Nationalism and Identity (Book Notes: Why the Nations Rage)

A basic feature of the political landscape today is nationalism, the devotion to one's nation and national identity. The importance and value of nationalism goes almost unquestioned - but perhaps they should. Nationalism hasn't always existed and isn't always an unmitigated good.

In Why the Nations Rage: Killing in the Name of God, Christopher Catherwood writes:

Self-determination becomes... dangerous when a nation state becomes exclusive rather than inclusive... This is because “as a cultural ideal, nationalism is the claim that while men and women have many identities, it is the nation which provides them with their primary form of belonging.”

A person’s identity — their sense of self and of who they are — will be made up from many different elements: religion, family, gender, community, ethnicity, race, and so forth. In the modern world, nationality is a part of this list and there is nothing wrong with that. Nationality is no more an invalid ingredient in one’s sense of personal identity than ethnicity or race.

As the above indicates, though, a problem does develop when nationality becomes exclusive rather than inclusive — when nationality becomes a club that is better than all the other clubs and one that doesn’t allow for ready admittance. It also becomes a problem when it is treated like the primary source of identity and self, rather than one of many ingredients, each pulling a person in potentially different directions and thereby dividing one’s loyalty.

Other aspects of a person’s identity can attempt to make similarly exclusive claims. It’s not that unusual for people to believe that they are superior to others because of their religion or race. One crucial difference, however, is that nations typically have the violent means to enforce particular ideas about what is right and wrong. Fanaticism about religious identity, when confined to the private religious sphere, is not as much of a problem as fanatical nationalism can be.

 

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