Does anybody believe in nationalism anymore?
Perhaps I don’t get out enough and if I did I would probably be shocked. I well remember around the time of the Whitlam dismissal seeing a person carrying on in public espousing Australian nationalism. I found it chilling because I remembered what Pierre Trudeau had said about the history of the twentieth century. That anxiety supposed a close link between nationalism and racism, which perhaps might not apply in settler societies when we can get our relationship with the indigenous population and coming to terms with their cruel cultural dispossession.
Settler societies in the modern era were destined to be multi-cultural societies, as Europe has become. The modern anxiety is with Islam. I suspect that Islam acclimatizes like other belief systems to the wider society around. Religions go native, which in part explains Islam’s diversity. Sufism and “Talibanism” are as lemonade and whiskey.
I particularly like the historical irony here that to my knowledge has not been commented upon. I do not presume that I am the only person to notice that during the time of the Crusader states that each new infusion of Westerners was shocked by the adaption of the earlier settlers. Of course, the Crusades are now contested ground. Who knows what impact Christendom had on Islam, other than through later imperialism, but Islamic Civilization had a profound and positive influence on Christendom, despite the Inquisition (and its’ mission creep).
There is a sense in which nationalism might be legitimate. Or is this just an example of my excessive loyalty. In a democracy as exercised through a public meeting there is the sense of the meeting, although that is the spirit that is often manipulated in various ways, and to the integrity of the institutions, not necessarily as they are, but as they should be.
I suggest if we are grounded in local democracy and in our local environment, and we understand that every process is part of the whole, we readily connect to global concerns. I learn that the river of my childhood memories is drying up. Not only that river but the Murray River has big problems. Is it not seemingly incredible that the Murray has lost the equivalent of 400 Sydney Harbours over the past six years? Is that believeable? I wonder whether there are any fully healthy river systems left in the world. What is perhaps not true for this neighbourhood in ethnic terms is nevertheless true for the wider local context that cultural diversity enriches our existence. Provisionally, I sumise that a person who is holistically engaged locally is engaged globally, which would include all the indigenous populations. A perception of process, sees parts as being of the whole.
Science in this sense cannot be reductionist; it is holistic. We as human beings are more social than individuals as language is the expression of our indviduality as of our interconnectedness. For humans consciousness is expressed in language, often in the first instance and if not then, if we are able, in the second instance.
David Kaiser reminds me that the sainted George Orwell had a few things to say about nationalism and what he called “pacifism”, but then again he did not live around the Pacific, much less the South Pacific. George is not very flattering about pacifists:
The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to the taking of life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists whose real though unadmitted motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration of totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writings of younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States.”
Orwell might have given more space to his assumed namesake George Fox, but that would require scholarship, not mere opinion.
However, as David Kaiser alludes to, Orwell is making a very contemporary observation as regards the United States:
“All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage–torture, the use of hostages, forced labor, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians–which does not change its moral color when it is committed by ‘our’ side. “
(I have no doubt that cognitive dissonance is rife here. It is just that I do not recognize it.) However, I would observe that by claiming the rule of law, the State is basing its claim in morality, and if national states continue within the guise of realpolik ignore morality they hasten their own demise. That is one problem. The other is if we discover that we are living in a global society we ought to care for others, and justice is a fundamental form of humanity. Therefore there is a need for global law applied equally. Such rules will solve problems and forestall the excuse for military violence.