What's Wrong with Nationalism?

[Dhimmi]

Well I'm going on anecdotal evidence from friends living there I'm afraid. They say people are quite rude and aggressive towards them. The swedish guys never get stopped and asked for papers by cops, while the american guys of latin american extraction get stopped frequently. That sort of thing.

Interesting, I'm happy to hear the anecdotal- often makes more immediate sense.

Emphasis on nationalism weakens the emphasis on class and class consciousness and perpetuates the myth that the respective interests of the conflicting classes are one and the same.

Do you think you could have a bit of both?

 

[Dhimmi]

Nationalism is an odd beast. There have of course been left wing nationalists, for instance Chavez and Morales in South America but this has been usually developed in opposition to a colonial master or a parasitic colonial elite that (as in Venezuela). The problem though lies in the fact that nationalism as a political movement tends to become as bourgeois as any other old liberals once in power as they stress the "national interest" over claims of the working class. The case in Scotland and Wales is interesting as both Plaid and the SNP hav been defined to a large extent by a struggle to promote traditional Welsh and Scottish cultural identities against attempts at anglicisation such as the decimation of their native languages (something which both movements have been successful in reintroducing). They are also defined by being against the union. The problem for any english nationalist movement is that the English ruling class were the dominant partners in the Union and the conservative party promoted British nationalism rather than a specifically english one. Even far right parties tend to blather on about "rule britannia" than about England. Whereas the Scots and Welsh have got the English to define themselves against and against the injustices of the act of union what have the english got to define themselves against.
Orwell made some good points in the Lion and the Unicorn and there is nothing wrong in being proud of your roots but this should never be used to suggest that there is some kind of unifying interest between the owning class and working class because there isn't. Nations are after all fundamentally creations of force carried out in our case by successive rather brutal kings and the devious machinations of the political class.

Outstanding contribution which I'll mull over a bit...

 

[Anotherfolky]

The biggest problem with Nationalism is that the diversity of people who make up a nation are not represented within a particular Nation, its usually the case that the mythologies that make up particular Nationalisms hark back to older times in a nations history.

Which easily describes both Scottish and Welsh nationalisms very well.

 

[tbaldwin]

Nationalism and patriotism are different things....

I think Nationalism is bullshit in most cases because it implies a National interest being more important than Class or anything else...

But patriotism caring about people around you doesnt sound too bad too me.
Just as long as it doesnt mean supporting multi millionaire footballers or the royal family.....

 

[STFC]

That's bollocks, I have no interests in common with my boss that's for sure! I want to fuck him over at every opportunity, given thats what he is doing to me and my workmates every day.

That doesn't sound much fun, have you considered a change of career?

 

[tbaldwin]

One of the most depressing thins about the Left in the UK..Is there lack of Internationalism...Some of the stuff people come out with on Immigration shows just how bad things have got with....People arguing that "we need more migrants to pay for our pensions!" And that "Immigration is in the National Interest"

Most International issues get very little interest from the Left unless the Mass media decides they are the main issues...So Iraq gets loads more attention than Starvation despite more people dying in one day of hunger than have died in Iraq in 3 years!

Even Charities are better than most of the Left who seem to think that something is only important when Newsnight says it is....

 

[TonkaToy]

So an employee sells his/her labour for less than it's real value, leaving their boss with the surplus and is making a profit

Maths 101 Tonka stylee

How do you determine what the "real value" is?

If you believe any profit is surplus, then how is a company supposed to expand without profits?

 

[Streathamite]

Nationalism and patriotism are different things....

I think Nationalism is bullshit in most cases because it implies a National interest being more important than Class or anything else...

But patriotism caring about people around you doesnt sound too bad too me.
Just as long as it doesnt mean supporting multi millionaire footballers or the royal family.....

patriotism does NOT mean 'caring about those around you' ffs! that's communalism.
Patriotism is a commitment to and belief in the ethos of your nation as an entity.
and it's bollocks, and detracts from the real issue of class.
jesus....

 

[STFC]

patriotism does NOT mean 'caring about those around you' ffs! that's communalism.
Patriotism is a commitment to and belief in the ethos of your nation as an entity.
and it's bollocks, and detracts from the real issue of class.
jesus....

Ever thought that some people might regard a commitment to and belief in the ethos of 'class' as an entity as bollocks, Jezza?

 

[Fruitloop]

Not really!

 

[Streathamite]

Ever thought that some people might regard a commitment to and belief in the ethos of 'class' as an entity as bollocks, Jezza?

yup - people who have either not read enough politics and history texts, or simply not understood them.
This is - whether some people see it or not - a class driven nation in a class-driven world, and it could not be anything else where the planet's most powerful politician would have been a nobody without the family connection, and where 5% of the population own 5% of the world's wealth.

 

[Streathamite]

One of the most depressing thins about the Left in the UK..Is there lack of Internationalism...Some of the stuff people come out with on Immigration shows just how bad things have got with....People arguing that "we need more migrants to pay for our pensions!" And that "Immigration is in the National Interest"

Most International issues get very little interest from the Left unless the Mass media decides they are the main issues...So Iraq gets loads more attention than Starvation despite more people dying in one day of hunger than have died in Iraq in 3 years!

Even Charities are better than most of the Left who seem to think that something is only important when Newsnight says it is....

oh yesss! and - bang on cue - comes balders with the only song he knows!
The left is this...the left is that....I know the truth and the Left doesn't...jesus you couldn't make this asininity up!
balders, repeat after me; there-is-no-monothought-clique-'left'-and-the-term-is-meaningless.
just obne thought; all them aid workers, relief workers - where do you think they reside, on the political spectrum?

 

[phildwyer]

I think it depends what nation you're feeling nationalistic about. It is a very different thing to be a nationalistic American than it is to be a nationalistic Bolivian.

 

[Fruitloop]

Emphasis on nationalism weakens the emphasis on class and class consciousness and perpetuates the myth that the respective interests of the conflicting classes are one and the same.

So good it was worth repeating

 

[STFC]

yup - people who have either not read enough politics and history texts, or simply not understood them.
This is - whether some people see it or not - a class driven nation in a class-driven world, and it could not be anything else where the planet's most powerful politician would have been a nobody without the family connection, and where 5% of the population own 5% of the world's wealth.

That may be so (although I think your stats may be flawed!), but bar the 'upper classes' and leftist 'class warriors', I'd wager that the vast majority of people really couldn't give a flying one about what class they belong to, whether they've read enough political and historical texts (by which I'm assuming you mean Marx?) or not.

 

[Streathamite]

That may be so (although I think your stats may be flawed!), but bar the 'upper classes' and leftist 'class warriors', I'd wager that the vast majority of people really couldn't give a flying one about what class they belong to, whether they've read enough political and historical texts (by which I'm assuming you mean Marx?) or not.

well, id disagree there. most middle-class people I know are frantically desperate not to be seen as 'common'. working class poeple, by and large, do have a strong class identity, whether or not they are politically conscious. Look around you - it's everywhere; people's postal address, the education they had, their place in the work hierarchy, etc.
No - i didn't just mean marx, i meant the full panoply of
a) history books
b) texts like Locke, honbbes, voltaire, diderot, gramsci, kropotkin, godwin, cobbett etc etc
It all boils down to who owns what, who controls what, who orders what.

 

[tbaldwin]

yup - people who have either not read enough politics and history texts, or simply not understood them.
.

Socialism is just for the clever people eh.......

LIBERAL SUPREMACISM more like RJ.

 

[Charlie Drake]

I think it depends what nation you're feeling nationalistic about. It is a very different thing to be a nationalistic American than it is to be a nationalistic Bolivian.

I hear what you're saying, but a lot of american nationalists hate their govts/foreign policy/feds/CIA etc and want to return to the founding father's days

 

[ViolentPanda]

Socialism is just for the clever people eh.......

Except that isn't what he said, is it?

Tut tut, Mr Balldwin being dishonest again!

LIBERAL SUPREMACISM more like RJ.

...brayed the donkey.

 

[tbaldwin]

Except that isn't what he said, is it?

Thats what he says and thinks and you know it. He likes to look down his nose at people and his Socialism is a bit of a joke...
How can you have Socialism without popular support.....You cant what he believes in is some kind of enlightened benevolence.....Altruism and all that shit.....
There has been a majority of people on U75 who basically agree with those kind of views. But it seems more and more people are begining to see through them....
Onwards and upwards....Power to the People.....

 

[ViolentPanda]

Thats what he says and thinks and you know it. He likes to look down his nose at people and his Socialism is a bit of a joke...

No Balders, that's what you've chosen to believe, and it's a pisspoor belief because it's wildly inaccurate.

How can you have Socialism without popular support.....You cant what he believes in is some kind of enlightened benevolence.....Altruism and all that shit.....

Unlike all the shit that you believe in, you mean?

There has been a majority of people on U75 who basically agree with those kind of views. But it seems more and more people are begining to see through them....

You know, there's a running them in your monologues, and the theme is that you know better than everyone else, that you have some blazing insight that no-one else shares, but can you articulate your vision, have you ever articulated it?

Have you fuck.

Instead, all we ever get are your bleatings and your eternal whining, interspersed with the occasional cry of "LBERAL SUPREMACIST".

You're a joke, and not even a funny joke.

Onwards and upwards....Power to the People.....

I believe that, but you obviously don't. How can you when you're a self-proclaimed "authoritarian socialist"?

 

[taffboy gwyrdd]

The Scots have the SNP, the Welsh have Plaid Cymru neither of which are racist movements but English nationalism seems to be uniquely so.
Hence;
What's wrong with English nationalism?
Could it be a conduit to a more progressive nation?
Are we trapped in the nineteenth century?

A chap I knew made a helpful distinction between Liberation and Imperialist nationalisms, the
latter being by far the greater evil.

 

[revol68]

Nationalism and patriotism are different things....

I think Nationalism is bullshit in most cases because it implies a National interest being more important than Class or anything else...

But patriotism caring about people around you doesnt sound too bad too me.
Just as long as it doesnt mean supporting multi millionaire footballers or the royal family.....

I've flushed more insightful things down the toliet than you. Fuck off and die, slowly and painfully.