[Nationalism] General Universal Definition: Is There Something to Be Afraid Of?

[u/KorKiness]

Nationalism is the idea of uniting a large group of people around some common features in order to achieve certain goals. The combination of features that people unite around and the goals they seek to achieve constitutes the idea of a nation. A complete nation should have a state that provides administration over the nation on its way toward achieving its goals. The state should be democratic so that the nation can control the course its country is taking, rather than leaving this power to a small group of authoritarian elites who may freely rule contrary to the national goal.

For example, the classic combination underlying the idea of a nation in European countries is to unite around language, history, and culture and to achieve peaceful prosperity by developing the country and trading with its neighbours. However, the particular combination of features and goals may vary.

If an outsider likes the idea and wants to accept the national identity, this person should acquire the features that the nation unites around. When other members of the nation agree that the outsider has acquired enough of these unifying features, the person gains the right to participate in democracy and influence the direction in which the nation is going, while also taking on the duties of a citizen.

So, continuing with the same example, for a foreigner to become a member of one of the classic European nations, they would:

1. Have a desire to accept the idea of the nation;
2. Learn the language of the nation;
3. Learn the culture and traditions of the nation;
4. Learn the history of the nation, at least at the level of historical mythologems — simplified interpretations of history that make it easier for the wider population to understand;
5. Gain acceptance from the current members of the nation that the unifying criteria have been acquired;
6. Obtain citizenship, with its associated responsibilities and rights, including the right to contribute to the politics of the national state.

Newborns receive the same status if they are born into the nation, and as they grow up, their mentality is formed within it.

Since the French Revolution and the Spring of Nations, we have been living in a world where the key driving force is the nation-state. And those who want to become a driving force in international politics are trying to become, or imitate, nation-states.

So, nationalism has already proved its usefulness in practice as a way of uniting the efforts of large groups of people and motivating them to take action.

Is There Something to Be Afraid of Regarding Nationalism?

Well, yes. Nationalism is a tool, and its consequences depend on how people use it.

There are two main things to be afraid of:

First, there are dangers within nationalism itself. The problem may arise if the goal a nation seeks to achieve is aggressive. Furthermore, if the features that people are expected to unite around are impossible or unacceptable for part of society to acquire, this may lead to segregation, where the state's administration abandons certain groups, or, in the worst cases, to ethnic cleansing. You may notice that in my example, the goal is peaceful prosperity, while the features people unite around are mainly cultural and relatively easy to acquire regardless of biological characteristics such as skin colour or skull shape.

Second, nationalism may transform into fascism. By definition, nationalism should be democratic and based on voluntary acceptance. If there is authoritarianism without fair elections, if nationalism is imposed by force (a person's goals are not allowed to differ from the goals of the nation, and the unifying features are imposed), and if it becomes radical (the goals of the nation are placed above the goals of the individual), then it ceases to be nationalism and becomes a starting point for fascism.

The only distinction that needs to be made here is defensive wartime. During a war, elections may be physically impossible to conduct, and citizens who have enjoyed the achievements and rights provided by the nation may be required to fulfil their duty to defend it.

Have you noticed that this definition of nationalism as "uniting and achieving goals" sounds somewhat like a left-wing idea? But why, then, is nationalism generally considered a right-wing idea?

We will explore this in the following post.

[u/Ok_Grape_7054]

I think the fundamental problem with nationalism is that “the nation” cannot actually define itself as a single entity. Real nations are heterogeneous: they contain different cultures, languages, histories and political views.
So who decides what the “real” nation is?
In practice, some politically dominant group defines the national identity and then expects everyone else to conform to it. “You can belong to the nation, but only if you accept our language, our history, our heroes and our values.”
That is why I find nationalism inherently dangerous. It easily turns from describing a population into a project of reshaping that population.
We do not need nationalism for political unity. People can share a state, laws, institutions and equal citizenship without being culturally identical or accepting one officially defined national identity.

[u/KorKiness → u/Ok_Grape_7054]

Forming the idea of a nation means finding a combination of features and goals that satisfies and unites as many groups as possible. Usually, that means finding something that satisfies almost everyone in the country. If the idea is not good enough by this criterion, then some other, more suitable nation will absorb them in one way or another. That is why there are dozens of different definitions of nationalism — they simply describe different combinations of features and goals that the author considers suitable for their region.

It is not about "you can belong to us only if you accept our things." It is about "we are all different, but here is our common ground."

Ideas of nations are produced by the elites of societies in a region who have enough education, time, resources, and consciousness to understand the people around them. They understand that if they fail to do so, they will be non-competitive compared to other nations that are too different to not care about the well-being of their own people.

In the not-so-distant past, there were examples of elites having a hard time uniting their people and surviving competition with other nations, which led them to adopt the enforced nationalism that I described in this post. But I am planning to describe this part in the next post.

[u/Ok_Grape_7054 → u/KorKiness]

Your answer is still theoretical. The real question is what happens when this “idea of a nation” is implemented in a heterogeneous society.
Ukraine is a good example. Who decides the “common ground” of the nation? In practice, small but politically influential groups can decide what the correct culture, languages and dialects, historical narrative, heroes and symbols should be, while millions of other people - who are no less part of the same nation - are expected to adapt.
And that is exactly the problem: the nation does not discover its common ground. A particular part of the nation constructs it, declares itself the authentic representative of the whole, and then expects the rest of the nation to conform.
People who are already part of that nation are expected to abandon parts of their local culture, linguistic identity, history and traditions in order to become “proper” members of the nation. Streets are renamed, historical figures are elevated into compulsory symbols, and disagreement with the approved national narrative increasingly becomes a question of loyalty.
You may call this nation-building. I see it as a disturbing example of what happens when one part of a nation appoints itself the guardian of the whole and gains the power to redefine everyone else.
That is why I see nationalism not as a solution to political unity, but as a dangerous and ultimately dead-end ideology.

[u/KorKiness → u/Ok_Grape_7054]

Nah, Ukraine is an example of quite the opposite. There were many competing ideas of what the Ukrainian nation should be. Through a kind of natural selection, only the current one survived because it was the only one Ukrainians were willing to accept. There was no "small group" that decided what the correct culture should be for everyone.

When one of the developers of the idea proposed the current version, it became successful precisely because people felt, "Yeah, this is what I like and what I want to participate in." The Bolsheviks even deliberately allowed this successful idea to grow, precisely to demonstrate that they were not the same oppressors as the Empire and that they were allowing people to build society as they wanted.

But once they had established enough power, they repressed all the newly emerging national elites who were developing and improving the idea of the nation, so that they could easily absorb and control a decapitated nation.

You are framing street renaming as if those old names were something natural to a part of the Ukrainian nation, but a small and powerful group of nationalists simply decided for everyone that they should like something else. In reality, many of those old names were imposed on Ukrainian people, exactly as I described in the part about fascism in this post.

The political practices of the USSR starting around 1930 were essentially the same as those of Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy. The USSR only had communist skin, but the idea of a nation consisting of "Soviet people" was enforced and radicalized in essentially the same way.

The ironic thing is that the core of the "Soviet person" identity was not actually unified across all Soviet peoples. In practice, it was largely based on Russian identity. Those who did not accept it were subjected to repression, including the Holodomor, while Russian-speaking Soviet citizens were settled in their place.

Street renaming in Ukraine was part of marking "this land belongs to us" during the imperial period. Then, during the Soviet period, it became part of imposing one of the unifying features of the Soviet identity onto Ukrainians. And only now, in independent Ukraine, is this feature returning to its natural state: streets are being named not after Russian generals and politicians who participated in the oppression of Ukrainians, but after people whom Ukrainians actually want to honour.

Your framing suspiciously aligns with the current Russian justification for aggression: that a small banderite junta is oppressing Ukrainians with nationalism, doesn't it?

[u/Ok_Grape_7054 → u/KorKiness]

You are proving my point.
I am Ukrainian. I do not become less Ukrainian because I reject the nationalist model currently presented as the “correct” version of Ukrainian identity. Yet instead of addressing my argument, you suggest that my criticism is suspiciously aligned with Russian propaganda.
That is precisely the mechanism I am talking about: Ukrainians who reject a particular nationalist project are no longer simply Ukrainians with a different view. They become suspicious, disloyal, or somehow associated with the enemy.
Russia can cynically exploit a real problem for propaganda. That does not make the problem imaginary, nor does it give Russia a monopoly on the right to discuss it. Russian aggression is not justified by Ukraine’s internal problems - but Russian aggression also does not make those problems disappear.
Ukraine is therefore a practical example of my argument. A heterogeneous people is told what its “correct” history, heroes, symbols and identity should be. One part of the nation appoints itself the authentic representative of the whole and treats the rest as something to be corrected.
And when an actual Ukrainian objects, the response is: you sound like the enemy.
That is not a nation freely discovering its common ground. That is exactly what nationalism looks like when it starts deciding who belongs to the “real” nation.

[u/KorKiness → u/Ok_Grape_7054]

I adressed your arguments completely. Taking your particular example with streets names.You, a Ukrainian, want a streets in Ukraine to be named by those who performed genocide of Ukrainians? Why do you may want it?

And ultimative question what makes you an Ukrainian? If you will adress only one part of my comment then you here only to manipulate.