This is one reason the Islamist idea of a worldwide Muslim Ummah and Khalifate have such a hold on some people. For centuries allegiance to a religious political order over racial/nationalistic lines was the norm. For example the vanguard of the early Arab nationalists was led by mostly Christian Arabs influenced by Western ideas, trying to secularise society in order to be treated as equals. These ideas were then accepted by wider Muslim Arabs hence movements like Nasserism, Ba’athism etc.

I agree on the formal importance of nationality and citizenship in a nation state. In practicality though such things are largely irrelevant in developing countries. For example most Bangladeshis/Indians/Pakistanis don’t register births and deaths. Passports are only necessary if one travels and most people don’t/can’t.

In the Brit Sylheti Bengali context our turbulent history means we don’t take the nation-state concept overly seriously. Especially given our history of travel and emigration and preference for reliance on local/phillial networks rather than overt trust in state institutions. During the British period we were tossed between Assam and Bengal. Then became a part of erstwhile East Pakistan and since 1971 Bangladesh. Who knows in another 20 years what will happen?

Surely you have mastered what it means to be English – to complain.

Personally I think the argument is at once over and about to get ugly. The “left” wrings its hands over timid displays of native patriotism while having largely achieved its objective: 40 years of multicultural propaganda has largely succeeded in convincing the English that they no longer exist.

Well done – the “colonel” Kismet so roundly condemned is now a figure of contempt, but what next? The commissar?

I would say that is the intriguiging thing about today – the options open for humans, we ALL have to have citizenship of a nation-state (otherwise we have serious problems in living)- whereas back in the day, it wasn’t as uniform or regulated as it is now. And if you’re not in the system as it is, you don’t exist.

no it isn’t.

You can reduce it all down to a simple matter of a balance sheet:

A is the amount of easily collectable centralised tax, especially from things like mines and exports.

B is the amount of free (or cheap, sub-market-price) labour people are willing to donate to defending or running the state

C is the amount of free or cheap labour people are willing to donate to overthrowing the state

If the ratio A:(B-C) is high, you are going to get instability and violence until the situation changes, if only by A tending to near zero as all centralised infrastructure is destroyed in the fighting. If you can make a rational business case for a hostile takeover, someone in the world is going to financially back it. This describes the situation in African countries like Sudan, Somalia and the Congo, and also risks becoming true of Iraq.

A country under foreign or imperial occupation is effectively getting an artificial subsidy to B, and when that goes away, the resulting state may well be non-viable if B isn’t high enough to balance out A and C.

Sources of a viable level of B are any and all the traditional measures of state legitimacy: personal, dynastic, territorial, liberal, constitutional, welfare, market, linguistic, religious, war-fighting, racial, national…

Some of these suck more than others, but they all do the same necessary job. You mostly just need to avoid picking an incompatible combination that doesn’t easily resolve into an agreed set of lines on a map.

To give examples British Bangladeshis/Indians/Pakistanis born in the UK generally tend to like life in Britain but also feel some allegiance and hold a candle for the ‘home’ country. Yet the majority of such individuals originate from certain distinct regions of the home country. So for example is a British Pakistani from Kashmir going to politically support Pakistan over Kashmir given the troubles on both sides of the LoC? Will a British Bengali support the celebration of the ‘national language’ Bengali when he/she speaks a language (Sylheti) unrecognised by the Bangladeshi government? Sometimes it is difficult to entangle support for the ‘home nation’ from that of the home region of origin. Hence when my mum exhorts me and my bro/sis to speak Bengali, she actually means speak Sylheti as she does not understand Bengali as is politically defined by unrepresentative Bangladeshi elites.

I’d argue that patriotism involves totems, symbols, etc (ie flags, military flying exercises that people get to see on the 4th of July, etc) whereas nationalism involves a consciousness/awareness of a collective fraternity. I do think the lines are blurred between patriotism and nationalism.

I don’t think nationalism is necessarily wrong (it is the driving vehicle of many anti-colonization movements, such as Indian independence, and currently, Palestine, for example) and it ain’t going anywhere anytime soon. However, I do abide to the idea that nationalism/patriotism are ideologies that seek to cordone ourselves off from others, and to think that we are the world and the world is us.

What I meant “national consciousness” was what Fanon believed was the only collective awareness that could forge solidarities and understanding across borders. National consciousness, the way I understand it, is the awareness of a collective struggle, and throwing off the chains of oppression, but being aware of similar struggles that others face. Some would argue that nationalism could also imbibe that kind of sentiment, and I wouldn’t vociferously argue against that… but far too often, nationalism does veer into xenophobia, etc the things that I mentioned in my other comments.

That can’t be right: England isn’t a nation-state, and an English patriot isn’t necessarily in favour of making it one. As many have said, nationalist is the word you want.

More prosaically, group identity is almost certainly a product of evolution through natural selection.

I suspect that to be true: that there’s a part of almost everyone’s brain that has an emotional response to the ‘tribe’ that lights up whenever it is talked about.

I tend to think that when talking about the emotions fired up that way, strong versus weak is a more useful distinction than positive versus negative. Extreme love and hate are two sides of the same coin. Rationality tinged with a bit of hope and affection, (paired with complacency and parochialism on the flip side), are the true opposite of both, another coin in a different pocket.

On a local level, I maintain that my corner of the world is one of the finest places on this or any other planet and you should all come here on holiday, see how great it is and maybe move up. When someone visits and says what a great time they had, I feel personally elated: if they got screwed over, I feel personally crestfallen – although in neither case did I have any input.

At a national level, more or less the same. There is no logical reason that I can think of for feeling vicarious satisfaction and pride when a sporting triumph, a technological wonder, a scientific breakthrough, a masterpiece of art or just a creditable response to a testing situation is written in the nations ledger, but I do. Similarly, there is no logical reason to feel ashamed or depressed when people who merely have the same passport as me behave vilely. But I do.

Take it a stage further and there are times when I am just proud to be human, and others when I can’t look a polecat in the eye for shame of what humans can do.

I don’t think it is a matter of nation states, the sense could apply to a single village (or a faction thereof) or to the species as a whole. It’s a sense of saying, ‘This is my group, I share in and celebrate its achievements – as it shares in mine. I blush for its flaws and failings , as it blushes for mine.’

More prosaically, group identity is almost certainly a product of evolution through natural selection. That doesn’t necessarily make it a good thing, most evolutionary adaptations turn out to be blind alleys. Perhaps ‘patriotism’ in this sense can be seen as being as deeply embedded in us as ‘fight or flight’. If your ‘fight or flight’ instinct always responds to being startled or suspicious by ‘Fight, Fight, Fight’ then you have a negative adaptation and your genes are likely to fare ill. Get the balance right and it will enhance your survival chances.

There, it seems to me, to be a difference between blind patriotism, which allows the likes of the BNP leg room and (what?) naturalistic patriotism, which as Just for Fun has been saying, is a different thing entirely.

However, I believe it is possible to feel patriotic for more than one nation without any loss of loyalty to either. British Jews – Israel and Britain – is a common dual patriotic impulse. Also British Bangladeshis, because they seem to be more associated to the “motherland” than other British Asians.

Inherently ? . I don’t think that is its inherent nature. Its inherent nature is the love of your nation state.

Now one might be misguided in ones love and that it might be better to love all, irrespective of nationality, but that is the inherant human failing of tribalism, and is probably genetic. After all the curse of gentics is to love ones children more than someonelses children.

Justforfun

You are right, Sid, patriotism and nationalism ARE different, but only marginally. But I am not confusing them in my comments– patriotism and nationalism DO germinate a mentality, collective mythologizing (is this a word?), presumed uniqueness, and myopia, esp when it comes to global affairs.

Your definition is spot on, but only if discussing nationalism. It is possible to be patriotic without being chauvinist or exceptionalist.

glorification of your nation-state,

ain’t that the truth..