Patriotism v. Nationalism

I regard myself as a British patriot because I love my country, not because I hate anyone else's or regard mine as superior.

I'm currently trying to memorise a piece of masonic ritual which includes an encouragement of allegiance to one's native land with the words

"ever remembering that nature has implanted in your breast a sacred and indissoluble attachment towards that country whence you derived your birth and infant nurture."

In other words the authors of that passage believed it right and natural that, say, a Frenchman should love France, that an American should love America or a Pole love Poland, and that - the key point - none of these feelings is inimical to the others.

That, to me is the difference between Patriotism and Nationalism. I have never heard of or met any nationalist movement which did not at least to some extent define itself by what it was not, and by reference to those who were not "one of us" as well as by what it was.

There was a time in the 19th century when nationalism could be seen as a progressive force because it encouraged people to obtain freedom by throwing off the yoke of oppressive foreign despots.

In the 20th century, however, nationalism has increasingly been the cause of wars and conflicts, of which the National Socialist German Workers Party, the NSDAP or as they are more usually known, the Nazi party, were the extreme example.

In this post I am going to be extremely critical of certain strands of nationalism. Let me make clear that I do not think all nationalists are neo-nazis, nor that everyone who supports UKIP or British exit from the EU is insane - indeed, I have not decided how to vote myself in the EU referendum yet - nor that all SNP supporters are mad, nor that either group are not entitled to their opinions.

I do however think that some forms of nationalism are both extremely foolish and downright  dangerous to the welfare of any country where those views become popular.

It is perfectly possible to want to reform or even leave the European Union on the basis of a worldview which is patriotic and outward-looking rather than nationalist and xenophobic.


NATIONALISM AND THE EU

I consider it perfectly natural for each country to want its' representatives to the EU to fight for their national interests. Hence when David Cameron goes to Brussels or to other European capitals to fight for British interests, it should be perfectly possible for him to find allies who recognise that policies which he is arguing for to protect British interests will also be in their country's interests too.

I know people who believe that the present EU is not working for any of the peoples of Europe and want it disbanded, or failing that for us to leave, without hating or being hostile to our neighbours.

However, I do not like the level of hostility to people of other countries which I see being whipped up in most the countries of Europe by various nationalistic parties -  the French National Front, "Golden Dawn" in Greece for example.

This does not apply to all Eurosceptics, here or elsewhere. There are plenty of Eurosceptics in both the Conservative party and UKIP who are not guilty of the sort of thing I am talking about, such as Dan Hannan MEP or Douglas Carswell MP, to give two of the most obvious examples. Eurosceptic parties which do not peddle chauvinistic nationalism include the AFD (Alternative fur Deutschland) in Germany.

But I do have concerns about the level of anger against, first, those who are seen as foreigners, and then anyone perceived as inadequately tough on them, among a large chunk of the supporters of two very different types of nationalism.

The first is the hardline British nationalism of some people in UKIP. And the second is the hardline element of the Scottish National Party.


EU vs. USSR

Let me just give one example of the sort of UKIP thinking which I find to be seriously over the top - some "Kippers" habitually refer to the European Union as the "EUSSR."

Now I would be the first to admit that the EU has a democratic deficit and sometimes adopts centralised bureaucratic policies which remind me of GOSPLAN. So the term has just - just - enough truth in it to have been funny the first time I heard it.

But some people talk as if they mean it. As if the EU was the sort of blood-drenched dictatorship propped up by the KGB which killed opponents on a scale only rivalled in recent centuries by Hitler, Mao or WWII era Imperial Japan, or as if Jean-Claude Junker had a human rights record like that of Yuri Andropov.

This becomes all the more ironic when the same people who use the term "EUSSR" also try to blame everything which has gone wrong in the Ukraine on the EU. It was, after all, Vladimir Putin who actually was a KGB officer under Comrade Andropov. And it shows.


SCOTTISH NATIONALISM

And the same sort of anger combined with complete lift-off from reality is displayed by a significant part - not, I hasten to emphasise, all - of those who support the SNP.

I have previously referred to the recent article in "The Scotsman" about the abuse David Mundell MP, re-elected as the one Tory MP in Scotland, received from "Cybernats" and if you want to know what he was talking about you need look no further than the comments some of them have posted on his article: you can read both at

http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/top-stories/david-mundell-cybernats-helped-me-to-election-win-1-3782135

A short while before last year's Independence Referendum, the Economist journalist who currently writes their "Bagehot" column wrote a provocatively titled article called

"How a nation went mad."

In that article Bagehot made what I believe to be a very strong case that many of the arguments being advanced for Scottish independence were incoherent nonsense and it was frightening how many normally rational people were taken in by this "exhilarating delusion."

Bagehot suggests that

"In England, socialism is dead because people remember the wreckage of the mixed economy and the 1978 winter of discontent. In Scotland it lives on, because people believe it was sabotaged by the English."

A similar provocative title was given to a piece written this month in "Standpoint" Iain Martin,

"How Scotland lost its' mind."

As the spelling of his Christian name gives away, Iain is a Scot by birth and although he lives in London thinks of Scotland as home. Which did not stop him being described as English by some of the comments on the article.

Let me give you a representative example of such comments, and I will make an exception to my usual standards of the language I accept on this site to make the point. A person calling herself "Dr Angela McBain" replied to his article with the words.

"What a moronic, baseless, tasteless and utterly ignorant pile of shit you write. Not even worthy of a high brow response. Crawl back in your hole."

Charming.

Here is an extract from the article:

"A former Labour cabinet minister told me of a recent encounter with a senior social worker in his Scottish constituency, who proclaimed proudly that she would never vote Labour again because the party had got into bed with the filthy Tories to defend the Union during the referendum. She knew, she said, exactly what was going on.

He expressed regret on hearing her view and asked, out of interest, where she got her news and her theories from. From Facebook, she said. Like many SNP supporters, every evening she logs onto social media for her fill of nationalist news, as she does not trust the BBC or newspapers.

And did the fall in the oil price not concern her?

“She said to me,” said the MP, “that it was a plot by the global oil companies and the British government to keep Scotland supine and in the Union. I suggested politely that this sounded odd. If there was a sinister plot by the oil companies wouldn’t it involve increasing rather than reducing the price? After all, the reduction in the oil price has slashed their profits. She wouldn’t listen.”


Iain Martin argues that people of strongly nationalist views form a "tartan echo chamber" bouncing nationalist ideas off each other and reinforcing them without the testing that would come from a real debate or any willingness to accept even facts, let alone opinions, which do not fit their preconceptions.


CONCLUSION

A lesson there for all of us, perhaps, not just nationalists and socialists. If we get all our news and views, and debate online, only with people who have similar opinions to our existing views and reinforce them, we will be cutting ourselves off from the experience and knowledge of large parts of society. This may be part of the reason why so many "experts" were so badly wrong about the result of the 2015 general election. And some people may get a similar shock with the EU Referendum.

Whichever way the EU referendum vote goes, I don't think either side is going to get less than 35%. I also suspect that a significant proportion of the losing side will be utterly shocked and horrified to learn that they are not in the majority. After all, nobody with any sense is going to trust the opinion polls, will they?

Comments

Jim said…
The main thing for this referendum is that's its going to be difficult for anyone to filter out the facts from the noise, and that goes for both campaigns. On the one hand we have DC and others saying you cant have single market membership without Political EU membership, which is not true. On the other side we have Dan Hannon stating how important it is that the UK retains its single market membership, then immediately contradicts himself by saying how we should adopt the approach of Switzerland.

Now I understand that the Euro zone, The EU, EFTA and the EEA are a bit of a minefield to anyone but the closest of followers, but you would think the PM and an MEP would know the difference.

for the avoidance of further doubt to readers of this blog, I shall just try and unmirk the water a little.

EU - The European Union is a political union (not a trade union, a political union) between 28 different Member states (the UK is one of them)

Euro Zone - this is the 19 Member states that use the Euro as their official currency (Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain). The UK is not a member of the Euro zone as we use the Pound.

EFTA - (European Free Trade Agreement) This a trade agreement between the 4 NILS countries (they are not member states) and are Norway, Iceland, Lichtenstein and Switzerland.

EEA - (European Economic Area) this is made of 3 of the 4 EFTA countries (Norway, Iceland & Lichtenstein) and all of the EU, it is commonly referred to as the single market, and the UK is a member.


the thing to note here is that you dont need to be a member of the EU to be part of the Single Market, as we can see from Norway, Iceland and Lichtenstein.

Switzerland is not a member of the single market (the EEA) instead they use very fragile Bi-lateral trading agreements to trade with the EU, they use EFTA to trade only with Norway, Iceland and Lichtenstein.

Jim said…
Should have said (more for completeness than anything else, the 28 Member States of the EU - Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the UK.

Jim said…
I feel like the Umpire at the back of the University boat race now, who yells down the megaphone "OOXFOOOOORD! CAAAAAABBBRIDE! BOTH CREEEEWS!" telling them they are in danger of breaching the rules.

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