ii) Anti-Semitism. There is little evidence about this at present, because the Nazi persecutions have made it necessary for any thinking person to side with the Jews against their oppressors. Anyone educated enough to have heard the word ‘antisemitism’ claims as a matter of course to be free of it, and anti-Jewish remarks are carefully eliminated from all classes of literature. Actually antisemitism appears to be widespread, even among intellectuals, and the general conspiracy of silence probably helps exacerbate it. People of Left opinions are not immune to it, and their attitude is sometimes affected by the fact that Trotskyists and Anarchists tend to be Jews. But antisemitism comes more naturally to people of Conservative tendency, who suspect Jews of weakening national morale and diluting the national culture. Neo-Tories and political Catholics are always liable to succumb to antisemitism, at least intermittently. Galston, William A. “Twelve Theses on Nationalism.” Brookings, August 12, 2019, https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/twelve-theses-on-nationalism/. Sraders, Anne. “What is Nationalism? Its History And What It Means in 2018. The Street, 2018, https://www.thestreet.com/politics/what-is-nationalism-14642847.

Obviously there are considerable resemblances between political Catholicism, as exemplified by Chesterton, and Communism. So there are between either of these and for instance Scottish nationalism, Zionism, Antisemitism or Trotskyism. It would be an oversimplification to say that all forms of nationalism are the same, even in their mental atmosphere, but there are certain rules that hold good in all cases. The following are the principal characteristics of nationalist thought: While radical critics of modernism argue that some nations have existed long before modernity, others present a moderate critique. Nations might be recent, but they are continuous with premodern communities. It is reasonable to understand these critics as rejecting the radical modernism of Eric Hobsbawm, who denies any serious continuity between older forms of community, ethnic or religious, for instance, and the nations invented by nationalism ( Hobsbawm, 1990; Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1983). Whether it is possible to get rid of [nationalistic tendencies], I do not know, but I do believe that it is possible to struggle against them” Notes on Nationalism Orwell writes that patriots believe their nation or way of life to be the best in the world, but don’t feel the need to force that on anyone else. Nationalism, however, is: “inseparable from the desire for power”. Indifference to reality refers to "the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts" and is a feature of all nationalists, according to Orwell. He describes how nationalism clouds people from perceiving facts of the real world. The use of torture, hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians all prove to be irrelevant towards the notion of "good or bad", and there is no outrage from within the public, as the atrocities are committed by "our side". Some nationalists even go into the trouble of defending such actions and search for arguments to support their case.The primary fault line between modernists and their critics concerns not the origins of nationalism as an ideology but the nature of nations and their antiquity. Rather than conceive of nations as artificial and recent, the critics of modernism consider them to be either ancient forms of community or transformations of premodern forms of community. While many accept that there are different kinds of nations, some reject this pluralism in favor of a monolithic view. Walker Connor insists that all nationalism is ethnic nationalism ( Connor, 1994).

Modernism is an attractive paradigm. Undeniably, nationalism spread and came to prominence in the past few centuries. Moreover, the nation-state and the notion of popular sovereignty certainly do not appear at home in the premodern world of multinational empires and dynastic power. And its advocates are right to show that much of what has been called ancient or authentic by nationalists was, in fact, neither. 8 Yet, for all its strengths, the modernist paradigm faces important hurdles. In this way, nationalism doesn’t just relate to how one feels about a particular country. Orwell says communism, anti-Semitism and even pacifism are all form of nationalistic thought. Yet another variant considers the territorial state to be the best explanation for the advent of nationalist ideology. Bluntly put, political changes are what call for a new political ideology. Nationalism emerges within the past few centuries because it is intimately linked to the modern state. The latter is not a collection of fiefdoms or local power structures but a stable administrative structure, centered in a capital, ruling over well-defined territories ( Giddens, 1985).

Author’s Notes

If this sounds familiar, compare the Party’s slogan in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four: “who controls the past … controls the future.” See also: Fake History. Types of nationalism Finally, there are radical constructivist accounts that emphasize the artificiality of the nation: Nationalism is a narrative and the nation is a cultural artifact. For instance, Benedict Anderson has famously argued that changes in terms of how we conceptualize time, the combination of the printing press and capitalism, as well as political change meant that we could imagine new forms of community in which large groups of people can simultaneously imagine themselves as equal members ( Anderson, 1983/2006). Abu NM. Waheeduzzaman. “ Repositioning Globalization Under Nationalism,” Journal of Competitiveness Studies. A rival view explains the origins of nationalism by appealing to another modern phenomenon: capitalism. For theorists like Tom Nairn, nationalism is a strategic response to the uneven spread of capitalism and the power that it provides ( Nairn, 1977). The unequal development and spread of capitalism distribute resources and power unequally: There are centers that benefited from the development of capitalism and there are poorer peripheries. Peripheral elites design an ideology that takes advantage of their only abundant resource: people. And to effectively mobilize and motivate those who do not share their class or interests, these peripheral elites must create a powerful sense of belonging. The solution is to draw on popular beliefs and practices to create a new interclass community: the nation. Thus, economic variants of modernism explain the advent of nationalism in terms of recent economic change, namely, capitalism. Uri, Antonia (22 November 2018). "The Scots leid is for aa, nae jist for nationalists". The National (in Scots) . Retrieved 22 September 2020.