Nationalism

A couple of points related to a post over at El Criador de Gorilas and the comments arising from it.

1.

I find the idea that there is something left wing about extreme Basque nationalism along the lines of Batasuna, or any of its alphabet soup of front organizations, quite absurd. Those people are pure blood and soil nationalists and have more in common with Hamas than anything remotely resembling democratic socialism. There can’t be anything progressive about a politics whose foundation is a claim of privileges for certain individuals on the basis that their ancestors lived in a certain place long before those of certain other individuals.

2.

Referring to the roots of nationalism, the author of the blog talks of the desire to,

Not live as a minority, not to have to learn another language, not be looked down on or, in some cases, be openly discriminated against. All of this is entirely understandable and defensible. Of course it can end up as a nationalism that oppresses its own people or minorities but it doesn´t have to turn out like that.

There are indeed positive aspects to nationalism. They basically consist of the desire to have the full benefits of universal human rights applied to a group of people one perceives oneself as belonging to on the basis of some linguistic, sanguinary or other connection. So far, so progressive. Experience teaches us though that it seems to be very difficult to demand the application of universal human rights to my own group without tending, at best, to limit those of another group or, at worst, suppress and eliminate that group and its members entirely. There are very few nation states that have not been built on the repression or indeed the physical elimination of a group or groups considered “not part of us”.

So there is a double moment in nationalism. Paradoxically therefore, any version of it that wants to have a genuine claim to be left wing will have to seek to universalize the rights it claims for its own people and resist the call of blood and soil that tend to make us want to slaughter those neighbours we see as Other.

Tags: El Criador de Gorilas, nationalism