'Nationalism unites; tribalism divides.'
George Rebane
The concept and notion of nationalism is now thoroughly misunderstood and misconstrued across western countries. The gist of the conversation or debate over nationalism is that it has been incorporated into the Left’s trans-national narrative as something that today portends giving rise to the more sinister angels of our collective nature. To be more precise, leftwing politicians here and in Europe have unleashed the message that nationalism implies ‘white nationalism’ which implies ‘ethnic exclusion’ which represents the strong form of ‘racism’. The lamestream media's daily outpouring makes all this very explicit, and it is swallowed hook, line, and sinker by the leftwing grassroots. An example of this reveals itself in recent comment streams found in these pages.
French president Macron did no one a favor by lecturing Trump that “nationalism is counter to patriotism” while defining his understanding of neither term (more here). Such simple and unexamined semantic conquests continue to be the modus operandi of how language is co-opted into politically correct newspeak. In more measured moments each of us can look up the pre-progressive definition of nationalism to find it means –
"Nationalism is a political, social, and economic system characterized by the promotion of the interests of a particular nation, especially with the aim of gaining and maintaining sovereignty (self-governance) over the homeland." (Wikipedia)
Nationalism is “a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations or supranational groups.” (Merriam-Webster)
Nationalism, “the strong belief that the interests of a particular nation-state are of primary importance. Also, the belief that a people who share a common language, history, and culture should constitute an independent nation, free of foreign domination.” (dictionary.com)
From these, and other such definitions, we see a common thread in an operational sense. Nationalism is simply the ideological tenet that describes a nationalist as one who puts the interests of his own nation first when contending, comparing, or competing with other nations. As such, there is nothing pejorative about any of these semantic variants. And anyone of any color, religion, ethnicity, etc can join with others similarly distinguishable as a fellow nationalist to promote the sovereignty of a given nation-state. (Sen Marco Rubio also expands on this here.)
Patriotism is nothing more or less that the expression of national pride within “the ideology of love and devotion to a homeland, and a sense of alliance with other citizens who share the same values.” (Wikipedia) In other words patriotism is the display, exercise, and/or implementation of nationalism – i.e. patriotism is the practice and maintenance of nationalism.
Things get dicier when we start adding modifiers to create ‘white nationalism’ and ‘black nationalism’. A white nationalist is not simply a nationalist of the Caucasian variety. No, no, no. The progressive definition of white nationalist has overt racial overtones such as white supremacy AND white separatism (two semantically orthogonal notions). Today being called a white nationalist clearly assigns you to the deplorably racist neo-Nazi camp without any chance of redemption or opportunity to explain yourself using more precise language.
A black nationalist is not so encumbered, and enjoys a very asymmetrical definition. “Black nationalism is a type of nationalism or pan-nationalism in the United States which seeks to promote, develop and maintain a black national identity for people of black ancestry.” (Wikipedia) Nation of Islam and Black Power are functional expressions of such black nationalism. Any such reciprocal notions of promoting, developing, or maintaining a white national identity for people of white ancestry is strictly forbidden. Moreover, evincing any efforts in those directions will get you placed on several lists of suspect and bad people that are maintained by our law enforcement and intelligence agencies. And should such leanings be known in your workplace, you likely will soon be unemployed.
For the record, there is no evidence that nationalist Republicans, Libertarians, conservetarians, conservatives, or Tea Party members embrace additional attributes of nationalism than those included in the above definitions. However, this conclusion does not fit the narrative of the Left, ranging from so-called moderate Democrats to their most fringe socialist cum communist cadres. The America of the non-Left is, has always been, and will remain an evil nation-state. And of this, our children must continue to be carefully taught in union dominated public schools and academe.
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