On Late-Stage Nationalism
Its banal histories, its misleading priorities, and its harm to us all
Dear readers,
Good gravy, is the world ever in a bad place.
But it’s a strange feeling, isn’t it? To live at a time when everything already feels terrible, and also to suspect we’re on the cusp of something worse? You want to drop everything and despair at what’s already been lost—but you’re also bracing for and trying to defend against whatever’s coming next.
Every time I’ve tried to write the following essay (many drafts), something in the news has made me hesitate. Escalating attacks. More sabre-rattling from major world powers. More extreme hate from all sides, and a stark division of opinions into one of only two possible camps. To write about history is a form of deflection from the present—or at least, it can be, if not done properly. I would write part of this essay, then hesitate. It’s not that what I was writing was false, but I was making choices: pay attention to this crisis. Contemplate that parallel.
Dangerous moves, always—and so, they left me with doubt.
Is this what will help the world best right now?
Does that reference aid or do harm?
Goodness, how much easier writing essays would be, if I could just lean into and enjoy the thrill of saying something provocative—to hell with the consequences!
In all seriousness, though, I need to emphasize at the outset that I am not a fan of nationalism. This is an important authorial context to keep in mind whenever reading whatever I write. If I talk about being Canadian, it’s to identify a privileged subject-position—and also, to keep people from mistaking me for someone ethnically Colombian, now that I live here. (This is also why I tend to stress that I have white settler ancestry, lest anyone think I’m ever trying to feign different origins.)
When I was a kid, I was certainly enamoured with Canadiana. Thanks to my father’s love of summer road trips, I travelled the country—from Ontario to the Yukon some summers; from Ontario to the Maritimes in others. I saw monuments, toured museums, read tons of books, and savoured family connections. I was trained to look upon my heritage unquestioningly, with pride. After all, how could “we” as a country not have pride in some of “our” greatest Canadians? What had Terry Fox ever done wrong? Didn’t Tommy Douglas forge a new path for universal welfare? Hadn’t Lester B. Pearson given Canada a reputation for international peace-keeping, and David Suzuki for environmental conservation?
Weren’t we the best?
Today, of course, I think very differently. It’s not that individuals didn’t do terrific things in the land of their birth; it’s that this strange sense of unearned pride, the “we” of it all, causes problems. We do such great things, across time and space—but we aren’t so keen on taking equal ownership over our failings across time and space, too. The Chinese Head Tax that cut off a whole generation from their families, after so many Chinese labourers had suffered and died to build the railroad integral to our country’s founding. The explicit Aryan fixation of our first Prime Minister, atypical even for others of his time and informing an assault on Indigenous culture that would continue in the residential school system until the late 1990s. Our internment of Ukrainian-Canadians in World War I. Our internment of Japanese-Canadians in World War II. How we turned away over 900 Jewish refugees in 1939, most to their deaths under the Nazis. How we turned away almost 400 Indian immigrants on the Komagata Maru in 1914, half to their death or imprisonment when returned to India.
Nationalism has a bias toward self-aggrandizement. If it were otherwise—if nationalism meant “I am committed to holding in tension all the different, often terrible things people have done in the name of this flag, and to taking responsibility for redress”—then maybe my opinion of the concept would be different.
As it stands, though, I strongly feel that nationalism damages the pursuit of full democratic action, even though the nation itself is one vehicle through which democracy arises. (It’s a delicate push-pull.) I further believe that many of the world’s wounds are caused by nationalist fervour, but in ways we don’t know how to address. Most of us want to move toward a more equitable and truly global way of seeing humanity, but how do we get there with existing systems? Some religions promise to make everyone equal through their faith. Some political leaders promise better action if everyone signs on to their terms. Some nation-states do, too.
Is it any wonder that there will always be dissenters, whenever someone proposes a solution based on everyone else changing to adopt their way of thinking?
And yet, every time a region struggles from a collision between national identities—Ukraine and Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Ethiopia and Eritrea, Israel and Palestine—the one guaranteed “winner” is nationalism itself. Or, more specifically, sovereign rights become more important than human rights. We are compelled to approach the world on nationalist terms, if we want to support those suffering in it.
This isn’t an ideal way to build a better world.
But it might be the only way we have right now, because nationalism is one of the most accessible and best-known vocabularies for political action. We’re branded with colours, currency, and songs long before we’re old enough to negotiate the related emotional bond with any real care and maturity—so that’s our toolkit.
Just as some 6.5 billion people have a religious belief, so too do the vast majority of humans find value in national identities.
It’s the water in which we swim.
And the water in which we’ll die.
However, in today’s essay for paid subscribers, I question that fatalism—a little. I invite people to rethink whether we’re really as tethered to national identity as many political movements make us out to be. If not, is there any hope of loosening its hold?
For everyone else: thank you for reading this far.
Take care of your hearts in tough times.
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