loyalty, identity and the nation state

It’s an article of faith on the Right, or at least on the Dissident Right, that nationalism is a good thing. But how good a thing is it really?

I certainly can follow the argument that ties of loyalty are a good thing. And that a love of one’s homeland is a good thing. But that’s not quite the same as nationalism, or at least it’s not the way most people understand nationalism.

Love of homeland, to me, is an extension of narrower loves and loyalties. There’s a series of concentric circles of loyalty. At the centre is immediate family – one’s children and one’s spouse. Given the times we live in I should qualify the latter. This can be a husband or a wife or a member of the opposite sex to whom one has made the  sort of commitment that used to be formalised by marriage.

The next circle is wider family – one’s parents, siblings and perhaps a few other close family members. While these ties are very important I think it can be taken for granted that loyalty to one’s children and one’s spouse takes precedence.

Other circles (depending on whether you live in a functional society or not) may include friends and a local community. Further out there may be regional loyalties. There are also ties of religion and class and there are loyalties to ideologies.

Loyalty to a nation state is a long way out.

These ties are what I would call organic ties. You’re either born into them or they involve a level of commitment that you can’t just walk away from. The closer to the centre the circle is, the stronger the ties. Loyalties to a circle towards the centre will always trump loyalties to a circle further out. This is the way I see it anyway. Others may have different views. If presented with a choice between loyalty to a woman I loved and loyalty to the nation I hope I would unhesitatingly choose the former. I also think that it would be perfectly right and natural to prefer loyalty to a religion over loyalty to a nation state (this of course is heresy to many nationalists). It’s not that I don’t feel loyalty to my country, it’s just that there are other ties of loyalty that for me would have to take precedence.

Loyalties beyond the nation are so weak and so vague as to be in most cases hardly relevant at all. To me they’re scarcely comprehensible.

And there is the problem that modern nation states are in many cases essentially artificial rather than organic. Loyalty to a nation state that has a strong cultural identity makes sense to me. Loyalty to a nation state with no genuine cultural identity makes no sense at all to me.

Over the past century or so the organic ties of identity have been weakened (in some cases deliberately) while new fake identities have been created. A fake identity is one that you can pick and later discard at will. Today you might identify as a polyamorous genderqueer but tomorrow you might decide you’re a genderfluid asexual and by the day after tomorrow you might have invented an entirely new identity of which you are the sole representative.

Racial identities are an odd case and would require an entire post on their own (and I’m not sure if I’m masochistic enough to make the attempt). What really matters is cultural identity. And modern nation states have been to a considerable degree engines for destroying cultural identities. What is left of Cornish identity? Or Breton identity? Nation states destroy organic identities and replace them with what is very often a fake national identity. We lose our organic ties and we’re left with membership of something like Team Australia which is about as emotionally satisfying as membership of a tennis club.

Given that nation states have been so destructive of a genuine organic sense of identity, where does that leave nationalism?

And that’s quite apart from the unfortunate habit of nationalism transforming itself into jingoism.

If I was put in a situation of having to choose between Australia’s national interests and Canada’s then being Australian I’d naturally pick Australia’s interests. But I not sure I’d be happy to send young men off to kill and die in order to advance our interests over Canada’s.

You might well decide from all this that I’m not a real nationalist. You may be right. I’m not sure that anyone who is a social conservative and who values culture and tradition can be a real nationalist. But you might disagree. I just feel that it’s something that requires some thinking about.