America“;
2.) „Great Britain“;
3.) „Israel“.
Have you ever been to school? Or is there no school in your country? Have you never heard what „America“ means? America is NOT a nation, NOT a state, but merely TWO CONTINENTS. According to Lizbethrose the claim of being „United States of America“ is a megalomanian nationalism and a megalomanian imperialism. Two isms! I am agaist any ism!
What does „Great“ in the name „Great Britain“ really mean? According to Lizbethrose the claim of being „Great Britain“ is a megalomanian nationalism and a megalomanian imperialism. Two isms! I am agaist any ism!
What does the name „Israel“ really mean? According to Lizbethrose the claim of being „Israel“ is a fascistic nationalism because the ancient Israel was eliminated in the year 133. So according to Lizbethrose that claim is fascism and nationalism. Two isms. I am agaist any ism!
Many names of nations / states / countries were not given by themselves, but by their neighbours, though the names of the three nations I mentioned were given by themselves. In the most cases names of nations / states / countries were given by their neighbours. For example: The Germans do not call themselves Germans and their nation / state / country Germany - they call themselves Deutsche and their nation / state / country Deutschland, but the neighbours call them Germans, Allemands, or Saxons, but not Deutsche, and their nation / state / country Germany, Allemagne, or Sachsa, but not Deutschland (exceptions are younger small neighbours, e.g. the Dutch, who became independent from Germany as the Holy Roman Empire of German Nation (Heiliges Römisches Reich Deutscher Nation - cp. Deutscher, thus not German Nation) in the year 1648 by the Peace of Westphalia. Arminius, who lived when Augustus (Octavian) as the follower of Caesar ruled in Rome, and other Germans didn’t call themselves Germans.
Arminius did NOT defend a nation, or even a nationalistic idea, Arminius defended culture and fighted civilisation, Arminius defended freedom and fighted slavery.
If you want to know what nationalism really is, Germany is not the most typical example; all other nations / states / countries in Europe have being been more nationalistic than Germany. I don’t say that primarily in order to defend my nation / state / country, but I say it primarily as historian.
Even Lizbethrose has to accept the truth and the facts. It is the truth, a fact that German scientists and philosophers have dominated in the past, and the Jewish percentage in German science and philosophy has always been about 1%, and the Jewsih population in Germany has always been about 0.5% (= ½%).
All this can be checked in books of libraries and in other sources.
According to „Hegels Dialektik“ nationalism as „Thesis“ leads to anti-nationalism as „Antithesis“, and both lead to globalism as „Synthesis“. Thus globalism doesn’t mean there is no more nationalism in it, but globalism even lifts nationalism on a higher level by denying anti-nationalism. So nationalism, anti-nationalism, and globalism are civilised barbarisms, and currently the danger comes mostly from globalism - of course in global dimensions!
I am against all isms at all because I am against ideologies at all. Thus I am also against civilised barbarism. Civilised barbarisms are for example nationalism, anti-nationalism, and globalism. I am a…istic, defendig a-…ism, fighting all isms. That is because of my strongly pronounced sense of freedom, especially the freedom of thinking and speaking. I defend freedom and fight slavery, as Arminius did in ancient times.
Not often Jewish because that is very relative: In Germany the Jewish population was only 0.5%, that is merely ½%, but the Jewish percentage in German science and philosophy was 1%.
Amongst thousand German scientist of the past you find about nine Jewish ones, and amongst thousand German philosophers of the past you find about ten Jewish ones.
Thus: When she does it, she calls it „patriotism“ or „feminism“; when they do it, she calls it „nationalism“ (incl. „nationalsocialism“ / „anti-semitism“) or „anti-feminism“.
It’s not about statistics but about known people … And there are enough of them, as you probably know, so I’ll save myself the trouble of listing them.
Greece celebrates its Independence Day on March 25. Greece won its independence from Turkey and the Ottoman Empire after many years of war led by Greek Nationalists. This is one definition of nation/nationalist/nationalism. The Ottoman Empire is another definition of ‘nation’–a people united under one religion, Islam, intent on spreading their religion through force and the forceful conquest of territory. The Spanish conquistadors and, later on, the French Jesuits, used religion to conquer nations–in this use of the word, the Incas, Aztecs, Cree, Iroquois, Seminoles, Arapaho, Navajo, and so on and so forth, all define nations.
The people who live in the United States of America are in a bit of a quandary when it comes to identity.
I’d like to talk about the difference between nationalism and patriotism. Both ‘-isms’ imply a ‘nation.’ Definitions of ‘nation’ are needed before the ‘-ism’ label can be applied. It seems to me that part of the difference is in the actions of both. Both will ‘fight’ for their countries, but, perhaps, for different reasons. It could be that a nationalist will fight for his/her country, right or wrong, while a patriot will fight for his/her country out of their love for the country, even though they recognize the country isn’t perfect. A patriot, imm, fights for the ideals their countries symbolize (in their minds,) rather than for the ‘country/territory,’ itself–unless the territory is attacked by another territory trying to conquer and force change.
The two ‘-isms’ are very intertwined, psychologically, which makes their definitions difficult to isolate distinctively.
I asked a question in this thread about nationalism, referencing some of your responses in the Nietzsche thread to which we both contributed. I received responses, most especially this from bob:
(That was a response to you, but he said the same thing to me.) I accepted that response and am trying to move on to a discussion of Nationalism vs. Patriotism and how both are so often not understood as distinct.
If you want to make this thread one of attack and counter attack, then may I suggest you move your comments out of this thread and into one of your own? I’ll try to reply to you there.
I asked a question in this thread about nationalism, referencing your replies to me in the Nietzsche thread to which we both contributed. I received responses, most especially this from bob:
(That was a response to you, but he said the same thing to me.) I accepted that response and am trying to move on to a discussion of Nationalism vs. Patriotism and how both are so often not understood as distinct.
If you want to make this thread one of attack and counter attack, then may I suggest you move your comments out of this thread and into one of your own? I’ll try to reply to you there.
I have trouble distinguishing these ideas. I mean, if I really sat down and tried to love all the Citizens of my country, I would have to become a kind of fanatic. (And note, I am not imagining some kind of passionate love, but even feeling some sense of Community with them as opposed to members of other nations.) Because I would be striving to - I can’t see this simply coming naturally - love these people and not those people, say, Argentinians. And, it seems to me, today, but also in the past, to work for the common weal, is not patriotism, since this mean it is not the common weal, but one people’s weal one desires to work for.
Take that last bit. Nationalism spurns reason, right or wrong, my country. Sure, when put like that it sounds bad and not simply patriotism. But once you look at patriotism, you find, not reason, but irrational rooting for, identification with, desire to work for their common weal and not the weal of others. The difference is that it is not clear that the patriot will do anything to help his or her ‘own’, whereas the, right or wrong quote implies the nationalist will. To me this is a matter of degree, not a matter of one spuring reason and the other being based on reason.
Frankly I have never really gotten either one. I do understand that I am more likely to look to the Welfare of those I know and those they know. But for me to somehow identify with a nation, it is beyond me. It is hallucatory and would require some kind of definitely spurning reason conceptual ruling emotion discipline. I Think I might have been able to identify with smaller city-states, like, say, genoa, if I’d been there. And certainly my tribe. But even Rhode Island is way too vast.
To be Ex-Nat, I think I would have had to take on another nationality, which I haven’t, so I’m Ex-Pat - at least, that is what I assume people say when they have lived a long time abroad.
I don’t think that anyone expects you to like all the citizens of your country, so a requirement to love them all wouldn’t go in that direction. I think that to love has been misconcieved for some time. Loving your neighbour means (for me) having an enduring emotional regard for people, and in so doing to have or show concern for them above others. The difference towards people I do not have this regard, would probably be towards having concern, but I would still respect them and show concern within the possibilities at hand.
I think the problem with patriotism/nationalism today is that we have an aggressive, rather than a defensive patriotism/nationalism, which is where the difficulties come from. Patriots were largely defending values, land, family etc. in the past. Today nationalism seems to take over and becomes aggressive, assuming some wrong doing that was done first of all to “us” by “them”. An objective look at whether this is actually true would do us all good.
But then nationalism is not about neighbors - I realize you were likely using the term in its broad sense, but to me that broad sense includes other nationalities. I have never been able to feel more emotional regard for the fine people of Alaska over the people of Montreal. The latter have been much closer to being neighbors. I don’t know what that means to hold someone in regard at such an abstract level. Love, hold in regard, be extra concerned about, identify with…I simply do not get it and it seems to me nationalism and patriotism both share a weird and problematic abstract emotionalism I cannot connect with. Nationalism - as defined pejoratively in this thread - would seem to mean that I would be naughty to help those I identify with. With patriotism, I might not go so far as to be naughty, I just wouldn’t consider how the Quebecois are feeling about Nafta or something, if my fellow countrymen seemed to benefit. Unlike the bad nationalism, I might be persuaded to object to Nafta out of concerns that only affected the Quebecois - should I be made aware of them, otherwise it would be beyond my focus - if I were merely a patriot. Bizzare. I find that bizzare. I can see automatically having greater concern for my literal neighbors, though the guy that lived next to us in the city, he scared the kids in the neighborhood, so I would put a randomly chosen Mongolian yak herder way ahead of him.
There’s the natural tendency to root for those people one feels connected to in positive ways. Interdependent on. This gets, to me, abstractly expanded to my nation’s Citizens? Which is not natural. By natural I mean flows automatically out of day to day interactions. To me both nationalism and patriotism are based on a fallacy of identification, where’s one’s actions are guided by an abstraction that need not lead to good consequences. I suppose the nationlist 1939 German ethnically germanic would not care about the Holocaust and would not object and the German ethnically Germanic patriot would object. He or she could be seen as patriotic since they are trying to keep the nation from being what it should not be. But I see no reason why a nationalist couldn’t object on similar grounds. That is not the nation I love, where is the Kaiser? Nationalist often hate the current leader, I mean look at Obama’s buddies out there. Likewise patriots. IOW a nationalist, like the Patriot, can object to what is being done, and would have been wise to object to what the Nazis were doing, given the consequences for Germany itself alone. But let’s say we agree to use these Words this way. To me it is a matter of degree. Both nationalists and patriots, as far as I can tell, were not bothered much by US intervention in Latin America. Yes, some liberals and even some conservatives managed to find and look at what was going on and be critical and I am sure they would call themselves patriots, I mean, who wouldn’t? Patriotism will lead to mistreatment of people from other countries. Nationalism is a more spit in your face version. Yes, we trained the police forces of a number of Latin American countries how to torture. Yes, ITT and Banana Corporations decided who would rule in other countries and undermined democracy, if necessary, to get this done. So what? The Patriot manages not to notice, or finds solace in the balanced reporting of the NYTimes until, a decade too late, the Times catches up with The Nation. Or the Patriot is embarrassed. But the same strange hallucination and bias is present in the patriot. I almost want to argue that it is present with less honesty.
When did we not have an aggressive nationalism patriotism? What years?
I am suer the Mexicans would have approved of this kind of analysis of the process by which we got Texas. Let alone how the natives might have viewed Manifest Destiny.
I have a terribly bad habit of reducing everything to linguistic games, though I think in most cases it’s pretty important to define one’s terms as precisely as possible. Where there is no definitive or generally agreed upon answer, arguments tend to spiral out of control rather quickly. See, e.g. “Does God exist?”
That being said, when I hear “nationalism” and “patriotism” used in conversation, or when I use them myself in conversation, I certainly consider them to have separate meanings. Putting aside for the moment how to define a nation, nationalism suggests to me a dogmatic, unthinking, automatic support for one’s nation. Patriotism, on the other hand, suggests a more idealistic, less dogmatic support.
Of course, I’m perfectly aware that the distinction I’m making is arbitrary, but if someone off the street asked me to differentiate between the two terms, that’s how I’d do it.
I think patriotism was simply the loyalty to the people (street, town, district, county, country) you are born into. Although I have always been someone who has continually been crossing borders, I can remember a neighbourhood in which there were no locked doors, where there was a spontaneous solidarity and where people looked after each other and we eat home grown foods (yes, I’m older). There was competition, but it wasn’t something that questioned that basic solidarity. In that age, we believed to be working for the common good and we were protecting values and the people of our community when we joined the armed services.
I also remember the awakening as well, when we realised that this sentiment had been betrayed and that figures were more important than people. I remember the rise of individualism, the breaking of habits, the revelation of abuse and misuse of power. It was a time of mass disappointment. Around this time I noticed how people back at home were becoming nationalists (see quote above) rather than patriots, showing irrational attitudes towards the fact that I was living abroad, especially amongst the Germans. There was an assumption that I must miss some of the aspects of Britain that I had actually sought to avoid, an assumption that people elsewhere were inferior, and the conviction that even the worst behaviour of Brits in Europe could be just accepted as “lads antics”.
My learning career in Germany brought sneers and comments about being “better than the rest” amongst people I had previously known and it was quite a while before I was able to realise that they were not everybody. But things changed again and similar opportunities were opening up in Britain, to what I had in Germany, only you had to work longer for the same reward, and Britain became financially instable.
Having said all that, when I drive home and approach the countryside I knew from childhood, albeit that I never settled there, I have a “coming home” experience. My family is still my family, and their neighbours (who were never my neighbours) welcome me into the community. That is what I feel patriotism is about. It’s about protecting that feeling of being at home amidst your family and community.
I consider it to have been patriotism that saw a threat in Nazi Germany to Britain since the Nazi’s had already marched into France after numerous other countries had been taken over. We also had our Fascists in the UK, so we knew that there were people who would have welcomed Hitler and had to act quickly to prevent worse things happen. Of course they did and WWII was simply a major catastrophe which nearly ended up destroying what civilization and cultivation there was in Europe.
I consider it “naughty” to have threatened those people who came to Britain with “The right to abide in the UK” in their passports, forgetting that they had received that right from us because our nation had assumed the right to make their country part of a commonwealth. I consider it “naughty” to go to war over a couple of Islands in the Atlantic on the Argentinian coastline. I consider it “naughty” for the West to prevent normal developments in the rest of the world because of its fear of Communism – but also the Communism that became known as such, really fascism in disguise, was to a very high degree “naughty”. It’s just that we managed to create our enemies of today at the same time as thwarting the influence of the Soviet Union.
I’m not sure of how I could rate the developments you were talking about on the “naughty scale”.
Many of the newer things you wrote about here were, in my eyes, part of a huge deception which very often got so out of hand that people went to the streets about it. The big problem has been that the behaviour of the state is no measure for the individual. People couldn’t act like the state very often does without punishment, because it is against the law. When the state is strong enough, it can even punish smaller, weaker states for doing those things that it has also done itself. Deception and hypocrisy is what ruins patriotism and curiously causes nationalism. “This is us, take it or leave it!” is a long way off from people who at least believe they are spreading something good.
Nationalism is the love and devotion to ones Nation and is simply an extension of the love of ones family and of ones Tribe.
A Nation is it’s people primarily, therefore the love of Nation is synonymous with love of the National community
Some people like above claim this is irrational.
But it’s like asking someone why they love their family?
Why? What does it matter? To reduce something so primal and innate within us to some piecemeal theoretical concept to justify it?
We love them because they are blood of our blood, flesh of our flesh, because we grew up with them, shared the same rituals with them and our fathers and their fathers knew each other as well as built up the lands with infrastructure, and bled together in war in order to give us their children a more prosperous existence.
Patriotism with an exception of the American use of it(though even then…), is loyalty to the State i.e. the Government. This is not necessarily synonymous with Nationalism, for example when their are leftist/plutocrat politicians that run on policies of anti-nationalism, loyalty to these are traitorous to the nation.
When we say “my country right or wrong,” we don’t mean to blindly follow whatever path our nations “leaders” are on, but that all of our actions whether we think some part of the nation has gone wrong or not is to either steer it back on the right direction or support it when it’s cause is just.
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu explains it beautifully in many occasions
Having used to have been an Anti-Nationalist derper myself in my early teens i’d say most people who consider themselves such do so for two reasons.
They don’t understand what Nationalism is and often Confuse it with Statism, which is funny because a lot of Leftist thought that encourages this time of nonsense desires the construction of a Society where people are bound exclusively by Statehood rather than by blood and custom.
They mistakenly Believe that all Humanity can live together in one harmonious and(even with all their supposed praise for “diversity and Multiculturalism”) unified society all following the doctrines of their “progressive/humanist” ethics. And that Nations inhibit this and cause division, when in fact what they believe to desire is something that has never been so their has been no division.
Nationalism has done more for the cause of unifying people from tribalism than any other ideal in the world. Internationalists try to claim some sort of superiority by showcasing how they can get along with people from all over the world in their shared cause of internationalism and say they have "moved past Tribalism, but notice how they behave towards Nationalists in any part of the world, and you’ll see they still have their preferences and bigotries the only difference is they’ve abandoned their biological loyalties for ideological ones. As a Nationalist i can say i’m quite found of Nationalists from all over the world even though their not a part of my Nation, i can respect them because their devotion to their cause is Noble.
Nationalism is International!
But where as peoples ideals can change (as i state about my own previous beleifs above) who you are in the sense of where you come from (your nation,your blood) never changes, it isn’t subject to these whims of fancy and therefore is a far superior foundation, which is why most States in the world today are divided along Ethnic and racial lines.
States can rise and crumble but the nation lives on so long as the blood remains in those who are alive. The blood of uncountable generations of your ancestors who toiled uncountable hours and fought and survived uncountable wars in order for you to exist.
You owe your existence to them, you are them, is that not reason enough to love ones Nation?
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