What is Ethnic Nationalism, exactly? Nationalism is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “loyalty and devotion to a nation, especially 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.” (Emphasis mine.) Ethnic Nationalism is like regular Nationalism but is a form wherein the nation is defined in terms of ethnicity. A good example of relatively benign ethnic nationalism is found in Japan. (Well, relatively benign now; much less so mid-20th Century!) I have a friend who has lived in Japan long enough to get dual citizenship. He’s a white dude. Approximately zero of the Japanese people he associates with on a regular basis consider him to be a “real” Japanese person, even though he’s a Japanese citizen. Japan is far from being the only place where this happens. In Hawaii, you might be able to get kama’aina (Hawaiian: kamaʻāina, literally “child or person of the land” ) discounts with a Hawaiian driver’s license, but you aren’t REALLY kama’aina unless you were born there.
For almost all of recorded history, nation and ethnicity were closely linked. Ignoring the long and complicated history of ancestral tribes and intermarriages and so on, citizens of France (for example) were ethnically French. The same goes for most other nations. But starting back in the Colonial Age, that became less true. The British Empire took British people all over the world, but it also caused people that weren’t ethnically British to be British citizens, sometimes living in England itself. The United States of America was founded partly on the idea that whatever nation or ethnic origin you had before, now that you’re a U.S. citizen you’re an American. In modern times, international immigration has led to a point where some nations have a sizable minority of citizens who don’t share an ethnic heritage with the original citizens. More on that in a minute.
Of course, the whole idea is absurd. For one thing, the idea of Nationalism itself doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny for the same reason that racism, sexism, and most other “isms” don’t hold up. Mainly, the idea that all of the members of any given group uniformly share certain traits or qualities, whether good or bad, is demonstrably false. For example, Japan has a long history of the concept of honor being very culturally important. In reality, there are (and always have been) plenty of dishonorable Japanese people just as there are in any other culture.
For another thing, any rudimentary knowledge of human history will show that humans are all inter-related. Literally. We’re all cousins to each other. So, while cultural differences can be very real, they are not rooted in ethnicity because the very concept of ethnicity is a kind of fiction, a way in which we can label and discuss smaller groups of people as opposed to constantly saying “everybody.” I mean, the people who were Hittites or Yuezhi or Ostrogoths or even, as it turns out, Neanderthals, didn’t simply vanish! Their descendants live on, but with a different ethnic label. So how real can the ethnic label be? It can be a useful conceptual shortcut, but sometimes shortcuts lead us astray. The map is not the territory.
As with the other “isms,” when this factually-deficient attitude is taken too far we can see horrible tragedy. When a nation or group of people get heavily invested in a “We rule, the others drool” kind of mentality, it’s easy to perceive another group as being Other to the point of no longer being truly human. Nazi Germany’s relationship to Jews, the Roma, homosexuals, etc. is the go-to example of this, but sadly it isn’t the only one. Several different Native American tribal names translate to “the people”, “real people,” or “the human beings,” implying that if you AREN’T a member of that tribe, then you aren’t “real people.” Ethnic cleansing is a real thing all over the world, even today. And let’s not forget about the United States’ treatment of people of African or “Mexican” ancestry, even though they’re all Americans. (I use the term “Mexican” because, to a U.S. Ethnic Nationalist idiot, any brown skinned person from south of the border is “Mexican.”)
Ethnic Nationalism is having a “moment” at this point in history. Sociologists and political theorists point to different causes, but a general consensus is that people tend to huddle into whatever group they feel like they belong to in times of stress. The rapid pace of technological change, economic instability, and increased rates of international immigration seem to be major triggers. Thus, we see right-wing Ethnic Nationalist parties gaining power throughout the world. This is A Bad Thing for people that hold progressive, humanist values. It’s the kind of environment that can easily lead to war. It’s worth noting that toxic Ethnic Nationalism is almost always a right-wing totalitarian phenomenon.
The most galling to me, though, is the rise of Ethnic Nationalism in the United States. We call it White Nationalism here, but there’ no difference. It’s galling not just because I’m an American, but also because it really underlines how the concept is bullshit. The United States is a concept, an idea that became “a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” There is no such thing as an “ethnic American.” The United States is a nation of immigrants, and yet we still hear a segment of the population who insists that they are going to “take the country back.” From whom, exactly? Themselves? The people saying this kind of thing are almost always Caucasians. They are not, in other words, part of any of the ethnic groups who are historically associated with North America. They are, in fact, the descendants of invaders who for the most part live side by side with other immigrants or immigrant-descendants of various ethnic origins.
Even more absurd, the concept of ethnicity is always a moving target. What is a “White” ethnicity, anyway? Like other ethnicities, it doesn’t really exist but even more so. It’s an ethnic group created out of whole cloth as a kind of umbrella for other ethnic groups. In the 19th Century, various groups of immigrants to the United States were considered to be Other; the Irish, Italians, Polish, Germans, etc. were all considered to be “Not Us” at one point, but now they’re all “Americans” and the “Not Us” label is used for people from Muslim or Asian nations. And, again, people with African or “Mexican” ancestry are still considered by many idiots to not really be “American,” being on the receiving end of such nonsense as “go back where you came from,” even if their ancestors arrived in North America BEFORE the ancestors of the person who is acting like an idiot and spewing nonsense.
So, when I see somebody wearing a Make America Great Again hat, I know what they really mean. They can go fuck themselves. As an American, I don’t want them dragging my country into the dustbin of history with them.
Author’s Note: You may notice that this post has fewer images than normal. I searched and searched, but I couldn’t find any images that illustrated what I was writing about that didn’t also make me angry and sickened at the thought of proliferating them, even as an example of what not to do. I added extra images to a previous post to make up for it!
Angry Fan