according to the video presentation what is nationalism

What Is Nationalism? Definition and Examples

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Nationalism is an ideology expressed by people who fervently believe that their nation is superior to all others. These feelings of superiority are often based on shared ethnicity, language, religion, culture, or social values. From a purely political standpoint, nationalism aims to defend the country’s popular sovereignty —the right to govern itself—and to protect it from the political, social, and cultural pressures posed by the modern global economy. In this sense, nationalism is seen as the antithesis of globalism .

Key Takeaways: Nationalism

• Politically, nationalists strive to protect the nation's sovereignty, the right to govern itself.
• Nationalists’ feelings of superiority are usually based on shared ethnicity, language, religion, culture, or social values.
• Extreme nationalists believe that their country has the right to dominate other nations through military aggression if necessary.
• The ideologies of nationalism are contrary to those of globalism and the modern globalization movement. 
• Economic nationalism strives to protect a nation’s economy from foreign competition, often through the practice of protectionism.
• Carried to its extremes, nationalism can lead to authoritarianism and the exclusion from the society of certain ethnic or racial groups.

Today, nationalism is generally recognized as a shared sentiment that because of the extent to which it influences public and private life, serves as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, determining factors of modern history.

History of Nationalism

Despite the common feeling that people who believe their country is the “best” have always existed, nationalism is a relatively modern movement. While people have always felt an attachment to their native land and the traditions of their parents, nationalism did not become a widely recognized sentiment until the end of the 18th century.

The 18th century American and French revolutions are often considered to have been the first impactful expressions of nationalism. During the 19th century, nationalism penetrated the new countries of Latin America and spread throughout central, eastern, and southeastern Europe. During the first half of the 20th century, nationalism arose in Asia and Africa.

Pre-20th Century Nationalism

The first true expressions of nationalism occurred in England during the Puritan Revolution of the middle 1600s.

By the end of the 17th-century, England had assumed a reputation as the world leader in science, commerce, and the development of political and social theory. After the English Civil War of 1642, the Puritan work ethic of Calvinism merged with the optimistic ethics of humanism .

Influenced by the Bible, an expression of English nationalism emerged in which the people equated their perceived mission to that of the people of ancient Israel . Swollen with pride and confidence, the English people began to feel that it was their mission to usher in a new age of reformation and individual liberty throughout the world. In his classic 1667 work “Paradise Lost,” English poet and intellectual John Milton described the English peoples’ efforts to spread what had by then become "England’s vision of liberty as being “celebrated for endless ages as a soil most genial to the growth of liberty,” to all the corners of the earth.

The nationalism of 18th century England, as expressed in the “ social contract ” political philosophy of John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau would influence American and French nationalism during the rest of the century.

Influenced by ideas of liberty put forth by Locke, Rousseau, and other contemporary French philosophers, American nationalism arose among the settlers of the North American British colonies . Stirred to action by current political thoughts expressed by Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine , the American colonists began their struggle for liberty and individual rights during the late 1700s. Similar to the aspirations of 17th century English nationalism, 18th-century American nationalism envisioned the new nation as humanity’s guiding light to liberty, equality, and happiness for all. Culminating with the American Revolution in 1775 and the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the influence of the new American nationalism was clearly reflected in the French Revolution of 1789.

In America as well as in France, nationalism came to represent a universal adherence to the progressive idea of a future of freedom and equality rather than the authoritarianism and inequality of the past. The new belief in the promise of “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” and “Liberty, equality, fraternity” following the American and French revolutions inspired new rituals and symbols, such as flags and parades, patriotic music, and national holidays, that remain the common expression of nationalism today.

20th Century Movements

Beginning in 1914 with the onset of World War I , and ending in 1991 with the dissolution of Communism in Central-Eastern Europe, the 20th century saw the emergence of new forms of nationalism shaped largely by World War I and World War II .

After World War I, Adolf Hitler based a new brand of fanatical nationalism in Germany on racial purity, authoritarian rule, and the mythical glories of Germany’s pre-Christian past. After the Second World War, most new forms of nationalism were driven by independence movements in the wake of decolonization. As they struggled to free themselves from their European colonizers, people created national identities to distinguish themselves from their oppressors. Whether based on race, religion, culture, or the political entanglements of the Cold War in Europe , all of these new nationalistic identities were in some way connected with the drive for independence.

World War I proved to be a triumph of nationalism in central and Eastern Europe. New nation-states of Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, and Romania were built from the remains of the Habsburg, Romanov, and Hohenzollern Russian empires. Budding nationalism in Asia and Africa produced charismatic revolutionary leaders like Kemal Atatürk in Turkey, Mahatma Gandhi in India, and Sun Yat-sen in China.

After World War II, the establishment of multinational economic, military, and political organizations such as the United Nations (UN) in 1945 and NATO in 1949 led to a general reduction of the spirit of nationalism across Europe. However, the policies pursued by France under Charles de Gaulle and the bitter Communism versus democracy division of East and West Germany until 1990 proved the appeal of nationalism remained very much alive.

Nationalism Today

It has been argued that at no time since Words War I has the power of nationalism been as evident as it is today. Especially since 2016, there has been a significant increase in nationalist sentiment across the world. For example, it was a nationalism-driven desire to regain lost national autonomy that led to Brexit, the controversial withdrawal of Great Britain from the European Union . In the United States, presidential candidate Donald Trump rode nationalistic appeals to “Make America Great Again” and “America First” to the White House.

In Germany, the nationalist-populist political party Alternative for Germany (AfD), known for its opposition to the European Union and immigration, has become a major opposition force. In Spain, the self-proclaimed conservative right-wing Vox party won seats in the Spanish parliament for the first time in the April 2019 general election. Nationalism forms the basis for Chinese President Xi Jinping’s efforts to make China a world economic leader. Similarly, nationalism is a common theme among right-wing politicians in France, Austria, Italy, Hungary, Poland, the Philippines, and Turkey.

Economic Nationalism

Most recently characterized by the reaction to the global financial crash of 2011, economic nationalism is defined as a set of policies and practices designed to create, grow, and most of all, protect national economies in the context of world markets. For example, a 2006 proposal to sell port management businesses in six major U.S. seaports to Dubai Ports World based in the United Arab Emirates was blocked by political opposition motivated by economic nationalism.

Economic nationalists oppose, or at least critically question the advisability of globalization in favor of the perceived safety and stability of protectionism . To economic nationalists, most of not all revenue from foreign trade should be used for what they consider to be essential national interests such as national security and building military power, rather than for social welfare programs. In many ways, economic nationalism is a variant of mercantilism—the zero-sum theory that trade generates wealth and is stimulated by the accumulation of profitable balances, which the government should encourage through protectionism.

Based on an often unfounded belief that it steals jobs from domestic workers, economic nationalists oppose immigration. For example, President Trump’s Mexican border security wall followed his nationalistic immigration policies. In convincing Congress to allocate funds to pay for the controversial wall, the President claimed the loss of American jobs to undocumented immigrants . 

Issues and Concerns

Today, developed nations are typically made up of multiple ethnic, racial, cultural, and religious, groups. This recent increase in anti-immigration, exclusionary brand of nationalism could become dangerous to groups considered to be outside the politically favored group, especially if taken to extremes, as it was in Nazi Germany . As a result, it is important to examine the potential negative aspects of nationalism.

First of all, nationalism’s sense of superiority differentiates it from patriotism . While patriotism is characterized by pride in one’s country and a willingness to defend it, nationalism extends pride to arrogance and potential military aggression. Extreme nationalists believe that their country’s superiority gives them the right to dominate other nations. They justify this by the belief that they are “liberating” the people of the conquered nation.

As it did in Europe during the 19th and early 20th centuries, nationalism was used to justify imperialism and colonization . Under the shield of nationalism, western nations overtook and controlled countries in Africa and Asia, the crippling economic and social consequences of which linger today. During World War II, Adolf Hitler mastered nationalistic propaganda to rally the German people to rationalize his tactics of ethnic Aryan supremacy as being in the best interest of Germany. When used in this manner to establish one group to be the only rightful citizens of a country, nationalism can be extremely dangerous in an increasingly globalized world.   

At several times throughout history, nationalistic fervor has led nations into prolonged periods of isolationism —the stifling and potentially dangerous doctrine of playing no role in the affairs of other nations. For example, widely supported isolationism during the late 1930s played a significant role in preventing the United States from becoming involved in World War II until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

Nationalism inevitably creates a competitive “us” vs. “them” or “love it or leave it” attitude among the people. As George Orwell put it in his 1945 essay Notes on Nationalism, “A nationalist is one who thinks solely, or mainly, in terms of competitive prestige… his thoughts always turn on victories, defeats, triumphs and humiliations.”

Nationalism can also contribute to domestic division and unrest. By demanding that the people decide who is and isn’t truly part of the nation, it encourages discrimination against anyone within the nation’s borders who is identified as part of “them” instead of “us.”

• “ Nationalism.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , September 2, 2020, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nationalism/.
• Sraders, Anne. “What is Nationalism? Its History And What It Means in 2018. The Street , 2018, https://www.thestreet.com/politics/what-is-nationalism-14642847.
• Galston, William A. “Twelve Theses on Nationalism.” Brookings , August 12, 2019, https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/twelve-theses-on-nationalism/.
• Pryke, Sam. “Economic Nationalism: Theory, History and Prospects.” Global Policy , September 6, 2012, ttps://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/articles/world-economy-trade-and-finance/economic-nationalism-theory-history-and-prospects.
• Walt, Stephen M. “The most powerful force in the world.” Forbes , July 15, 2011, https://foreignpolicy.com/2011/07/15/the-most-powerful-force-in-the-world/.
• Holmes, Ph.D., Kim R. “The Problem of Nationalism.” Heritage Foundation , December 13, 2019, https://www.heritage.org/conservatism/commentary/the-problem-nationalism.
• Orwell, George. 1945. “ Notes on Nationalism .” Penguin UK, ISBN-10:‎ 9780241339565.
• Manfred Jonas. “Isolationism in America 1933-1941.” Cornell University Press, 1966, ISBN-10: 187917601
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Nationalism (11:31)

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Think about the following questions as you watch the video

• 02:28 How does this video define nationalism?
• 03:14 What did Benedict Anderson mean when he called the nation an “imagined political community”?
• 06:50 According to the video, where did nationalism begin and how did it spread?
• 07:27 How did nationalism contribute to the extreme violence of the twentieth century?
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Nationalism

The term “nationalism” is generally used to describe two phenomena:

• the attitude that the members of a nation have when they care about their national identity, and
• the actions that the members of a nation take when seeking to achieve (or sustain) self-determination.

(1) raises questions about the concept of a nation (or national identity), which is often defined in terms of common origin, ethnicity, or cultural ties, and specifically about whether an individual’s membership in a nation should be regarded as non-voluntary or voluntary. (2) raises questions about whether self-determination must be understood as involving having full statehood with complete authority over domestic and international affairs, or whether something less is required.

Nationalism came into the focus of philosophical debate three decades ago, in the nineties, partly in consequence of rather spectacular and troubling nationalist clashes. Surges of nationalism tend to present a morally ambiguous, and for this reason often fascinating, picture. “National awakening” and struggles for political independence are often both heroic and cruel; the formation of a recognizably national state often responds to deep popular sentiment but sometimes yields inhuman consequences, from violent expulsion and “cleansing” of non-nationals to organized mass murder. The moral debate on nationalism reflects a deep moral tension between solidarity with oppressed national groups on the one hand and repulsion in the face of crimes perpetrated in the name of nationalism on the other. Moreover, the issue of nationalism points to a wider domain of problems related to the treatment of ethnic and cultural differences within democratic polity, arguably among the most pressing problems of contemporary political theory.

In the last two decades, migration crisis and the populist reactions to migration and domestic economic issues have been the defining traits of a new political constellation. The traditional issue of the contrast between nationalism and cosmopolitanism has changed its profile: the current drastic contrast is between populist aversion to the foreigners-migrants and a more generous, or simply just, attitude of acceptance and Samaritan help. The populist aversion inherits some features traditionally associated with patriotism and nationalism, and the opposite attitude the main features of traditional cosmopolitanism. One could expect that the work on nationalism will be moving further on this new and challenging playground, addressing the new contrast and trying to locate nationalism in relation to it.

In this entry, we shall first present conceptual issues of definition and classification (Sections 1 and 2) and then the arguments put forward in the debate (Section 3), dedicating more space to the arguments in favor of nationalism than to those against it in order to give the philosophical nationalist a proper hearing. In the last part we shall turn to the new constellation and sketch the new issues raised by nationalist and trans-nationalist populisms and the migration crisis.

1.1 The Basic Concept of Nationalism

1.2 the concept of a nation, 2.1 concepts of nationalism: classical and liberal, 2.2 moral claims, classical vs. liberal: the centrality of nation, 3.1 classical and liberal nationalisms, 3.2 arguments in favor of nationalism, classical vs. liberal: the deep need for community, 3.3 arguments in favor of nationalism: issues of justice, 3.4 populism and a new face of nationalism, 3.5 nation-state in global context, 4. conclusion, introduction, other internet resources, related entries, 1. what is a nation.

Although the term “nationalism” has a variety of meanings, it centrally encompasses two phenomena: (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 (see for example, Nielsen 1998–9: 9). Each of these aspects requires elaboration.

• raises questions about the concept of a nation or national identity, about what it is to belong to a nation, and about how much one ought to care about one’s nation. Nations and national identity may be defined in terms of common origin, ethnicity, or cultural ties, and while an individual’s membership in the nation is often regarded as involuntary, it is sometimes regarded as voluntary. The degree of care for one’s nation that nationalists require is often, but not always, taken to be very high: according to such views, the claims of one’s nation take precedence over rival contenders for authority and loyalty. [ 1 ]
• raises questions about whether sovereignty requires the acquisition of full statehood with complete authority over domestic and international affairs, or whether something less than statehood suffices. Although sovereignty is often taken to mean full statehood (Gellner 1983: ch. 1), [ 2 ] possible exceptions have been recognized (Miller 1992: 87; Miller 2000). Some authors even defend an anarchist version of patriotism-moderate nationalism foreshadowed by Bakunin (see Sparrow 2007).

There is a terminological and conceptual question of distinguishing nationalism from patriotism. A popular proposal is the contrast between attachment to one’s country as defining patriotism and attachment to one’s people and its traditions as defining nationalism (Kleinig 2014: 228, and Primoratz 2017: Section 1.2). One problem with this proposal is that love for a country is not really just love of a piece of land but normally involves attachment to the community of its inhabitants, and this introduces “nation” into the conception of patriotism. Another contrast is the one between strong, and somewhat aggressive attachment (nationalism) and a mild one (patriotism), dating back at least to George Orwell (see his 1945 essay). [ 3 ]

Despite these definitional worries, there is a fair amount of agreement about the classical, historically paradigmatic form of nationalism. It typically features the supremacy of the nation’s claims over other claims to individual allegiance and full sovereignty as the persistent aim of its political program. Territorial sovereignty has traditionally been seen as a defining element of state power and essential for nationhood. It was extolled in classic modern works by Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau and is returning to center stage in the debate, though philosophers are now more skeptical (see below). Issues surrounding the control of the movement of money and people (in particular immigration) and the resource rights implied in territorial sovereignty make the topic politically central in the age of globalization and philosophically interesting for nationalists and anti-nationalists alike.

In recent times, the philosophical focus has moved more in the direction of “liberal nationalism”, the view that mitigates the classical claims and tries to bring together the pro-national attitude and the respect for traditional liberal values. For instance, the territorial state as political unit is seen by classical nationalists as centrally “belonging” to one ethnic-cultural group and as actively charged with protecting and promulgating its traditions. The liberal variety allows for “sharing” of the territorial state with non-dominant ethnic groups. Consequences are varied and quite interested (for more see below, especially section 2.1 ).

In its general form, the issue of nationalism concerns the mapping between the ethno-cultural domain (featuring ethno-cultural groups or “nations”) and the domain of political organization. In breaking down the issue, we have mentioned the importance of the attitude that the members of a nation have when they care about their national identity. This point raises two sorts of questions. First, the descriptive ones:

Second, the normative ones:

This section discusses the descriptive questions, starting with (1a) and (1b) ;the normative questions are addressed in Section 3 on the moral debate. If one wants to enjoin people to struggle for their national interests, one must have some idea about what a nation is and what it is to belong to a nation. So, in order to formulate and ground their evaluations, claims, and directives for action, pro-nationalist thinkers have expounded theories of ethnicity, culture, nation, and state. Their opponents have in turn challenged these elaborations. Now, some presuppositions about ethnic groups and nations are essential for the nationalist, while others are theoretical elaborations designed to support the essential ones. The definition and status of the social group that benefits from the nationalist program, variously called the “nation”, “ethno-nation”, or “ethnic group”, is essential. Since nationalism is particularly prominent with groups that do not yet have a state, a definition of nation and nationalism purely in terms of belonging to a state is a non-starter.

Indeed, purely “civic” loyalties are often categorized separately under the title “patriotism”, which we already mentioned, or “constitutional patriotism”. [ 4 ] This leaves two extreme options and a number of intermediates. The first extreme option has been put forward by a small but distinguished band of theorists. [ 5 ] According to their purely voluntaristic definition, a nation is any group of people aspiring to a common political state-like organization. If such a group of people succeeds in forming a state, the loyalties of the group members become “civic” (as opposed to “ethnic”) in nature. At the other extreme, and more typically, nationalist claims are focused upon the non-voluntary community of common origin, language, tradition, and culture: the classic ethno-nation is a community of origin and culture, including prominently a language and customs. The distinction is related (although not identical) to that drawn by older schools of social and political science between “civic” and “ethnic” nationalism, the former being allegedly Western European and the latter more Central and Eastern European, originating in Germany. [ 6 ] Philosophical discussions centered on nationalism tend to concern the ethnic-cultural variants only, and this habit will be followed here. A group aspiring to nationhood on this basis will be called an “ethno-nation” to underscore its ethno-cultural rather than purely civic underpinnings. For the ethno-(cultural) nationalist it is one’s ethnic-cultural background that determines one’s membership in the community. One cannot choose to be a member; instead, membership depends on the accident of origin and early socialization. However, commonality of origin has become mythical for most contemporary candidate groups: ethnic groups have been mixing for millennia.

Sophisticated, liberal pro-nationalists therefore tend to stress cultural membership only and speak of “nationality”, omitting the “ethno-” part (Miller 1992, 2000; Tamir 1993,2013; Gans 2003). Michel Seymour’s proposal of a “socio-cultural definition” adds a political dimension to the purely cultural one: a nation is a cultural group, possibly but not necessarily united by a common descent, endowed with civic ties (Seymour 2000). This is the kind of definition that would be accepted by most parties in the debate today. So defined, the nation is a somewhat mixed category, both ethno-cultural and civic, but still closer to the purely ethno-cultural than to the purely civic extreme.

Let us now turn to the issue of the origin and “authenticity” of ethno-cultural groups or ethno-nations. In social and political science one usually distinguishes two kinds of views, but there is a third group, combining element from both. The first are modernist views that see nationalism as born in modern times, together with nation-states. [ 7 ] In our times the view was pioneered by Ernst Gellner (see his 1983). [ 8 ] Other modernist choose similar starting points with century or two of variation. [ 9 ] The opposite view can be called, following Edward Shils (1957) “primordialist”. According to it, actual ethno-cultural nations have either existed “since time immemorial”.

The third, quite plausible kind of view, distinct from both primordialism-ethno-symbolism and modernism, has been initiated by W. Connor (1994). [ 10 ] A nation is a politicized and mobilized ethnic group rather than a state. So, the origins of nationalism predate the modern state, and its emotional content remains up to our times (Conversi 2002: 270), but the actual statist organization is, indeed, modern. However, nation-state is a nationalist dream and fiction, never really implemented, due to the inescapable plurality of social groups. So much for the three dominant perspectives on the origin of nationalism.

Indeed, the older authors—from great thinkers like Herder and Otto Bauer to the propagandists who followed their footsteps—took great pains to ground normative claims upon firm ontological realism about nations: nations are real, bona fide entities. However, the contemporary moral debate has tried to diminish the importance of the imagined/real divide. Prominent contemporary philosophers have claimed that normative-evaluative nationalist claims are compatible with the “imagined” nature of a nation. [ 11 ] They point out that common imaginings can tie people together, and that actual interaction resulting from togetherness can engender important moral obligations.

Let us now turn to question (1c) about the nature of pro-national attitudes. The explanatory issue that has interested political and social scientists concerns ethno-nationalist sentiment, the paradigm case of a pro-national attitude. Is it as irrational, romantic, and indifferent to self-interest as it might seem on the surface? The issue has divided authors who see nationalism as basically irrational and those who try to explain it as being in some sense rational. Authors who see it as irrational propose various explanations of why people assent to irrational views. Some say, critically, that nationalism is based on “false consciousness”. But where does such false consciousness come from? The most simplistic view is that it is a result of direct manipulation of “masses” by “elites”. On the opposite side, the famous critic of nationalism Elie Kedourie (1960) thinks this irrationality is spontaneous. A decade and a half ago Liah Greenfeld went as far as linking nationalism to mental illness in her provocative 2005 article (see also her 2006 book). On the opposite side, Michael Walzer has offered a sympathetic account of nationalist passion in his 2002. Authors relying upon the Marxist tradition offer various deeper explanations. To mention one, the French structuralist Étienne Balibar sees it as a result of the “production” of ideology effectuated by mechanisms which have nothing to do with spontaneous credulity of individuals, but with impersonal, structural social factors (Balibar & Wallerstein 1988 [1991]). [ 12 ]

Some authors claim that it is often rational for individuals to become nationalists (Hardin 1985). Can one rationally explain the extremes of ethno-national conflict? Authors like Russell Hardin propose to do so in terms of a general view of when hostile behavior is rational: most typically, if an individual has no reason to trust someone, it is reasonable for that individual to take precautions against the other. If both sides take precautions, however, each will tend to see the other as increasingly inimical. It then becomes rational to start treating the other as an enemy. Mere suspicion can thus lead by small, individually rational steps to a situation of conflict. (Such negative development is often presented as a variant of the Prisoner’s Dilemma; see the entry on prisoner’s dilemma ). It is relatively easy to spot the circumstances in which this general pattern applies to national solidarities and conflicts (see also Wimmer 2013).

Finally, as for question (1d) , the nation is typically seen as an essentially non-voluntary community to which one belongs by birth and early nurture and such that the belonging is enhanced and made more complete by one’s additional conscious endorsement. Not everyone agrees: liberal nationalists accept the idea of choice of one’s national belonging and of possibility for immigrants to become nationals by choice and intentional acculturation.

2. Varieties of Nationalism

We pointed out at the very beginning of the entry that nationalism focuses upon (1) the attitude that the members of a nation have when they care about their national identity, and (2) the actions that the members of a nation take when seeking to achieve (or sustain) some form of political sovereignty. The politically central point is (2): the actions enjoined by the nationalist. To these we now turn, beginning with sovereignty and territory, the usual foci of a national struggle for independence. They raise an important issue:

The classical answer is that a state is required. A more liberal answer is that some form of political autonomy suffices. Once this has been discussed, we can turn to the related normative issues:

Consider first the classical nationalist answer to (2a) . Political sovereignty requires a state “rightfully owned” by the ethno-nation (Oldenquist 1997). Developments of this line of thought often state or imply specific answers to (2b) , and (2c) , i.e., that in a national independence struggle the use of force against the threatening central power is almost always a legitimate means for bringing about sovereignty. However, classical nationalism is not only concerned with the creation of a state but also with its maintenance and strengthening.

Classical nationalism is the political program that sees the creation and maintenance of a fully sovereign state owned by a given ethno-national group (“people” or “nation”) as a primary duty of each member of the group. Starting from the assumption that the appropriate (or “natural”) unit of culture is an ethno-nation, it claims that a primary duty of each member is to abide by one’s recognizably ethno-national culture in all cultural matters.

Classical nationalists are usually vigilant about the kind of culture they protect and promote and about the kind of attitude people have to their nation-state. This watchful attitude carries some potential dangers: many elements of a given culture that are universal or simply not recognizably national may fall prey to such nationalist enthusiasms. Classical nationalism in everyday life puts various additional demands on individuals, from buying more expensive home-produced goods in preference to cheaper imported ones to procreating as many future members of the nation as one can manage (see Yuval-Davies 1997, and Yack 2012).

Besides classical nationalism (and its more radical extremist cousins), various moderate views are also now classified as nationalist. Indeed, the philosophical discussion has shifted to these moderate or even ultra-moderate forms, and most philosophers who describe themselves as nationalists propose very moderate nationalist programs.

Nationalism in this wider sense is any complex of attitudes, claims, and directives for action ascribing a fundamental political, moral, and cultural value to nation and nationality and deriving obligations (for individual members of the nation, and for any involved third parties, individual or collective) from this ascribed value. The main representative of this group of views is liberal nationalism , proposed by authors like Miller, Tamir, and Gans (see below).

Nationalisms in this wider sense can vary somewhat in their conceptions of the nation (which are often left implicit in their discourse), in the grounds for and degree of its value, and in the scope of their prescribed obligations. Moderate nationalism is less demanding than classical nationalism and sometimes goes under the name of “patriotism.” (A different usage, again, reserves “patriotism” for valuing civic community and loyalty to state, in contrast to nationalism, centered on ethnic-cultural communities).

Let us now turn to liberal nationalism, the most discussed kind of moderate nationalism.

Liberal nationalists see liberal-democratic principles and pro-national attitudes as belonging together. One of the main proponents of the view, Yael Tamir, started the debate in her 1993 book and in her recent book talks about the nation-state as “an ideal meeting point between the two” (2019: 6). Of course, some things have to be sacrificed: we must acknowledge that either the meaningfulness of a community or its openness must be sacrificed to some extent as we cannot have them both. (2019: 57). How much of each is to give way is left open, and of course, various liberal nationalists take different views of what precisely the right answer is.

Tamir’s version of liberal nationalism is a kind of social liberalism, in this respect similar to the views of David Miller who talks about “solidaristic communities” in his 1999 book Principles of Social Justice and also takes stance in his 1995 and 2008 books. They both see the feeling of national identity as a feeling that promotes solidarity, and solidarity as means for increased social justice (Tamir 2019, in particular ch.20; compare Walzer 1983, Kymlicka 1995a, 2001, and Gans 2003, 2008).

Liberal nationalists diverge about the value of multiculturalism. Kymlicka takes it as basic for his picture of liberalism while Tamir dismisses it without much ado: multicultural, multiethnic democracies have a very poor track record, she claims (2019: 62). Tamir’s diagnosis of the present day political crisis, with politicians like Trump and Le Pen coming to the forefront, is that “liberal democrats were paralyzed by their assumed victory” whereas “nationalists felt defeated and obsolete” (2019: 7).

Tamir lists two kinds of reasons that guarantee special political status to nations. First kind, that no other political entity “is more able than the state to promote ideas in the public sphere” (2019: 52), and the second kind that nation needs continuous creative effort to make it functional and attractive.

The historical development of liberalism turned it into a universalistic, anti-communitarian principle; this has been a fatal mistake that can be and should be corrected by the liberal nationalist synthesis. Can we revive the unifying narratives of our nationality without sacrificing the liberal inheritance of freedom and rights? Liberal nationalism answers in the affirmative. From its standpoint, national particularism has primacy: “The love of humanity is a noble ideal, but real love is always particular…” (2019: 68).

Interestingly, Tamir combines this high regard of nation with an extreme constructivist view of its nature: nations are mental structures that exist in the minds of their members (2019: 58).

Is liberal nationalism implemented anywhere in the present world, or is it more of an ideal, probably end-state theory, that proposes a picture of a desirable society? Judging by the writings of liberal nationalists, it is the latter, although presented as a relatively easily reachable ideal, combining two traditions that are already well implemented in political reality.

The variations of nationalism most relevant for philosophy are those that influence the moral standing of claims and of recommended nationalist practices. The elaborate philosophical views put forward in favor of nationalism will be referred to as “theoretical nationalism”, the adjective serving to distinguish such views from less sophisticated and more practical nationalist discourse. The central theoretical nationalist evaluative claims can be charted on the map of possible positions within political theory in the following useful but somewhat simplified and schematic way.

Nationalist claims featuring the nation as central to political action must answer two crucial general questions. First, is there one kind of large social group that is of special moral importance? The nationalist answer is that there certainly is one, namely, the nation. Moreover, when an ultimate choice is to be made, say between ties of family, or friendship, and the nation, the latter has priority. Liberal nationalists prefer a more moderate stance, which ascribes value to national belonging, but don’t make it central in this way. Second, what are the grounds for an individual’s obligations to the morally central group? Are they based on voluntary or involuntary membership in the group? The typical contemporary nationalist thinker opts for the latter, while admitting that voluntary endorsement of one’s national identity is a morally important achievement. On the philosophical map, pro-nationalist normative tastes fit nicely with the communitarian stance in general: most pro-nationalist philosophers are communitarians who choose the nation as the preferred community (in contrast to those of their fellow communitarians who prefer more far-ranging communities, such as those defined by global religious traditions). [ 13 ]

Before proceeding to moral claims, let us briefly sketch the issues and viewpoints connected to territory and territorial rights that are essential for nationalist political programs. [ 14 ] Why is territory important for ethno-national groups, and what are the extent and grounds of territorial rights? Its primary importance resides in sovereignty and all the associated possibilities for internal control and external exclusion. Add to this the Rousseauian view that political attachments are essentially bounded and that love —or, to put it more mildly, republican civil friendship—for one’s group requires exclusion of some “other”, and the importance becomes quite obvious. What about the grounds for the demand for territorial rights? Nationalist and pro-nationalist views mostly rely on the attachment that members of a nation have to national territory and to the formative value of territory for a nation to justify territorial claims (see Miller 2000 and Meisels 2009). This is similar in some respects to the rationale given by proponents of indigenous peoples’ rights (Tully 2004, but see also Hendrix 2008) and in other respects to Kolers’ 2009 ethno-geographical non-nationalist theory, but differs in preferring ethno-national groups as the sole carriers of the right. These attachment views stand in stark contrast to more pragmatic views about territorial rights as means for conflict resolution (e.g., Levy 2000). Another quite popular alternative is the family of individualistic views grounding territorial rights in rights and interests of individuals. [ 15 ] On the extreme end of anti-nationalist views stands the idea of Pogge) that there are no specific territorial problems for political philosophy—the “dissolution approach”, as Kolers calls it.

We now pass to the normative dimension of nationalism. We shall first describe the very heart of the nationalist program, i.e., sketch and classify the typical normative and evaluative nationalist claims. These claims can be seen as answers to the normative subset of our initial questions about (1) pro-national attitudes and (2) actions.

We will see that these claims recommend various courses of action: centrally, those meant to secure and sustain a political organization for the given ethno-cultural national community (thereby making more specific the answers to our normative questions (1e) , (1f) , (2b) , and (2c) ). Further, they enjoin the community’s members to promulgate recognizable ethno-cultural contents as central features of the cultural life within such a state. Finally, we shall discuss various lines of pro-nationalist thought that have been put forward in defense of these claims. To begin, let us return to the claims concerning the furthering of the national state and culture. These are proposed by the nationalist as norms of conduct. The philosophically most important variations concern three aspects of such normative claims:

• The normative nature and strength of the claim: does it promote merely a right (say, to have and maintain a form of political self-government, preferably and typically a state, or have cultural life centered upon a recognizably ethno-national culture), or a moral obligation (to get and maintain one), or a moral, legal, and political obligation? The strongest claim is typical of classical nationalism; its typical norms are both moral and, once the nation-state is in place, legally enforceable obligations for all parties concerned, including for the individual members of the ethno-nation. A weaker but still quite demanding version speaks only of moral obligation (“sacred duty”).
• The strength of the nationalist claim in relation to various external interests and rights: to give a real example, is the use of the domestic language so important that even international conferences should be held in it, at the cost of losing the most interesting participants from abroad? The force of the nationalist claim is here being weighed against the force of other claims, including those of individual or group interests or rights. Variations in comparative strength of nationalist claims take place on a continuum between two extremes. At one rather unpalatable extreme, nation-focused claims take precedence over any other claims, including over human rights. Further towards the center is the classical nationalism that gives nation-centered claims precedence over individual interests and many needs, but not necessarily over general human rights (see, for example, MacIntyre 1994, Oldenquist 1997). On the opposite end, which is mild, humane, and liberal, the central classical nationalist claims are accorded prima facie status only (see Tamir 1993, Gans 2003, and Miller 2013; and for applications to Central Europe Stefan Auer 2004).

Universalizing nationalism is the political program that claims that every ethno-nation should have a state that it should rightfully own and the interests of which it should promote.

Alternatively, a claim may be particularistic, such as the claim “Group X ought to have a state”, where this implies nothing about any other group:

Particularistic nationalism is the political program claiming that some ethno-nation should have its state, without extending the claim to all ethno-nations. It claims thus either by omission (unreflective particularistic nationalism), or by explicitly specifying who is excluded: “Group X ought to have a state, but group Y should not” (invidious nationalism).

The most difficult and indeed chauvinistic sub-case of particularism, i.e., (B), has been called “invidious” since it explicitly denies the privilege of having a state to some peoples. Serious theoretical nationalists usually defend only the universalist variety, whereas the nationalist-in-the-street most often defends the egoistic indeterminate one.

The nationalist picture of morality traditionally has been quite close to the dominant view in the theory of international relations called “realism”. Put starkly, the view is that morality ends at the boundaries of the nation-state; beyond there is nothing but anarchy. [ 16 ] It nicely complements the main classical nationalist claim about the nation-state, i.e., that each ethno-nation or people should have a state of its own, and suggests what happens next: nation-states enter into competition in the name of their constitutive peoples.

3. The Moral Debate

Recall the initial normative question centered around (1) attitudes and (2) actions. Is national partiality justified, and to what extent? What actions are appropriate to bring about sovereignty? In particular, are ethno-national states and institutionally protected (ethno-) national cultures goods independent from the individual will of their members, and how far may one go in protecting them? The philosophical debate for and against nationalism is a debate about the moral validity of its central claims. In particular, the ultimate moral issue is the following: is any form of nationalism morally permissible or justified, and, if not, how bad are particular forms of it? [ 17 ] Why do nationalist claims require a defense? In some situations they seem plausible: for instance, the plight of some stateless national groups—the history of Jews and Armenians, the historical and contemporary misfortunes of Kurds—lends credence to the idea that having their own state would have solved the worst problems. Still, there are good reasons to examine nationalist claims more carefully. The most general reason is that it should first be shown that the political form of the nation-state has some value as such, that a national community has a particular, or even central, moral and political value, and that claims in its favor have normative validity. Once this is established, a further defense is needed. Some classical nationalist claims appear to clash—at least under normal circumstances of contemporary life—with various values that people tend to accept. Some of these values are considered essential to liberal-democratic societies, while others are important specifically for the flourishing of creativity and culture. The main values in the first set are individual autonomy and benevolent impartiality (most prominently towards members of groups culturally different from one’s own). The alleged special duties towards one’s ethno-national culture can and often do interfere with individuals’ right to autonomy.

Liberal nationalists are aware of the difficulties of the classical approach, and soften the classical claims, giving them only a prima facie status. They usually speak of “various accretions that have given nationalism a bad name”, and they are eager to “separate the idea of nationality itself from these excesses” (Miller 1992, 2000). Such thoughtful pro-nationalist writers have participated in an ongoing philosophical dialogue between proponents and opponents of the claim. [ 18 ] In order to help the reader find their through this involved debate, we shall briefly summarize the considerations which are open to the ethno-nationalist to defend their case (compare the useful overview in Lichtenberg 1997). Further lines of thought built upon these considerations can be used to defend very different varieties of nationalism, from radical to very moderate ones.

For brevity, each line of thought will be reduced to a brief argument; the actual debate is more involved than one can represent in a sketch. Some prominent lines of criticism that have been put forward in the debate will be indicated in brackets (see Miscevic 2001). The main arguments in favor of nationalism will be divided into two sets. The first set of arguments defends the claim that national communities have a high value, sometime seen as coming from the interests of their individual member (e.g., by Kymlicka, Miller, and Raz) and sometimes as non-instrumental and independent of the wishes and choices of their individual members, and argues that they should therefore be protected by means of state and official statist policies. The second set is less deeply “comprehensive”, and encompasses arguments from the requirements of justice, independent from substantial assumptions about culture and cultural values.

The first set will be presented in more detail since it has formed the core of the debate. It depicts the community as the source of value or as the transmission device connecting its members to some important values. For the classical nationalist, the arguments from this set are communitarian in a particularly “deep” sense since they are grounded in basic features of the human condition.

The general form of deep communitarian arguments is as follows. First, the communitarian premise: there is some uncontroversial good (e.g., a person’s identity), and some kind of community is essential for acquisition and preservation of it. Then comes the claim that the ethno-cultural nation is the kind of community ideally suited for this task. Then follows the statist conclusion: in order for such a community to preserve its own identity and support the identity of its members, it has to assume (always or at least normally) the political form of a state. The conclusion of this type of argument is that the ethno-national community has the right to an ethno-national state and the citizens of the state have the right and obligation to favor their own ethnic culture in relation to any other.

Although the deeper philosophical assumptions in the arguments stem from the communitarian tradition, weakened forms have also been proposed by more liberal philosophers. The original communitarian lines of thought in favor of nationalism suggest that there is some value in preserving ethno-national cultural traditions, in feelings of belonging to a common nation, and in solidarity between a nation’s members. A liberal nationalist might claim that these are not the central values of political life but are values nevertheless. Moreover, the diametrically opposing views, pure individualism and cosmopolitanism, do seem arid, abstract, and unmotivated by comparison. By cosmopolitanism we refer to moral and political doctrines claiming that

• one’s primary moral obligations are directed to all human beings (regardless of geographical or cultural distance), and
• political arrangements should faithfully reflect this universal moral obligation (in the form of supra-statist arrangements that take precedence over nation-states).

Confronted with opposing forces of nationalism and cosmopolitanism, many philosophers opt for a mixture of liberalism-cosmopolitanism and patriotism-nationalism. In his writings, B. Barber glorifies “a remarkable mixture of cosmopolitanism and parochialism” that in his view characterizes American national identity (Barber 1996: 31). Charles Taylor claims that “we have no choice but to be cosmopolitan and patriots” (Taylor 1996: 121). Hilary Putnam proposes loyalty to what is best in the multiple traditions in which each of us participates, apparently a middle way between a narrow-minded patriotism and an overly abstract cosmopolitanism (Putnam 1996: 114). The compromise has been foreshadowed by Berlin (1979) and Taylor (1989, 1993), [ 19 ] and in the last two decades it has occupied center stage in the debate and even provoked re-readings of historical nationalism in its light. [ 20 ] Most liberal nationalist authors accept various weakened versions of the arguments we list below, taking them to support moderate or ultra-moderate nationalist claims.

Here are then the main weakenings of classical ethno-nationalism that liberal, limited-liberal, and cosmopolitan nationalists propose. First, ethno-national claims have only prima facie strength and cannot trump individual rights. Second, legitimate ethno-national claims do not in themselves automatically amount to the right to a state, but rather to the right to a certain level of cultural autonomy. The main models of autonomy are either territorial or non-territorial: the first involves territorial devolution; the second, cultural autonomy granted to individuals regardless of their domicile within the state. [ 21 ] Third, ethno-nationalism is subordinate to civic patriotism, which has little or nothing to do with ethnic criteria. Fourth, ethno-national mythologies and similar “important falsehoods” are to be tolerated only if benign and inoffensive, in which case they are morally permissible despite their falsity. Finally, any legitimacy that ethno-national claims may have is to be derived from choices the concerned individuals are free to make.

Consider now the particular pro-nationalist arguments from the first set. The first argument depends on assumptions that also appear in the subsequent ones, but it further ascribes to the community an intrinsic value. The later arguments point more towards an instrumental value of nation, derived from the value of individual flourishing, moral understanding, firm identity and the like.

• The Argument From Intrinsic Value . Each ethno-national community is valuable in and of itself since it is only within the natural encompassing framework of various cultural traditions that important meanings and values are produced and transmitted. The members of such communities share a special cultural proximity to each other. By speaking the same language and sharing customs and traditions, the members of these communities are typically closer to one another in various ways than they are to the outsiders.
• The Argument from Flourishing . The ethno-national community is essential for each of its members to flourish. In particular, it is only within such a community that an individual can acquire concepts and values crucial for understanding the community’s cultural life in general and the individual’s own life in particular. There has been much debate on the pro-nationalist side about whether divergence of values is essential for separateness of national groups.

The Canadian liberal nationalists Seymour (1999), Taylor, and Kymlicka pointed out that “divergences of value between different regions of Canada” that aspire to separate nationhood are “minimal”. Taylor (1993: 155) concluded that it is not separateness of value that matters.

• The Argument from Identity . Communitarian philosophers emphasize nurture over nature as the principal force determining our identity as people—we come to be who we are because of the social settings and contexts in which we mature. This claim certainly has some plausibility. The very identity of each person depends upon his/her participation in communal life (see MacIntyre 1994, Nielsen, 1998, and Lagerspetz 2000). Given that an individual’s morality depends upon their having a mature and stable personal identity, the communal conditions that foster the development of personal identity must be preserved and encouraged. Therefore, communal life should be organized around particular national cultures.
• The Argument from Moral Understanding . A particularly important variety of value is moral value. Some values are universal, e.g., freedom and equality, but these are too abstract and “thin”. The rich, “thick” moral values are discernible only within particular traditions; as Charles Taylor puts it, “the language we have come to accept articulates the issues of the good for us” (1989: 35). The nation offers a natural framework for moral traditions, and thereby for moral understanding; it is the primary school of morals.

The ‘physiognomies’ of cultures are unique: each presents a wonderful exfoliation of human potentialities in its own time and place and environment. We are forbidden to make judgments of comparative value, for that is measuring the incommensurable. (1976: 206)

Assuming that the (ethno-)nation is the natural unit of culture, the preservation of cultural diversity amounts to institutionally protecting the purity of (ethno-)national culture. The plurality of cultural styles can be preserved and enhanced by tying them to ethno-national “forms of life”.

David Miller has developed an interesting and sophisticated liberal pro-national stance over the course of decades from his work in 1990 to the most recent work in 2013. He accepts multicultural diversity within a society but stresses an overarching national identity, taking as his prime example British national identity, which encompasses the English, Scottish, and other ethnic identities. He demands an “inclusive identity, accessible to members of all cultural groups” (2013: 91). miller claims such identity is necessary for basic social solidarity, and it goes far beyond simple constitutional patriotism. A skeptic could note the following. The problem with multicultural society is that national identity has historically been a matter of ethno-national ties and has required sameness in the weighted majority of cultural traits (common language, common “history-as-remembered”, customs, religion and so on). However, multi-cultural states typically bring together groups with very different histories, languages, religions, and even quite contrasting appearances. Now, how is the overarching “national identity” to be achieved starting from the very thin identity of common belonging to a state? One seems to have a dilemma. Grounding social solidarity in national identity requires the latter to be rather thin and seems likely to end up as full-on, unitary cultural identity. Thick constitutional patriotism may be one interesting possible attitude that can ground such solidarity while preserving the original cultural diversity.

The arguments in the second set concern political justice and do not rely on metaphysical claims about identity, flourishing, and cultural values. They appeal to (actual or alleged) circumstances that would make nationalist policies reasonable (or permissible or even mandatory), such as (a) the fact that a large part of the world is organized into nation-states (so that each new group aspiring to create a nation-state just follows an established pattern), or (b) the circumstances of group self-defense or of redressing past injustice that might justify nationalist policies (to take a special case). Some of the arguments also present nationhood as conducive to important political goods, such as equality.

• The Argument from the Right to Collective Self-determination . A group of people of a sufficient size has a prima facie right to govern itself and decide its future membership, if the members of the group so wish. It is fundamentally the democratic will of the members themselves that grounds the right to an ethno-national state and to ethno-centric cultural institutions and practices. This argument presents the justification of (ethno-)national claims as deriving from the will of the members of the nation. It is therefore highly suitable for liberal nationalism but not appealing to a deep communitarian who sees the demands of the nation as independent from, and prior to, the choices of particular individuals. [ 22 ]
• The Argument from the Right to Self-defense and to Redress Past Injustices . Oppression and injustice give the victimized group a just cause and the right to secede. If a minority group is oppressed by the majority to the extent that almost every minority member is worse off than most members of the majority simply in virtue of belonging to the minority, then nationalist claims on behalf of the minority are morally plausible and potentially compelling. The argument establishes a typical remedial right, acceptable from a liberal standpoint (see the discussion in Kukathas and Poole 2000, also Buchanan 1991; for past injustices see Waldron 1992).
• The Argument from Equality . Members of a minority group are often disadvantaged in relation to the dominant culture because they have to rely on those with the same language and culture to conduct the affairs of daily life. Therefore, liberal neutrality itself requires that the majority provide certain basic cultural goods, i.e., granting differential rights (see Kymlicka 1995b, 2001, and 2003b). Institutional protections and the right to the minority group’s own institutional structure are remedies that restore equality and turn the resulting nation-state into a more moderate multicultural one.
• The Argument from Success . The nationstate has in the past succeeded in promoting equality and democracy. Ethno-national solidarity is a powerful motive for a more egalitarian distribution of goods (Miller 1995; Canovan 1996, 2000). The nation-state also seems to be essential to safeguard the moral life of communities in the future, since it is the only form of political institution capable of protecting communities from the threats of globalization and assimilationism (for a detailed critical discussion of this argument see Mason 1999).

Andreas Wimmer (2018) presents an interesting discussion of the historical success of nation-state (discussed in Knott, Tolz, Green, & Wimmer 2019).

These political arguments can be combined with deep communitarian ones. However, taken in isolation, their perspectives offer a “liberal culturalism” that is more suitable for ethno-culturally plural societies. More remote from classical nationalism than the liberal one of Tamir and Nielsen, it eschews any communitarian philosophical underpinning. [ 23 ] The idea of moderate nation-building points to an open multi-culturalism in which every group receives its share of remedial rights but, instead of walling itself off from others, participates in a common, overlapping civic culture in open communication with other sub-communities. Given the variety of pluralistic societies and intensity of trans-national interactions, such openness seems to many to be the only guarantee of stable social and political life (see the debate in Shapiro and Kymlicka 1997).

In general, the liberal nationalist stance is mild and civil, and there is much to be said in favor of it. It tries to reconcile our intuitions in favor of some sort of political protection of cultural communities with a liberal political morality. Of course, this raises issues of compatibility between liberal universal principles and the particular attachments to one’s ethno-cultural nation. Very liberal nationalists such as Tamir divorce ethno-cultural nationhood from statehood. Also, the kind of love for country they suggest is tempered by all kinds of universalist considerations, which in the last instance trump national interest (Tamir 1993: 115; 2019: passim, see also Moore 2001 and Gans 2003). There is an ongoing debate among philosophical nationalists about how much weakening and compromising is still compatible with a stance’s being nationalist at all. [ 24 ] There is also a streak of cosmopolitan interest present in the work of some liberal nationalists (Nielsen 1998–99). [ 25 ]

In the last two decades, the issues of nationalism have been increasingly integrated into the debate about the international order (see the entries on globalization and cosmopolitanism ). The main conceptual link is the claim that nation-states are natural, stable, and suitable units of the international order. A related debate concerns the role of minorities in the processes of globalization (see Kaldor 2004). Moreover, the two approaches might ultimately converge: a multiculturalist liberal nationalism and a moderate, difference-respecting cosmopolitanism have a lot in common. [ 26 ]

“Populism” is an umbrella term, covering both right-wing and left-wing varieties. This section will pay attention to right-wing populist movements, very close to their traditional nationalist predecessors. This corresponds to the situation in the biggest part of Europe, and in the US, where nationalist topics are being put forward by the right-wing populist. [ 27 ]

However, it has become quite clear that nationalism is only one of the political “isms” attracting the right-wing populists. The migration crisis has brought to the forefront populist self-identification with linguistic-cultural communities (“we, French speaking people” for the former, “we Christians” for the later) that goes beyond nationalism.

Jan-Werner Müller (2016) and Cas Mudde (2007) note that the form common to all sorts of populism is quite simple and describe it as “thin”. Mudde explains: “Populism is understood as a thin-centered ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the People” (2007: 23). Populism, so defined, has two opposites: elitism and pluralism. First, there is the elite vs. people (“underdog”) contrast. Second, it is possible to distinguish two ways of characterizing “the people”: either in terms of social status (class, income-level, etc.) or in terms of ethnic and/or cultural belonging (see also de Cleen 2017).

The second, horizontal dimension distinguishes the predominantly left-wing from the predominantly right-wing populisms and leaves a place for a centrist populist option. Take classical strong ethnic nationalism. The relation between right-wing populism and such a nationalism is very tight. This has led some theoreticians (Taguieff 2015) to present “nationalist populism” as the only kind of populism. The term captures exactly the synthesis of populism and the strong ethnic nationalism or nativism. From populism, it takes the general schema of anti-elitism: the leader is addressing directly the people and is allegedly following the people’s interest. From nationalism, it takes the characterization of the people: it is the ethnic community, in most cases the state-owing ethnic community, or the ethno-nation. In his work, Mudde documents the claim that purely right-wing populists claim to represent the true people who form the true nation and whose purity is being muddied by new entrants. In the United States, one can talk about populist and reactionary movements, like the Tea Party, that have emerged through the recent experience of immigration, terrorist attacks, and growing economic polarization. We have to set aside here, for reasons of space, the main populist alternative (or quasi-alternative) to national populism. In some countries, like Germany, some populist groups-parties (e.g., German AfD party (Alternative for Germany)), appeal to properties much wider in their reach than ethno-national belonging, typically to religious affiliations. Others combine this appeal with the ethno-national one. This yields what Riva Kastoryano (2006) calls “transnational nationalism”.

Interestingly, liberal nationalism is not very attractive to the populists. On the theoretical side one can note that Tamir (2019) sees her liberal nationalism as a good recipe against the threat of demagogues like Trump and Boris Johnson (she avoids the use of the label “populist”, e.g., 2019: 31).

The rise of populism is changing the political playfield one must work with. The tolerant (liberal nationalist or anti-nationalist) views are confronting new problems in the populist age marked by migration crisis, etc. The dangers traditionally associated with military presence are gone; the national populists have to invent and construct a presumed danger that comes into the country together with foreign families, including those with children. In short, if these conjectures hold, the politicians and theoreticians are faced with a change. The traditional issue of the contrast between patriotism/nationalism and cosmopolitanism has changed its profile: the current drastic contrast is between the populist aversion to the foreigners-migrants and a more generous attitude of acceptance and Samaritan help. Finally, the populist understanding of “our people” (“we-community”) encompasses not only nationalist options but also goes way beyond it. The important element is the promiscuous character of the populist choices. It is probable that the future scholarship on nationalism will mainly focus on this new and challenging playfield, with an aim to address the new contrast and locate kinds of nationalism in relation to it. [ 28 ]

The migration crisis has made the nation-state in global context the central political topic concerning nationality. Before moving on to current events, the state of art before the crisis should be summarized. First, consider the debates on territory and nation and issues of global justice.

Liberal nationalists try to preserve the traditional nationalist link between ethnic “ownership” of the state and sovereignty and territorial control, but in a much more flexible and sophisticated setting. Tamar Meisels thus argues in favor of “taking existing national settlements into account as a central factor in demarcating territorial boundaries” since this line “has both liberal foundations” (i.e., in the work of John Locke) and liberal-national appeal (2009: 159) grounded in its affinity with the liberal doctrine of national self-determination. She combines it with Chaim Gans’ (2003: Ch. 4) interpretation of “historical right” claims as “the right to formative territories”. She thus combines “historical arguments, understood as claims to formative territories”, with her argument from settlement and insists on their interplay and mutual reinforcement, presenting them as being “most closely related to, and based on, liberal nationalist assumptions and underlying ideas” (Meisels 2009: 160). She nevertheless stresses that more than one ethnic group can have formative ties to a given territory, and that there might be competing claims based on settlement. [ 29 ] But, given the ethno-national conflicts of the twentieth century, one can safely assume that culturally plural states divided into isolated and closed sub-communities glued together merely by arrangements of modus vivendi are inherently unstable. Stability might therefore require that the pluralist society envisioned by liberal culturalists promote quite intense intra-state interaction between cultural groups in order to forestall mistrust, reduce prejudice, and create a solid basis for cohabitation.

But where should one stop? The question arises since there are many geographically open, interacting territories of various sizes. Consider first the geographical openness of big continental planes, then add the modern ease of interaction (“No island is an island any more”, one could say), and, finally and dramatically, the substantial ecological interconnectedness of land and climate. Here, the tough nationalistic line is no longer proposed seriously in ethical debates, so the furthest pro-national extreme is in fact a relatively moderate stance, exemplified by Miller in the works listed. Here is a typical proposal of his concerning global justice based on nation-states: it might become a matter of national pride to have set aside a certain percentage of GDP for developmental goals—perhaps for projects in one particular country or group of countries (2013: 182).

This brings us to the topic of migrations, and the heated debate on the present scene. [ 30 ] In Europe immigration is probably the main topic of the present day populist uproar, and in the United States it is one of the main topics. So, immigration plus the nationalist-populist reactions to it are in the current decade the main testing ground for nationalist and cosmopolitan views.

Let’s look at the pro-national side in the debate. Liberal nationalists, in particular Miller, have put forward some thoughtful pro-nationalist proposal concerning immigration. Miller’s proposal allows refugees to seek asylum temporarily until the situation in their country of origin improves; it also limits economic migration. Miller argues against the defensibility of a global standard for equality, opportunity, welfare, etc., because measures of just equality are context-bound. People do have the right to a minimum standard of living, but the right to migrate only activates as a last resort after all other measures within a candidate-migrant’s country of origin have been tried. However, he also (particularly in his book on “Strangers in our midst”, 2016), claims that national responsibility to accept immigrant refugees is balanced by considerations of the interest of would-be immigrants and the interests that national communities have in maintaining control over their own composition and character.

If we agree with the liberal nationalists on the positive side, we can ask about the dynamics of the help required for the immigrants. Distinguish at least three stages, first, the immediate emergency (starvation, freezing, urgent medical problems) and catering to it, second, settlement and learning (on the host and the immigrant newcomer side), and third, the stage of (some kind of) citizenship, of relatively stable life in the host country.

In the first phase, the immediate help comes first, both normatively and causally: just accept the would-be refugees (indeed, the would-be refugees should be helped in leaving their countries and travelling to the host country). In longer term, staying should involve opportunity for work and training.

But there is more. The Samaritan obligation can and should function as a preparation for wider global activity. [ 31 ] So, we have two theoretical steps, first, accepting Samaritanism and second, agreeing with deeper trans-national measure of blocking distant causes, like poverty and wars in the Third world. Let us call this “Samaritan-to-deeper-measures model”. The model is geared to the dramatically changed playground in which the nationalism issues are played out in the context of populism and refugee crisis, raising issues that were not around two decades ago.

In presenting the claims that the pro-nationalists defend, we have proceeded from the more radical towards more liberal nationalist alternatives. In examining the arguments for these claims, we have presented metaphysically demanding communitarian arguments resting upon deep communitarian assumptions about culture, such as the premise that the ethno-cultural nation is the most important community for all individuals. This is an interesting and respectable claim, but its plausibility has not been established. The moral debate about nationalism has resulted in various weakenings of culture-based arguments, typically proposed by liberal nationalists, which render the arguments less ambitious but much more plausible. Having abandoned the old nationalist ideal of a state owned by a single dominant ethno-cultural group, liberal nationalists have become receptive to the idea that identification with a plurality of cultures and communities is important for a person’s social identity. They have equally become sensitive to trans-national issues and more willing to embrace a partly cosmopolitan perspective. Liberal nationalism has also brought to the fore more modest, less philosophically or metaphysically charged arguments grounded in concerns about justice. These stress the practical importance of ethno-cultural membership, ethno-cultural groups’ rights to have injustices redressed, democratic rights of political association, and the role that ethno-cultural ties and associations can play in promoting just social arrangements.

The events in the current decade, the refugee crisis and the rise of right-wing populism, have dramatically changed the relevant practical and theoretical playground. The traditional nationalism is still relevant, but populist nationalism attracts much more attention: new theories are being produced and debated, coming to occupy the center stage. On the other hand, migration crisis has replaced the typical cosmopolitan issue of solidarity-with-distant-strangers with burning issues of helping refugees present at our doors. Of course, the causes of the crisis are still the same ones that cosmopolitans have been worrying about much earlier: wars and dramatically unequal global distribution of goods, and of threats, like illnesses and climate disasters. The task of the theory is now to connect these deeper issues with the new problems occupying the center-stage of the new playground; it is a challenge now formulated in somewhat different vocabulary and within different political conceptual frameworks than before.

This is a short list of books on nationalism that are readable and useful introductions to the literature. First, two contemporary classics of social science with opposing views are:

• Gellner, Ernest, 1983, Nations and Nationalism , Oxford: Blackwell.
• Smith, Anthony D., 1991, National Identity , Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Three presentations of liberal nationalism, two of them by the same author, Yael Tamir, offer the best introduction to the approach:

• Miller, David, 1995, On Nationality , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/0198293569.001.0001
• Tamir, Yael, 1993, Liberal Nationalism , Press, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• –––, 2019, Why Nationalism , Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Two short and readable introductions are:

• Özkirimli, Umut, 2010, Theories of Nationalism: A Critical Introduction , second edition, London: Palgrave Macmillan. First edition is 2000; third edition is 2017.
• Spencer, Philip and Howard Wollman, 2002, Nationalism, A Critical Introduction , London: Sage.

The two best anthologies of high-quality philosophical papers on the morality of nationalism are:

• McKim, Robert and Jeff McMahan (eds), 1997, The Morality of Nationalism , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Couture, Jocelyne, Kai Nielsen, and Michel Seymour (eds.), 1998, Rethinking Nationalism , Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Supplement Volume 22, Calgary, AB: University of Calgary Press.

The debate continues in:

• Miscevic, Nenad (ed), 2000, Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict: Philosophical Perspectives , La Salle and Chicago: Open Court.
• Dieckoff, Alain (ed.), 2004, The Politics of Belonging: Nationalism, Liberalism, and Pluralism , Lanham: Lexington.
• Primoratz, Igor and Aleksandar Pavković (eds), 2007, Patriotism, Philosophical and Political Perspectives , London: Ashgate.
• Breen, Keith and Shane O’Neill (eds.), 2010, After the Nation? Critical Reflections on Nationalism and Postnationalism , London: Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1057/9780230293175

A good brief sociological introduction to nationalism in general is:

• Grosby, Steven, 2005, Nationalism: A Very Short Introduction , Oxford: Oxford University Press.

and to the gender-inspired criticism of nationalism is:

• Yuval-Davis, Nira, 1997, Gender & Nation , London: Sage Publications.
• Heuer, Jennifer, 2008, “Gender and Nationalism”, in Herb and Kaplan 2008: vol. 1, 43–58.
• Hogan, Jackie, 2009, Gender, Race and National Identity: Nations of Flesh and Blood , London: Routledge.

The best general introduction to the communitarian-individualist debate is still:

• Avineri, Shlomo and Avner de-Shalit (eds.), 1992, Communitarianism and Individualism , Oxford: Oxford University Press.

For a non-nationalist defense of culturalist claims see:

• Kymlicka, Will (ed.), 1995a, The Rights of Minority Cultures , Oxford: Oxford University Press.

A very readable philosophical defense of very moderate liberal nationalism is:

• Gans, Chaim, 2003, The Limits of Nationalism , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511490231

And for application to Central Europe see:

• Auer, Stefan, 2004, Liberal Nationalism in Central Europe , London: Routledge.

A polemical, witty and thoughtful critique is offered in:

• Barry, Brian, 2001, Culture and Equality: An Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism , Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.

And a more recent one in

• Kelly, Paul, 2015, “Liberalism and Nationalism”, in The Cambridge Companion to Liberalism , Steven Wall (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 329–352. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139942478.018

Interesting critical analyses of group solidarity in general and nationalism in particular, written in the traditions of rational choice theory and motivation analysis, are:

• Hardin, Russell, 1985, One for All, The Logic of Group Conflict , Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Yack, Bernard, 2012, Nationalism and the Moral Psychology of Community , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

There is a wide offering of interesting sociological and political science work on nationalism, which is beginning to be summarized in:

• Motyl, Alexander (ed.), 2001, Encyclopedia of Nationalism , Volumes I and II, New York: Academic Press.

A fine encyclopedic overview is:

• Herb, Guntram H. and David H. Kaplan, 2008, Nations and Nationalism: a Global Historical Overview , four volumes, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC Clio.

A detailed sociological study of life under nationalist rule is:

• Billig, Michael, 1995, Banal Nationalism , London: Sage Publications.

The most readable short anthology of brief papers for and against cosmopolitanism (and nationalism) by leading authors in the field is:

• Cohen, Joshua (ed.), 1996, For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism , Martha Nussbaum and respondents, Boston, MA: Beacon Press
• Anderson, Benedict, 1983 [2006], Imagined Communities , London: Verso; revised edition, 2006.
• Aron, Raymond, 1962, Paix et guerre entre les nations , Paris: Calmann-Levy. Translated as Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations , Richard Howard and Annette Baker Fox (trans), Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965.
• Balibar, Etienne and Immanuel Wallerstein, 1988 [1991], Race, nation, classe: les identités ambiguës , Paris: Editiones La Découverte; translated as Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities , Chris Turner (trans.), London-New York: Verso.
• Barber, Benjamin R., 1996, “Constitutional Faith”, in J. Cohen (ed.) 1996: 30–37.
• –––, 1996, Jihad Vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism are Reshaping the World , New York: Ballantine Books.
• Barry, Brian, 1999, “Statism and Nationalism: a Cosmopolitan Critique”, in Shapiro and Brilmayer 1999: 12–66.
• –––, 2001, Culture and Equality: An Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism , Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.
• Bauböck, Reiner, 2004, “Territorial or Cultural Autonomy for National Minorities?”, in Dieckoff 2004: 221–258.
• Bechhofer, Frank and David McCrone (eds.), 2009, National Identity, Nationalism and Constitutional Change , London: Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1057/9780230234147
• Bell, Duncan (ed.), 2008, Political Thought and International Relations: Variations on a Realist Theme , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Berlin, Isaiah, 1976, Vico and Herder: Two Studies in the History of Ideas , London: The Hogarth Press.
• –––, 1979, “Nationalism: Past Neglect and Present Power”, in Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas , London: Hogarth Press, 333–355.
• Betts, Alexander and Paul Collier, 2017, Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System , London: Penguin.
• –––, 2017, “Banal Nationalism and the Imagining of Politics”, in Everyday Nationhood: Theorising Culture, Identity and Belonging after Banal Nationalism , Michael Skey and Marco Antonsich (eds.), London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 307–321. doi:10.1057/978-1-137-57098-7_15
• Blake, Michael, 2013, Justice and Foreign Policy , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199552009.001.0001
• Breuilly, John, 2001, “The State”, in Motyl (ed.) 2001: Volume 1.
• –––, 2011, “On the Principle of Nationality”, in The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Political Thought , Gareth Stedman Jones and Gregory Claeys (eds.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 77–109. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521430562.005
• Breuilly, John, John Hutchinson, and Eric Kaufmann (eds), 2019, special issue on populism and nationalism in Nations and Nationalism , 25(1): 1–400.
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• –––, 2013, “Language, Religion and the Politics of Difference”, Nations and Nationalism , 19(1): 1–20. doi:10.1111/j.1469-8129.2012.00562.x
• –––, 2015, Grounds for Difference , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Buchanan, Allen, 1991, Secession: The Morality of Political Divorce from Fort Sumter to Lithuania and Quebec , Boulder: Westview Press.
• –––, 2004, Justice, Legitimacy, and Self-Determination: Moral Foundations for International Law , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/0198295359.001.0001
• Buchanan, Allen and Margaret Moore (eds.), 2003, States, Nations and Borders: The Ethics of Making Boundaries , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511613937
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• Canovan, Margaret, 1996, Nationhood and Political Theory , Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
• –––, 2000, “Patriotism Is Not Enough”, British Journal of Political Science , 30(3): 413–432. doi:10.1017/S000712340000017X
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How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• Nussbaum, Martha C. 2002, “ Beyond the Social Contract: Toward Global Justice ”, Tanner Lecture, Australian National University.
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• Global Policy Forum , has papers on the future of nation-states.
• Academy of European Law , at the European University Institute.
• Territory and Justice network: repository of pre-publication papers .

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Article contents

Nationalism.

• Renaud-Philippe Garner Renaud-Philippe Garner Department of Political Science, Aarhus University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.2039
• Published online: 18 May 2022

Nationalism is a set of beliefs about the nation: its origins, nature, and value. For nationalists, we are particular social animals. On the one hand, our lives are structured by a profound sense of togetherness and similarity: We share languages and memories. On the other hand, our lives are characterized by deep divisions and differences: We draw borders and contest historical narratives. For nationalism, humanity is neither a single species-wide community nor an aggregation of individuals but divided into distinct and unique nations. At the heart of nationalism are claims about our identity and needs as social animals that form the basis of a series of normative claims. To answer the question “what should I do” or “how should I live,” one must first answer the questions “who am I” and “where do I belong.” Nationalism says that our membership in a nation takes precedence and ultimately must guide our choices and actions. In terms of guiding choice and action, nationalist thought proposes a specific form of partiality. Rather than treat the interests or claims of persons and groups impartially, the nationalist demands that one favors one’s own, either as a group or as individual persons. While nationalism does not claim to be the only form of partiality, it does claim to outrank all others: Loyalty or obligations to other groups or identities are subordinated to national loyalty. Together, these claims function as a political ideology. Nationalism identifies the nation as the central form of community and elevates it to the object of supreme loyalty. This fundamental concern for the nation and its flourishing can be fragmented into narrower aims or objectives: national autonomy, national identity, and national unity. Debate on nationalism tends to divide into two clusters, one descriptive and one normative, that only make partial contact. For historians and sociologists, the questions are explanatory: What is nationalism, what is a nation, how are they related, and when and how did they emerge? Philosophers and political theorists focus on the justification of nationalism or nationalist claims: Is national loyalty defensible, what are the limits of this loyalty, how do we rank our loyalties, and does nationalism conflict with human rights?

• nationalism
• perennialism
• civic nation
• ethnic nation
• liberal nationalism
• globalization

Introduction: A Contested Concept

Nationalism is not a consensual idea: We might say that it is doubly contested. On the one hand, there is little consensus on what it is . Primarily, historians and sociologists have conducted descriptive research: They argue for a definition of nationalism as well as an account of its emergence, and they advance typologies of nationalism or stages of its transformation. Arguably, the central debate concerns the origins of nationalism and nations: When did they emerge and why did they do so? Modernists claim that nationalism emerged in the past few centuries and created nations: The ideology invents a new and artificial form of community. Their critics, often experts on premodern eras, either respond that nations are far older than the modernist paradigm allows or that they are transformations of older communities rather than ex nihilo creations.

These debates are not merely about dates. Behind the answer to the question “when did nationalism first emerge?” we find questions like “what is nationalism?” “what is its function?” and “which conditions made it possible or inevitable?” Even among those who agree on an approximate timeline or place for its emergence, we find a range of competing explanations on what produced nationalism: new economic conditions, political transformations, or the power of new ideas.

Nor is there any consensus on the precise relationship between nationalism and nations. For some, nations predate nationalism but are transformed by it, while for others, nationalism creates nations, and for others yet, nations are the modern transformation of prenational communities.

On the other hand, we find intense disagreement about the morality or justification of nationalism. While some scholars seem ambivalent, noting both achievements and failures, and others defend some version of it, there is no gainsaying that nationalism is the object of sustained criticism. The normative debate is further complicated by the fact that what philosophers call “nationalism” only partially overlaps with what historians and sociologists mean by it. Many philosophers and political theorists seem interested in national partiality— the idea that one can, should, or must be partial to fellow nationals—rather than an ideology that orders domestic life and the international order.

Generally, the seminal works on nationalism are explanatory accounts. In addition, to this difference in age and output, there is a question of reliance. Normative debates depend on descriptive ones. Those making normative arguments tend to draw on the descriptive research—from their conception of nationalism to the extent to which they think the nation is artificial. Consequently, this entry focuses on central descriptive and normative questions, with a longer examination of the former. It begins with a clarificatory section (“ Nationalism or Patriotism? ”) that distinguishes the two eponymous concepts and provides a “core” definition of nationalism. The section “ The Origins and Nature of Nationalism ” provides a critical survey of the central descriptive debate: How and when did nationalism emerge? This section divides into subsections: “ Modernism and Its Proponents ” as well as “ Antimodernism .” The section “ Conceptions of the Nation ” addresses the question of what kind of community the nation is through a critical discussion of the ethnic–civic distinction. Normative questions are considered in the section “ The Justification of Nationalism .” The subsection “ Liberal Nationalism and Its Defense ” distinguishes liberal nationalism from core nationalism before turning to prominent arguments made in favor of and against the former.

Nationalism or Patriotism?

While nationalism and patriotism are sometimes treated as synonymous, there are good reasons to differentiate them. First, patriotism is far older than nationalism. While modernists all believe that nationalism is recent, none contest Greek patriotism during the Medic Wars ( Kohn, 1944 ). This chronological difference depends upon a more basic one: Nationalism and patriotism belong to different categories. Typically, patriotism is viewed as a love for or loyalty to one’s community, whether an emotion or character trait ( Kedourie, 1960 ; Kleinig et al., 2015 ; MacIntyre, 1984 ; Oldenquist, 1982 ). 1 Either way, patriotism is neither an ideology nor a form of politics. Understood as an emotion or a character trait, we can grasp the futility of asking when it first appeared: We do not ask when courage was invented or which society discovered love. 2

This distinction also helps explain why the two phenomena are related and sometimes conflated. If patriotism is older and more basic, it makes sense that nationalism draws on this emotion or character trait that arises naturally within human communities. Conversely, it is unsurprising that those who cultivate love and loyalty for their community are drawn to an ideology centered on it.

Nationalism, however, cannot be reduced to sentiment or a character trait. The standard view is that it is an ideology, whatever else it might be ( Billig, 1995 ; Eriksen, 2002 ; Kedourie, 1960 ; Smith, 1991 , 1998 , 2010 ). 3 Despite a wide variety of nationalisms and nationalist thinkers, we can still identify a few core propositions that were shared by seminal thinkers as well as by nationalist movements. We can refer to this as “core” or “classical nationalism.”

Nationalism begins with a claim about the nature and order of the world: It is divided into distinct and unique nations (i). 4 Then it adds a claim about the human good: Human freedom (or flourishing) is dependent upon membership in a nation (ii). Upon these claims about the world and our nature, they add normative claims. The nation, and only the nation, is the source of political legitimacy (iii). Nations must be autonomous and express their characters (iv). Finally, national loyalty outranks all other loyalties (v) ( Kedourie, 1960 ; Smith, 1991 , 1998 , 2010 ). 5

Together, these propositions can explain a great deal of what we call nationalism. 6 For instance, the quest for authenticity depends upon (i) and (iv). If nations are not unique, then it is hard to understand why authenticity should matter. Nor does it make much sense to stress the value of self-expression is what is being expressed is banal or common. Similarly, the nationalist aim of achieving statehood largely follows from (iii) and (iv). On the one hand, if all alien rule is illegitimate, then why should a nation accept it? On the other hand, it seems plausible that the best guarantee of autonomy and self-expression is state sovereignty. Or consider how nationalism is associated with mass mobilization and self-sacrifice. This is in part a function of (v). These projects are justified by an appeal to rank-ordering; if national loyalty reigns supreme, then all other loyalties must be subordinate.

In sum, while nationalist thinkers and nationalist movements present us with additions or iterations, these five beliefs capture much of what is shared. When one speaks about the age of nationalism or its spread, one is invariably speaking about some or all of these propositions. 7

The Origins and Nature of Nationalism

Since the mid- 20th century , the origins and nature of nationalism have been fiercely debated between modernists and their critics. While the former view has emerged as the dominant paradigm, steady criticism has produced notable rival views.

Modernism developed as a rejection of previous scholarship. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries , school manuals and scholarship presented nations as ancient, even immemorial. History was taught as a multimillennia narrative of nations and their great members. For example, Germans were taught that their nation long predated unification under Otto von Bismarck. The Hermannsdenkmal— a 19th-century monument celebrating the victory of Arminius, a 1st-century warlord, over the Romans at Teutoburger Forest—embodies this belief in continuity between contemporary Germans and their alleged ancestors ( Grosby, 2005 ).

Modernism and Its Proponents

Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist—but it does need some pre-existing differentiating marks to work on, even if, as indicated, these are purely negative. ( Gellner, 1964 , p. 168)

For modernists, nationalism and nations are products of modernity, even necessary features of it. They emerge, together, sometime between the English Revolution ( Greenfeld, 1992 ; Kohn, 1940 ) or Fichte’s Addresses to the German Nation ( Kedourie, 1960 ). Central to modernism is the relationship between nationalism and nations: Nationalism invents nations. The latter are not organic communities. Unlike families or religious communities, they have not and cannot emerge anywhere, any time. The nation is created by nationalism, which in turn is the product of a particular set of sociohistorical circumstances.

This shared belief is also the point of departure for deep disagreement. Which features of modernity best explain the emergence of nationalism and the invention of nations? There are roughly five kinds of answers to this question: cultural, economic, political, ideological, and radical constructivism.

Modern man is not loyal to a monarch or a land or a faith, whatever he may say, but to a culture. ( Gellner, 1983 , p. 36)

Primarily associated with Ernest Gellner, the cultural view claims that modernization created nationalism, which in turn created nations, out of necessity ( Gellner, 1964 , 1973 , 1983 ). The disruption of premodern life caused by industrialization made it necessary to produce a homogeneous culture that would allow workers to communicate independently of context. To overcome fragmented local premodern cultures, one needs an overarching culture: a national culture. For this reason, a high culture is constructed and later a mass education system is devised to ensure its uniform transmission. Nationalism is a product of necessity: It constructs a new form of identity and community as a response to urban uprooting and industrialization. The dislocating effects of modernity require a refashioning of culture and identity.

People is all they have got: this is the essence of the underdevelopment dilemma itself. ( Nairn, 1977 , p. 100)

A rival view explains the origins of nationalism by appealing to another modern phenomenon: capitalism. For theorists like Tom Nairn, nationalism is a strategic response to the uneven spread of capitalism and the power that it provides ( Nairn, 1977 ). The unequal development and spread of capitalism distribute resources and power unequally: There are centers that benefited from the development of capitalism and there are poorer peripheries. Peripheral elites design an ideology that takes advantage of their only abundant resource: people. And to effectively mobilize and motivate those who do not share their class or interests, these peripheral elites must create a powerful sense of belonging. The solution is to draw on popular beliefs and practices to create a new interclass community: the nation. Thus, economic variants of modernism explain the advent of nationalism in terms of recent economic change, namely, capitalism.

On these views, nationalism is both a form of elite manipulation and transformation. The elites must construct a new sense of community to persuade the masses to endorse their priorities and projects. Yet, they must also change; they must become conversant in a language that draws on popular culture, its myths, and symbols, to mobilize this sense of interclass community.

But the clarity of focus on the nation as coterminous with the state cries out for a predominantly political explanation. ( Mann, 1995 , p. 48)

Yet another variant considers the territorial state to be the best explanation for the advent of nationalist ideology. Bluntly put, political changes are what call for a new political ideology. Nationalism emerges within the past few centuries because it is intimately linked to the modern state. The latter is not a collection of fiefdoms or local power structures but a stable administrative structure, centered in a capital, ruling over well-defined territories ( Giddens, 1985 ).

Here too modernity is cast as a disruptive force and nationalism is part and parcel of a response to it. Whatever else it disrupts, modernity destroys premodern polities and political frameworks. Instead of drawing on religious symbols or myths of descent, nationalism is the attachment to those symbols or representations of the modern state such as citizenship.

Other political variants of modernism emphasize interstate competition and the role that militarization plays ( Mann, 1986 ; Tilly, 1975 ). Still, the argument is essentially the same: Nationalism is created by modern states to help them function competitively and effectively in domestic or international affairs. Either way, it is a largely psychological phenomenon, a special esprit de corps tailor-made for the inhabitants of these new large administrative states.

Again, since a nation, ipso facto, must speak an original language, its speech must be cleansed of foreign accretions and borrowings, since the purer the language, the more natural it is, and the easier it becomes for the nation to realise itself, and to increase its freedom. ( Kedourie, 1960 , p. 67)

A fourth variant considers nationalism to be the response to the discontentment brought by modernity. Powerfully articulated by Elie Kedourie, this view presents nationalism as a civic religion, complete with a narrative of the fall, a path to redemption, and exhortations to sacrifice and purification. This creed was birthed by disillusioned marginal German intellectuals and then exported worldwide ( Kedourie, 1960 , 1971 ).

Collective humiliation and powerlessness are to be explained by national disunity, loss of identity, and autonomy. Like ancient Hebrews explaining their political subjugation in terms of their sinful ways, the nationalist blames contemporary discontentment on a failure to honor and safeguard one’s unique and distinct nation. The solution is national revival: The nation must be reunited, autonomy restored, and national identity restored to its authentic self.

Unlike other variants of modernism that see nationalism as the creation of elites seeking to secure the rising power structures or to provide the necessary social identity for the changing times, this view of nationalism as civic religion is invented by powerless members of society.

No surprise then that the search was on, so to speak, for a new way of linking fraternity, power and time meaningfully together. Nothing perhaps more precipitated this search, nor made it more fruitful, than print-capitalism, which made it possible for rapidly growing numbers of people to think about themselves, and to relate themselves to other, in profoundly new ways. ( Anderson, 1983/2006 , p. 36)

Finally, there are radical constructivist accounts that emphasize the artificiality of the nation: Nationalism is a narrative and the nation is a cultural artifact. For instance, Benedict Anderson has famously argued that changes in terms of how we conceptualize time, the combination of the printing press and capitalism, as well as political change meant that we could imagine new forms of community in which large groups of people can simultaneously imagine themselves as equal members ( Anderson, 1983/2006 ).

The convergence of factors explains what is needed for the narrative to take form and succeed. Print capitalism provides both the material means and an economic incentive to help construct and sustain reading publics, united by a vernacular language. Yet, the impetus to tell this story, to imagine such communities, comes from disaffected civil servants. Here we find echoes of the ideological account: Disaffected functionaries in Latin America came to resent their careers stunted by imperial metropoles. In short, the construction of nations through the nationalist narrative is made possible by several factors: new technology, changing ideas, and a class of people motivated to reimagine their sense of belonging.

Modernism is an attractive paradigm. Undeniably, nationalism spread and came to prominence in the past few centuries. Moreover, the nation-state and the notion of popular sovereignty certainly do not appear at home in the premodern world of multinational empires and dynastic power. And its advocates are right to show that much of what has been called ancient or authentic by nationalists was, in fact, neither. 8 Yet, for all its strengths, the modernist paradigm faces important hurdles.

The proliferation of variants reveals deep disagreement; irreconcilable modernisms cast doubt on the promise of modernism. For example, while modernists agree that the nation is a recent creation, they cannot agree on who created it. If nationalism invented nations, who invented nationalism?

For authors who defend economic modernism, it is the invention of peripheral elites who need a new form of mobilization to outcompete richer and more powerful elites ( Hechter, 1975 ; Nairn, 1977 ). Similarly, for those who consider nationalism as a form of political messianism, it is the invention of the marginal and frustrated among the educated and the skilled ( Kedourie, 1960 , 1971 ). Yet, conceiving nationalism as a rational strategy for weaker parties cannot be reconciled with the claim that nationalism emerges as the state’s official ideology to reinforce militarization or with the view that it is devised by elites for the sake of modernization and industrialization ( Gellner, 1964 , 1983 ; Tilly, 1975 ). One is left wondering whether nationalism is the ideology of the downtrodden who seek liberation or the ideology of the ruling class who seek consolidation.

There are deeper problems for modernist accounts. All of them purport to offer a unitary explanation and yet none do. Each variant draws its strength from its ability to compellingly explain certain cases, but none can explain all the central let alone the plausible cases. While economic theories rightly show how nationalism can be a strategy in an unequal contest, this hardly proves that nationalism is the consequence of such conditions: Underdevelopment often fails to produce nationalism, and nationalism regularly emerges among the (over)developed ( Connor, 1994 ). Similarly, explaining nationalism as a response to industrialization fails to account for those cases where the former precedes the latter ( Smith, 1983 ). And political accounts of nationalism fail to explain why nationalist energies can focus on something besides the state or sovereignty. If nationalism is only about the pursuit or consolidation of state power, what are we to make of cultural nationalism: artistic renaissances, campaigns for moral regeneration, and attempts to transform through education? And given that cultural and political nationalism feed off each other, why focus solely on the latter ( Hutchinson, 1987 , 1994 )?

Finally, the modernist paradigm struggles to persuasively answer important questions. Even if modern societies require new forms of community, this does not explain why the nation arouses such powerful and awe-inspiring passions. Put otherwise, how can instrumental accounts, which consider the nation an artificial community invented to serve some further end, explain its motivational power? Some modernists try to explain the power of nationalism by pointing to its self-referential quality: It is a form of self-worship ( Breuilly, 1993 ). But such replies must inevitably fail. Even if group worship provides great motivational power, this fails to answer a comparative question: Why is the national identity so much more powerful than other available identities? Why should an artificial and recent form of self-worship prove so effective?

Antimodernism

The appearance of the nation and its continuation over time is not a historically uniform process that can be attributed to one cause, such as the requirements of industrial capitalism, or confined to one period of time, such as the last several centuries. ( Grosby, 2005 , p. 58)

The primary fault line between modernists and their critics concerns not the origins of nationalism as an ideology but the nature of nations and their antiquity. Rather than conceive of nations as artificial and recent, the critics of modernism consider them to be either ancient forms of community or transformations of premodern forms of community.

Either way, critics of modernism tend to stress the extent to which nations must build upon dimensions of human identity that are far from modern, such as ethnicity or religion ( Armstrong, 1982 ; Gat, 2012 ; Grosby, 1991 , 2005 ; Hastings, 1997 ; Reynolds, 1983 , 1984 ; Smith, 1986 , 1991 , 1998 , 2000 ).

The argument tends to center on an existential claim: Is it or is it not the case that a nation has existed before modernity? For modernists, the answer must be negative. Indeed, if a single nation precedes nationalism, then the former can exist independently of the latter. And this demonstrates that nationalism neither invents the nation as a type of community nor all tokens of it. For this reason, considerable time and energy are expended to show that some nations, or at the very least one nation, existed before modernity.

We should distinguish between two antimodernist strands. Primordialism is the belief that nations are natural: They have always existed, or their origins are lost in time. While such views were more common in the 19th century , there are late- 20th-century attempts to defend primordialism. Sociobiological primordialism considers the nation as an extension of kin selection; our national ties are the product of our evolutionary inheritance and our tendency to favor those who are genetically similar ( van den Berghe, 1978 ). However, such views quickly break down. If the nation is primarily about kin selection, then it makes little sense to cooperate with and sacrifice oneself for those who are genetically unrelated. Even ethnic nations are bound by myths of common descent rather than actual genetic proximity.

Alternatively, we can speak of “cultural primordialism” when (national) culture is treated as a social given, something inherited that arouses powerful and nearly irresistible passions, even if this is only how we feel or perceive these ties ( Geertz, 1973 ). However, this view quickly falters. While “given” or “primordial” ties can be powerful, they are also subject to change, revision, and rejection. Moreover, the theory does not explain the power of these ties so much as rename them. Why should the given be stronger than the chosen?

Far more influential, perennialism accepts that nationalism is a modern ideology, that nations are historical objects—they appear at a point in time—but rejects that they were invented by nationalism in the modern era. 9 We can distinguish between perennialists who believe that the nation is persistent and those who argue that it is best understood as a recurrent phenomenon. The former is the idea that nations, or at least some of them, are continuous intergenerational communities that have existed without interruption while the latter is the view of nations as recurring, going in and out of existence throughout the ages ( Smith, 1998 ).

Because the critics of modernity do not claim that all or most nations are ancient, they readily concede that Tanzania is quite modern. Instead, the debate focuses on the antiquity of specific nations that serve as litmus tests. Thus, Adrian Hastings argued that England had already emerged as a functional national community during the Middle Ages. For him, there is an English national identity, modeled on the biblical model of Israel: a united people keenly aware of their identity, possessing a language and territory, a government, and a shared religion ( Hastings, 1997 ). Later developments, like the Reformation and the spread of a vernacular-language Bible, might reinforce and transform English identity, but what is being changed must be older than these transformations.

Naturally, if the English nation is modeled on something older, then the antiquity of the nation can be pressed further. Perhaps the hardest case for the modernist paradigm is that of ancient Israel. Here we are faced with what appears to be the uninterrupted intergenerational community that was conscious of its distinct identity, as well as possessed a unique language and religion and a homeland. In addition, they shared memories of an independent political community and rebellions against foreign occupation ( Grosby, 1991 ).

Again, cases such as medieval England or ancient Israel are designed to show that while premodern nations might be exceptional, modernism is wrong to assert that nationalism invents the concept of the nation and all instances of it. In a way, we might say that critics of modernity imagine nations like democracy: Most democracies are quite young, and the success of the idea is recent, but that does not show that democracy is a modern invention.

While radical critics of modernism argue that some nations have existed long before modernity, others present a moderate critique. Nations might be recent, but they are continuous with premodern communities. It is reasonable to understand these critics as rejecting the radical modernism of Eric Hobsbawm, who denies any serious continuity between older forms of community, ethnic or religious, for instance, and the nations invented by nationalism ( Hobsbawm, 1990 ; Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1983 ).

These moderate critics argue that nationalism does not create ex nihilo a novel form of community. Instead, nationalism transforms preexisting identities (cultural, ethnic, religious, etc.) to produce the modern nation. For medievalists like Susan Reynolds, it is a mistake to overlook the existence of communities that identified themselves through myths of ethnic descent, customs and laws, and the use of proper nouns. Nations might appear later, but many are rooted in the regnal kingdoms that possessed popular consciousness and a sense of identity ( Reynolds, 1983 , 1984 ).

Yet, the most sophisticated attempt to show continuity between the premodern and modern identity is probably the work of Anthony D. Smith’s. Through several decades of scholarship, Smith has stressed the importance of the longue durée , long-term analysis. To appreciate the emergence of nationalism and nations, we need to look at very long periods in part to avoid becoming narrowly focused on a particular era or set of cases that would lead to hasty generalizations. Where studies of short periods see invention, long-term analysis reveals that “invention” is often reinterpretation or reconstruction of older materials. Attention to the longue durée also helps explain why nationalism resonates. While many of its claims are inaccurate or false, the continuity between ethnic communities and modern nations shows that behind myths of antiquity and rootedness lie real shared memories and practices, an intergenerational sense of belonging that is not the invention of political elites ( Smith, 1986 , 1991 , 1998 , 2000 , 2009 ).

However insightful these rival views are, they are not without their weaknesses. To begin, none of them quite propose a rival grand narrative or general theory that explains the emergence of nationalism or nations. Again, many arguments center on the most convincing cases that can falsify modernism’s claims. Consequently, these case-study arguments often leave us with important questions about patterns and widespread change. Why do some nations like Israel emerge so early while others like Germany emerge much later? Why does the age of nationalism arrive so late if the nation is so old? What explains the appearance of major changes to collective identity if modernity does not invent nations?

Modernists also raise important methodological objections for their critics. For one, they accuse them of assuming that there is more continuity than the evidence supports ( Breuilly, 1996 ). A leitmotiv is that we have little idea what ordinary or plain persons believed in the premodern world given that they have left behind few writings. The writings of literate elites cannot be presumed to represent widespread beliefs or sentiments. 10 Furthermore, even when we do have some insight into what plain persons thought thanks to partial or fragmentary testimony, we must be careful to avoid reading the past through contemporary lenses.

In turn, this focus on written sources has itself been criticized. Azar Gat (2012) has argued that too much has been made of the written word or the lack of it. Not only is very little of human history covered by written documentation, but it is far from the only available evidence. For instance, while we have few texts documenting the sentiments of ordinary people, we have accounts of events that depended upon ordinary people. Gat repeatedly returns to the case of mobilization and war in the premodern world to argue that it is unrealistic to maintain that ordinary sentiments or identities are unknown or unknowable. Small and weak states did not simply coerce thousands if not tens of thousands of men to fight who barely recognized themselves in their elites. A fortiori , this is true of popular uprisings. 11 Simply put, Gat rejects the idea that we are begging the question of national identity or consciousness if they are part of the best explanation of phenomena ( Gat, 2012 ).

Still, this question of national consciousness is not solely methodological. It is one thing to ask on what grounds we attribute such beliefs or sentiments, and it is quite another to ask why this must be demonstrated. Here we shift from a discussion about whether nationalism invents nations to the very nature of the nation. Even if modernists and their critics could agree on how to conduct their inquiry, they might still disagree on its object. If a nation is defined as a group in which mass national consciousness must exist , then demonstrating that nations existed in the premodern world is far harder than if nations only require moderate consciousness. 12 Fundamentally, the question of how to prove the existence of premodern nations is a function of what the nation is.

Conceptions of the Nation

A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Two things that, in truth, are but one constitute this soul, this spiritual principle. One is in the past, the other in the present. One is the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories; the other is present consent, the desire to live together, the will to perpetuate the value of the heritage that one has received in an undivided form. ( Renan, 2018 , p. 261)

Despite its centrality, the question “what is a nation?” has been debated since Ernest Renan’s eponymous lecture at La Sorbonne in 1882 . Disagreement over what the nation is—what kind of community is it, how does it differ from other forms?—has produced some striking responses.

Faced with this question, Hugh Seton-Watson admits that there is nothing else to say save that a nation exists when enough people within a community believe that they belong to a nation or act as if they do ( Seton-Watson, 1977 ). Others like Rogers Brubaker deny that the nation is a particular kind of object. Instead, we should consider the “nation” as a category of practice rather than a form of community with set properties. Hence his proposal to “think about nationalism without nations” ( Brubaker, 1996 , p. 21).

Nevertheless, we can identify some broadly consensual beliefs about the nation. To begin, nations are territorial communities: They claim land as rightfully theirs. The homeland is sacred territory. It is imbued with meaning because it is the site of past events that define the group: where battles were fought, the dead are buried, and past generations flourished.

Moreover, nations are always understood as bounded and limited communities. No nation, however ambitious, understands itself as universal. Unlike certain religious communities, the nation does not aspire to or imagine itself as encompassing humankind. Finally, the nation is primarily a group in which membership is inherited, even when it is open to outsiders. Newborns are not without nationality until they reach the age of reason; one receives a nationality at birth even if one later opts to renounce it or to try to obtain another.

Beyond these shared and widely accepted features, we remain confronted by a central question: What is the nature of the community? What unites conationals?

Civic and Ethnic Views of the Nations

Two main concepts of nation and fatherland emerged in the intertwining of influence and conditions; conflicting and fusing, they became embodied in currents of thought in all nations and, to a varying degree, in entire nations. The one was basically a rational and universal concept of political liberty and the rights of man, looking towards the city of the future. In it the secularized Stoic-Christian tradition lived on: in England, it is Protestant form, in France, in its Catholic form. It found its chief support in the political and economic strength of the educated middle classes and, with a shift of emphasis, in the social-democratically organized labor movements. The other was basically founded on history, on monuments and graveyards, even harking back to the mysteries of ancient times and of tribal solidarity. ( Kohn, 1944 , p. 574)

Nations, and nationalisms, are often sorted according to two ideal types: French and German, Western and Eastern, or civic and ethnic. 13 This typology refers to the nature of the community or the identity that defines the nation. The Western or civic nation is primarily a political association and therefore more of a voluntary community. On this view, the nation is a pact or covenant, a social contract. The nation qua political community occupies a territory that is governed by laws and institutions. This is the view of the nation most associated with Western nations, particularly France, where republicanism played an important part in defining membership in the nation.

The Eastern or ethnic nation is defined by descent, or rather the presumed shared descent of its members. Here members understand themselves as ancestrally related, possessing an identity that is inherited and unchosen on the model of the family. The idea of the ethnic nation is often compared to the family as in Walker Connor’s well-known claim that it is perceived as “the family fully extended” ( Connor, 1994 , p. 202).

We might summarize these two views of the nations in terms of competing conceptions of nationality and its attribution— jus soli and jus sanguinis . How one acquires membership is a function of the nature of the community. The former attributes nationality to those born within the national territory while the latter attributes nationality based on the identity of one’s parents. 14

Of course, one’s conception of the nation is linked to other crucial concepts, namely, national identity. How one understands the nature of the community called the nation affects one’s conception of national identity. What it means to be an X—American or Turkish—will depend on the nature of the community in question. If one considers that the United States of America is a civic nation, a social contract in which members of the republic share political ideals and obey the same laws, then being or becoming an American is a function of becoming a member of a political union. On the civic view, who one’s parents are or which religion one practices will often be orthogonal to determining one’s national identity. Yet, if one holds an ethnic view of the nation, then the identity of one’s parents is no longer irrelevant but essential. On this view, to be Turkish is to be ancestrally related to other Turks and thus filiation is central.

However, these are ideal types. They allow us to make analytical distinctions, to explain patterns of thought and behavior, but they do not correspond to social reality. No actual nation is purely civic or purely ethnic but contains both civic and elements. For example, during the Third French Republic, while students learned about la Répulique, une et indivisible , they also learned that their country used to be called Gaul and their ancestors were Gauls. We find both the civic view embodied by the Republic and the ethnic view embodied in shared ancestry. While it is useful to speak of civic or ethnic to pick out what is emphasized, real nations only approximate these models ( Smith, 1991 ; Yack, 1996 , 2012 ). It is perhaps most useful to think of nations as ranging from more civic (e.g., the United States of America) to more ethnic (e.g., Japan).

The division of nations into civic and ethnic communities is not merely a descriptive question. Behind this categorization loom normative issues: We consider the civic nation to be more open and compatible with consent while the ethnic nation is bound through unchosen features—hence the reason why the civic nation is referred to as voluntarist conception while the ethnic nation is an organic conception. While ethnic nationalism might like to describe itself with the language of the family— fatherland, motherland, brotherhood, and so on —a less controversial unchosen association, it remains the case that the ethnic conception of the nationality makes it harder for newcomers to join. One can profess one’s faith in the republic, one can consent to the social contract, but one cannot so easily choose to change one’s (presumed) descent.

Here again, we must not lose sight that if we consider civic nations to be voluntary and ethnic nations to be organic, and that all actual nations combine elements of both models, then no nation is purely voluntarist or organic. This mixed view, which combines consent and inheritance, was already present in Ernest Renan’s seminal lecture. As it is often highlighted, he insists on the importance of consent, famously calling the nation an “everyday plebiscite” ( Renan, 2018 , pp. 262–263). Nevertheless, he also speaks about the importance of an indivisible past, an inheritance of “glory and regrets” ( Renan, 2018 , p. 261).

The Justification of Nationalism

Despite its unrivaled appeal and motivational power, nationalism has seduced few scholars. Several of its most prominent scholars could hardly disguise their contempt like Elie Kedourie or Eric Hobsbawm. Among philosophers and political theorists, it is often met with skepticism or hostility. Ethnic nationalism, the most ubiquitous form, past and present, is largely thought to be indefensible. Civic nationalism, while judged less harshly, is not universally embraced. In the words of an eminent political theorist, nationalism is “the starkest political shame of the twentieth century , most intractable and yet most unanticipated blot on the political history of the world since the year 1900 ” ( Dunn, 1979 , p. 55). Normatively, nationalism is on the back foot.

And yet, there is also considerable misunderstanding. To a large extent, the descriptive and the normative work fail to make contact. Consider what is arguably the most prominent anthology of high-profile philosophical papers on the justification of nationalism, The Morality of Nationalism ( McKim & McMahan, 1997 ). The endnotes reveal that many chapters contain few or no references to major or minor studies of nationalism. Several philosophers base their arguments on a commonsense understanding or on one or two works. Something similar holds the other way around. In Nations and Nationalism: A Reader ( Spencer & Wollman, 2010 ), 3 out of 19 of the authors from the above anthology appear very cursorily in the references. None of those contributing to the first anthology are the authors of any essential texts in the reader.

There are likely many reasons for this situation, but two should retain our attention. First, many normative works on nationalism either fail to distinguish it from patriotism or conflate them. In his defense of “nationalism,” Hurka defines it as “people being partial to their conationals” ( Hurka, 1997 , p. 140). However, so defined, it is indistinguishable from a widespread understanding of patriotism. Similarly, Judith Lichtenberg seems to think that the only difference between nationalism and patriotism is that the former applies before the establishment of the state while the latter applies after it ( Lichtenberg, 1997 ). This is an astonishing claim as it would make patriotism more recent than nationalism.

Second, and more fundamentally, many normative theorists use “nationalism” to mean something very different from the core ideology of nationalism or some variant. Typically, they mean national partiality , which amounts to the idea that one may, should, or must favor the claims or interests of one’s conationals over those of foreigners. For instance, when Thomas Hurka defends a moderate form of national partiality, he is very far from justifying the claim that national loyalty outranks all others, which was proposition (v). It is perfectly possible to favor one’s conationals over foreigners and yet believe that friends and family command a greater loyalty still.

We can add that nationalists, with few notable exceptions, do not have a purely instrumental view of loyalty and sacrifice: They do not love the nation to better serve humankind. 15 Rather, the nation itself is the ultimate end. In other words, the instrumental defenses of national partiality that we find in the philosophical literature share little with the classical view of nationalism. 16

In short, many philosophers are using “nationalism” in a very narrow sense compared to the scholars of nationalism. While we can find important contributions in these piecemeal or partial discussions of the morality of nationalism, we can also find defenses of something that goes beyond some measure of partiality or an isolated defense of self-determination. 17 However, we do not find much of a defense of classical or core nationalism. Commonly, we find a defense of liberal nationalism .

Liberal Nationalism and Its Defense

Liberals then need to ask themselves whether national convictions matter to their way of thinking, to their values, norms, and modes of behaviour, to their notions of social justice, and to the range of practical policies they support. In other words, they must rethink their beliefs and policies and seek to adapt them to the world in which they live. ( Tamir, 1993 , pp. 3–4)

Liberal nationalism is not part of an explanatory theory of nationalism. 18 Instead, it is an attempt to revise nationalism so that it can be reconciled with the dominant post-Enlightenment political framework, liberalism. Recall that the core ideology of nationalism involves certain claims about morality and human flourishing. On the one hand, we find claims about the value of community and membership. For instance, we saw that proposition (ii) of core nationalism was that individual freedom or flourishing required membership in a nation. Either way, the point is the connection between membership in a nation and human well-being. On the other hand, we find claims that are action-guiding: Proposition (v) is that national loyalty always comes first.

To be schematic, the classical view of the nation can be summarized as an ideology with a demanding view of partiality, which rests upon very strong claims about the value of nations. This demandingness is captured by the insistence that one sacrifice everything on the national altar. We find it in a Swiss “political catechism,” exhorting citizens to “sacrifice willingly and joyfully” their property and lives to the fatherland ( Kohn, 1944 , p. 385). Or in the poetry of Thomas Babington Macauley famously taught to British schoolchildren:

Then out spake brave Horatius, The Captain of the Gate; “To every man upon this earth Death cometh soon or late. And how can man die better Than facing fearful odds, For the ashes of his fathers, And the temples of his Gods.”

In sum, the morality view put forward by classical nationalism emphasizes the utmost importance of national membership in human flourishing and consequently affirms a rigid hierarchy of duties that places national loyalty above all else. These features—its demandingness, its absolute claims about communal life and flourishing—help explain why many have been so critical.

On the one hand, internal critiques seek to show that the classical view of nationalism is incapable of defending its strong claims. Prominently, we find objections concerning the relative value of the nation and nationality. A popular form of this objection lists the various communities to which one belongs and asks for a clear explanation as to why membership in the nation is so important. To be clear, the argument is not that the nation does not matter but that even if one can establish that it plays a very important role in human flourishing, perhaps even that it is the most valuable form of communal life, this does not yet show that national loyalty must always trump other loyalties ( Lichtenberg, 1997 ).

Here it is worth pointing out how descriptive research is mobilized to make normative arguments. If modernism is true, then the defenders of nationalism must explain why human flourishing depends so much upon a recent invention. Were premodern lives all deeply marred? If nations were invented, why can we not invent more inclusive communities to replace them? Conversely, if the critics of modernity are right, then it is easier to argue that national membership like family membership is a deep feature of human life and flourishing.

On a similar line of thought, one can admit that national autonomy is valuable or defensible and accept that national identity should be expressed and yet challenge precisely what is required to achieve either. If neither national autonomy nor national self-expression requires a nation-state, at least not in all cases, then it becomes much harder to justify nationalist demands for one.

On the other hand, we find external critiques that point to the conflict between nationalism and other normative beliefs or commitments we might have. First, it is difficult to reconcile the core ideology of nationalism with any demanding form of cosmopolitanism. Indeed, given the rigid rank-ordering of loyalties in core nationalism, one’s loyalty to humankind is at best something to be attended to once one’s duties to the nation are discharged. If cosmopolitanism is a commitment to impartial benevolence and the belief that our common humanity is our overriding identity and the object of our strongest loyalty, then they are flatly incompatible.

A similar point can be made about human rights. Understood as bedrock normative claims, human rights would represent (nearly) absolute side constraints. Here too there is a very real possibility that human rights and nationalism conflict. If national loyalty dominates all other loyalties, then it is difficult to understand how a nationalist can coherently choose to honor human rights when these conflict with the demands of the nation. Indeed, when scholars and plain persons evoke how nationalism can be belligerent or fanatical, this is largely what they mean. If loyalty always takes precedence, then there is little or nothing nationalists will not do. And this, its critics say, is precisely why the 20th century was so bloody. 19

Finally, classical nationalism can seem hard to reconcile with a strong commitment to autonomy or political consent. One is obligated to one’s nation and fellow nationals, and yet one’s nationality is often unchosen. This worry is at its strongest when applied to ethnic nationalism as on this view, membership is doubly unchosen: One cannot choose one’s ancestors at birth, nor can one easily later choose to be ancestrally related to members of a new group. Yet, ethnic nationalism is not unique in imposing obligations based on unchosen identities ( Scheffler, 1994 ). Even membership in civic nations is largely unchosen and can be demanding.

Liberal nationalism seeks to reconcile nationalism and liberalism, even showing them to be mutually reinforcing. Proposed initially by Yael Tamir in her seminal Liberal Nationalism , variants of this moderate form of nationalism have also been prominently defended by David Miller and Chaim Gans ( Gans, 2003 ; Miller, 1995 , 1999 , 2007 , 2016 ; Tamir, 1993 , 2019 ). Before addressing arguments for liberal nationalism, we should consider how it generally differs from classical or core nationalism.

First, liberal nationalists abandon the rigid acontextual hierarchy of duties of core nationalism. National loyalty may still outrank other loyalties, but it does not always do so. Most notably, when the human rights of foreigners are at stake, our duties to fellow nationals or to the nation itself must come second. This is the spirit of the “weak cosmopolitanism” we find endorsed by liberal nationalists ( Miller, 2016 ). We might also say that while we have stronger positive duties to fellow nationals than to foreigners, our negative duties to not violate human rights apply equally to all and take precedence over positive duties to fellow members ( Miller, 2005 ).

Second, liberal nationalism is essentially a nonethnic form of nationalism. This does not make it a pure civic nationalism because it focuses on the preservation and transmission of a national identity and a public culture that are not exhausted by constitutionalism. 20 However, it does essentially abandon myths of ethnic descent or ancestral relatedness as a part of national identity ( Smith, 2010 ). While nationality might still be attributed at birth, it becomes considerably easier to join and become accepted within another nation once ethnic descent is jettisoned.

Third, liberal nationalists are more concerned with the relationship between the nation and liberal democracy ( Tamir, 1993 , 2019 ). While many classical nationalists were strong advocates of democratic or republican regimes, it was by no means universal. Indeed, core nationalism is compatible with an authoritarian government so long as it is authentic or expressive of the national character. Indeed, some very prominent nationalists were antidemocratic, like Charles Maurras and l’Action française as well as Russian nationalists, who summed up their view as “Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality” ( Riasanovsky, 2005 ).

To justify their views, liberal nationalists essentially offer two kinds of arguments. Recall, their project is not to revise or rehabilitate democracy or liberalism as it is to revise and rehabilitate nationalism; this explains why their arguments presume the value of democracy and liberalism and focus on establishing the ethical credentials of (a reformed) nationalism.

The first kind of argument put forward by nationalists might be called communitarian . These arguments are all noninstrumental in the sense that they do not derive the value of national community or loyalty from its contribution to either liberal democracy or liberal conceptions of justice. The arguments focus on the value of community independently of its contribution to democracy or social justice. We might further divide this argument into arguments over the intrinsic worth of national communities and the constitutive role of national communities in human flourishing.

The former strives to demonstrate that nations are valuable communities; they are the site of shared meaning and values. Cultures or cultural communities are good things, and they should continue to exist. Moreover, if we add that these cultures are distinct and unique—proposition (i) from core nationalism—then we ought to appreciate that preserving and sustaining nations provides the world with a diversity of cultures ( Berlin, 1976 ). If culture is good, then nations are valuable as incarnations of culture, and if we value a diversity of cultures, we ought to value the irreducible plurality of nations.

The latter kind of argument seeks to show how nations are constitutive of human flourishing. In their strongest form, they claim that one cannot flourish outside of the nation while weaker versions simply highlight how dispensing with the nation or national makes human flourishing harder or less complete than it otherwise might be. Here, we find various iterations. Some focus on the relationship between national identity and self-esteem ( Berlin, 1979 ; MacCormick, 1982 , 1991 , 1996 ; Margalit & Raz, 1990 ; Nielsen, 1999 ; Tamir, 1993 ; Taylor,1992 ), others on how our understanding of morality is conditioned by our membership in a nation and our participation in its moral traditions, its interpretation of principles or values ( MacIntyre, 1981 , 1984 , 1988 ; Taylor, 1989 ; Walzer, 1983 , 1987 , 1994 ). Others still insist on how choice and personal development require communal membership ( Kymlicka, 1995 ; Tamir, 1993 ).

The key point is that all these arguments seek to show that without the nation, human life would be greatly impoverished. Our national identities and our national loyalty constitute, at least for many of us, part and parcel of what it is to live a meaningful or good life.

The second kind of argument is instrumental: The value of the nation is derived from its role in sustaining either liberal democracy or liberal conceptions of justice. National identity and loyalty are either presented as necessary or uniquely valuable means of achieving our political aims of popular rule or social justice. Put otherwise, these arguments all work back from our commitments to democracy or justice and argue that once we properly appreciate how nations can help us achieve our aims, we will value them.

The most famous, the trust argument , has many variations. Essentially, we begin with the need for trust: To cooperate, to sacrifice for others, we must trust that others will reciprocate. For instance, in a democracy, the minority must believe that the majority will not abuse its power and will relinquish it when it loses. All must believe that others are equally committed to the common good. Yet, within large groups, trust cannot rest on personal knowledge of individual track records. To establish trust and motivate people to cooperate and make sacrifices, people need to feel committed to something above and beyond the partisan factions. The nation is presented as an engine of social trust because national identity will bind together and motivate nationals to work as a team. Liberal nationalists present the nation as (uniquely) capable of providing the identification and trust necessary to overcome the various forces, like disagreement or egoism, that threaten social cooperation, sacrifice, and trust ( Canovan, 1996 ; Kymlicka, 2001 ; Miller, 1995 ; Moore, 2001 ; Schnapper, 1998 ).

Of course, not only democracy requires social trust. Redistributive policies and social justice also require cooperation and sacrifice from people who are personally unacquainted. Here too, the argument goes, national identity provides the necessary identification and motivation.

In short, liberal nationalism is defended on two grounds. Noninstrumental arguments are fundamentally arguments about the value of community tout court or its constitutive role in human flourishing. Either way, they need to defend a certain conception of human nature or one about intrinsic value. The instrumental arguments are less ambitious as they begin from the commitments held by many critics of nationalism, such as democracy and social justice, and seek to show the cost of eliminating national identities and loyalties.

While more moderate than classical nationalism, liberal nationalism has not been spared criticism. On the one hand, it faces internal critiques. For instance, the trust argument has been the target of a fair amount of skepticism. Does national identity bind and motivate as its advocates claim? Critics have argued that it is far from clear that national identity can or does create the kind of affective bond and trust that its proponents claim. For instance, there appear to be plenty of cases in which fellow nationals distrust each other and would prefer to deal with foreigners if they had the choice ( Abizadeh, 2002 ). Moreover, given that a central claim can be empirically verified, we are entitled to ask what quantitative evidence can be produced in addition to sociohistorical narratives about the relationship between nation-states and welfare states. Here, even defenders of liberal nationalism concede that testing the claim has only provided partial support ( Miller & Ali, 2014 ).

Multiple external criticisms have been formulated, but two are particularly noteworthy against the backdrop of globalization. 21 An older and quite prominent critique is egalitarian. Essentially, these critics begin by identifying our commitment to equality and then show how nation-states contribute to inequality: They favor nationals at the expense of foreigners. While this might be tolerable in a world where everyone had access to a decent life, it is intolerable when so many lack so much and others live in abundance. In sum, the argument seeks to show that liberal nationalism, or any variation that does not significantly depart from the status quo, is deeply incompatible with a commitment to human equality ( Caney, 2005 ; Pogge, 2002 ; Singer, 1972 ; Steiner, 1994 ).

The second critique focuses on how liberal nationalism remains at odds with certain conceptions of human rights. Here, research is undeniably influenced by the political reality of the early 21st century ; migration and refugee crises have stimulated debate on the morality of borders. Behind talk of borders, we find the deeper conflict between, on the one hand, the notion of collective autonomy or the self-determination of peoples and, on the other hand, a human right to free movement or to immigrate. If liberal nationalism allows that one can exclude people from one’s group or territory, then we must ask whether self-determination comes at the expense of a basic right. For those who endorse a human right to immigrate, liberal nationalism’s support for borders and exclusion is objectionable ( Carens, 2013 ; Oberman, 2016 ).

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1. Classically, patriotism was classified as a virtue (i.e., an admirable character trait). Yet, its ethical credentials have been increasingly questioned in the wake of World War I. Still, proponents and opponents of patriotism tend to agree that it is a character trait.

2. One view is that patriotism is loyalty to political institutions, specifically republican, rather than to an ethnocultural community ( Connor, 1994 ; Dietz, 1989 ; Taylor, 1997 ; Viroli, 1995 ). However, this definition is questionable. Even if “patriots” has often been used to name advocates of republicanism, it is certainly not the only recorded use. Nor does this view match the common uses of “patriot” or “patriotism” to speak of the intense loyalty of those who have no institutions or do not necessarily believe in republicanism (e.g., patriotic Kurds). Worse, if patriotism is loyalty to institutions and nationalism is loyalty to an ethnocultural group, then those who defend this distinction seem committed to the claim that nationalism is ancient. How else can they describe loyalty to the Jewish people and Kingdom during the Jewish-Roman wars?

3. A prominent dissenter in the literature is Benedict Anderson. He claimed that nationalism was more like kinship or religion, no doubt in part due to what he considered to be its philosophical poverty and even incoherence ( Anderson, 2006 , pp. 4–5).

4. We might say that nations are numerically distinct and qualitatively distinct as opposed to manufactured objects that are numerically distinct but qualitatively indistinct.

5. The point is not that there existed a clear doctrine called “core nationalism” that people simply adopted or not. There are and have been nationalists of all ideological stripes—conservative, liberal, socialist, and so on. The point of putting forward core nationalism is to identify those beliefs most shared between them that allow us to recognize that despite their differences and nuances, there are common threads.

6. This view is open to the challenge that it primarily summarizes Western nationalism. For those interested in an influential non-Western perspective, see Chatterjee (1986 , 1993 ).

7. An example is the way in which proposition (iii) has become so central to nationalist movements in the wake of the French Revolution. The age of nationalism and later decolonization delegitimized the millennia-old institution of empire by spreading the proposition that all alien rule is illegitimate.

8. From Thanksgiving that commemorates events in the early 17th century but only becomes a national institution in the late 19th century, to the 19th-century invention of distinct clan tartans in Scotland, more than one practice or symbol is far more recent than commonly believed ( Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1983 ).

9. Authors like Azar Gat would be unhappy with this label. Nevertheless, his overall argument is far more critical of modernism than anything else. Indeed, insisting on the antiquity of the national state seems like a form of perennialism ( Gat, 2012 ).

10. Modernists are skeptical of identity unsupported by institutions. Identity that is not affirmed and transmitted through institutions is “fragmentary, discontinuous and elusive” ( Breuilly, 1996 , p. 156).

11. The battle of Raphia and the subsequent popular Egyptian revolt against Hellenistic rule is a textbook case drawn from the premodern world ( Gat, 2012 , pp. 118–119). Similar examples abound in Gat’s account.

12. For instance, Walker Connor insists that nations begin at the end of the 19th or early 20th century because they require mass consciousness, which in turn depends upon mass communication and standardized education. Adrian Hastings believed that so long as national consciousness extends to many people beyond government circles and the ruling class, then one can speak of a nation ( Connor, 1994 ; Hastings, 1997 ).

13. These are the most prominent, but they are not the only classification of nations and nationalism. For instance, one may draw the line between secular and religious forms of nationalism ( Juergensmeyer, 1993 ).

14. While many accept that there are different kinds of nations, some reject this pluralism in favor of a monolithic view. Walker Connor insists that all nationalism is ethnic nationalism ( Connor, 1994 ).

15. Perhaps the most notable exception is Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who often defends nationalism as essential for the progress of humanity ( Fichte, 2008 ). Notwithstanding these passages, Fichte certainly sounds like an ardent nationalist.

16. Authors who defend loyalty to the nation or national partiality purely as a means of achieving the greatest happiness or to ensure the maximal discharging of moral duties, such as R. M. Hare and Robert Goodin respectively argue, are hardly endorsing “nationalism” ( Goodin, 1988 ; Hare, 1981 ). Few nationalists think of their nation as a mere tool let alone believe that humanity is the ultimate object of loyalty.

17. An excellent example of the way that debate has proceeded is the way that Alasdair MacIntyre (1984) is cited or discussed. MacIntyre does not discuss let alone defend nationalism but patriotism. His focus is clearly on a character trait and not an ideology: Nowhere does he claim that all political legitimacy comes from the nation or that nations must be as autonomous as possible. Of course, this does not mean that MacIntyre’s defense of patriotism is irrelevant—he does after all make strong claims about communal life and human flourishing. The point is that many philosophers and political theorists treat nationalism and national partiality as interchangeable. Consequently, what is discussed on the heading of “nationalism” in the normative debate is often an anemic understanding of what historians and sociologists are discussing.

18. Authors like David Miller might reply that liberal nationalism is not a contemporary reconstruction of nationalism but a view inspired by historical nationalists such as Giuseppe Manzini and John Stuart Mill ( Gustavsson & Miller, 2019 ). While one might convincingly argue that Manzini advocated something sufficiently like contemporary liberal nationalism, things are less clear for Mill. While he did believe that national sentiment was crucial to representative government, he also advocated colonialism on the grounds that it made the colonized better off—a point hard to square with core nationalism ( Bell, 2010 ).

19. The accusation that nationalism is particularly responsible for brutal and total wars in the 20th century is widespread ( Smith, 1998 , 2010 ). Even if the accusation is correct, nationalism was also a driving force, if not the driving force, behind decolonization. Whatever historical debates are to be had about what causes what, the cost-benefit analysis of nationalism is likely more complex than François Mitterand’s “ Le nationalisme, c’est la guerre .”

20. If by “constitutional patriotism” we mean that people are primarily loyal not to a cultural community but the norms and values of a liberal democratic constitution, then liberal nationalism remains a form of nationalism ( Habermas, 1994 ).

21. There is no shortage of external critiques. Feminist authors have pointed out the extent to which nationalism can be understood as a gendered ideology: one that rarely grants women an equal role in the nation or addresses their concerns ( Elshtain, 1993 ; Enloe, 1989 ; Walby, 1992 ). Similarly, those whose argue that we inhabit an increasingly postnational or globalized world argue that the nation and nationalism are obsolete ( Falk, 2002 ; Horsman & Marshall, 1994 ; McNeill, 1986 ).

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In light of the many ethnic and national conflicts of the twentieth century, the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918 appears less surprising than the fact that it remained intact for so long. National identity is not an essential characteristic of peoples, and in many cases in Europe it is a relatively recent invention. As such, there are many different characteristics according to which national communities can be defined, or, in Benedict Anderson’s phrase, imagined. Along with religion and ethnicity, language has played a particularly important role in shaping the imaginary identification of individuals with abstract communities. No one factor necessarily determines this identification, as evidenced by modern countries such as Belgium and Switzerland that incorporate multiple linguistic and cultural groups in one national community.

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Lesson Plan: Daniel Webster and American Nationalism

American Nationalism

University of California law professor Joel Richard Paul provides an overview of the impact that 19th-century lawyer, statesman, and orator Daniel Webster had in shaping America’s national identity prior to the Civil War.

Description

This lesson focuses on the emergence of American nationalism in the early 1800s and Daniel Webster's role in its development. The lesson, which features University of California law professor Joel Richard Paul, opens with reflective questions that ask students to consider the definition of nationalism and the presence of a common American identity. Students then view two introductory video clips in which Paul provides an overview of the impact that 19th-century lawyer, statesman, and orator Daniel Webster had in shaping America’s national identity prior to the Civil War. From there, students view and analyze five video clips that provide background information on Daniel Webster’s rise into politics and influence on the national stage before learning about the "Golden Age of the Senate" and engaging in a choice activity where they study one of four issues of the era, including expansionism, tariffs, the National Bank, and the Nullification Crisis. Students then view two video clips that detail the Compromise of 1850 and Daniel Webster’s demise and a final video clip in which Paul provides two reflective thoughts from the life and contributions of Webster. Students then respond to a summative writing prompt that asks them to consider how Webster contributed to the emergence of American nationalism.

This lesson offers several options for you to use with your students whether you are teaching in class, using a hybrid model, or engaging through distance learning. It can be completed in steps as a class or students can move at their own pace and complete the activities independently.

You can post links to the videos in the lesson along with the related handouts and engage in discussion to share responses on a discussion board or learning management system.

You can also save and share the following Google resources for students to use with this lesson.

Handout: Graphic Organizer (Google Doc).

Handout: Vocabulary Chart (Google Doc).

In Google, choose "File" then "Make a Copy" to get your own copy. You can make any needed adjustments in the instructions such as which activities students need to complete, when it is due, etc. and then make it available to them via Google.

Pose the following brainstorming questions to your students, directing them to record their responses in their notebooks or on a piece of paper, share with a partner, and then with the class if they choose.

• What is nationalism?
• Do Americans share a common “identity?” Why or why not?

INTRODUCTION

Play the following introductory video clips of University of California law professor Joel Richard Paul providing an overview of the impact that 19th-century lawyer, statesman, and orator Daniel Webster had in shaping America’s national identity prior to the Civil War. Direct your students to answer the related questions on their graphic organizer and share their findings with a partner, small group, or the class when finished.

Clip #1: American Nationalism (2:43).

• According to Joel Richard Paul, what did we not have at the start of our republic?
• What does Paul mean when he says America “was just a concept?”
• Compare the “various notions” that formed in the early 1800s.
• What “idea” did Daniel Webster believe?

Clip #2: 50 Year Period (3:46).

• What adjective does Joel Richard Paul use to describe the early 1800s? Why?
• How were Chief Justice John Marshall and Daniel Webster “closely associated?”
• What “synergy” did the two men develop?
• What “intrigues” Paul about this era?

Provide your students access to the Vocabulary Chart (Google Doc). Direct your students to view and define the vocabulary terms and provide a brief summary of the featured people that will appear in the lesson in the chart. The vocabulary words and individuals are also listed to the right on this webpage. We recommend having your students define and present the terms and people in a jigsaw activity to save time.

Depending on time and resources, you may consider having your students define and present the terms in a Frayer's Model activity , where each student takes one or two items. Students can then post their models around the room for reference throughout the lesson. Note: this is not an all-encompassing list of terms or individuals included in each video. We recommend you preview the video clips to determine any necessary additions/subtractions to this list for your specific students.

Direct students to the background section of their graphic organizers. Instruct your students to view the following five video clips that provide background information on Daniel Webster’s rise into politics and influence on the national stage. Direct your students to answer the related questions on their graphic organizer and share their findings with a partner, small group, or the class when finished.

Clip #3: Daniel Webster (3:23).

• Based on the clip, describe Daniel Webster’s early life and education.
• What was Webster “determined” to do?
• According to Joel Richard Paul, why was Webster elected to Congress?
• For what reason did Webster become “famous?” Summarize his career progression.

Clip #4: Ideology (1:48).

• Based on the clip, how many different political parties did Daniel Webster belong to?
• What was Webster’s “defining ideology?”
• What does Joel Richard Paul mean when he says Webster was known as the “conscious of New England?”
• According to Paul, what steps did Webster take to meet his ideological goals?

Clip #5: Oratorical Skills (5:13).

• For what do we “remember” Daniel Webster today?
• What “role” did oratory play in 19th century America?
• Describe Webster’s speech at the Bunker Hill monument dedication, as described by Joel Richard Paul.
• Based on the clip, summarize how others viewed Webster’s speeches and oratorical skill.

Clip #6: Vices (1:34).

• What three “vices” did Daniel Webster have?
• According to Joel Richard Paul, what did Webster take from his constituents?

Clip #7: Large Influence (4:13).

• Why did the Presidency “elude” Daniel Webster?
• Based on the clip, what happened to excerpts of Webster’s speeches?
• Who was “transformed” by Webster’s words, and how do we know?
• What did Webster’s influence “prepare” the country for?

ISSUES OF THE ERA

Direct students to view Clip #8, which provides information about the U.S. Senate during Daniel Webster’s time in office. Then, have your students CHOOSE (or you can assign) ONE of the four video clips that follow to study in detail. Instruct your students to answer the related questions on their graphic organizer and share their findings with a partner, small group, or the class when finished.

Clip #8: Golden Age of the Senate (3:04).

• Based on the clip, when was Daniel Webster elected to the Senate?
• Why does Betty Koed disagree that the 1820-50 time period was the “Golden Age of the Senate?”
• According to Joel Richard Paul, how were the conditions in Congress during the era? What examples does he provide?
• What did the men have “monumental capacities” for?

OPTION 1 of 4 - Clip #9: Issue: Expansionism (4:41).

• Over what were there “huge debates” during this era?
• Who was the first “expansionist” in American history? Summarize his view.
• What did Daniel Webster believe about the issue, according to Joel Richard Paul? Why?
• Based on the clip, what influence did the “slavocracy” have on the nation?

OPTION 2 of 4 - Clip #10: Issue: Tariffs (3:00).

• Summarize the quote from John Rutledge, as told in the clip.
• According to Joel Richard Paul, what impact did the Constitution have on trade?
• Why was tariff policy a “hot issue?”
• Compare the three perspectives on the issue, as described in the clip.

OPTION 3 of 4 - Clip #11: Issue: National Bank (3:58).

• According to Joel Richard Paul, how did banking work in the early republic?
• What “dislocations” did this system cause?
• Based on the clip, what was the purpose of creating a National Bank?
• Why did “hostility” arise to the idea of the National Bank?

OPTION 4 of 4 - Clip #12: Issue: Nullification Crisis (3:22).

• What risk was “very real” during this era?
• According to Joel Richard Paul, what problems did Georgia and South Carolina have with the national government?
• Summarize John C. Calhoun and Robert Y. Hayne’s arguments and Daniel Webster’s response, as stated in the clip.
• Of what was Webster’s speech a “powerful defense?”

TOWARD THE END

Direct students to the toward the end section of their graphic organizers. Instruct your students to view the following two video clips that detail the Compromise of 1850 and Daniel Webster’s demise. Direct your students to answer the related questions on their graphic organizer and share their findings with a partner, small group, or the class when finished.

Clip #13: Compromise of 1850 (7:54).

• Why was it “important” to admit California into the union? What did the south threaten to do if this occurred?
• What did Henry Clay propose on Monday, January 21, 1850?
• Why did Clay need to get Daniel Webster’s cooperation, according to Joel Richard Paul?
• Why would supporting Clay’s proposal be a “career-ender” for Webster?
• According to Paul, why did Webster become the Secretary of State? What responsibilities came with this position?
• What “doomed” Webster’s chances for the presidency?

Clip #14: America's Tragedy (2:35).

• Summarize the quote from Joel Richard Paul’s book, as read in the clip.
• Based on the clip, what did Daniel Webster accomplish?
• According to Paul, what allowed the United States to win the Civil War?

Direct students to the reflection section of their graphic organizers. Instruct your students to view the following video clip that provides concluding thoughts for the lesson. Direct your students to answer the related questions on their graphic organizer and share their findings with a partner, small group, or the class when finished.

Clip #15: Simultaneous Thoughts (1:44).

• What two thoughts are presented in the quote from Joel Richard Paul’s book?
• According to Paul, how did people begin to identify themselves by 1850?
• Based on the clip, how did the south view their actions of secession at the start of the Civil War?
• What made it “possible” for the country to join back together after the Civil War?

After your students are finished sharing their findings from the lesson, direct them to complete the final culminating writing prompt in their graphic organizers, and have students share their responses, comparing their perspectives with their classmates' perspectives: Having now learned about the life and times of Daniel Webster, describe how he contributed to the emergence of American nationalism. Be sure to include evidence from the video clips in the lesson to support your argument.

Related Articles

• Daniel Webster | American politician (Britannica)
• Daniel Webster: A Featured Biography (U.S. Senate)
• Daniel Webster - Facts, Career & Legacy (HISTORY)

Additional Resources

• Bell Ringer: The Compromise of 1850
• Bell Ringer: Maysville Road: Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson and The American Plan
• Bell Ringer: The Constitutional Questions of States
• Bell Ringer: Henry Clay and the American System
• Bell Ringer: The 1828 Tariff of Abominations and Nullification
• Bell Ringer: Nullification Crisis
• Bell Ringer: Andrew Jackson and the Bank War
• Lesson Plan: The Louisiana Purchase
• Lesson Plan: Did Andrew Jackson Really Support Limited Federal Government?
• Lesson Plan: Congress and the Antebellum South
• Lesson Plan: Major Events Leading to the Civil War
• Lesson Plan: The Mexican-American War
• American Civil War (1861-65)
• Andrew Jackson
• Compromise Of 1850
• Constituent
• Constitution
• Daniel Webster
• Expansionism
• Fugitive Slave Law
• John C. Calhoun
• John Marshall
• John Quincy Adams
• Louisiana Purchase (1803)
• Mcguffey Readers
• Mexican American War (1846-48)
• Nationalism
• Nullification Crisis (1832-33)
• Secretary Of State
• Underground Railroad
• War Of 1812

The Mass Psychology of Ethnonationalism pp 15–78 Cite as

What Is Nationalism?

• Dusan Kecmanovic 7  

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Part of the book series: Path in Psychology ((PATH))

Nationalism, like nation, is very hard to define clearly and unequivocally. The contention that nationalism is what nationalists make of it is, in fact, an evasion. There are no two authors, whether sociologists, historians, political scientists, or psychologists, who define nationalism in the same way. This may lead novices in the study of nationalism to infer that, having read a few works on the subject, they are even less knowledgeable than when they began. 1

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Nationalism as a term was mentioned for the first time in 1409 at Leipzig University. It was not before the end of the eighteenth century that it began to be used in the sense of national egoism, (cf. Hyslop, B., 1934, French Nationalism in 1789 According to the General Cahiers , and Kemilainen, A., 1964, Problems Concerning the Word, Concept and Classification ).

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Many scholars who have dealt with nationalism share the idea that nationalism is but a modern form of the human tendency to congregate and to submit to a social entity that is dominant, that is most important, at a given epoch. Thus Hertz (1944:292) points out that nationalism is “certainly but one expression of human instinct and not a bit more natural and more ‘latent’ than tribalism, clannishness.... Yet it is nationalism, far more than any other expression of human gregariousness, which has come to the fore in modern times.” Geertz (1963:106-7) stresses that “the grouping under a common rubric” such as tribalism, parochialism, communalism, nationalism, etc., is not simply adventitious. “These phenomena are in some way similar.” Shafer (1980) made the same point: “Group and community sentiments are as old as humankind; nationalism is a late modern, powerful, and pervasive variant.” Hayes (1968:12), for his part, contends that “modern nationalism signifies a more or less purposeful effort to revive primitive tribalism on an enlarged and more artificial scale.” Yet Gellner (1983:138) argues that nationalism is “a distinctive species of patriotism, and one which becomes pervasive and dominant only under certain social conditions, which in fact prevail in the modern world, and nowhere else.” Cobban (1969:106-7) states that while “loyalty to the community in which for the time being are enshrined the highest aspirations is a perennial quality, the object of that loyalty varied widely from age to age. There is little to suggest that the combination of cultural and political unity in the idea of the nation state is the last, or that is the highest, of those mortal gods to which men have sometimes paid undue adoration.” According to Kedourie (1960:72), “patriotism, affection for one’s own country, or one’s group, loyalty to its institution, and zeal for its defense, is a sentiment known among all kinds of men; so is xenophobia, which is dislike of the stranger, the outsider, and reluctance to admit him into one’s own group. Neither sentiment depends on a particular anthropology and neither asserts a particular doctrine of the state or of the individual’s relation to it. Nationalism does both; it is a comprehensive doctrine which leads to a distinctive style of politics.... If confusion exists, it is because nationalist doctrine has annexed these universally held sentiments to the service of a specific anthropology and metaphysic.” Pfaff (1993:196) observes that ethnic and communal conflict, and racial, religious, or linguistic rivalry and struggle exist for reasons having nothing originally to do with nation states, and concludes: “Nationalism is an expression of the primordial attachments of an individual to a group, possessing both positive and destructive powers, and this is a phenomenon which existed long before the group to which such passionate loyalty was attached became the modern nation-state.” Garvin (1993:64-5), pointing to the continuities between modern nationalisms and older traditions of collective identitty, stresses that these older traditions have a “life of their own and can dictate the form of the succeeding nationalist identity in many important ways, or even take it over Modern nationalisms...’ sit on top’ of older traditions or collective belief systems....” And Walzer (1995:331-2) concludes, along the same lines, that tribalism, that is, “the committment of individuals and groups to their own history, culture and identity, is a permanent feature of human social life,” and its destruction “lies beyond the reach of any repressive power.” Yet parochialism, which has been bred by tribalism, “is similarly permanent. It can’t be overcome; it has to be accommodated, and therefore the crucial universal principle is that it must always be accommodated: not only my parochialism, but yours as well, and his and hers in their turn.”.

It was Nairn (1981:348) who first said that nationalism can be pictured as the old Roman god, Janus. Nairn contends that it is, essentially, groundless to draw a distinction between “healthy” and “degenerate” sorts of nationalism, because “the substance of nationalism as such is always morally, politically, humanly ambiguous.” “Without for a moment,” writes Nairn (1981:347-8), “denying that these moral and political distinctions are justified, and indeed obvious, one is none the less forced to point out that the theoretical dimension attaching to them is quite mistaken. The distinctions do not imply the existence of two brands of nationalism, one healthy and one morbid. The point is, as the most elementary comparative analysis will show, that all nationalism is both healthy and morbid. Both progress and regress are inscribed in its genetic code from the start. This a structural fact about it. And it is a fact to which there are no exceptions: in this sense, it is an exact (not a rhetorical) statement about nationalism to say that it is by nature ambivalent.” Griffin (1993:150) calls schizoid this ambiguous nature of nationalism, its capacity for “double thinking, and at times to act both as an enlightened Dr Jekyll and a sociopathological Mr Hyde.... “As long as it has been an active force in history,” this author emphasizes (1993:150), “it has always contained the potential for promoting both genuine liberal democracy and its grotesque travesty, one which upholds the rights of on segment of humankind at the expense of others.”.

Mazzini was the first to argue for a need to distinguish a good and a bad nationalism (Hertz, 1944:34), and Balibar (1991:47) points out that all the questions concerning the definition of nationalism revolve around the dilemma: a good nationalism or a bad nationalism. “There is one,” writes this author, “which tends to construct a state or a community and the one which tends to subjugate, to destroy; the one which refers to right and the one which refers to might; the one which tolerates other nationalisms and may even argue in their defense and include them a single historical perspective... and the one which radically excludes them in an imperialist and racist perspective. In short, the internal split within nationalism seems as essential—and as difficult to pin down—as the step that leads from ‘dying for one’s fatherland’ to ‘killing for one’s country.’” Various authors use different terms to refer to mainly identical phenomena—a good and a bad nationalism: original nationalism and derived nationalism (Hayes, 1928); political nationalism and cultural nationalism (Kohn, 1944); people-oriented nationalism and power-oriented nationalism (Bay, Gullvag, Ofstad, and Tonnessen, 1950); a belligerent, megalomaniac, superiority-delusional nationalism and a relatively peaceful, self-conceited, isolationist form (van der Dennen, 1987); an ordinary nationalism and a destructive nationalism (Berke, 1989); political nationalism and ethnic nationalism (Nodia, 1994); and so on.

The authors of a report on nationalism, published by the Royal Institute of International Affairs (1939), in a introductory note point to this twofold meaning of nationalism. “Its [of nationalism] effect is not necessarily taken as being confined to the individual’s own nation, although admittedly this is very often the case, nor is the nationalist necessarily conceived of as making the interest of his own nation supremely important. In short, the term is used in such a sense that Mazzini, Gladstone, and Woodrow Wilson can be described as exponents of nationalism, as well as Herr Hitler.”.

By applying Meinecke’s principle of distinction between the political and cultural nation (see Chapter 1), Kohn (1944:455-576) has contrasted the western European, and the central and eastern European concepts of nation. Like the different concepts of nation, there are different understandings of nationalism in these regions. Germanophilism and Slavophilism provide examples of central-eastern European nationalism, in which the emphasis is on Eigenart (or samobytnost). Arendt (1951:226-7) calls the western European type of nationalism chauvinism, and the central and easternEuropean, tribal nationalism. “Chauvinism now usually thought of in connection with the nationalism integral of Maurras and Bares... even in its most wildly fantastic manifestations did not hold that men of French origin, born and raised in another country, without any knowledge of French language would be ‘born Frenchmen’ thanks to some mysterious qualities of body and soul.... In psychological terms, the chief difference between even the most violent chauvinism and this tribal nationalism is that one is extroverted, concerned with visible, spiritual and material achievements of the nation, whereas the other, even in the mildest forms... is introverted, concentrates on the individual’s own soul which is considered as the embodiment of the general national qualities.” See also Pejovic (1993), who states that “the ethos in Eastern Europe has a strong bias towards communalism. The prevailing concept of the community in the region is not the classical-liberal one of a voluntary association of individuals who, in the pursuit of their private ends, join and leave the community by free choice. Instead, the community is seen as an organic whole to which individuals are expected to suboordinate their private their private ends and in which all cooperate to pursue their common value.” Along the same lines Hutchinson (1994:17) makes the distinction between the two conceptions of the nation. “The first is civic, focusing on the achievement of an autonomous state of equal citizens, a concept which emerged first in Western Europe, and the second is ethnic, associated with Central and Eastern Europe, where the nation was initially conceived of as a historical and cultural individuality which must be preserved or revived.”.

About the transition from liberal nationalism to imperialist nationalism see Arendt, “Imperialism,” In part II The Origins of Totalitarianism .

Griffin (1993:148-9) rightly noticed that the demarcation line between the two nationalisms—nationalism that is “indispensable to the cohesion of democratic institutions and values”, and nationalism as “chauvinism, integral nationalism, hyper-or ultra-nationalism”—is rarely as straightforward as it might seem.

“What we call fascist style was in reality the climax of a ‘new politics’ upon the emerging eighteenth century idea of popular sovereignty. A common substance of citizenship was said to exist, of which all could partake. No longer would royal or princely dynasties take the place of popular self-expression. The concept popular sovereignty was given precision by the ‘general will,’ as J.J. Rousseau has expressed it, by the belief that only when men are acting together as an assembled people does man’s nature as a citizen come into active existence. The general will became a secular religion, the people worshipping themselves, and the new politics to guide and formalize this worship. The unity of the people was not merely cemented by the idea of common citizenship; rather a newly awakened national consciousness performed this function” (Mosse, 1975:1).

Mead (1968:222) emphasizers that war depends upon the establishment of unequivocal and mutually exclusive identities and loyalties, today represented by national boundaries. In this sense, in considering the alternatives to war, Mead, among negative requirements, points out “the reduction of the strength of all mutually exclusive loyalties, whether of nation, race, class, religion or ideology, and constructing some different form of organizations in which the memory of these loyalties and the organizational residues of these former exclusive loyalties cannot threaten the total structure”; and among positive requirements she emphasizes “the establishment of the conditions for a variety of mutually overlapping and non-exclusive identifications with larger groups of many kinds, without any single or overriding loyalty.” This last requirement comes down to a depatriotizing. Morris (1969:153-4), in his book “The Naked Ape,” posits that “defeat is what an animal wants, not murder; domination is the goal of aggression, not destruction,” and basically humans “do not seem to differ from other species in this respect.” However, the original goal has become blurred for the individuals involved in the fighting due to “the vicious combination of attack remoteness and group cooperativness.” The result is that humans “attack now more to support their comrades than to dominate their enemies.” Morris warns that “this unfortunate development may yet prove to be our undoing and lead to the rapid extinction of the species,” and proposes three possible solutions: massive mutual disarmament, to depatriotize the members of the different social groups and to provide and promote harmless symbolic subistitutes for war. The question arises how feasible are these solutions. As far as the depatriotizing is concerned, the author is very skceptical. “This would be working against a fundamental biological feature of our species. As fast as alliances could be forged in one direction, they would be broken in another. The natural tendency to form social in-groups could never be eradicated without a major genetical change in our make-up, and one which would automatically cause our complex social structure to desintegrate.” However questionable is Morris’s opinion that such a thing as group mentality is naturally, biologically, genetically conditioned, he is near the mark when he states that there is no way to change humans’ tendency to form social ingroups and to prevent all the ramifications and consequences of such a proclivity or disposition. Scheff (1994:2) also blames excessive committment to only one social group for one of the most devastating plights humans may experience. “Destructive wars require not only isolation between nations but also engulfment within: blind loyalty that overrides reason and dissent.” According to this author (1994:58), nationalism constitutes a bimodal alienation: engulfment within the group, isolation outside of it.

Connor (1987:213) states that the question of accommodating ethnonational heterogeneity within a single state revolves about two loyalties—loyalty to the national and loyalty to the state, and gives his opinion about the most likely outcome of this conflict of loyalties. “The great number of bloody separatist movements that have occurred in the past two decades within the first, second, and third worlds bear ample testimony that when the two loyalties are seen as being in irreconcilable conflict, loyalty to the state loses out.”.

Except in periods of crisis, “when international tensions and national fears become dominant,” certain circumstances, according to (Grodzins, 1956:51-68), make it comparatively easy for individuals to reconcile nonnational and national loyalties. The ambiguity of the meaning of the nation . “It is by no means clear in a democratic state what the ‘nation’ is to which loyalty is required. Is it the government in power? Is it the system of government? Is it the moral creed or the historic ideas on which government rests. Is it the duly elected leaders? Is it the enduring cultural complex?... Individuals and groups define for themselves to which of these ‘nations’ they owe their allegiance.... It is thus possible for all manner of activities to be defined as loyal by all manner of men.” In addition to that, loyalty is defined in law only negatively . “No constitutional provision or statute attempts to set forth what loyalty is. The legal documents define disloyalty: treason, espionage, sabotage, and related crimes.” Legitimization . The practice of “making other loyalties right and justified by equating them with national loyalty” is quite widespread. “Private and special interests are given the prestige of the national interest. Some persons and organizations argue that their own goals are—or should be—the nation’s goals; others take up national programs as their own.” The segmentation of life and multiplicity of roles . “The very segmentation of life makes it typically easy for individuals to reconcile the different kinds of action demanded of them by their various group loyalties.... A citizen can be exclusively concerned with private affairs and he can still assume that his fulfils his role as citizen.... The center of his life and the center of his interests are rarely the nation. The nation’s demands can thus be put into a pigeonhole alongside other pigeonholes. The segmentation of life makes possible the segmentation of loyalties. Expressions of loyalty to the nation seldom conflict with the expression of other loyalties.”.

According to Hertz (1944:21), national aspirations are composed of four elements: the striving for national unity, the striving for national freedom, the striving for separateness, distinctiveness, individuality, originality, or peculiarity, and the striving for distinction among nations. Hertz considers the striving for distinction among nations to be the strongest of all four aspirations and to underlie them all. And what seems to be even more important, “the striving for distinction among nations, for honour, dignity, prestige and influence easily becomes a striving for domination.”.

See the paper “Ethnic Mobilization in New and Old States: an Extension of the Competition Model,” in which Nagel and Olzak (1982) account for the resurgence of ethnic mobilization in the modern world by urbanization, the increased scale of social organization, the expansion of the secondary and tertiary economic sectors, the expansion of the political sector, and the supranational organizations.

Distinction is to be made between crimes inspired by a supraindividual entity and committed in its name and crimes, the perpetrator of which, tries to justify by referring to the dictates and interests of a supraindividual entity.

liiere are a number of psychological studies in which group members are shown to prefer ingroups to outgroups (e.g., Doise, 1972; Kahn and Ryen, 1972; Turner, 1978; Brewer and Silver, 1978; Locksley, Ortiz, and Hepburn, 1980).

Connor (1994:46) rightly observes: “Ethnic strife is too often superificially discerned as principally predicated upon language, religion, customs, economic inequity, or some other tangible element. But what is fundamentally involved in such a conflict is that divergence of basic identity which manifests itself in the ‘us-them’ syndrome.”.

“Only when our sense of justice is offended do we react with rage, and this reaction by no means necessarily reflects personal injury” (Arendt, 1970:63).

See Smith’s (1983) criticism of the van den Berghe’s sociobiological position.

“Even if it is true that more nationalistic or ethnocentric groups are more likely to survive in time of danger, more nationalistic or ethnocentric groups may decrease the chances for continued existence by increasing the number of dangerous situations in which they get involved, by decreasing the amount of constructive criticism offered by group members in the face of threats to survival” (Rosenblatt, 1964). Braunthal (1946:5), in a more open and direct form, expresses the same opinion about the perilousness of nationalist views. “Nationalist emotion was the strongest creative force during the last hundred and fifty years. In the age of modern warfare and world-wide economic interdependence it became, however, the most destructive force. Hitherto, nationalist emotion sought its political satisfaction in the sovereignty and grandeur of the national State. In the atomic age, however, national egotism conflicts with the conditions for national self-preservation, because national self-preservation requires the subordination of national sovereignty to an international sovereignty and the subordination of national economic interests to those of the whole world. The true nationalist must therefore become a true internationalist in order to avoid the peril of the impoverishment and destruction of his nation.”.

Wertham’s reasoning (1966:88) about the psychological preparation needed for racism-driven mass killing may also be applied to ethnocentrism-inspired taking of other people’s lives. This author points out that the dehumanization of people of other races is a part of the rationalization process designed to provide acceptable reason for killing, especially mass killing. Rationalization actually encompasses two steps. The first step is deindividualization: people of another ethnonational background (and another race, too) are not looked upon as individuals but rather as a type or a stereotype. The stereotypical view of other people supersedes the individualized approach aimed at respecting the individual specificities of every human being. In the second step the victim is “consigned to nonhuman status and is no longer entitled even to mercy”; in other words, he or she is dehumanized. Sanford (1972:40) argues that “since in most cultures there are strong prohibitions against killing people... this process of defining them as outside the human race makes the killing or enslavement possible.” Schwartz and Struch (1989:153) share the same opinion: “It is when people dehumanize others, viewing them as lacking the moral sensibilities that distinguish humankind, that they can ignore the internalized and social norms that enjoin compassion and oppose cruelty to others.” And Bernard, Ottenberg, and Redl (1971:102) observe that dehumanization as a kind of misperceiving of others ranges from viewing them en bloc as “subhuman” or “bad human” (a long-familiar component of group prejudice) to viewing them as “nonhuman.” There are two kindred but distinct forms of dehumanization (Rieber and Kelly, 1991:16). Self-directed dehumanization “relates to intrapsychic events where the self protects itself by immunizing itself against stress-laden situations that threaten to be traumatizing.” On the other side, object-dehumanization aims at depersonalizing the other; it strips other people of their human traits. Rieber and Kelly (1991:16) state that enmification, a derivative of enemy (see Chapter 4, “Nationalism and Aggressiveness”), takes the process of object dehumanization “one step further and reduces the other to a ‘thing’ that is potentially dangereous.” The sequence of events might also be reversed so that enmification precedes object dehumanization. Yet Fein (1990:36) questioned the concept itself of dehumanization, because “it presumes an universalistic norm barring collective violence.” However, the existence of such a norm, according to this author, cannot be taken for granted. That is why Fein prefers the notion of “the exclusion of the victim from the universe of mutual obligations” to the concept of dehumanization. Fein rightly stresses that the exclusion of the victim from the universe of obligations is necessary but not sufficient condition for genocide, which is always precipitated by purposeful “state action, by instrumental rationality of its perpetrators, given their ends.” Dehumanization is, according to Bar-Tal (1990:93), one of the most commonly used contents of delegitimization. This author defines delegitimization (or beliefs of delegitimization) as those “beliefs that downgrade another group with extreme negative social categories for the purpose of excluding it from human groups that are considered as acting within the limits of acceptable norms and/or values.” Delegitimization is a wider notion than dehumanization, as it includes, among others, the use of extremely negative and unique contents, the rejection of the delegitimized group, and so on.

McCall et al. (1974:28) see the social relationship as a form of social organization. Although they considers a relationship between two individuals to be the basic form of social relationship and thereby of social organization, the authors assert that a dyadic relationship is in many regards comparable to relations existing in groups and communities.

Eriksen (1993:62) calls children from “mixed” couples ethnic anomalies. He says that their identity problems “may be similar to those of the children or grandchildren of immigrants”. Children from ethnically “mixed” couples, according to this author (1993:62), can be considered “as ‘neither-nor’ or ‘both-and/ depending on the situation and/or the wider context.” It is interesting, this author adds, that in some places, for example in Mauritius, “mixed” people may be considered a particular ethnic group.

Allport (1954:13-4) points out that attitude and belief are at one and the same time related and different, particularly ethnocentric attitudes and beliefs (e.g., I cannot abide Negroes, is an attitude, and Negroes are smelly, is a belief). “The belief system has a way of stitchering around to justify the more permanent attitude. The process is one of rationalization—of the accommodation of beliefs to attitudes.” If effort were made to suppress, to correct an ethnocentric attitude, it, as a rule, would hide, slip into respective belief, and as soon as corrective pressure eased up the attitude would resurface. According to van Dijk (1987:195), ethnic prejudice has five basic properties. “A first property of prejudice is that it is a ‘group attitude’—it is shared by the members of a social group (the ‘in-group’).” In other words, “it is not a set of personal opinions.” “Second, the objects of attitude are one or more other groups (‘out-groups’) that are assumed to be different on any social dimension.” In ethnic prejudice, “this difference is attributed to the ethnic characteristic of the out-group.” Third, “the overall (macro)evaluation dominating the group attitude is negative.” Fourth, “the negative opinions of the ethnic attitude are generalizations based on lacking, insufficient, or biased models.” Fifth, “the ethnic attitude is acquired, used, and transformed in social contexts and functions as the cognitive program for intergroup perceptions and interactions that are structurally favorable for the in-group and its members.”.

Bay et al. (1950:19-20) also state that one cannot talk about distinct and descrete entities—nationalists and nonnationalists. Both can be presented on a dimension. On one pole of this dimension are persons showing a high power orientation, low people orientation, and strong hostility toward outgroups; on the other pole are persons showing low power orientation, high people orientation, and no or very little hostility to outgroups. According to the authors, people-oriented identification means identifications with people as individual human beings, independently of their social status or power, and power-oriented identification means an identification with symbols of power and authority, that is, with events, institutions, persons, or any other objects in so far as they are perceived as representing power and authority.

It was Sumner (1906:13) who first coined the term ethnocentrism and defined it as “this view of things in which one’s own group is the center of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it.... Each group nourishes its own pride and vanity, boasts superior, exalts its own divinities, and looks with contempt on outsiders. Each group thinks its own folkways the only right ones, and if it observes that other groups have other folkways, these exite its scorn” Originally, ethnocentrism involved a tendency to apply the values and criteria of one’s own ethnic group “to other cultural contexts where different values are operative” (Le Vine and Campbell, 1972:1). Ethnocentrism in a broader sense implies people’s strong attachment to their national group, whereas “symbols of other groups or their values become objects of contempt and hatred.” In this broader sense, the idea of ethnocentrism is close to that of nationalism. In fact, “nationalism and ethnocentrism are similar in the sense that they both usually involve positive attitudes toward an ingroup and negative attitudes toward some or all outgroups. They do not overlap completely. Nationalism, more often than ethnocentrism, involves loyalty to a politically distinct entity, membership in an elaborately organized and relatively populous social grouping, adherence to a formalized ideology, and performance of relatively stereotyped allegiance-expressing behavior” (Rosenblatt, 1964). Stack (1981:4) also considers nationalism as “only the most visible and politicized manifestation of the phenomenon we call ethnicity.”.

If a partner to an, in ethnonational terms, mixed marriage happens to have ethnonationalist beliefs and, in addition, by his or her psychological make-up, is a assertive person, the other partner, in order to establish and sustain peaceful marital relations (“the peaceful life under the same roof”), may use the defensive mechanism called identification with the aggressor; and by so doing become the preacher of the same nationalist attitudes as his/her spouse. However, once the partner, who in this context may be considered an authentic (“genuine”) nationalist, has died or the partners, for whatever reason, have split up, the partner who resorted to nationalism for (in the above sense) defensive purposes, quite often, and almost overnight, becomes a fierce enemy of the ethnonational group of his or her former (or late) spouse. I have witnessed many a time this kind of switching from one nationalism to another during the most recent clashes among the ethnonational groups in the Balkans.

“Nationalism proved most successful in creating the new politics in part because it was based on emotion. But this emotion did not produce ‘a crowd in ecstasy’ simply because reason and logic were missing. Rather, the careful efforts of nationalist movements were directed towards disciplining and directing the masses in order to avoid that chaos which defeats the creation of a meaningful movement” (Mosse, 1975:16).

About the mythopoeic dimension of nationalism see Smith (1976:5).

“The past is an essential element, perhaps the essential element in these ideologies (nationalistic). If there is no suitable past, it can always be invented The past legitimizes. The past gives a more glorious background to a present that does not have much to show for itself” (Hobsbawm, 1993b) Smith (1995:63) calls the same nationalist invention and glorification of the past calls ‘ethno-history’ or ethnic mythistoire. “I mean,” says this author, “not an objective historian’s dispassionate enquiry into the past but the subjective view of later generations of a given cultural unit of population of the experience of their real or presumed forebears. That view is inseparable from what the historian and social scientist would term ‘myth’.”.

Many scholars consider nationalism to be one of the forms of historicist culture (cf. Breuilly, 1982:336; Smith, 1991:97, and others).

Two other paradoxes of nationalism, according to Anderson (1987:14), are “(1) the formal universality of nationality as a sociocultural concept—in the modern world one—versus the irremediable particularity of its concrete, so that, by definition, ‘Greek’ nationality is sui generis, and (2) the political power of nationalism versus its philosophical poverty and even incoherence.”.

In comparing the popularity of the nationalist and Marxist explications of human suffering, Moore (1978:485-6) points to the general advantage of nationalism. “In the first place, it is simple, which Marxism certainly is not. Nationalism puts the blame for whatever is painful in one’s own society squarely on an easily identified group: the outsiders, the foreign enemy. There is no need for nuances and complicated causal links. Class consciousness, on the other hand, runs counter to many obvious facts from daily experience. It is hard to put domestic power-holders in the same emotional and intellectual category as foreign ones, when every day’s news brings evidence of conflict between “our” leaders and those of other states. It is also not so easy to make a steelworker believe that he has a great deal in common with a brewery worker if the price of beer goes up.... The foreign enemy is also a relatively safe target for day-to-day symbolic aggression. Retaliation is far less likely than in the case of an attack on local power-holders. For that reason too the attack is much more likely to attract diverse social support.”.

There are many aspects of the relationship between religion and nationalism. We will mention but a few of them. 1. Nationalism is a substitute for religion. The binding force of nationalism plays the role which religious beliefs used to perform. “The insecurities arising from changes in the material environment have been augmented,” asserts Lasswell (1935:50-51), “by the stresses arising from the decline in potency of the older religious symbols and practices. Nationalism and proletarianism are secularized alternatives to the surviving religious patterns, answering to the need of personalities to restabilize themselves in a mobile world.” Llobera (1994:144) observes that modern national identity appeared in Western Europe at a time “when all the intermediary bonds were collapsing, and religion itself was losing its grip on the masses.” This author attributes the success of nationalism in modernity largely to “the sacred character that the nation has inherited from religion. In its essence the nation is the secularized god of our times” (Llobera, 1994:211). Nationalism can substitute for religion because they have many common features, most clearly articulated by Hayes (1980:164-5) in his book “Nationalism: A Religion.” “Nationalism, like any religion, calls into play not only the will, but the intellect, the imagination and the emotions. The intellect constructs a speculative theology or mythology of nationalism. The imagination build an unseen world around the eternal past and the everlasting future of one’s nationality. The emotions arouse a joy and an ecstasy in the contemplation of the national god who is all-god and all-protecting, a longing for his favors, a thankfulness for his benefits, a fear of offending him, and feelings of awe and reverence at the immensity of his power and wisdom; they express themselves naturally in worship, both private and public. For nationalism, again like any other religion, is social, and its chief rites are public rites performed in the name and for the salvation of a whole community.” 2. Religion is a political extension of traditional religions. (Smith, 1976:19). The notion of political religion in the sense in which Apter (1963:77-89) uses this term in some way exemplifies this aspect of the relationship between religion and nationalism. Reconciliation systems (a government of laws and not of humans) are undergoing, according to this author, a crisis intensified by the secularization of the religious sphere. “The logic of this argument would be a return to religious belief as the way out of our difficulty.” However, this course of action seems to be “highly unlikely,” and therefore new solutions are needed. “The resulting internal danger is that reconciliation systems might turn to political religions to reinforce their own position or in an illusory effort to eradicate enemies both within and without. This was the Nazi solution in Germany, and the Fascist solution in Italy.” States in which political religion dominates, which arose in the West as a response to the loss of faith, have something in common with theocratic states. “States created through nationalism have taken a form not dissimilar to theocracies in that they attempt to create new systems of transcendental values that have the twin effects of establishing legitimacy for the state and the moral underpinnings necessary to political objectives. In this respect political religion is at least partly employed for nonreligious objectives.” 3. The secular and religious nationalism. It was Jurgensmeyer (1993:13-24) who made this distinction. According to this author, “the secular-nationalist loyalties are based in the idea that the legitimacy of the state was rooted in the will of the people, divorced from any religious sanction.” Yet the religious nationalism “dismisses secular nationalism as bereft of moral and spiritual values,” and its advocates reproach secular nationalism for having failed to political freedom, economic prosperity, and social justice. “The vision of religious nationalists is appealing in part because it promises a future that cannot easily fail: its moral and spiritual goals are transcendent and not so easy to gauge as are the more materialistic promises of secular nationalists.” 4. The holy of religion is in many ways entwined with the unholy of nationalism. Nationalism-inspired and driven warriors seek the blessings of their respective gods. “However cynical the leaders might ever have been, their followers generally believed they had these blessings and killed and died because they held certain creeds to be true, practiced certain rites, or—perhaps most commonly—lacking faith or piety or both, simply wore the badges of belonging or not belonging to this or that religious persuasion” (Isaacs, 1975:154). The same point is made by Jurgensmeyer (1993:15). He says that religion and nationalism provide an overarching framework of moral order, a framework that commands ultimate loyalty from those who subscribe to it. “Nowhere is this common form of loyalty more evident than in the ability of nationalism and religion, alone among all forms of allegiance, to give moral sanction to martyrdom and violence.”.

Griffin (1991:26) defines generic fascism in the following way: “Fascism is a genus of political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of a populist ultra-nationalism.”.

Weber (1948:177) writes that “the earliest and most energetic manifestations of the idea (of the nation), in some form, even though it may have been veiled, have contained the legend of a providential ‘mission.’ Those to whom the representatives of the idea zealously turned were expected to shoulder this mission.”.

“National unity requires both a sense of cohesion or ‘fraternity’ and a compact, secure, recognized territory or ‘homeland’; all nationalisms, therefore, strive for such fraternity and homelands. But, since neither are born overnight or ex nihil, both presuppose a long history of collective experience. So ‘history’ becomes the focal point of nationalism and nation-formation. The ‘rediscovery’ or ‘invention’ of history is no longer a scholarly pastime; it is a matter of national honour and collective endeavour” (Smith, 1986:148). In the same sense, the progress in historical studies (not “rediscovery” or “invention” of history) may constitute, according to Rennan (1990:11) a danger for (the principle) of nationality. “Historical enquiry brings to light deeds of violence which took place at the origin of all political formations, even those whose consequences have been altogether beneficial. Unity if always effected by means of violence....”.

Fukuyama (1991:182) writes that there is no reason to believe that “all people will evaluate themselves as the equals of other people.” Rather, they may seek to be recognized as superior to other people, “possibly on the basis of true inner worth, but more likely out of an inflated and vain estimate of themselves.” Fukuyama dubs as megalothymia (“a new word with ancient Greek roots”) this desire to be recognized as superior to other people, and, later (1991:201) adds that “nationalism represents a transmutation of the megalothymia of earlier ages into a more modern and democratic form.”.

Connor (1987:204) points at two main effects or consequences of the fact that the sense of common kinship permeates the ethnonational bond. “First, it qualitatively distinguishes national consciousness from non-kinship identities (such as those based on religion or class)... and secondly, an intuitive sense of kindredness or extended family would explain why nations are endowed with a very special psychological dimension—an emotional dimension—not enjoyed by essentially functional or juridicial groupings, such as socio-economic classes or states”.

Weber (1948:179) stresses that, in the eyes of the nationals, “the significance of the ‘nation’ is usually anchored in the superiority, or at least irreplaceability, of the culture values that are to be preserved and developed only through the cultivation of the group.” The politicization of the native culture, Smith (1995:68) observes, often goes hand in hand with the purification of the community. This means, “first of all, jettisoning all ‘alien’ cultural traits—words, customs, dress, food, artistic styles—and reappropriating vernacular traits for a renewed indigenous culture. But it also means purifying the people themselves, forging the ‘new man’ and the ‘new woman,’ in the image of a pristine ideal found only in a idealized past of heroic splendour.”.

Smith (1976:18) shares the same view. “Every secession movement is fundamentally a linguistic movement.” Fishman (1985:71-2) calls the language loyalty movement this nationalists’ insistence on only “our” culture. The main goal of such a movement is “to activate and use unconscious language-and-ethnicity linkages in order to attain or reallocate econotechnical, political and cultural/educational power.... Language loyalty movements utilize language as a medium for reaching the largest possible target population and as a symbol of the purported ‘authenticity’, ‘unity’ and ‘mission’ of that population.” The main objective of national linguistic purism is to draw a linguistic boundary between our language and the language of our enemy. “The same enemies that are opposed in the struggle for national identity and autonomy are also opposed in the quest for linguistic identity and autonomy” (Fishman, 1973:409). And Hobsbawm (1990:9-11) observes that “problems of power, status, politics and ideology and not of communication or even culture, lie at the heart of the nationalism of language” and adds that that “there is an evident analogy between the insistence of racists on the importance of racial purity and the horrors of miscegenation, and the insistence of so many—one is tempted to say of most—forms of linguistic nationalism on the need to purify the national language from foreign elements.”.

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Kecmanovic, D. (1996). What Is Nationalism?. In: The Mass Psychology of Ethnonationalism. Path in Psychology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0188-0_2

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Time Is Running Out for Rahul Gandhi’s Vision for India

But in this year’s elections, the scion of India’s most storied political family is still trying to unseat Modi — and change the nation’s course.

India’s National Congress Party leader Rahul Gandhi, as his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra (Unite India March for Justice) passed through Varanasi. Credit... Chinky Shukla for The New York Times

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By Samanth Subramanian

Samanth Subramanian is a writer and journalist based in London. He has covered Indian politics, culture and the rise of Hindu nationalism for The New Yorker, The Guardian and The New York Times.

• April 20, 2024

Rahul Gandhi stood in a red Jeep, amid a churning crowd in Varanasi, trying to unseat the Indian government with a microphone in his hand. “The mic isn’t good,” he said. “Please quiet down and listen.” It was the morning of Feb. 17 — Day 35 of a journey that began in the hills of Manipur, in India’s northeast, and would end by the ocean in Mumbai, in mid-March. In total, Gandhi would cover 15 states and 4,100 miles, traveling across a country that once voted for his party, the Indian National Congress, almost by reflex. No longer, though. For a decade, the Congress Party has been so deep in the political wilderness, occupying fewer than a tenth of the seats in Parliament, that even its well-wishers wonder if Gandhi is merely the custodian of its end.

Listen to this article, read by Vikas Adam

Gandhi called his expedition the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra — roughly, the Unite India March for Justice. He never said it in so many words, but the yatra was an appeal to voters to deny Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party a third straight term in parliamentary elections starting on April 19. Congress, the only other party with a national presence, is the fulcrum of an anti-B.J.P. coalition. Indian pundits and journalists bicker about many things, but on this point they’re unanimous: Only a miracle will halt the B.J.P. Still, it falls to Gandhi, steward of his enfeebled party, to try.

The speech lasted barely 15 minutes. Gandhi is a fidgety orator, unable to shrug off the routine disturbances of a rally. He kept calling for silence, and scolding overzealous policemen regulating the mob. He didn’t ramble, exactly, but eddied around the point he wanted to make. “This is a country of love, not of hate,” he said. He talked of two Indias, populated respectively by the millionaires and the impoverished. He laid into TV news channels, many of which have been captured by oligarchs prospering under the B.J.P.: “They won’t show the farmers, or the workers or the poor,” he said. “But they will show Narendra Modi 24 hours a day.” Then he helped onto his Jeep a member of the audience, a young man who complained that, despite spending hundreds of thousands of rupees on his education, he still had no job. His is a common story in Modi’s India. Two out of every five recent college graduates are out of work, and young people make up 83 percent of the unemployed. To his crowd, Gandhi called out: “These are the two issues facing India: unemployment and — ?” He received only a tepid response of “poverty.” When he finished, there was no applause.

The crush of people at the rally was suffocating, although in India a crowd is no index of popularity. People may gawk and then go vote for the other guy — and Gandhi is, after all, one of the country’s most recognizable men. Officially, he is no longer his party’s president, but he is undoubtedly its face. At 53, with a well-salted beard and serious eyes, he’s too old to be called Congress’s “scion,” but he still wears the sheen of dynasty. His great-grandfather, the unflinchingly secular Jawaharlal Nehru, was India’s first prime minister. His grandmother, Indira, and his father, Rajiv, both became prime ministers; both were assassinated. His mother, Sonia, steered Congress into government in 2004 and 2009, but declined the top post. Then, on the heels of several corruption scandals, the mighty party — 140 years old next year — came unstuck. Out of 543 seats in the lower house of Parliament, Congress holds just 46, compared to the B.J.P.’s 288. Gandhi embodies all this history: the triumphs as well as the failures. For the crowds, that is the fascination he exerts.

One of Modi’s successes has been not just to trounce the Congress Party but also to persuade people that the party has weakened India and emasculated its Hindus. Through his cult of personality, Modi is fulfilling a century-old project, recasting India as a Hindu nation, in which minorities, particularly Muslims, live at the sufferance of the majority. Emblematic of this is a new law offering fast-tracked citizenship to people fleeing Pakistan, Bangladesh or Afghanistan — as long as they aren’t Muslim. It is the B.J.P.’s totemic achievement: the use of religion to decide who can be called “Indian.” Opposing this law or indeed resisting the B.J.P. in any way has proved difficult. Investigating agencies mount flimsy cases against critics of the government, as Amnesty International has frequently noted. (Amnesty itself halted its work in India in 2020, in the midst of what it later called an “incessant witch hunt” by the government.) Activists are regularly imprisoned, sometimes on the basis of planted evidence; journalists are sent to jail or otherwise bullied so frequently that India has slipped to 161st out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index , just three spots above Russia. Pliant courts often endorse it all. Such is the mood in India that one of the plainest sentences in Congress’s election manifesto is also one of its most resonant: “We promise you freedom from fear.”

As the election neared, the quelling of dissent grew more visible still. This year, in an unprecedented move, Modi’s administration arrested two chief ministers of states run by small opposition parties. (One stepped down hours before his arrest.) In both instances, the government claimed corruption, but many critics noted that the arrests were uncannily timed to pull two popular politicians out of campaign season in states where the B.J.P. has struggled. Income-tax authorities froze Congress’s bank accounts, supposedly over a late filing. “It has been orchestrated to cripple us in the elections,” Gandhi told reporters. If so, it feels like overkill, because it is common wisdom that Congress can’t win. Those who want nothing to do with the B.J.P. watch Gandhi with conflicted anguish. He is, by all accounts, sincere, empathetic and committed to a pluralistic India. This is a man who forgave his father’s killers, and who said on the sidelines of a private New York event last year, according to one of those present: “I don’t hate Modi. The day I hate, I will leave politics.” But he’s also the latest in a lineage under whom Congress grew undemocratic and sometimes wildly corrupt. The great liberal hope is that Gandhi can achieve contradictory things: use his dynastic privilege to resuscitate his party, and dissolve the dynasty at the same time.

That’s a steep demand, but Gandhi’s priorities are altogether more Himalayan. “He doesn’t say it,” Sitaram Yechury, the general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) who knows Gandhi well, told me, “but he’s modeling himself after Mahatma Gandhi. He doesn’t want to take any position of power.” In January, Gandhi told his colleagues that he has “one foot in and one foot out of the party,” and that he plans to be “a bridge to activists outside.” As he explained it then, the B.J.P., with its undiluted majoritarianism, “is a political-ideological machine. It can’t be defeated by a political machine alone.” His role, as he sees it, is to be the counter ideology — to go out into the country, rouse Indians to the dangers of the B.J.P. and offer them his dream of a fairer, more tolerant India instead.

The yatra is a well-worn exercise in Indian politics. Its most famous practitioner, Mahatma Gandhi, returned from South Africa in 1915 hungering to know more about his country. Go travel the land, one of his mentors told him, “with eyes and ears open, but mouth shut.” After using the yatra to gain an education, he employed it for political purpose. In 1930, he walked 240 miles to the Arabian Sea to protest the British monopoly on salt; hundreds of people joined him, and he spoke to thousands en route. On reaching the beach, he scooped out a fist of salty sand and announced he had broken the monopoly, setting off a wave of civil disobedience. There have been plenty of other yatras since. In 1983, Smita Gupta, a retired journalist who was then a cub reporter, walked part of a 2,650-mile yatra by a politician named Chandra Shekhar, as he tried to enlist support against Indira Gandhi. As Gupta recalled, for people who live far from the centers of power, “when a politician descends from the skies and comes to your home, it’s a big deal — I was swept away.”

Rahul Gandhi conceived of his yatra much as Chandra Shekhar did: as a way to counter the ideology of a seemingly immovable leader. There’s no place more vital for this project than Uttar Pradesh, the state through which I trailed him in February. With its 80 parliamentary seats and 240 million people, many living on incomes lower than the sub-Saharan average of $1,700 a year, Uttar Pradesh is electorally pivotal. Excelling here isn’t a guarantee of securing power in Delhi, but it’s as close to ironclad as it gets. It’s also the state that produced the Gandhis. When Nehru, born in Uttar Pradesh, ran for Parliament from a constituency near his hometown, Congress shared one advantage with other parties in post-colonial countries: the glory of having led the freedom struggle. That kept for surprisingly long without spoiling. Nehru’s heirs — Indira, then her son Rajiv, then his wife, Sonia — all won election after election from their constituencies in Uttar Pradesh. Rahul Gandhi once called Uttar Pradesh his karmabhoomi , a Sanskrit word for the land of one’s momentous actions.

But Uttar Pradesh also became the land where Congress was fated to fail. Today it’s the roiling heart of the B.J.P.’s Hindu nationalism. Varanasi, Hinduism’s most sacred city, lies near the state’s eastern border, and Modi chose to represent it in Parliament — a crafty choice for a man wishing to be hailed as a defender of his faith. Around 40 million Muslims live in the state, and under its B.J.P. chief minister, they’re increasingly being erased from public life. One law jeopardizes their right to marry whom they wish. Other regulations have constricted the meat trade, in which many Muslims work. Islamic schools are in danger of being banned outright. By painting Muslims as trespassers, the B.J.P. licenses violence against them, sometimes even explicitly. (In 2015, a man was beaten to death by his Hindu neighbors in his village in western Uttar Pradesh, on the rumor that he had slaughtered a cow. The men accused of his murder have since been freed on bail and the case is still unresolved.) More than any other part of India, Uttar Pradesh shows what the B.J.P. has wrought and how successful it has been. In 2019, during the last national election, the B.J.P. swept 62 of the state’s 80 seats. Congress won just one.

A few years ago, Gandhi decided that his party needed a way to mobilize people against the B.J.P., settling on a yatra as a means to that end. He embarked on his first, walking up the spine of India, in late 2022. Even the plainness of his attire — sneakers, loosefitting trousers, white polo shirt — was a rebuke to the Olympian vanity of Modi, who once had his own name stitched, in tiny letters, to form the pinstripes of a suit. The yatras felt like campaigns, yet Gandhi’s team insists that they were not about projecting him as prime minister but rather a form of ideological resistance, almost above politics. (His staff politely refused my repeated requests for an interview.)

The Congress Party found itself divided over Gandhi’s approach. Salman Khurshid, a Congress veteran, worried that the party has strayed from bread-and-butter political strategy. We were in his office in Delhi, and he kept looking dolorously at his phone, which never stopped ringing. It was the feverish middle of the election season, and Congress was picking its candidates and negotiating alliances with other parties. Gandhi had to weigh in, Khurshid said: “We’d like him to be within shouting distance. He’s a thousand kilometers away.” Khurshid wished for a more customary system, the sort that promised, say, a 20-minute appointment at 10 a.m. to talk about three things. “That’s how ordinary political parties work,” he said. “He wants an extraordinary political party.”

Sometimes, Gandhi’s team told Khurshid and others to come on the yatra and talk to Gandhi on the bus. But it wasn’t sufficient, Khurshid told me. “There’s never enough time.” The yatra involved a lot of stopping and starting and stopping again, as I discovered. Two or three times a day, Gandhi’s Jeep — and its caravan of police cars, S.U.V.s and a vehicle bearing a device labeled “Jammer” — inched through a town, halting at a crossroads for a speech. Then the convoy would hasten to its next engagement, trying to cover vast Uttar Pradesh distances through dense Uttar Pradesh traffic, and always behind schedule. The day ended in a cordoned-off campsite, where everyone slept in shipping containers fitted with bunks. Here, in his own enclosure, Gandhi hobnobbed with local Congress functionaries or practiced jiu-jitsu with his instructor.

In Prayagraj, where we headed after Varanasi, it’s possible to traverse the distance between the party’s zenith and its rock bottom in a single evening. First, Gandhi made a speech outside Anand Bhavan, an ancestral family home, an eggshell-white mansion on an emerald lawn. Anand Bhavan is now a museum, but its chief relic is intangible: the promise of Nehruvian secularism, circa 1947. Then, while leaving Prayagraj, we passed the high court that invalidated Indira Gandhi’s election in 1975 on the grounds of electoral malpractice. The verdict provoked her to impose a state of emergency — a suspension of civic rights — for nearly two years, tarnishing Congress and strengthening its competitors. By this time too, the party had wrapped itself feudally around the dynasty. Any emergent leaders with their own base were subdued or cast off because they threatened the Gandhis. By the late 1980s, other politicians had clawed voters away from Congress by courting specific groups — members of a caste, say, or as with the B.J.P. and Hindus, of a religion.

As Congress faltered, its workers joined rival parties, including the B.J.P. In India, party workers don’t just canvass voters — they step in for an insufficient state. If a farmer needing a loan is turned away by the bank manager, or if a woman can’t pay the cost of treatment for her sick daughter, party workers use their contacts to help. These services are performed in the hope that the favors will be returned every five years, come the election. “The average party worker needs, say, 10,000 rupees a month to run his home,” an old Congress hand in Varanasi, who asked not to be named for fear of professional reprisal, told me. “If their party can’t get to power, how will they get paid? They’ll go work for whoever is most likely to win.”

Gilles Verniers, a political scientist, recounted taking his Ashoka University class on a trip to Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh’s capital, on the day votes were counted in a state election in 2017. He distributed his pupils among the headquarters of various parties, but by midmorning, the students at the Congress office called him. “They said: ‘Can we go elsewhere?’” Verniers told me. “ ‘There’s no one here, everybody left.’ The party knew they were getting spanked, but at least you could stick around, thanking workers, encouraging them. There was no one to even make tea.” Today, the Varanasi representative told me, “we just hope to God we win even one seat in Uttar Pradesh.”

Gandhi entered politics with several lifetimes’ worth of trauma packed into his 33 years. When he was 14, two of his grandmother’s bodyguards shot her dead — revenge for an assault she ordered upon a Sikh temple to root out separatist militants sheltering within. The bodyguards had taught a young Rahul how to play badminton. Seven years later, while he was a student at Harvard, his father, Rajiv, was killed by a suicide bomber — revenge again, this time by a separatist group in Sri Lanka, where he had sent Indian troops to aid the government. It became difficult for Rahul Gandhi to be Rahul Gandhi: to trust people or go anywhere ungirded by security. For a while it didn’t seem inevitable that he would choose politics. Later he would say that he made the decision on a train just as it entered Prayagraj, when he was taking his father’s cremated remains to pour into the Ganges River.

Smita Gupta, the former journalist, attended one of Gandhi’s earliest rallies, in an Uttar Pradesh town called Farrukhabad, in 2004. The road was so crowded that a 15-minute drive took three hours. Gandhi arrived in a Jeep, smiling and dimpling and waving. As he walked to the dais, the barricades broke from the masses of excited people pushing against them. “He was swept away, sailing with the crowd,” Gupta said. Soon after Congress won that election, Gandhi took charge of the party’s junior wing. The transition to the dynasty’s next generation seemed underway, and he exhibited the air of someone who knew he was the man for the job.

At the time, Gandhi often showed little patience with the orthodox figures of politics. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a political scientist at Princeton, who met Gandhi back then, recalled that he made minimal eye contact and seemed distracted — unable even to feign interest as politicians usually do so well. A journalist who met Gandhi privately told me that he was, as the saying goes, eager to tell you what you thought: “It was: ‘You don’t know how the Congress works. Let me tell you.’ Or, ‘I’ll tell you about India and Pakistan.’” In his memoir “A Promised Land,” Barack Obama compared Gandhi, whom he met in 2010, to “a student who’d done the coursework and was eager to impress the teacher but deep down lacked either the aptitude or the passion to master the subject.” One of Gandhi’s colleagues admits he used to be “very anxious and pushy” back in the day. “He has calmed down over a period of time.”

He had to. Congress isn’t a party you can change in a hurry. Its ways are too ossified, and it is honeycombed with fiefs. When Gandhi wanted Congress to field new faces in elections, he pushed for candidates to be selected through an internal voting system, rather like a primary. According to one former party consultant, senior politicians, worried about losing their tickets, complained to his mother, Sonia, the Congress president. Khurshid, one of the old guard, told me: “Everything that destroys democracy got in there — money, muscle, power.” It resulted in “the dedicated warriors of the Congress at the youth level” being sidelined. The primaries never took off. In 2018, Gandhi wanted young chief ministers in three states where Congress had won state elections. He didn’t get his way. But at least Gandhi tried something, a consultant to Congress told me. “If you leave it to these other guys,” he said, “they will not even change the curtains in the party office.”

These exasperations may have amplified a hesitancy about power and responsibility that Gandhi seemed always to harbor. In 2009, he declined the offer to be a cabinet minister. Perhaps even then he saw his role as that of a moral authority outside the government, Yechury said. On becoming the party’s vice president, Gandhi gave not a stirring speech but a somber one, recalling the assassinations in his family and counseling his party that “power is poison.” In 2017, he became the party’s president, but after Congress lost the 2019 election, he quit the post. According to two Congress sources, he expected other top party leaders to feel accountable and step down as well. No one did.

In a party often pilloried for being dynastic, Gandhi has been unable to stamp his will on Congress. One friend of the family described Gandhi as “timid.” When his 2022 yatra went through the state of Kerala, Yechury, the Communist leader, considered walking with him, but members of Congress’s Kerala unit protested: The Communists were their chief rivals in the state, and this show of solidarity — even against the B.J.P., a common antagonist — wouldn’t do at all. Yechury couldn’t understand it. Gandhi might not be the party’s president, but there’s no doubt he is its presiding force, Yechury said. Why didn’t he just hold fast?

Two years ago, during a protest in Delhi, Gandhi and dozens of his Congress colleagues were detained by the police. One of those present, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly, told me that several senior leaders were held together, and Gandhi had “really frank and open conversations” with them. A couple of these leaders “got aggressive, saying, ‘You have to take charge,’ persuading him to take back the party presidency, accusing him of running away from responsibility.” It was high-octane drama: “What do you do when you’re detained, man? We were there for six hours. He couldn’t go anywhere.” The Congress worker remembers Gandhi saying then: “I know what I have to do. My job is to do mass outreach. You guys handle the party.”

Gandhi’s two yatras have unfolded in the shadow of another, some 30 years ago — one that ultimately helped bring Modi to power. Riding in a Toyota decked out as a chariot, a B.J.P. leader named Lal Krishna Advani rode through northern and central India, advertising one of his party’s priorities: the claim that, 450 years earlier in the town Ayodhya, a Mughal ruler had knocked down a temple to build a mosque. Advani promised his audiences that the B.J.P. would restore the temple to that very spot. Two years later, the foot soldiers of the B.J.P. and other right-wing groups razed the mosque, triggering not just riots that killed 2,000 people but also a deep fracture in Indian society. After that, the B.J.P. regularly listed the construction of a temple in its election manifestos, harvesting votes out of the religious polarization around the issue. In 2019, mere months after Modi won his second term, the Supreme Court ruled that the mosque’s demolition was illegal, and that there was no evidence it had been built by knocking down a Hindu shrine. Yet the judges allowed a new temple to be erected on the site, legitimizing the majority’s abuse of disputed medieval history to its own retributive ends. In January, that temple was consecrated. Modi presided over the rites, as if he were head priest rather than prime minister.

Congress didn’t send any representatives to the temple’s inauguration, and I had expected Gandhi to speak about Ayodhya, which lies, after all, in Uttar Pradesh. But he barely mentioned it, even in Varanasi, a city facing a potential reprise of Ayodhya. The morning after his speech there, I visited a quarter called Pilikothi, following a sequence of lanes, each framed by so many tall tenements that there was something canyonlike about them. It was a Sunday, but Pilikothi echoed with the tack-tack of sari looms. The sound drifted into the basement in which Abdul Batin Nomani, the mufti of Varanasi, sat at a low desk. Behind him were shelves of theological volumes. When he pulled a book out to illustrate a point, his hand didn’t hesitate for a second.

The title of mufti, or jurist, has been in Nomani’s family since 1927, and he has filled the role for more than two decades. In that time, he said, the B.J.P. has spread so much hate that it has corroded even the possibility of amicable relations between Hindus and Muslims. You can be arrested for offering the namaz in public, or for being a Muslim man marrying a Hindu woman, or for running your butcher shop during Hindu festivals. You could be lynched on a whisper that you’re carrying beef, or have your house bulldozed on suspicion of being a rioter, or be hunted by mobs goaded by B.J.P. politicians calling for murder. Nomani told me about the head of a Hindu monastery nearby, and how they would invite one another to their religious functions. “Then, slowly, his mind turned,” Nomani said. “He must have been convinced that to talk to people like me is wrong.”

Nomani heads the committee of the Gyanvapi Mosque, another centuries-old structure that the Hindu right aims to replace with a temple. Weeks before I met Nomani, a court allowed Hindus to worship in the mosque’s basement, similar to what happened in Ayodhya in 1986. Varanasi’s Muslims are fearful, Nomani said. Wouldn’t the same cascade of consequences ensue? Wouldn’t other mosques surely follow? When the yatra swung by, Nomani told a local Congress representative he would welcome a meeting with Gandhi. It never transpired. Nomani wondered why Gandhi didn’t even speak about the issue and directly confront the B.J.P.’s divisive politics. “Someone could have called and reassured us: ‘Don’t worry, we’re with you,’” Nomani said. He regards Gandhi with sympathy. “I believe he wants to do the right thing, and that he is against this culture of hate,” he said. “But he’s weak. His party is weak. He can’t do anything.”

From Prayagraj, the yatra headed to Amethi, a town a couple of hours to the north. I had last visited in 2009, when it was still a stronghold of Congress’s first family, and I remembered the fields of winter mustard, yellow till the horizon, on the town’s outskirts and the wishbone layout of its three main roads. Gandhi won resoundingly that year. But in 2014, when his margin shrank, he must have seen the incoming tide of Hindu nationalism. Sanjay Singh, a local Congress worker, recalled that, on vote-counting day, Gandhi sounded dispirited as the results trickled in, telling his colleagues “the politics of this state is beyond my understanding.” In 2019, the B.J.P. flipped Amethi. If Gandhi hadn’t simultaneously run from another seat, in Kerala, he wouldn’t be in Parliament at all.

The yatra’s schedule included an evening rally, so I spent the afternoon in Singh’s house in a village nearby. A stern-eyed man with a ramrod bearing, he wore a spotless white shirt and trousers, and he had tucked a Congress streamer around his neck like a cravat. He lamented Congress’s loss of Amethi, but he wasn’t surprised. Between 2014 and 2019, Gandhi visited Amethi less and less, dispatching his advisers instead. Still, Singh felt almost guilty that Amethi voted for the B.J.P. Last year he had a chance to meet Gandhi, he said, and asked him to run from Amethi again: “I told him, ‘Whatever mistake we made, we’re ready to rectify.’” A few weeks after I met Singh, though, Gandhi declared that he would stick to his constituency in Kerala.

For the rally, the party had set up rows of chairs in a field, but the audience started dribbling out almost as soon as it began. By the time Gandhi was midway through his speech, only half the chairs were occupied. He talked about China, and riots in faraway Manipur, and the B.J.P.’s cronyism. Standing next to me, a policewoman told a videographer, “He isn’t talking about Amethi at all.” The only cheers came when he raised the plight of India’s poorer castes — the very people who made up most of his audience. As he had done throughout the yatra, he warned them they’d never get very far in the B.J.P.’s India. He may well be right, but I remembered something Mehta told me. Modi’s narrative of a resurgent Hinduism, however hollow, makes people feel good about themselves, Mehta said. “Rahul’s narrative does the opposite.”

The next day, something interrupted the yatra’s staid choreography. We were in Raebareli, the one Uttar Pradesh constituency still with the Congress Party. Halfway through his address, Gandhi invited a young man onto his Jeep to quiz him about his prospects. The man introduced himself as Amit Maurya, but he was barely audible, so Gandhi said, paternally but lightly, “First, learn how to handle a microphone.”

“I’m a little anxious, sir.”

“Don’t worry,” Gandhi replied. “You’re a lion.”

Either it was the pressure of the moment or the unchecking of a dam of frustration, but Maurya burst into tears.

In the week’s most genuine moment, Gandhi seemed nonplused, as if he didn’t know what to do with this political gift. Instinctively, he folded Maurya into an embrace and kept his arm around the sobbing man. Still, he just couldn’t abandon his routine — the statistics he’d memorized, the thesis presentation mode he was in. But even if his speech didn’t change, he sounded more passionate — angry, even — about the inequities he had lined up to narrate to his crowd.

Well after the yatra’s end, when summer hammers down and ballot machines appear in schools and colleges and municipal buildings, Gandhi may at least be able to count on Maurya’s vote. But who knows. Elections are subject to every manner of caprice, and the B.J.P. has shown itself to be peerless at swaying India’s voters. Out of hubris or audacity, Gandhi wants to persuade people to consider lofty things like morality and love, indispensable values that nonetheless make for nebulous campaign platforms. He doesn’t mind if it takes years, and perhaps he doesn’t mind if he loses his party in the process. In that time, though, he risks seeing his idea of India extinguished altogether.

Samanth Subramanian, who has written frequently for the magazine, is the author of several books, including “This Divided Island: Life, Death and the Sri Lankan War” and “A Dominant Character: The Radical Politics and Restless Politics of J.B.S. Haldane,” a New York Times Notable Book of 2020. Chinky Shukla is a documentary photographer based in New Delhi. Her work focuses on cultural assimilation, memory and the environment.

Read by Vikas Adam

Narration produced by Tanya Pérez

Engineered by Zachary Mouton

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