what is nationalism?
In: Other
The belief that your nation is the best, most deserving, most special nation to exist or ever exist. Your nation can do no wrong and deserves your support no matter what. Even if you know that your nation is wrong it’s not wrong and still deserves your support.
Other nations are just there to either support your nation or be enemies and in either case it’s perfectly fine to fuck them both over if it helps your nation. But watch out any nation that treats yours the same! That’s evil!
You ever meet a Mets fan? Completely obsessed with this poorly organized and performing team, never having a reason to continue supporting them other than their dad and their dads dad being Mets fans. Eagerly proclaiming “I’ll be a Mets fan until the day that I die!”.
Yeah nationalism is like that but replace MLB baseball teams with the governments and countries of the world
“My country first! All other countries next. And when we do join forces, it had better be in my country’s best interest. Also, if my country did it, it’s right — unless we have to change it — in which case, my country is the best at fixing things!”
It’s a very general term that broadly encompasses an ideology of national exceptionalism (the belief that a nation could only do things the nation has done because it is that nation) for example if someone were to say “Brazil has succeeded in every endeavor because it’s Brazil”. Nazi Germany is a very clear example of this, they believed in “the German spirit” and “German race”, things that are unique to the German nation in their eyes.
In short, it’s a broad descriptor that if it’s to be summed up in as few words as possible it would be this; “my nation is better than all other nations.”
There’s a lot of different sorts of nationalism
https://nigerianscholars.com/tutorials/nationalism-and-decolonization/types-of-nationalism/
Most comments here define nationalism by its worst aspects: “my nation is better than the others!”
But they neglect the real meaning of nationalism: “my country = my nation”. It doesn’t mean some nations are better than others. Just that nations (groups of people with a common cultural heritage, values, etc,…) have a right to have their own countries and self-govern the way they see fit.
Is it good? Is it bad? Mostly depends on the outcome. There’s no denying some real nasty stuff was done in the name of nationalism, but it also was born as a response to some worse previous forms of rule.
Nationalism itself isn’t anything harmful, since it’s simply the belief in a nation – that the people of one area / language / culture should come together and found / form a nation.
Nationalism becomes problematic if paired with extreme patriotism or exclusion / chauvinism, because then you place “your” nation above all other in a superior / inferior kind of way. That’s the way we experience “nationalism” nowadays (at least most of the times). So yeah, though nationalism itself has helped form the countries we know today, it’s definition has shifted in modern days.
A country is a combination of nation and state. The state is the political and technical part of a country, it’s the people in charge, the taxes, the laws and infrastructure. The nation is the identity of a country, the culture, the language, the art, the philosophy, the history.
Nationalism, at it’s root, is a strong attachment to a national identity. Although the word is often used to describe a toxic, dangerous, or bigoted attachment to national identity. It is often linked with political ideologies that seek to “protect” an idealised form of national identity, usually from perceived outside threats such as immigrants, racial minorities and religions, or anything else that the nationalist is worried might weaken their nation.
the idea that a culture or people deserve their own autonomous state (the nation) and that the good of the nation equals the good of the people. furthermore that nations are in conflict with each other and that mixing makes them inferior. goes hand in hand with glorifying national identity.
Historically it has been used as a geopolitical tool to build nations (Germany, Italy), expand them (Great Britain) or gain liberty from foreign rulers (most of the global south, the balkans).
Since I’m from the Balkans nationalism here has a really negative meaning, for me ofc. Where I come from whenever someone is a nationalists it means his country is the best and everyone is the worst. I like to use the term blood cell counting. For those people its important that you are the same nationality as they, if you are someone else well then its not good. So people “count blood cells” to see if you are what they want you to be, horrible thing. Those are my experiences unfortunately. Never seen, or wanted to see, some positive nationalism. One thing is loving your country, but what saw and heard was a “clean” country where just one nation lives there. If you have answers we can talk no problem.
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