Nationalism belongs to the times when humans lived in an associative way and in a familiar and cherished environment, and it has brought mankind to where we are today, good and bad. The future our descendants will have to live in -or survive in- will demand much more from us … and from them.
Patriotism is a love of everything to do with our native land: its history, its traditions, its language, its natural features. It is a love which extends also to the works of our compatriots and the fruits of their genius.
—Pope John Paul II, Memory and Identity (2005)
These are unusual sentiments for a public figure to express in much of the West today. Perhaps only a Polish patriot, and one who was born just two years after the re-emergence of the Polish nation in 1918 from the long unwelcome grip of its near neighbours, could understand why nationhood still matters. The terrors and brutality twentieth-century Europe unleashed upon itself—and unavoidably upon others—have, as a direct result, given rise to a European psychosis, particularly evidenced in the European Union where the “death of nationalism” has become bound into its liturgy. A fear of war has contaminated the European view of itself, its place in a new world order and what it must seek to become. Though seeming to cling to its often difficult history, it is reconstructing itself, though, in the words of Melanie Phillips, “the EU is [an] artificial construct, the imagined community that falsely claims for itself the … appurtenances of a nation … which concentrates power in Brussels while reducing nations to the status of provinces”. It has distanced itself from the values which identify a politically active, democratic, liberal, corruption-free and secular polity. The EU leadership has other imperatives.
Seeking scapegoats for Europe’s war-ravaged past, the EU has seized upon nationalism. Such a view is entirely at odds with those modern states which still find strength and energy in the values of nationhood; the USA, Japan and India for example. Nationalism and militarism have sometimes been chained together, though it can quickly be seen that nationalism can operate well without being a vessel for militarism, just as militarism can work without the full benefits of nationalism; but that with an uncertain stability.
The purging of the nationalist spirit is an EU work-in-progress and is shown by an intentional demeaning of the idea of nationhood. The EU’s policy of the free movement of EU citizens has the effect of removing from the individual all national sentiment. Internationalism, the EU has determined, will replace any other political formation and the ubiquitous notion of “community” will replace the long-used but nearly forgotten descriptor “the people”. This, of course, is merely the beginning of the politically correct program steering the sanitisation of words and meaning to better identify what is acceptable and unacceptable thought and, therefore, action. This is a corruption hastening an end to a non-ideological language, or its re-incarnation as a twisted liturgy.
One more point in this preamble: the immigration of people from countries outside the EU is poorly controlled by the EU. Immigration offsets future labour shortage estimates and thus helps to meet, via the taxation system, part of the funds required to meet rising welfare costs—a welfare program necessarily providing for the arrival and settlement costs of the increasing number of refugees and immigrants who, as an aside, are more likely to cast their votes in favour of the parties most sympathetic to their needs. Accordingly, since all governments have, as their most fundamental political obligation, to ensure the security and safety of their citizens, allowing mass immigration without serious regulation or control, abuses that obligation.
A history
A country that does not understand its own history is unlikely to respect that of others.
—Antony Beevor, military historian
What is meant by “patriot”? The Oxford English Reference Dictionary says that it derives from the Latin patrios (of one’s father) and patris (fatherland). Patriotism, therefore, is of one’s blood heritage, of one’s land. Military heroes are treated, and rewarded, as patriots.
Nationalism has its roots in the Latin word nation from which the concepts of native, tribe, birth, race and a confederation of like people emerge. The English word innate shares the same beginnings. Nationalism, therefore, salutes the association of those of like being and, in a more modern sense, the political struggle of associated people for national independence.
George Orwell wrote that “nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism”. For Orwell “patriotism is, of its nature, defensive, both military and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire [for] power”. These sentiments were uttered immediately after the Second World War and reflected the distress of those times. Whether one can become “confused” between these two distinctions is open for discussion but to treat “patriotism” as attaching to personal valour, and “nationalism” or “nationhood” as referring to the unity of a people with a common language, shared ceremonies, history and landscape, is the chosen distinction for this essay.
Though nationalism is frequently seen as a modern phenomenon—the French Revolution is commonly considered its beginnings—the roots of nationhood are ancient. The course of the life of Homo sapiens perhaps began some 80,000 to 120,000 years ago with migrations from the north-west of Africa into Asia and Europe. Over time Homo sapiens established its colonies in all regions of the world as a hunter-gatherer, and survived as the dominant hominid species; no matter the dangers, the uncertainties, the vast, empty landscapes and the violent clashes with others of their kind.
