Hi people, I was looking for some views and opinions on this text I wrote on nationalism. This is a political forum so I assumed it would be the right place to discuss political ideologies. Might be some grammar mistakes (oh there are) and I apologize for that but I'm more concerned on the general content at this point.

Is Nationalism Good or Bad?

In this essay I want to look at both the bad and the good which comes with nationalism and determine if nationalism is a viable solution in the modern world. Nationalism is a widely discussed topic, partly because of the wide range of views and opinions surrounding this political ideology as well as the historical and current events that are still relevant and that had an impact on shaping the world’s nations. People have a tendency to connect nationalism to the Nazis and fascism, which is appropriate but that is merely one type of extreme nationalism that few nationalist parties and nations are still pushing today.

“Loyalty and devotion to a nation; especially : a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations or supranational group” (Merriam-Webster, 2008).

The definition from Merriam-Webster is the definition of ethno-cultural nationalism, which is based upon shared national identity (ethnicity) and culture, this type of nationalism is considered involuntary because you cannot decide which nations you are going to be born in or what type of ethnic background your parents will have. Unlike the more liberal version of nationalism which is a strong contrast to classic nationalism (ethno-cultural based) because civic nationalism does not exclude membership to people with different ethnical and cultural background. This type of nationalism can be found in multi ethnical countries like the United States, France and also New Zealand.
Before we move on it’s important to define a nation, since nationalism is something that occurs in a nation only. There could be something similar happen in only a small city but that would not be called nationalism since it does not cover the nation only a city, therefore it would probably be referred to as’ local loyalties’.
“(1) The attitude that the members of a nation have when they care about their identity as members of that nation and (2) the actions that the members of a nation take in seeking to achieve (or sustain) some form of political sovereignty” (Miscevic, 2005).
Nationalism is considered to be a modern phenomenon and most historians believe it originated in the early 19th century, before then it said that nationalism could only be found in small local loyalty, not nationwide. "A country is not merely a geographic territory.... A country is the sense of love which unites as one all the sons and daughters of that geographic territory” (Joseph Mazzini, 1875).

Why do these nationalistic groups and individuals appear? And what do they want to accomplish? Sometimes the government can try spark up nationalism to achieve a goal, for example the Nazis managed to get the whole country waving their flags and worship their fatherland only to achieve a goal which the government and Hitler had set for Germany. The type of nationalism that filled Germany during the Second World War was very extreme, and it the government misused the peoples nationalism. It is quite common for a government to try and use nationalism in order to try and become a greater country, in power or territorial size. A lot of nationalist believe that the people in that country decide and the government reflect their opinion unlike fascism, most current nationalists want a democracy.
Before nationalism a Serbian prince would feel a deeper connection with his horse then with the farmers that work for him (Ernest Gellner, 1998). These words from Gellner’s famous book called Nationalism are possibly true because nationalism has caused the national people to become closer, but it also has caused them to become more isolated from the rest. This is one of the main things people dislike about modern nationalism, nation solidarity.
In order to keep a national identity intact they often refrain from mixing with other people who have a different ethnicity and cultural background (Miscevic, 2005).
“When the word got around that I was married to a Serb in my village in Croatia, the environment became quite hostile. Rumors around the village started to spread that a group was going to do my family harm. That’s the reason we had to move from Croatia and why my husband said he will never ever live in that country again. Nationalism has done a lot of damage on our family, I don’t like nationalism because of the destruction I have seen it do, therefore I am very liberal” (Zdenka *****, 2008).
The reason for the hostile reaction was simple, the Croatians did not want their national identity to be tainted because the child that was born would not be considered a proper Croatian. The nationalism at the time was extremely high and groups of people (Serbs, Bosnians and Croatians) were very isolated towards each other. A while has passed since the wars and in Sydney you will find a lot of Croatians and Serbs living there. The two hardly ever speak to each other or communicate even though they can understand each other perfectly, this is a lot to do with National pride which is also an isolating factor. Wars create deep scars, the more horrible the war is the deeper the scars get. Like physical scars, they don’t disappear, every person related to a bloody war will have a hard time forgetting it and starting from scratch with the rival nation. National pride is a part of the national spirit, the pride lets members take joy in success and share their misery in the hour of defeat.

Even though nationalism can work as a huge isolator it can also bring a whole nation together, after nationalism the Serbian prince probably felt as one with the farmers and the people. Nationalism does not necessarily mean that the one nation will isolate itself from every other country in the world, in fact it’s common that nationalists have an unusual strong relationship with a couple of countries that intertwine with their own country through history or shared values. A good example here would be Serbia, Russia and Greece, they are connected through history as well as shared religion and some culture, and nationalists in all three of these countries display their love for each other by supporting each other in problems and waving each other’s flags.

Globalization is a direct opposite of nationalism (Scheuerman, 2006). Globalization wants the world to become one while nationalism wants to head for the complete opposite. Globalization refrains strongly from isolation and promotes multiethnic countries. Some people want promote globalization since they believe it will make a better world, economically and more tolerant since there would be no nationalism. The problem with globalization is that national borders and national culture are not the sole things splitting people. Even though you have a globalized world people would still have religion which would probably split a lot of people, skin color and political views. Even without nationalism in the sense we know it there would still be plenty of things to make people become isolated from each other and turn to group solidarity. When these large groups split up and separate each other inside of the nation it is very possible that they might want their own land where’ equally minded’ people can live. Globalization could possibly destroy what the nationalists so dearly want to protect, namely their national identity. A globalized world would cause a lot of multi ethnicity, which is not bad but a country filled with rich culture and which most likely has existed for thousands of years certainly is allowed to try and keep their national identity intact. What will happen if globalization succeeds and still there are a few countries which do not want to participate? There’s a little chance that pro-globalists nations are going to globalize by using direct brute force (military) but they can shut down things linking to that country like trade, water and electricity, resources that the country really needs, and eventually the country would break and accept to globalize.

Assimilation of all people, races and genders have been tried several times through history, but it eventually fails since the tension between the different groups reach a peak which usually ends messy. A good example would be Yugoslavia, where Tito tried to maintain the nationalism at on all time low by banning nationalistic groups. People in Yugoslavia often considered themselves Yugoslavs instead of Serbs, Croats and such. There were other factors than nationalism that take fault in its fall, but nationalism is one of them. It did hold up for a while but you can’t look away from the giant mess it created which is referred to as the Balkan wars.
“The creation of a Yugoslav state should have brought an end to the rivalry between the communities but the religious, cultural and linguistic differences were too great to maintain peace” (Catherine Samary, 1995).

In theory a moderately nationalistic country should be without many problems. The problems occur when the neighbors are nationalistic as well because then a rivalry can be created and eventually it can become dangerous and small things could spark up bigger things. Moderate nationalists want to do what is best for the nation but extremists can sometimes fool these moderate nationalists into believing the extremists views on what is best for the country. Therefore it’s important to try and split the different type of nationalists up because extremists rarely do anything that will benefit the country as in the people within that country and the country itself by making it great and gain respect. It’s rare to find nationalists who say they are doing it for ‘the government’, they will rather use the names of political leaders which represent the ‘government’, because most nationalists do not consider the government as the nation.

Nationalism can be good in the sense that it can create an extremely close relationship and community inside the nation and with other nation which have strong similarities. Each nation has a right to maintain their national identity, nationalism does not justify attacking other nations because they are different. It puts the nation in front of your own needs which means that most nationalist would gladly fight for their country if necessary to protect their identity. The isolation of nations and possible hostility to nations that threaten the national identity are the negative aspects with nationalism. People tend to have a need or wanting to belong is some type of group which is exactly what nationalism allows people to do. The lack of diversity that nationalism has is unfortunate but people will always separate for whatever reasons there may be, and it’s hard to erase history. The world is a lot more interesting with a lot of different countries, languages and people therefore in some ways globalization would be bad for the world. As well as for the reason that nationalists would not abandon their nation without a fight, this is understandable considering the sacrifice a lot of nations has done throughout history to be able to be independent with a different culture and different values. If nationalism was the only thing stopping diversity and mixing with different people, it should have been stopped straight away, but it’s not. Will nationalism cause wars in the future? It probably will but then again so will religion and liberals as well. The problem with nationalism is that it is a modern phenomenon and it has not passed the test of time the same yet, so it’s uncertain how long it will remain amongst us. Wars fuel nationalism that’s one of the reasons why there different nationalism levels around the world, for example the Balkans has much larger amounts of nationalism than Scandinavia. With Nations and conflicts, nationalism will appear, unless one of these things disappear we will always have nationalism. I’m confident when or if nationalism ever disappears from the face of the world there will be something else to replace it. With the same ideal to protect a certain thing, whether its political views, country or people. Time will tell what the future has in store for the modern phenomenon, and may there be one day where people can have different national identities without having to worry about it getting neither tainted nor destroyed.

Bibliography:
Venturi, E. A. (1875). Joseph Mazzini: a memoir (1st edition) London.
Merriam-Webster “Nationalism”, (2008)
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Gellner, E. (1983, Cornell University Press). Nations and Nationalism (Older edition).
***** M. Interview with Zdenka *****. 23 February 2008.
Samary, C. (1995, Monthly Review press). Yugoslavia Dismembered (1st edition) New York.
Miscevic, N. "Nationalism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Sep 24th 2005), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This Political Forum Link.
Scheuerman, W. "Globalization", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Jun 16th 2006), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This Political Forum Link.