You are a nationalist.

[Flying Pig]

OK, you're really starting to get desperate. Did Ptolemaic Egypt and Gaul just decide to unite 'because they identified with one another?'

I'm not quite sure how that relates to what I said. In any case, both of those are excellent examples of political communities which did have cohesive identities and ideologies that justified their existence, but did not rely on nationalism. What people in Ptolemaic Egypt had in common was that they were ruled by the Pharaoh/Basileus (depending on how you chose to see things) in Alexandria. The rightful borders of Ptolemaic Egypt were defined as the territory that the Pharaoh/Basileus could lay his hands on, and his authority as a leader was his descent from Ptolemy I, who was given authority to rule the entire Macedonian empire by Alexander (again, this took a bit of choosing to see things the right way), or alternatively that, as Pharaoh, he had the divine mandate of the gods to rule Egypt and conquer lesser peoples. Likewise, being a 'Roman' meant being a subject of the Roman empire, with the various legal rights and responsibilities that came with that: the proper boundaries of the Roman empire were the whole world (but some of it they chose not to administer directly, of course), and they were so because the Roman Empire was ruled by the people of Rome, to whom Jupiter had granted 'empire without end'.

Neither of those are nationalist in the slightest. They're both a long way from the legitimately nationalist arguments used to argue that Holstein should have been incorporated into the German Empire - the argument there was that the people of Holstein were part of the German Nation, despite living in Denmark, and that the rightful borders of Germany encompassed all of the people who belonged to the German nation (plus whichever non-European territories that they could get hold of, but that's part and parcel of the sort of imperialism where you only count as a person if you live in Europe).

 

[Angst]

I honestly don't see how this engages at all with my arguments. I don't care whether it is based on ethnicity, religion, civic institutions. If a group of people identify as a nation then they are a nation. That's the only definition any reasonable person should accept.

If a group of people identiy as a nation then they are a nation? So nations did not exist before nationalism? Also, you understand that you are actually arguing against yourself here? If a group of people identify as a nation then they are a nation, sure. But they can identiy as lots of other things.

Also, you must understand that in order to identify as a nation, you have to believe in nation as a concept, and that is intrinsically tied to history.

Name them, then. I'm tired of arguing with people who can't even state their position.

Look, it's not my problem you don't comprehend that nationalism is a relatively new thing and isn't universal. Also I'm unsure what you expect me to say. There is a wealth of political ideologies out with organizing principles there that aren't nationalist. Have at it. I'm honestly indifferent to your tiredness, and seeing you ignore Flying Pig's perfectly reasonable example of the Habsburgs is kind of ridiculous. I have stated my position plenty of times and you have failed to accept it.

 

[Lexicus]

If a group of people identify as a nation then they are a nation.

What does this actually mean, concretely?

 

[Angst]

Apparently it means that everyone is a nationalist. It doesn't connect for me, either.

 

[Moriarte]

Assuming you don't support an immediate and total abolition of national borders (or a proletariat revolt), then you are a nationalist.

Nationalism, as a superstructure, strives to legitimise/solidify elite’s right of governance and it’s inception is dictated by ongoing economic necessity. Nationalism is here to stay as a simple tool in the box, until the underlying need for it disappears due to intellectual, health, technological and possibly spiritual advances, the synthesis of which can gradually create a political-economic model(s), where current nation-states would pale in comparison of raw economic effectiveness.

 

[Aleksey_aka_al]

There's no real difference between saying "nations work better than global citizenship because [insert reason here]" and "nationalism is natural and good." At their core, both are appeals to pragmatism. Assuming you don't support an immediate and total abolition of national borders (or a proletariat revolt), then you are a nationalist.

Funny that the first successful proletarian revolution led to creating national borders in an almost unitary country prior to that.

 

[Mouthwash]

I'm not quite sure how that relates to what I said. In any case, both of those are excellent examples of political communities which did have cohesive identities and ideologies that justified their existence, but did not rely on nationalism.

I don't think that the vast majority of Hungarians, Italians and Flemish had much in common with each other under the Habsburgs.

What people in Ptolemaic Egypt had in common was that they were ruled by the Pharaoh/Basileus (depending on how you chose to see things) in Alexandria. The rightful borders of Ptolemaic Egypt were defined as the territory that the Pharaoh/Basileus could lay his hands on, and his authority as a leader was his descent from Ptolemy I, who was given authority to rule the entire Macedonian empire by Alexander (again, this took a bit of choosing to see things the right way), or alternatively that, as Pharaoh, he had the divine mandate of the gods to rule Egypt and conquer lesser peoples. Likewise, being a 'Roman' meant being a subject of the Roman empire, with the various legal rights and responsibilities that came with that: the proper boundaries of the Roman empire were the whole world (but some of it they chose not to administer directly, of course), and they were so because the Roman Empire was ruled by the people of Rome, to whom Jupiter had granted 'empire without end'

Neither of those are nationalist in the slightest.

Exactly. The Egyptians, Greeks and Gauls didn't care about one another. They submitted to a foreign power that just happened to control them all.

They're both a long way from the legitimately nationalist arguments used to argue that Holstein should have been incorporated into the German Empire - the argument there was that the people of Holstein were part of the German Nation, despite living in Denmark, and that the rightful borders of Germany encompassed all of the people who belonged to the German nation (plus whichever non-European territories that they could get hold of, but that's part and parcel of the sort of imperialism where you only count as a person if you live in Europe).

This is pretty much how I defined nationalism. Thanks for agreeing.

If a group of people identiy as a nation then they are a nation? So nations did not exist before nationalism?

Partly. The idea of organizing into a single polity was new, but it's hard to speak of ethnic groups without the 'stuff' that defined them. Some nationalities were inventions of the late or early-modern era, but others had roots stretching back thousands of years, even though they weren't called nations then.

Also, you understand that you are actually arguing against yourself here? If a group of people identify as a nation then they are a nation, sure. But they can identiy as lots of other things.

Nationalism deals with how people want to be tied to other people. If it doesn't, then I don't see the relevance.

Funny that the first successful proletarian revolution led to creating national borders in an almost unitary country prior to that.

Yeah, I probably should have added monarchists as an exception.

What does this actually mean, concretely?

That's imprecise- I should have said that if a group of people act as if they are a nation, they are a nation.

 

[Flying Pig]

I don't think that the vast majority of Hungarians, Italians and Flemish had much in common with each other under the Habsburgs.

Exactly. The Egyptians, Greeks and Gauls didn't care about one another. They submitted to a foreign power that just happened to control them all.

This is pretty much how I defined nationalism. Thanks for agreeing.

I'm afraid you've lost me here. But to pick up the key point:

Exactly. The Egyptians, Greeks and Gauls didn't care about one another. They submitted to a foreign power that just happened to control them all.

That's simply not true. No empire, particularly not an ancient one, can be held together entirely by brute force or the fear of it: there were never going to be enough Roman soldiers, or the means to get them around Europe fast enough, to be physically on hand to keep an entire continent suppressed by force. Indeed, if you look at where Roman legions were actually deployed, you can see that they were not designed to be an internal peacekeeping force: with the notable exception of Britain, which remained heavily militarised, there were very few soldiers in internal provinces. This map isn't bad:

You can see that people in Greece, southern Gaul and western Anatolia can't have been staying under Roman rule because they were scared of the Roman army: the Roman army wasn't something that they saw, except when it was passing through to attack somebody else. The Roman empire definitely did have an ideology that held it together and defined people as Romans: you were a Roman if you had certain legal rights (hence Paul in the Bible was very proud of it, despite being born in Judea and probably not knowing much more Latin than civis Romanus sum, if that), and by extension if you knew and did certain things, such as wearing the right clothes - a toga, not trousers - speaking the right language, or at least speaking Latin the right way, and knowing the right body of mythology and literature. However, the whole point was that Roman identity sat on top of your other identities, which we might vaguely recognise as 'national' today: you could be a Greek, for instance, and still be a Roman, just as you could be a Gaul and also a Roman. Even then, the ideology of the empire wasn't built on the fact that it only contained Romans: it was thought of as the Romans, their allies and their conquests, and nobody had a problem with the state including people who were definitely not Romans - on the contrary, that was a good thing, because conquering other people was what emperors were supposed to do. So to come back to what you said, if you define nationalism as:

the legitimately nationalist arguments used to argue that Holstein should have been incorporated into the German Empire - the argument there was that the people of Holstein were part of the German Nation, despite living in Denmark, and that the rightful borders of Germany encompassed all of the people who belonged to the German nation (plus whichever non-European territories that they could get hold of, but that's part and parcel of the sort of imperialism where you only count as a person if you live in Europe).

Then I've just shown you a state with an ideology that gave it a common identity, and a justification for where its borders were, and neither of those are remotely nationalist by the definition you just subscribed to.

 

[Mouthwash]

That's simply not true. No empire, particularly not an ancient one, can be held together entirely by brute force or the fear of it: there were never going to be enough Roman soldiers, or the means to get them around Europe fast enough, to be physically on hand to keep an entire continent suppressed by force.

I didn't say that at all. I meant that Egypt and Gaul came together under the umbrella of a different power. A Roman-era Egyptian likely didn't care one whit if the Semnones or Cherusci crossed the Rhine and sacked some cities.

You can see that people in Greece, southern Gaul and western Anatolia can't have been staying under Roman rule because they were scared of the Roman army: the Roman army wasn't something that they saw, except when it was passing through to attack somebody else. The Roman empire definitely did have an ideology that held it together and defined people as Romans: you were a Roman if you had certain legal rights (hence Paul in the Bible was very proud of it, despite being born in Judea and probably not knowing much more Latin than civis Romanus sum, if that), and by extension if you knew and did certain things, such as wearing the right clothes - a toga, not trousers - speaking the right language, or at least speaking Latin the right way, and knowing the right body of mythology and literature. However, the whole point was that Roman identity sat on top of your other identities, which we might vaguely recognise as 'national' today: you could be a Greek, for instance, and still be a Roman, just as you could be a Gaul and also a Roman. Even then, the ideology of the empire wasn't built on the fact that it only contained Romans: it was thought of as the Romans, their allies and their conquests, and nobody had a problem with the state including people who were definitely not Romans - on the contrary, that was a good thing, because conquering other people was what emperors were supposed to do. So to come back to what you said, if you define nationalism as:

Then I've just shown you a state with an ideology that gave it a common identity, and a justification for where its borders were, and neither of those are remotely nationalist by the definition you just subscribed to.

No, I think Roman identity counts as civic nationalism.

Just answer this, do you think that Britain should be dismantled as an independent state? If not, then please explain why that isn't a form of nationalism (however weak).

 

[Flying Pig]

I've just explained that supporting a state is not the same as nationalism. If it's your own state, that's what we call patriotism. As we said before, plenty of people supported the Habsburg monarchy while fully understanding that it contained many national groups - that wasn't a problem: it was the whole point. You seem to think that patriotism is necessarily a form of nationalism, which runs contrary to how both of those words are normally used. What do you think they should mean, and why should they be changed like that?

On the Roman subject, people in the provinces absolutely did care if the barbarians crossed the Rhine - in fact, quite a few of them even wrote about it. Here's Jerome, a Christian leader in Bethelehem, on his reaction to hearing of the Sack of Rome in 410:

Intelligence was suddenly brought me of the death of Pammachus and Marcella, the siege of Rome, and the falling asleep of many of my brethren and sisters. I was so stupefied and dismayed that day and night I could think of nothing but the welfare of the community; it seemed as though I was sharing the captivity of the saints, and I could not open my lips until I knew something more definite; and all the while, full of anxiety, I was wavering between hope and despair, and was torturing myself with the misfortunes of other people. But when the bright light of all the world was put out, or, rather, when the Roman Empire was decapitated, and, to speak more correctly, the whole world perished in one city, I became dumb and humbled myself, and kept silence from good words, but my grief broke out afresh, my heart glowed within me, and while I meditated the fire was kindled.

 

[Mouthwash]

I've just explained that supporting a state is not the same as nationalism. If it's your own state, that's what we call patriotism. You seem to think that patriotism is necessarily a form of nationalism, which runs contrary to how both of those words are normally used. What do you think they should mean, and why should they be changed like that?

It's possible for something to be both patriotic and nationalist, and no, I don't think that all instances of the former are also the latter.

As we said before, plenty of people supported the Habsburg monarchy while fully understanding that it contained many national groups - that wasn't a problem: it was the whole point.

What on earth are you trying to say here? Nationalism is form of self-identification as a group. An Italian would be loyal to their monarch in spite of him also ruling Hungary and Flanders, not BECAUSE of it.

On the Roman subject, people in the provinces absolutely did care if the barbarians crossed the Rhine - in fact, quite a few of them even wrote about it. Here's Jerome, a Christian leader in Bethelehem, on his reaction to hearing of the Sack of Rome in 410:

Yeah, and British people talk about Aleppo the same way today. Your guy was an Illyrian who lived most of his life in Rome, Antioch and Constantinople- you couldn't have used a better example of 'rootless cosmopolitan' here.

 

[Flying Pig]

What on earth are you trying to say here? Nationalism is form of self-identification as a group. An Italian would be loyal to their monarch in spite of him also ruling Hungary and Flanders, not BECAUSE of it.

I'm not sure that follows: does it follow that the Hungarians are loyal to the monarch because he is the ruler of Hungary, but are prepared to overlook that he's not Hungarian? If so, why are the Italians so attached to him? In a sense, I think you're right - that the legitimacy of the Habsburg Emperor, or the Roman Emperor, is in his office, not his national status - hence it doesn't particularly matter where any individual emperor comes from, and you have Roman emperors from all over the place. In the same way, you can have kings of England from Wessex, Normandy, Holland and Hannover which don't cause a particular fuss, because the ideology that makes the king of England legitimate doesn't hinge on his being born English. This - nationalist - idea that leaders are in some sense the personification of the nation is only one way to have political legitimacy: in its extreme form, it's fascist, though you do see muted forms of it in quite a lot of modern democracies.

But if you're looking again at the Roman Empire, the legitimacy of that empire was that it had been given unlimited authority by the gods, and the legitimacy of the emperor was tied to that. In other words, the fact that the emperor was regularly involved in conquering barbarians was a key part of what made him legitimate as emperor, and there was at least theoretically room for unease if the emperor didn't seem particularly keen on extending Roman power.

 

[Lexicus]

That's imprecise- I should have said that if a group of people act as if they are a nation, they are a nation.

Okay, what does this actually mean? You realize this is a tautology as stated, right?

 

[Mouthwash]

I'm not sure that follows: does it follow that the Hungarians are loyal to the monarch because he is the ruler of Hungary, but are prepared to overlook that he's not Hungarian? If so, why are the Italians so attached to him? In a sense, I think you're right - that the legitimacy of the Habsburg Emperor, or the Roman Emperor, is in his office, not his national status - hence it doesn't particularly matter where any individual emperor comes from, and you have Roman emperors from all over the place. In the same way, you can have kings of England from Wessex, Normandy, Holland and Hannover which don't cause a particular fuss, because the ideology that makes the king of England legitimate doesn't hinge on his being born English. This - nationalist - idea that leaders are in some sense the personification of the nation is only one way to have political legitimacy: in its extreme form, it's fascist, though you do see muted forms of it in quite a lot of modern democracies.

But if you're looking again at the Roman Empire, the legitimacy of that empire was that it had been given unlimited authority by the gods, and the legitimacy of the emperor was tied to that. In other words, the fact that the emperor was regularly involved in conquering barbarians was a key part of what made him legitimate as emperor, and there was at least theoretically room for unease if the emperor didn't seem particularly keen on extending Roman power.

I'm really missing your point here. What does this have to do with any definition of nationalism I've argued for?

Okay, what does this actually mean? You realize this is a tautology as stated, right?

Yes.

 

[Traitorfish]

That's a definition of popular sovereignty, not of nationalism.

In modern usage, the two tend to assume each other. We define a "people" not as a voluntary free association but as an enduring historical community, that is, as a nation, and we tend to assume that national self-government is justified by the existence of the nation as sovereign "people". Even in a fascist regime, this holds true, they just hold some wacky ideas about "self-government".

You can certainly find examples of popular sovereignty that don't refer to nationalism, but not many of them would find mainstream acceptance today. Closest I can imagine is some remaining tribal groups, and they are usually re-imagined in nationalistic terms; a tribal confederation becomes the "Lakota Nation" for example.

If that's the case, why is the pro-Remain/EU crowd seething at Britain's perceived resurgent nationalism? Even if the purpose of integration wasn't to do away with national identities, there was certainly an expectation that they would lose relevance.

So at least 48% of people aren't nationalists?

It seems to me like you're making the same error you starting off highlighting, the conflation of nationalism-in-general with a specifically exclusionary and aggressive form of nationalism.

 

[Flying Pig]

This is true, but that only means that modern states and nations tend to coincide. It doesn't mean that most people in those states support them because (and providing that) they coincide with a nation. Again, when you get to places like Northern Ireland, that idea starts looking a bit feeble

 

[Traitorfish]

This is true, but that only means that modern states and nations tend to coincide. It doesn't mean that most people in those states support them because (and providing that) they coincide with a nation. Again, when you get to places like Northern Ireland, that idea starts looking a bit feeble

The claim was not that people support any state that coincides with a nation, but that they assume coincidence with a nation as crucial condition of a legitimate state. Northern Ireland is an expression of just that belief: they key ideological conflict is whether the current borders are authentically "national", the Nationalist position being that the Six Counties are Irish and should therefore be part of an Irish state, and the Unionist position being that they are British (Ulster and British, depending on who you ask), and should remain within a British state (or an Ulster state within a British state, again depending on who you ask). In its most general sense, "nationalism" means the belief that states and nations should coincide, that states are justified by nationality and that nations are entitled to statehood, however any of those terms are defined specifically.

 

[Flying Pig]

I think Unionism, at least, is a bit more complicated than that. If you ask a Unionist if they're British, they'll say yes, but they won't agree that that stops them from being Irish. The Nationalist argument certainly is, well, nationality, but the Unionist one is built on something slightly different. The same is true in Scotland - even the most ardent No voter would never have argued that the Scottish nation didn't exist.

 

[Angst]

I think that if nationalism universally means loyalty to state or civic coherence (constituting elements in all forms of states) it's kind of useless as a political ideology, and as such useless as an ideological argument.

 

[Lexicus]

Yes.

What does it mean in practice?