Is ‘white nationalism’, nationalism?

Are ‘white nationalists’ really nationalists? This label is one that right-wing, white activists themselves have chosen, and as such, compels rigorous investigation to avoid simply adopting the preferred nomenclature of these activists and their ambitions. The nation and nationalism are concepts with rich scholarly histories, and this paper seeks to examine the discussion, activities and statements of so-called white nationalists in light of this literature. We argue through a three-fold concept of the nation—based on territoriality, population and symbolic and/or cultural content—that the vision of the political community and ambitions of these activists falls short of the standard of a nation and that their aspirations do not conform to what the literature lays out as nationalism. We argue, therefore, that using the language of ‘white nationalism’ to describe these groups obfuscates and sanitises their motives and lends undue legitimacy to their standing in public discourse.     

Ethno‐traditional nationalism and the challenge of immigration

The rise of the populist right in the West is emerging as the most discussed manifestation of nationalism in the world today. In this paper, I argue that this ‘new nationalism’ is largely driven by immigration, which affects ethnic majorities within nation‐states. This in turn alters the ethnic character of the nation, challenging what I term the ethno‐traditions of nationhood. Our inherited concepts of ethnic and civic nationalism were developed in an earlier period when immigration was limited and territorial revisionism animated nationalist movements. Only on the furthest reaches of the extreme right is the worldview one of ethnic nationalism. In our demographically churning yet territorially static western world, we need a new term to describe the cultural nationalism of the anti‐immigration right. I characterise this as ethno‐traditional nationalism, a variety of nationalism which seeks to protect the traditional preponderance of ethnic majorities through slower immigration and assimilation but which does not seek to close the door entirely to migration or exclude minorities from national membership.     

‘Scientific’ nationalism

This paper investigates how the discursive battle for the Flemish nation is waged in the Flemish mass media by politicians of the Flemish nationalist party, the New Flemish Alliance (N‐VA). I focus on the ‘new nationalism’ that N‐VA politicians advocate as a means to ‘banalise’ a hot Flemish nationalism. I establish that N‐VA spokespeople and especially their chairman Bart De Wever invoke discursive alliances with established scholars such as Anderson, Hroch, Calhoun and Billig. On the one hand, these alliances are used to sell their nationalism as a non‐ideological or non‐discursive project. On the other hand, the analyses of these intellectuals are used as manuals to ‘banalise’ a hot nationalism. The concept of ‘scientific’ nationalism refers to the entextualisation of scientific discourses in order to legitimate and banalise the nationalist project of the party as ‘in line with science’.     

Switzerland as a ‘fractured nation’

ABSTRACT. This article deals with Swiss nationalism and Swiss nation‐building. Its main thesis is that Switzerland cannot accurately be described as either a nation or a non‐nation but is something in between, and could thus best be characterised as a ‘fractured’ nation. Switzerland has experienced some powerful nationalist moments, from the creation of the Swiss state in 1848 to the last few decades. Yet this recurrent nationalism among the Swiss, considered alongside their more traditional reluctance to consider themselves a nation, make Switzerland a peculiar object: a ‘fractured’ nation. This flawed process of nation‐building in turn reveals some basic characteristics of all nations – inherent artificiality, and the tremendous efforts undertaken to hide it. Switzerland could be considered an unfinished, incomplete nation, and this is precisely why its study can be interesting for scholars of nations and nationalism.     

Varieties of nationalism in the political discourses of Habsburg Austria

Nationalism in the Habsburg Empire is traditionally viewed through an ethnic lens. Despite a growing literature on ‘national indifference’ that studies nationalism in Habsburg central Europe from a constructivist perspective and advances our knowledge concerning variations in national identifications, the nationalism implied in these works remains largely limited to an exclusionary ethnic type. This reductionist view of central European nationalism mirrors the traditional dichotomy of ethnic ‘Eastern’ versus civic ‘Western’ nationalism. In order to avoid this reduction, this article approaches nationalism as a thin-centred ideology and explores varieties of nationalism in Habsburg Austria during the long 19th century. Although certain ideational paths made ethno-nationalism appear, retrospectively, as a quasi-natural feature of central Europe, the findings show that there developed rival discursive traditions of nationalism and competing representations of nation.     

Reconstructing the history of nationalist cognition and everyday nationhood from personal accounts

New approaches to nationalism have focused on the role of human agency within nation‐building structures (nationhood from below, everyday nationalism, experiences of nation, personal nationalism, etc.). However, the development of specific methodologies is still scarce. This paper proposes the use of personal accounts (mostly journals and autobiographies, but not only) as sources for qualitative historical research in nations and nationalism. Departing from the concepts of ‘identity’, ‘experience’ and ‘memory’, it is argued that, although very problematic, these sources are a valid path to the study of nations as they are: social phenomena of discursive nature and political frame, whose real agents are individuals. When these agents narrate their lives employing the nation as a meaningful category, they are not producing mere second‐hand reflections of superior and prior realms, but are performing microhistorical acts of nation‐making that are significant for understanding any case of nation‐building. The paper includes an empirical example using British personal accounts from the Age of Revolutions (c.1780–1840).     

Nationalism and National Movements: Comparing the Past and the Present of Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract. This article compares the ‘new nationalism’ in post-communist countries since the 1980s with the ‘classical’ national movements o the nineteenth century. Looking for analogies and differences between these two processes, it seeks to achieve a better understanding and more profound interpretation of contemporary ‘nationalism’. Most important analogies are: both national movements emerged as a result of (and as an answer to) the crisis and disintegration of an old regime and its value system; in both cases we observe a low level of political experience among the population, the stereotype of a personalised nation, and of a defensive position. Similarly both movements define their national border by both ethnic and historical borders: in both cases, the nationally relevant conflict of interests plays a decisive role. Among the differences are: the extremely high level of social communication in the twentieth-century movements, combined with a ‘vacuum at the top’ (the need for new elites) and with deep economic depression. The ‘contemporary’ national movements fought for the political rights of undoubtedly pre-existing nations (above all, for full independence), while the ‘classical’ ones fought for the concept of a nation-to-be, whose existence was not generally accepted. Nevertheless, in both cases, similar specifics of the nation-forming process under conditions of a ‘small nation’ can be observed. The author does not view nationalism as a ‘disease’ or external force: but rather as an answer given by some members of the nation to new challenges and unexpected conflicts of interests, which could be interpreted as national ones.     

Scottish Rights and ‘Centralisation’ in the Mid-Nineteenth Century

Abstract. This article will address the assumption that the essential definition of nationalism is parliamentary political. By highlighting the solitary Scottish nationalist movement in the mid-nineteenth century, the National Association for the Vindication of Scottish Rights, this article asks whether a ‘centralised’ state for the Scottish nation should be the model against which nationalism is interpreted. By developing the concept of ‘civil society’ as both ‘container’ and ‘director’ of nationalism, this article will show the influence of a ‘decentralised’ state to conceptions of ‘best-governing’. By stressing the contradictions in the legitimacy of the British state mid-century, it will be argued that Scottish nationalism can not be regarded as merely romantic, nor, as its outcome, can Scottish culture be presented as somehow weak. This article will argue that intellectual thought regarding the state meant that the only form of nationalism at this time was ‘Unionist-nationalism’, more union with England, not less.     

Nation‐freezing: images of the nation and the migrant in citizenship packages

ABSTRACT. New nationalism differs from classical nationalism in terms of its content and focus. Whereas classical nationalism distinguishes itself from other nation‐states in defining its national identity, new nationalism distinguishes the ‘native’ national identity from that of its current and prospective citizens of migrant origin. The terms of integration thus become conditions of membership in the national community. Citizenship and integration policies emerge as central arenas where the discourse of new nationalism unfolds. This study looks into the discourses of cultural citizenship by studying the content of the official ‘citizenship packages’ – materials designed to welcome newcomers and assist them in their integration – in three Western European countries: The Netherlands, France and the UK. What images are depicted of the nation‐state and the migrant in citizenship packages, and (how) do these images freeze the nation?     

The Anti‐Essentialist Choice: Nationalism and Feminism in the Interaction between Two Women's Projects

Abstract. Two cross‐national women's organisations, one in Northern Ireland the other in Bosnia‐Herzegovina, are observed here in interaction with each other. The article explores the connection between their ability to sustain such cross‐community alliances and their choice to be women's projects. In so doing, it addresses the question ‘are feminism and nationalism compatible?’ Not all the women are ‘anti‐nationalist’ in philosophy, but they draw distinctions between variants of nationalism, and may be described as ‘anti‐essentialist’. The article distinguishes between variants of ‘feminism’, recognising it, too, as a plurality of movements. An anti‐essentialist understanding of ethnicity and nation is partnered in both the Network and Medica by an anti‐essentialist feminism, in which a woman's family role is minimised and value placed instead on her autonomy and agency. Certain forms of feminism and nationalism are thus compatible – but the configuration may be progressive or retrograde.     

Post–national Spain? Post–Spanish Spain?

The term ‘post–nationalism’ has been proposed to designate the emergence of political bodies in the wake of economic globalisation. However, not only is the ‘post–national landscape’ strongly redolent of nationalism, but nations themselves continue to correlate with the political subject in ways that cannot be dismissed. In Spanish political debates the notion of ‘post–nationalism’ has been deployed along with the concept of ‘patriotism of the constitution’, vulgarising their original philosophical use. In this context both terms do ideological duty against the peripheral nationalities in an effort to relegitimise the centralised control of the state. In this article I ‘deconstruct’ the self–serving duality between ‘constitutionalists’ and ‘nationalists’ by showing that traditional state nationalism overlaps with the ‘constitutionalist’ position. Subsequently, I consider whether some form of Habermasian detachment of nation from state can be contemplated for Spain.     

Team Arab: al‐Jazeera and the flagging of everyday Arabism during the 2008 Beijing Olympics

The linking of living rooms across state borders by al‐Jazeera and other pan‐Arab satellite television channels has prompted claims that a ‘new Arabism’ that undermines state nationalism is emerging. Until now, analysts have mostly focused on the ‘hot’ Arabism in the news coverage of politicised events such as the Israel–Palestine conflict. This article offers a new dimension by suggesting that as important to satellite television's construction and reproduction of Arab identity is the everyday discourse found in less overtly political programmes such as sport. To demonstrate this, it offers an analysis of al‐Jazeera's coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics showing how the broadcasts address viewers as a common Arab audience who are simultaneously encouraged to be nationalistic towards their separate nation‐states within a given ‘Arab arena’ of states with whom they should primarily compete. This suggests that new Arabism should in fact be considered a ‘supranationalism’, not a revived Arab nationalism as it simultaneously promotes Arab and state identities in tandem. Finally, it aims to expand our understanding of ‘everyday nationalism’ by adapting Michael Billig's theory and methodology of ‘banal nationalism’ in British newspapers to facilitate the study of sport on supranational Arab identity on satellite television.     

How to gauge banal nationalism and national indifference in the past: proletarian tweets in Belgium's belle époque

Michael Billig's theory of banal nationalism involves the assumption that the absence of an explicit discourse on the nation should be interpreted as the unmindful presence of nationalism and that the mass media faithfully represent or reflect the discourses of ‘ordinary people’. Recent historical research of ‘national indifference’ in imperial Austria has inverted the correlation between the ubiquity of nationalist discourses and their impact in society. This article assesses these conflicting frameworks and refutes AD Smith's critique of everyday nationalism research as necessarily ahistorical and presentist. This case study of the rank‐and‐file of the social‐democratic Belgian Workers' Party at the close of the nineteenth century uses a unique source of working‐class voices: the so‐called ‘propaganda pence’ or ‘proletarian tweets’ from the Flemish‐speaking city of Ghent. Hot, explicit nationalism was absent from these sources, which begs the question: is this proof of banal nationalism or national indifference? A historically contextualized analysis of the absences shows that workers expressed national indifference towards Belgian, but not towards Flemish ethnicity. In Rogers Brubaker's terms: Flemish ethnicity was a relevant social category, but only in a very restricted number of social contexts could it become a basis for ‘groupness’ or political mobilisation in daily life.     

The end of ethnic nationalism? Changing conceptions of national identity and belonging among young South Koreans

Historically in South Korea, ideas of nation and nationalism have been based upon the ethnic and cultural homogeneity of all Korean people. More recently, there has been an evolution in South Korean nationalism that is based on strikingly different notions particularly among young people. This paper argues that a new South Korean nationalism is emerging and that it has, what I term, globalised cultural characteristics. These characteristics challenge the role of ethnicity in young people's conception of the South Korean nation and its component members. This paper details the evolution of South Korea's nationalism and explains its implications for Korean politics and society as well as its comparative significance for other national contexts. It also highlights some elements of this evolving nationalism that demonstrate less cosmopolitan characteristics, such as patriarchy and social class, in determining who can be ‘imagined’ as a member of this changing South Korean nation.     

‘Supplicant Nationalism’ in Slovakia and Wales: Polyethnic Rights During the Nineteenth Century

During the nineteenth century, nationalists in Wales and Slovakia attempted to promote national goals by attempting to persuade English and Hungarian leaders to freely grant collective rights to the ‘subordinate’ nation. This strategy of ‘supplicant’ nationalism included effusive declarations of loyalty to the common state, exaggerated claims to moral superiority, and flattering comments about the ‘dominant’ nation. Supplicant nationalism closely resembles what Will Kymlicka called the struggle for ‘polyethnic rights’, but can still be seen as a form of nationalism.     

Tolerant majorities,loyal minorities and ‘ethnic reversals’: constructing minority rights at Versailles 1919*

ABSTRACT. The 1919 Versailles Peace Conference created new states in East Central Europe (ECE), but the imperfect implementation of the ‘one nation, one state’ formula resulted in more than twenty‐five million ‘unassimilable’ minorities. With the introduction of majoritarian democracy, this gave rise to what we term ‘ethnic reversals’: ‘formally dominant majorities’ suffered status decline, while previously ‘minoritised majorities’ found new political powers. Accordingly, the 1919 Minorities Treaties sought to manage these ‘ethnic reversals’ by instituting a liberal minority rights regime that tried to create both ‘tolerant majorities’ and ‘loyal minorities’. While the Treaties reflected the influences of Anglo‐American and Anglo‐American Jewish elites – the most notable voices of liberalism in an age of ethnic homogenisation – we suggest that in contexts of historical diversity with little institutionalised liberalism, ‘ethnic reversals’ raise issues that cannot be resolved within liberal conceptions of minority rights that rely solely or primarily on cultural protections.     

Indifference towards national identity: what young adults think about being English and British*

ABSTRACT. National identity should be sharply distinguished from nationalism. People speak by reference to a general and assumed membership of a country, and routine markers of behaviour and style may exhibit this sense of membership. This matter‐of‐fact acceptance of ‘national’ membership does not guarantee enthusiasm for the ‘nation’ and it cannot be taken as a signal of nationalism, banal or otherwise. While theoretical statements and assumptions often suggest that national identity is fundamental to individuals in contemporary societies, empirical investigation of people talking about national identity uncovers some broad strands of indifference and hostility towards national identity in general, and towards British and English identities in particular. This may reflect young adults' wish not to appear ‘nationalist’ just as many would wish not to appear racist. But the level of apathy and antagonism towards national identity among young adults suggests that we ought to reconsider any assumption that national identity is ‘normally’ a powerful and important marker, embraced with enthusiasm.     

Explaining,and explaining with,economic nationalism

This article rejects the widely held view that economic nationalism is an anachronistic economic doctrine in the age of globalisation. Rather than being the opposite of economic liberalism, as the conventional view maintains, economic nationalism is better understood as a generic phenomenon that can accommodate almost any doctrinal content, including economic liberalism. Economic nationalism is not so much about the economy as it is about the nation, as illustrated by literature on economic nations and national economic cultures. Such a broader conception of economic nationalism is then placed in the context of a larger ‘nationalising mechanism’ that sheds new light on a variety of phenomena discussed in the globalisation debate, such as economic performance, state disintegration, or cultural conflict, and success or failure in post-communist systemic change.     

Archaeology and the Irish rediscovery of the Celtic past

This article examines the place of archaeology in the second wave of Irish cultural nationalism, and how archaeological findings were appropriated by rival ethno‐religious communities in Ireland. In particular, it focuses on George Petrie, who was the founder of ‘scientific’ archaeology and was also one of the leading figures in the nineteenth‐century Celtic revival that sought a moral regeneration of the Irish nation In Ireland, as elsewhere, archaeology was important in reconstructing an early history of the nation where few written records existed and in making this visible through material artefacts. However, archaeology was only significant as part of a wider cultural revival that presented artefacts and sites as national symbols to an island undergoing rapid social change. This article will explore the relationship between archaeology and this national revival, and how the material objects recovered by archaeologists extended and transformed the existing repertoires of how the nation was imagined and felt. It will assess the different reception of these images in the rival Catholic and Protestant communities. Finally, it will comment on the capacity of a medieval ‘Celtic’ repertoire to provide the basis of a dynamic modern Irish national culture.     

Imperial modernity,national identity and capital punishment in the Samarcand Arson Case, 1931

ABSTRACT. This article draws upon the fascinating and little known 1931 Samarcand Arson Case involving the possible execution of adolescent white female inmates at a juvenile reformatory in North Carolina. Marked by nationalist discourses, the spectacle generated by this case indicates much about how white New South advocates construed national life and sought to construct a white ‘civilised’ collective identity, defending their region from Northern charges of Southern barbarism and asserting their place within the imperial politics of American nation building. The decision not to execute any of the sixteen defendants was informed by a series of interconnected ideas about sexuality, national danger, ‘civilisation’ and ‘race,’ suggesting that the presumed ‘legal chivalry’ extended to the young defendants was not a simple matter of gender bias, but involved a nuanced set of reasons related to negotiations of national belonging through racialised alliances.