What is the meaning of nationalism? How do nationalists behave - Interesting History Network

Nation and Nationalism

To understand nationalism, you must first know what a nation is. A nation refers to people with the same language, language, and culture formed at a certain stage of historical development. People with the same cultural life and those who identify themselves with the same national and cultural characteristics are a stable community of a group.

Nationalism, also known as nationalism or nationalism, is an ideology that includes the three identities of nation, race, and country. It advocates that the nation is the "basic unit" of human group life. As the conceptual basis for shaping specific cultural and political opinions. Specifically, it advocates that the nation is “the only legal basis for the existence of the country” and that “all ethnic groups have the right to self-determination and founding of the country.” There is no distinction between nationalism and patriotism. Civilized societies in the past mostly emphasized national unity, but instead focused on cultural or political unity stated by the state or government.

Nationalism also specifically refers to the ideology of the national independence movement, that is, making cultural and political claims in the name of the nation. Today it is usually used to describe England; nationalism is also known as the unity of the nation. The doctrine of consubstantiality. Two measures of nationalism (and different methodologies) are Benedict Anderson's "Imagined Communities" and Liah Greenfeld's "Nationalities". Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity.

Nationalists define a nation on the basis of clear criteria to distinguish it from other nations and determine who is a member of the nation. Its criteria may include a common language, culture, and value orientation, but the most important one today may be ethnicity, that is, racial belonging and status among them. National "identity" is related to both of the above and the "sense of belonging" of the ethnic group. Nationalists view nationhood as exclusive and non-autonomous, that is, not free to join as other autonomous groups.

Nationalism views human activities with national characteristics. Each nation has its national symbols, national character, national culture, national music, national literature, and folklore. In some cases, it even has national characteristics. Religion (national religion). As a member of the nation, an individual enjoys the national value system and national identity, admires national heroes, eats national dishes, and engages in national sports.

Because the nation-state has become the mainstream of national structure, nationalism has a huge impact on world history and geopolitics. The vast majority of the world's population lives, at least in name, in nation-states. The word "nation" is often erroneously equated with these states. The purpose of the nation-state is to ensure the survival of the nation, maintain its identity, and provide a territory where the national culture and social ethos can dominate. Nation-states mostly resort to cultural and historical myths to prove their survival and legitimacy.

Nationalists recognize the existence of "non-national states". In fact, early nationalist movements often targeted empires, such as the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Vatican is a sovereign state that exists for the leadership of the Catholic Church, not the nation; Islamists seek to establish caliphates around the world as another example of a non-nation state.

Anyone who has a national identity and regards the nation-state as the legal system can be called a "nationalist". According to this idea, most adults are "passive nationalists."

However, the term "nationalism" today involves the use of political activities (or military involvement) to support nationalist ideas, which may include separatism, irredentism, militarism, and in extreme cases even Contains "ethnic cleansing". Political science (and the media) tend to pay attention to these extreme types of nationalism, as former Soviet Chairman of the Council of Ministers N. I. Ryzhkov said when evaluating the extreme nationalism against Armenians that occurred in Baku in 1990: Nationalism - This is not love for one's own nation, but hatred for other nations.

Nationalism and statism

First of all, we must distinguish the difference between nation and country. A nation is different from a country, because the establishment of a country does not require a unique language. A nation can form a country, and multiple nations can also form a country. A nation must have its own unique language. A nation can belong to A country can also belong to multiple countries.

Nationalism puts the country first (for example: the Soviet Union), while nationalism puts the nation first.

Ethnicity and national unity

The term “ethnic unity” is groundless. National unity refers to multiple ethnic groups living in the same region (i.e. country) with the same politics. Groups developed under economic life, and there are not too many cultural connections between various ethnic groups.

Nationalism and Racism

It is undeniable that nations are also presented in the form of blood. , but they are too different. Racism refers to a self-centered attitude that believes that racial differences determine the history and cultural development of human society. It believes that the group to which it belongs, such as race, nation or country, is superior to other groups and belongs to An extremely extreme thought, it is also a tool used by those in power to segregate and oppress foreign ethnic groups.

Nationalism and national concepts

Although the theory of nationalism was born in my country, it does not mean that there has been no such thing in the history of our country. The two words nation. Nationalism only systematizes and theorizes the concept of nation.

Language and nationalism

*** Language is one of the characteristics of the nation. For example, before the French Revolution, Breton and Occitan were spoken locally in France, and the two were incomprehensible to each other. Standard French is spoken in most parts of the country and is the main language, but it could not become the national language in non-French-speaking areas before the revolution. For example, in Brittany, Celtic names were banned. Forming a nation-state and consolidating itself after independence is generally accompanied by policies that restrict, replace, or reject minority languages. This accelerates the trend noted in sociolinguistic research, whereby higher-status languages ??replace lower-status ones. See French language policy.

Several theorists believe that nationalism came to prominence in the 19th century because of the rise in literacy, which made language an important unifying tool. More people read newspapers, books, pamphlets, etc., and their reading ability improved due to the widespread spread of printing. For the first time in history, they were able to develop a broad cultural identity beyond their native land. Differences between languages ??also became fixed at the same time, breaking up into dialects, and different language groups mutually exclusive.

Nationalist activists from Ireland to India promoted the teaching, preservation, and use of traditional languages ??such as Celtic, Hebrew, and Hindi. See Language revival.

The United States has always been a country that welcomes multi-ethnic immigrants, but discrimination against languages ??other than English is still obvious. Among them, German is a clear example. It was almost uprooted in the United States during World War I; French and Italian were also almost extinct from daily life. Today, Spanish is a second language in many parts of the United States. Some politicians, such as Pat Buchanan, deliberately opposed the rise of Spanish as a second language in the United States, fearing the erosion of traditional institutions.

During the colonial period in the Arab world, people were forced to learn Turkish, French, Spanish, and English to varying degrees.

After the end of the colonial period (mostly after the Second World War), there was a process of "Arabisation" to revive the Arabic language as a way to unify Arab countries and promote an Arab culture driven by Pan-Arabism. Widespread Arab identity. Algeria and Western Sahara engaged in large-scale Arab localization, each transitioning from Frenchization and Spanishization to Arabization.

However, some nationalists in the Arab world attempt to get rid of the official language and use traditional Arabic as a foreign language, and nominally Arab countries-Arabization in politics, but not necessarily in terms of language, culture and ethnicity. You can see that illiterate people usually cannot communicate with each other. This policy was promoted within Egypt in the mid-20th century by the Egyptian scholar and nationalist Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid, who referred to Egypt's official language as the mother tongue of Egyptians. Bayoumi Andil, a recent Egyptian linguist and Egyptology scholar, studies "modern Egyptian" from a nationalist perspective, which he believes has "nothing to do" with Arabic. He claimed that it was the fourth phase of Ancient Egyptian inherited from Coptic in terms of syntax, morphology and phonology, involving Arabic.

Similar to emphasizing that minority languages ??and Arabic languages ??are not related to each other, Nubians are divided from Egypt and Sudan. The more successful examples are Berber languages. , also known as Amazigh or Imazighen) is drawn from Morocco.

Nationalism and Extremism

In stable nation-states, although nationalism has a multifaceted impact on daily life, it is usually hidden. Michael Billig's term "banal nationalism" suggests that, day by day, nationalism becomes less and less noticeable, influencing residents' thinking. In Western democracies, xenophobic and immigrant groups often call themselves nationalists to avoid the pejorative term racism. A party holding this position may have many supporters and enter Congress. Small but well-known groups such as skinheads also call themselves nationalists, a euphemism for national-socialists or white supremacists. Other countries often call them ultra-nationalists, which has an obvious derogatory connotation. See chauvinism and jingoism.

Nationalism includes elements of political ideologies such as fascism, and the term extremism is often used here. But it is incorrect to describe fascism simply as an extreme form of nationalism. Fascism, in a general sense, is a combination of racial nationalism and national nationalism that originated in Italy, and was obviously influenced by Nazism. For Adolf Hitler's geopolitical ambitions, imperialism may be a better description, and many of the vast areas under Nazi Germany had no trace of Germans in history. Compared with typical European nation-states, Nazi Germany was sui generis.

Disclaimer: The above content comes from the Internet, and the copyright belongs to the original author. If there is any infringement of your original copyright, please inform us and we will delete the relevant content as soon as possible.