The Horrors of Nationalism

I watched the movie Hotel Rwanda this past week and, like most people, I was shocked at the savage brutality of the events that took place in that country. The other thought I had was how often this type of thing has happened throughout the history of the world. The continuing recurrence of such atrocities implies a common thread that ties them all together. People are not murderers by nature, so when large groups of them engage in mass slaughter of others who they do not even know, there must be something inciting them to do so.

There is always some kind of ideology at work in these situations that causes people to think collectively, and to classify themselves and others into narrow groups and categories. In the case of Rwanda, the categories were Hutus and Tutsis, which were vaguely distinct ethnic groups that happened to live in the same area. (A more thorough history of the roots of the Rwandan crisis can be found here.) Indeed race has been a common thread running through many of history's atrocities such as in the case of Hitler's attempted extermination of the Jews.

Because our culture has expended so much energy and effort at promoting tolerance and eliminating racism (though by no means has it been entirely eradicated,) we tend to think that the people who advocate and believe in these racist doctrines are extremely ignorant and uncivilized. While this is true, I think this also prevents us from seeing the mote that is our own eye. Many of us have fallen prey to an ideology that is just as destructive and just as ignorant as the bigoted ideas we abhor in others.

Nationalism is a fairly new movement that arose in force with the French Revolution and the creation of the modern nation-state. Whereas racism teaches that one race is inferior to another, nationalism teaches that one's nation of birth is superior to that of foreigners. People have always had a general love and nostalgic appreciation for the land in which they were born and raised. People who live in close proximity to each other usually share common interests, a common religion and some common historical and cultural heritage. The word patriotism begins with the prefix patr which refers to fathers. The idea that one should be loyal to those with whom one shares such ties is as old as civilization itself. However, as the trend towards centralization began and gigantic nations rose to replace numerous scattered kingdoms, enclaves, dukedoms, counties, and city-states, this concept was stretched and made to apply to much larger areas and much more diverse groups of people than it ever had before.

Historically there were good reasons for people to band together and to think of themselves as a collective body. Sometimes this was necessary to repel invasion of their lands by a foreign force. In other cases, such as that of the early American nation, it was due largely to shared principles and beliefs, both religious and political. Modern nationalism served to divorce this sentiment from its local, cultural, and religious roots and to associate it instead with the state and its icons. Now a man in Siberia was supposed to care greatly about what was going on in Moscow simply because both shared the same flag. Events occurring in California were supposed to be of great concern to men and women living in Florida. Names such as America, France, China, or Russia served to bind together men who would never meet, had little if any common interests, did not share the same beliefs and principles, and who in many cases did not speak the same language.

While it may seem that this was a positive change in that it served to unite larger groups of people than had ever before been united, that is not the case. Not only did nationalism bind millions of people together under a single government, it did so in a xenophobic manner. The local conflicts over water usage, the tribal skirmishes over the best hunting grounds and the small-scale, petty wars between feudal kingdoms were remade into monstrous and massively destructive conflicts between whole nations. The limited battles between mercenary forces, which did not target or engage civilians were replaced with total war where the entire population of one country is mobilized and militarized against the entire population of another.

So just what is nationalism? Why is it that I should care more about American lives or American jobs than the lives and jobs of any other people. If we truly do see all people as being created equal as our constitution claims, then why do we belittle and trivialize the lives, property and well-being of foreigners simply because they live outside the arbitrary boundaries we have drawn around ourselves? Why should the place where a man was born or the language he speaks serve to define and categorize him in the minds of others, regardless of his individual personality, his character and his beliefs and opinions. When truly analyzed and seen for what it is, the modern concept of nationalism is absurd, hypocritical and similar in many aspects to various racist ideologies.

In analyzing the concept of nationalism, the American experience is perhaps the most enlightening. What started out as a loosely organized federation of sovereign states has become a highly centralized superpower with an imperial agenda. One of the most effective tools in accomplishing this transformation has been the substitution of symbols, songs, icons and emotions for what used to be widely shared and highly prized principles. Americans used to be united in their love of liberty and their distrust for big government. Now they have mostly forgotten what liberty means and they are united simply because they are all Americans. The phrase coined by Thomas Paine: "that government is best which governs least," has been replaced with the idea that "our government is best because we're America." Waving the flag and invoking the constitution has been the facade used by those who have run roughshod over the principles that the former stood for and the latter was supposed to protect.

From the time we first set foot in a classroom we are bombarded with songs, pledges, icons and heroic stories that are meant to foster within us a deep emotional attachment to our country and our government. The entire purpose of these objects and rituals is to cause emotion and passion to overwhelm reason and objective analysis. The concept of patriotism is so strongly felt and believed in that it is capable of instigating a mass reaction to almost any event. The 911 attacks were used to provoke an outpouring of patriotic outrage that was then used to justify a war that had absolutely nothing to do with the attacks.

Such is the legacy of modern nationalism. It has been instrumental in instigating and intensifying war to a level never before seen in the history of the world. The senseless carnage and meaningless destruction of the First World War and the use of nuclear weapons to entirely destroy two cities full of civilians in the Second World War are both the fruits of nationalistic fervor. The people of the world have been so thoroughly hypnotized by patriotic propaganda that they can scarcely believe that there might be other ways to view the world. Until people learn to stop thinking and acting in herds, to see beyond the artificial boundaries that have been erected all around us, and instead learn to see the world as composed of individual people just like themselves, we can expect more of the war, terror and suffering we have witnessed up to this point.

This is not to say that it is wrong to be patriotic in the original sense of the word. I have a love for the land of my birth and an appreciation of my heritage. I too feel a swelling of emotion when I hear songs and stories about the sacrifices and heroic deeds performed by our forefathers in their pursuit of liberty and independence. However, I do not associate these feelings with things that have no relevance to them. I do not think that just because it has the same flag and goes by the same name it always has, that our country has not changed drastically from the time of our founding fathers. To me the flag represents certain principles and ideals which I hold dear. For this reason I find it to be a mockery and a show of hypocrisy when it is used to support causes and actions that are not consistent with those principles. No country, flag, or government deserves your loyalty simply because you happen to live in its jurisdiction. To the extent that it is tyrannical and unjust, both at home and abroad, it should be denounced and criticized. To the extent it serves and protects liberty it should be praised and applauded. At no time should we feel that citizenship means unconditional support or blind acceptance.

To me nationalism is no different from racism, religious fanaticism, or any other creed that teaches people to think in large, arbitrary groups. There is little difference in my mind between disliking someone because of the color of their skin, and disliking them because of the colors on their flag. Both ideas teach that it is okay and sometimes necessary to use violence against those who don't fit whatever narrow criteria have been set in place for us. If we are to learn anything from the tragedies in Rwanda and elsewhere, it should be that these hateful, fearful ideologies are a danger to the very survival of the human race.