"Nationalism and Christianity"

[PetrChelcicky]

Some time ago, Ernie promoted an article in "Plain News":
https://www.plainnews.org/wp-content/up ... tnip-1.pdf

I have for a long time looked for such an article - as a base for my critical arguments against the present common opinion, as it is laid down in this article.

1. Anti-nationalism often starts with a persuasive definition.
In our case, it is Merriam-Webster which defines nationalism as an "elated" sense of nationality - which makes a negative judgment very easy.
In reality, the sense of nationality develops according to external circumstances. It can get greater and aggressive, it can get smaller and defensive. For example if you look into "White nationalism" nowadays, it is mostly defensive. It does not look for white suprematism, but for white separatism. But anti-nationalists shy away form the question of defensive nationalism.

2. Anti-nationalists have no real insight into imperialism. For example the (possible) Russian attempt to conquer Ukraine is simply classified as elated nationalism. What's with American wars? Do they really belong into a quite different section of Christian ethics? George W. Bush obviously didn't think so when we made his prominent gaffe: He thought the Russian behaviour comparable to the American invasion of Iraq.

3. Because anti-nationalists have no insight into imperialism, they have sentimental and kitschy ideas about cosmopolitanism.
Cosmopolitans nowadays are a rather aggressive special interest group. They have job opportunities and business interests all over the world and therefore they want to replace national states by a global empire. There's nothing Christian about that.

4. For matters of debate I think we must distinguish between three different principles of identification: ethny (ethnicity, ethinical nationalism) - territory (territorial nationalism) - ideology (the "proposition nation" with its propositional nationalism).

5. The most blatant sin in traditional ethnical nationalism is in my eyes: to treat territory as the "property" of an ethny. Which often means: In order to keep our territory we have to expel or suppress all ethnic minorities. (Like, Russians in Ukraine.) It's part of an exaggerated sense of property and I would support all initiatives against that.

6. But the great seduction of our times is not: getting seduced into ethnical nationalism. It is: getting seduced into propositional imperialism. Propositional imperialism ("making the world safe for democracy") was the great propaganda effort in WW2, most Christian churches were seduced by it. And the neocons are just reviving that tradition. Anabaptists did quite well in resisting WW2 propaganda. But it seems that they did not really understand what they were up against. And reading this article here I feel that they may be more susceptible to "propositional imperialism" nowadays.

[Josh]

Most "anti-nationalism" these days is really just one nationalist denouncing everyone else. For example, the Western elites are very much in favour of the Western nation since it benefits them a lot, and then denounce other nations, like Russia. To them, whatever America and the West are fighting for is "good", and their enemies are "bad". We can see this to an extreme with how they portrayed Russia, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Serbia, North Korea, Venezuela as unmitigated evil (indeed, even calling it an "axis of evil" at one point).

What is actually at play is not whether those nations are good or evil, but whether or not they bend the knee to what the Western imperialists want.

[Bootstrap]

This quote from the article doesn't seem to be what has happened:

Thus, an ethnic Russian who lives in the country of Ukraine may be torn between love for the political entity known as Ukraine or a love for his nation, the Russian people.

Sure looks like most ethnic Russians in Ukraine think Ukraine is their nation. They have overwhelmingly taken Ukraine's side in the war. They did not welcome the Russian military with open arms, they did not seem to think they needed to be rescued by Russia.

Do most ethnic English in America think England is their nation?

[Bootstrap]

What is actually at play is not whether those nations are good or evil, but whether or not they bend the knee to what the Western imperialists want.

Clearly, what Russia has done to Ukraine is evil. If the word has any meaning at all. If a nation did this to the place where you live, you would understand.

The United States has also done evil things. But that doesn't mean we don't take evil seriously.

[Josh]

This quote from the article doesn't seem to be what has happened:

Thus, an ethnic Russian who lives in the country of Ukraine may be torn between love for the political entity known as Ukraine or a love for his nation, the Russian people.

Sure looks like most ethnic Russians in Ukraine think Ukraine is their nation. They have overwhelmingly taken Ukraine's side in the war. They did not welcome the Russian military with open arms, they did not seem to think they needed to be rescued by Russia.

Boot,

Do you consider Crimea part of Ukraine?

[QuietlyListening]

Josh, this is from a Ukrainian.

Sometimes I get questions from my non-Ukrainian friends about the annexed Crimea:
Isn’t Crimea generally pro-Russian?
Don’t people in Crimea speak Russian?
Didn’t the majority of people in Crimea actually want to be a part of Russia when it was annexed in 2014?
And finally my favorite:
Isn’t Crimea historically Russian?
If that is what you think, then here is something you will NOT be thrilled to learn. This way of thinking about Crimea is the result of successfully executed Russian propaganda. It stretches far beyond just the population of Russia.
Crimea is NOT historically Russian.
What you might know about Crimea being “pro-Russian” and speaking Russian is the result of yet another horrible crime by Russia against yet another nation.
Before 1944 Crimean Tatars lived in Crimea. It was a beautiful land, with gorgeous architecture, well maintained infrastructure, and rich in culture.
But in 1944 the Soviet government, acting on behalf of Joseph Stalin, executed a mass deportation of Crimean Tatars. 191,044 Crimean Tatars, to be exact.
Within three days, the NKVD used cattle trains to deport mostly women, children, the elderly to the Uzbek SSR, several thousand kilometers away.
Nearly 8,000 Crimean Tatars died during the deportation, while tens of thousands perished subsequently due to the harsh exile conditions. The Crimean Tatar exile resulted in the abandonment of 80,000 households and 360,000 acres of land. An intense campaign of "detatarization" to erase remaining traces of Crimean Tatar existence followed.
That was the genocide part.
And here is the part where "Crimea becomes historically Russian."
In 1944 the Soviet government relocated Russians to Crimea to live in the Crimean Tatar people's houses. Original geographic names of mountains, lakes, and towns were changed to Russian names with a Soviet ring to them.
Tatar people became unwanted on their own land. They couldn't go back for another 45 years - that's when the ban was finally lifted. But, of course, by then Crimea became "historically Russian."
History is a thing of perspective. The truth depends on how deep you dig for it.

[Josh]

And in the present era, Crimea is populated by Russians who seem to be quite happy being part of Russia.

Elsewhere in Russia, Tatars are a reliable pro-Russian demographic group (indeed making up many of the fighting units in Ukraine now, alongside groups like Chechens).

If you want to litigate past movements of people, you'll have a whole lot of work to unwind: after all, Americans pushed out native peoples from America, Europeans pushed out other Europeans when they fought wars and displaced each other. the Ottoman empire did the same thing, so did the Romans. You can find endless disputes about these kind of things, ranging from Turkey and Armenia to Turkish Cyprus vs. Greek Cyprus.

What matters is who is there today.

[barnhart]

PetrC, thank you for organizing your thoughts. I value your perspective as it originates outside the cultural bubble of the US.

Can you give an example of a "defensive nationalism" that does not fall into the errors you mention of demanding territory or coersion of minority groups?

[Ernie]

This quote from the article doesn't seem to be what has happened:

Thus, an ethnic Russian who lives in the country of Ukraine may be torn between love for the political entity known as Ukraine or a love for his nation, the Russian people.

Sure looks like most ethnic Russians in Ukraine think Ukraine is their nation. They have overwhelmingly taken Ukraine's side in the war. They did not welcome the Russian military with open arms, they did not seem to think they needed to be rescued by Russia.

https://ratinggroup.ua/en/research/ukra ... _2022.html

Today, the data suggest that language is more of a regional feature than a way of thinking. For example, in December 2021, 65% of bilingual speakers and half of those who speak Russian considered Russia an aggressor. At the same time, in the Ukrainian-speaking segment, one in ten had pro-Russian views. The sympathy to Russia was determined not so much by the language of communication as by political views and the influence of propaganda and was associated with the support for pro-Russian parties (“The Opposition Platform — For Life”, “Nashi” and Shariy’s party).

[PetrChelcicky]

Barnhart,
in order to study defensive nationalism we must look
(a) to nations who have lost their own state: how do they survive? This includes the Jews before 1948 and the Polish before 1918
(b) to nations who never had their own state, but felt imprisoned by their neighbours: for instance, the Croations, the Slovaks, parts of the Ukrainians, or the Kurds, also perhaps the Bretons and certainly the Basques and Catalanians.

Strategies of such a defensive nationalism are similar: keeping up one's own means of communication (speech, script, media); keeping up one's own memory (libraries, archives, statues); keeping up as much self-administration as possible.
I suppose that, for the sake of self-administration, a certain longing for one's own "safe space" or "homeland" is inevitably implied, too. I don't think that that is a very bad thing, as long as the territory meant is already mostly inhabitated by members of that nation and non-members are not expelled.
For a similar approach in the United States I mention the White Separatist longing for their own North-Western territory and the Black Separatist longing for their own Southern territory - with the idea to RETREAT to those territories in order to be protected against external aggression (that's why I call this defensive).

Mark that I do not use "defensive nationalism" as a clear-cut category. There are some individuals who are only-defensive out of principle (for instance, Jared Taylor). As for nationalist movements as a whole, they are at a certain period in a defensive or an offensive mood, according to the circumstances.