Patriotism, Nationalism And National Identity: Correlation Of The Notions

In an increasingly globalized and connected world, maintaining a national identity is harder than ever. What’s more, the tangibility of “the nation” as a concept is ambiguous at most. Despite that, nationalism and national feelings have experienced a recent resurgence. In the modern political conversation concerning patriotism, the nation to the individual has little to do with heredity or residence. Globalisation and attraction render the most pedigree lineages mutt, and the sources promising belonging, from nation to religion, leave every person a composite of several heritages. Rather, the one feature ubiquitous to all nations is the member’s identification with it. Therefore national belonging, and by reciprocity patriotism is in practice not legacy but the agreement to obey the authority they have created for themselves. That is to say that a group’s faith in a nation’s existence is what constructs it in the first place. This fundamentally modernist anti-realist view does not seek to challenge the might of a nation; rather it seeks to defy the often patriotic notion of the antecedence of an ethno-cultural group to its members and make it operationable as a concept.

An important distinction needs to be drawn between a state and a nation. Whereas a nation may be of any ethnic or cultural community striving for statehood, a state is a political entity with a high degree of sovereignty (Özkırımlı, p. 201) which, as will be argued in this essay, does not need to contain one unified nation. It is impossible to operationably assimilate all cultures present in a state in one singular national identity relatable for all its citizens. That means that as long as multiple nations dwell in the boundaries of one state, the encouragement of national feeling within it will always discriminate at least to some degree the minorities present within it. When considering the belonging to a state, the pervasion of geography as the common denominator is challenged in the practical context of shifting boarders, alliances and immigration.

Additionally, nationalism axiomatically is antithetical to objectivity and inclusiveness. It calls for one singular, absolute cultural identity. This almost necessitates a uniformity and rigidity of thought from its members. In a vicious cycle, this cultural relativism both enables and perpetuates either cultural assimilation, or a violent clash of its actors, neither of which should be desirable. The dramatic collapse of the Dual Monarchy in 1918 is perhaps the most poignant example of an unsuccessful attempt at containing different national interests in one state. Its demise may certainly be traced back to the house of Habsburg misguidedly expecting peaceful, but separated national coexistence of the nations to ensue the Ausgleich. It thereby disregarded the validity of Hungarian culture and underestimated the pre-existing separatist effort of its ethnic groups. This suggests that sole cohabitation, even independently of an implicit imbalance of power, is unstable. Instead the idea that the political framework, the state, is related to the identity of a nation must be dismissed or at least reconsidered.

While it was not by chance that states have historically had a tendency to share attributes with the dominant nation it contains, and especially charged political camps such as anarchism may well be source of mutual values, both entities should to be considered individually. This gains particular significance in the border demarcation of states, taking on almost hyperbolic proportions in the example of the treaty of Maastricht. Fifteen years and three border commissions after the dissolution of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Dutch-Belgian border of Baerle-Duc boasted 24 Dutch exclaves, 20 Belgian exclaves and 7 Dutch counter- enclaves. Though it seems like a parody of bureaucracy, this echo of the region’s feudalist history shines light on the bizarreness of the attempt to concile state and nation. Not only is it ridiculous, If the concept of a nation does not forcibly provide sufficient reason for the persistence of a state, what defines its borders? Is only the force of geography, and if so, isn’t geography in a political sphere close to randomness? If a state is a political framework for a practically random group of people, what does that say about its obligation to said group? Acceptance of colourfulness-> impossible because psychological dialectic of the foreign)

An alternative approach to the question would suggest that there are no grounds to expect different nations to coincide, and to advocate instead a “liberal archipelago” (Chandran, p.21) which puts forth the idea of an almost anarchic canvas of acquiescence on which all nations may autonomously coexist. Cosmopolitanism is perhaps the antithesis of nationalism and as a whole the more logical consideration of the human condition as a whole. It supports the regard of all rational beings to belong to a supranational world and requires the awareness of our ultimately mutual experience as human beings beyond patriotism. However, cosmopolitanism may coexist with a temperate patriotism. One can be simultaneously aware of one’s humanity and recognize one’s heritage if it does not exceed a sense of personal identification and affection for it. When visualising humanity’s identity by device of a series of concentric circles, the centre being unique to any person’s set of identity, the cosmopolitan circle would encompass all persons.

When considering nationalism, its two constituents need to be separately evaluated, (1) the intrapersonal identification with an ethno-cultural concept and (2) the political actions handled by members of a nation with the conviction of supremacy. The former closely coincides with the notion of patriotism. It is hard to apply a relative/abstract concept like virtue to the concrete reality of patriotism. Much more utility promises to be gained when examining patriotism’s effectiveness as a tool, i.e. the effects patriotism has historically had or strives to achieve and by inference their desirability.

Patriotism most certainly plays an essential part in warfare. While nationalism can often be identified as the cause of such conflict, patriotism is the tool for radicalisation and motivation. As a very emotive subject, many draw from their deep attachments to their home. Patriotism means something to people, it’s a deeply resonant symbol, it’s emotional. Simultaneously you don’t want to disparage the passionate national feelings of other people for their fights, for their songs, for their rituals, for their dreams and for their memories. Enormously productive force, collective allegiance, loyalty love and belonging- but also a source of blood and conflict, hostility and hatred. The notion of patriotism being primarily a duty very oppressive in nature.

Everybody’s down on nationalism, but when you think about it, it’s also when you think about national pride, it’s a source of our capacity to make sacrifices for something bigger than ourselves. Under the assumption of relativism, national feeling does not stimulate sentiments of kinship within a group; rather it functions by distinguishing a national identity from other groups. This may easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy because the issue is inadvertently perpetuated in our minds. The nationalist notion of superiority presupposes at best disaffection, at worst contempt for alien groups. The presumption of the supremacy of the own state calls for the protection from the culturally devoid and principally anarchistic ‘outside’ of it. In such a worldview the particularistic actions of Patriotism and Nationalism are reasonable measures to ensure the national progress and safety. If similar sentiments are projected to fuel the actions or precautions of said alien groups, what may be best described as a reciprocal feedback loop causes them to see each other as increasingly inimical until the dialectic arrives at hostility being the most rational choice. Because of its subjects’ proximity and immediateness, patriotism is much more tangible and excitable than a cosmopolitan position. But while it instructs to overcome boundaries of ethnicity, class, gender and race, the expansion of this notion to members other states is rejected, the aspiration to a common set of values loses its relevance at a state’s borders.