“All of us often speak about both communism and nationalism as if they were singular and monolithic for the purposes of general discussion and definition.”

Never were truer words written. What Daniel Larison is describing is what we call “categories of discourse” which are all around us in addition to nationalism and communism. Categories like paleolibertarians or paleoconservatives or conservative or consitutionalist or citizenism (Steve Sailer’s favorite) serve more to divert us that to educate us. It is hard work to describe exactly what we mean without relying on flawed categories of discourse, but until we learn to do it, we are history’s losers. (Now that’s a category of discourse!)

Many of Mr. Larison’s fine comments could be applied to the American Revolution fairly
easily.  The Whigs/Patriots/Rebels invaded Canada in 1775, before the Declaration of
Independence, in the hope that the Canadians would be grateful for our help in “liberating’
them.  The Rebels thought that all the colonies would balk as did the thirteen south of
the Bay of Fundy, so logically the new alliance of colonies should include Canada.  All British North
Americans naturally would want to participate in the rebellion.  Not so.

Then the Tories/Loyalists were cleansed:  “Their resistance is typically condemned in terms of being corrupted by foreign influence or as ideological deviationism from the reigning ideology . . .”
The Tories violated the nascent American republican and constitutional creed.  Even though
they definitely were American, they could not be assimilated into the new regime.  So
they either left of their own accord, were driven out, or were forced to adapt.  To be
a good American definitely required republicanism, which helps explain why America has
never had a substantial reactionary monarchist faction that hankered for the ancien
regime.  It’s not that these people never existed, it’s that they cleared out or were
cleared out.  The American Revolution might have looked alot more like the French one
(or at least like the Jacobite wars) if the Tories had stood their ground instead of
sailing off.  Some Americans also claimed California on the basis that Sir Francis Drake
had claimed it and all British claims belonged to the U.S. of A., the successor of the
British. 

“There is also a progressive reading of history in which the slumbering, divided nation awoke to its true purpose and mission, which are usually revealed through wars of liberation or wars of unification in which the recalcitrant members of “the nation” who did not wish to be united to the new state were subjugated, and their regional and linguistic distinctiveness suppressed as much as possible. “

As I see it, this sort of nationalism began with the Revolution, at least in an inchoate
form.  Linguistic distinctiveness may not have been suppressed (though Webster did write
a dictionary . . .) early on, but the Tories were expelled or fled.  Then there was the
suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion, which told people on the other side of the mountains just who was boss.

Nationalism is when you don’t have to use paragraph breaks.  The paragraphs then march on parade like regiments in Red Square.

Nice post.  Although let’s remember: it was Nixon and Kissinger, and not the “anti-anticommunist,” who grasped that “communist movements were not part of an undifferentiated whole, but differed according to national character and reprised old national rivalries among themselves.”

Defining nationalism in terms of a people is just begging the question.  What the hell is a “people”, then?  There are other, less serious, problems with the definition as well.  For instance, some of the canonical examples of nationalism, such as the Armenian, did not really demand a state at all.  But the circularity of referring to a vague and undefined concept of “people” makes the definition pretty much useless.

It’s interesting that writers at a conservative forum are apparently trying to conceptualize nationalism from scratch, ignoring a long tradition of scholarship on the subject.  This tradition includes putative definitions (everybody’s got one of his own), and also plenty of contention about whose concept is the best.  As far as I can tell from very limited reading, the concepts of “nation” and “nationalism” have evolved dialectically over time, even in recent scholarship.

Maybe one of the reasons that the writers here have seemed so disoriented, spinning their wheels on this topic for months, is that they’re apparently writing without reference to that long tradition of scholarship.

Richard Spencer wrote: “it was Nixon and Kissinger, and not the “anti-anticommunist,” who grasped that “communist movements were not part of an undifferentiated whole”.

Let’s remember that it was the communists themselves who grasped this (blindingly obvious) fact, and who asserted it most aggressively.  I’m talking mostly about communists in the West, including America.  There were Maoist, Castroite, Stalinist, etc. etc. commies and they all hated each other.  There was also some fellow named Leon something-or-other, I believe, who pointed out that communism was not monolithic, until he himself got the point.

“For instance, some of the canonical examples of nationalism, such as the Armenian, did not really demand a state at all.”

If you say so, except that Armenian nationalists did demand a state and forged one out of the post-WWI chaos, and it was then subordinated to the USSR.  Mer Hayrenik, anyone?

Mr. Larison, you’re right of course that the Armenians eventually demanded and got a state.  I should have said that the Armenian nationalists didn’t initially demand a state, and in fact some of them emphasized that fact to the Turks (not that it helped them any).  My point is still that early Armenian nationalism was nationalism by any reasonable definition, despite its lack of demand for a nation-state.

To repeat, though, that’s a relatively minor objection to your definition.  My real objection is the circularity of defining nationalism in terms of the vague and undefined concept of “a people”.

These observations about nationalism are incisive. Nevertheless, they do not, and cannot go to establishing some moral equivalence between nationalism, considered as a phenomenon, and communism. Communism, as numerous Papal encyclicals pointed out at the time, is the more pernicious evil becuause of a secular messianic drive to transcend all regionalisms, in order to provide a single solution to the problems inherent in human existence in this world (poverty, inequity). To do so it must inevitably re-define man. Nationalism need not do this, as it is more narrowly the exxageration of a legitimate human good, the state.

To Richard Spencer: Actually, I believe was such a reputedly hardcore anti-Communist as MacArthur who first publicly noted that about Russia and China long before Nixon and Kissinger, although it has been forgotten or overlooked that his relative sympathies there seemed to be the opposite of Nixon and Kissinger’s.

Nationalism as it evolved among Europeans in the 18th century is based upon genetic identity (a perceived one at least), and from my impression this was the case in US at that time as well.  If one is different from the others, he/she is much more likely to become the scapegoat if things get tough, so it means security to live among people who are like oneself. However, from time to time there are competing concepts and they are promoted by people who want to strengthen their concepts of society or loyalty as well as improving their own power.  Priests will advance allegiance based upon religion, kings based upon the residency in their land and a glorified common history, and labor leaders based upon the membership in that particular social class. In the Germany of the 30-year war, religion played a much bigger role than today, so the Protestant Germans found more comfort being with the Protestant Swedes, than with the Catholic Germans. When religion became less important, people returned to the common bloodline and other cultural aspects as the thing that bind. The Bolsheviks offered the international worker class security (workers of the world – unite), but had to abandon that concept – at least temporarily - during WWII in favor of a genetic based community, in order to motivate the “worker sons of Mother Russia” fight against the “worker sons of the German National Socialist Workers Party”. In the long run the saying that “blood is thicker than water” always comes true, as the Tutsi’s in Rwanda had to experience. This will show us as well the long term futility of “nation building” if it is based upon anything other than genetic identity.

There needs to be some means to elicit loyalty to fellow nationals over against foreigners, at least in the case of those entering the national territory in a way which does violence to those within. If one rejects all nationalism, is it still possible to retain loyalty to civilization; and let Hellenic Cyprus be the litmus test of this question. If one emulates the tranzis of Europe in despising all that they would call nationalism, including national loyalty as that of fellow citizens to each other relative to foreigners, and civilization has to be defended one polity at a time, exactly as it is attacked; there would be no room for loyalty to civilization without loyalty to nation, such as tranzis would condemn.