For many people, the primary cause of the Second World War
was nationalism – the ethos of creating and promoting a strong and distinct
sense of national identity among the citizens of a country. In particular the
intense nationalism of Nazi Germany, which characterised Germany and Germans as
the rightful rulers of the world, followed closely by the fanatical patriotism
of the Japanese who also regarded themselves as destined to rule at least the
Eastern Hemisphere was blamed for the conflagration the consumed 40 million
lives.
In fact, nationalism had been under attack from the Marxists in the 19th century. Socialists were internationalists, convinced
that nationalistic sentiments, which led inexorably to wars, were part of a
capitalist strategy to divide and exploit the working class.
However, nationalism has one great strength that
internationalism lacks. Nationalism is a remedy for tribalism.
In promoting a
national identity, citizens are encouraged, not necessarily to abandon things
such as ethnic or religious identity but to subordinate them to their identity as
citizens of their country. Internationalism fails to do this because it is
inherently multicultural, seeking to unite people under some form of global
government or ideology while at the same time retaining their local cultures
and customs. In short, internationalism is essentially just anti-nationalism in
that it accepts national governments as administrative and political instruments
but believes that there are only two permissible types of identity – the identity
which arises from your membership of a particular ethnic, racial or religious
group, and your identity as a member of the global human race.
The European Union arose initially as an attempt to replace
the nationalism, which people blamed for starting two devastating wars, with a
pan-European identity. This worked to a certain extent with many people,
notably from the intellectual classes, prepared to declare that they were “Europeans”
rather than British or French. But this declaration was mostly theoretical. Defining
oneself as “European” became problematic when someone asked “Well, what does
that mean? What constitutes European characteristics?” The problem with
creating a "European" identity is, firstly, that Europe is extremely diverse
in its cultures: Greece is not like Sweden and Spain is not like Poland.
Secondly, ethnic identity can be subordinated to national identity when people
intermingle but in the EU, despite the opening of borders, most French people
still live in France and most Germans still live in Germany. Thirdly, an essential
requirement of a national identity is a physical border to define who is in and
who is not in the nation. They EU’s border is poorly defined having some countries
on its perimeter which are not quite in, like Norway, some trying to get in and
some perhaps on the verge of leaving or being thrown out. Fourthly, national identity
depends on some sort of strong central government, not only for the unification
of laws, which is essential for any national identity, but also to manage the
cultivation of that identity and the rituals and reassurances the constantly
remind people of what country, and what kind
of country they live in. The EU has no such central government, only a
Byzantine bureaucracy in Brussels with an unelected Parliament and a leaders which
most people in the member countries cannot name, and certainly could not
recognise on sight.
For the last five hundred years, probably no country, with possible
exception of Japan, has had such a clear sense of national identity as Britain,
even given the separatist sentiments of some refractory Scots. From the time
Henry VIII set up Britain’s own version of the Catholic Church and Elizabeth
oversaw the destruction of the Armada, Britain saw itself as a unique nation,
blessed with a continuity unimpeded by the constant ebb and flow of invasions and
empires that constantly changed identities across the Channel. That strong sense of being English, later British,
created a unity that was even capable of surmounting the British class system. The
revolutionary leaders of France envied this unity and were at pains to impose a
similar French identity on their country, still embodied today in the “Vive la
France” attitude. The Risorgimento turned “Italian” from a geographical term to a
type of citizenship and the unification of a mass of tiny fractious
kingdoms and principalities into what became Germany was effected by the creation of a
national identity - "German" - which subsumed older identities such as Prussian or Bohemian.
Now, it is possible to argue that this process of concatenating small countries into
large countries suppressed conflict within
European nations but led to vastly more destructive wars between the nations, and this indeed is true. But the fact that one
of those recently formed nations got carried away with their new-found identity
doesn’t mean that nationalism is a bad thing per se. By way of contrast, we can see how quickly dismantling
nationalism can reanimate old ethnic loyalties and hostilities in the case of Yugoslavia where, almost as soon as it fell apart in the collapse of the Soviet
Eastern bloc, war and genocide broke out amongst its former constituents.
So what became of British nationalism when it joined the EU?
The answer is that it was severely compromised by the internationalist ethos underlying
The European Project. That of course was met with approval by many people – the
internationalist and socialists of the Sixties and Seventies - who equated
nationalism with jingoism and western chauvinism and still blamed patriotism
for the two world wars. In the wake of joining the EU, cultural diversity was
welcomed and celebrated and immigrants to Britain were not only permitted but encouraged
to retain their own cultures and values. The result has been the creation of
enclaves in Britain which are virtually countries-within-a-country. The “Trojan
Horse” scandal, though dismissed as a scare by the multiculturalists and
internationalists, saw several schools in the Birmingham region taken over by
Moslem-dominated school councils which altered the school curriculum to conform
to Islamic principles and virtually turned them into madrassas. Surveys in
Britain have shown that up to 30% of Moslem immigrants believe that communities
where large number of Moslem people live should be able to impose sharia law. Again,
these problem largely arise because anti-nationalism believes in empowering local
communities at the expense of national government.
Now, finally, Prime Minister (for the time being) Theresa
May, has said “Enough is enough” and “We have shown too much tolerance for
extremism.” But the real problem began long before extremism. It began with the
notion that British culture and British law was nothing special and in no way
superior to any other European country, or indeed the world. This comes about because the internationalism
that justifies British renouncing its own sovereignty to join the EU is the
same internationalism that comprises the notion of cultural relativism – the
belief that all cultures are equally good, all religions are equally good, all societies
are equally effective and worthy of respect. That cancer of social relativism,
which has seeped into public policies across the western world, has seriously hampered
attempts in the West to stamp out barbaric practices and, what is worse,
ignorance.
It is worth noting
that even though American patriotism is obnoxious with its inherent belief that
America is the “greatest country in the world” and crowds chanting “U.S.A.- U.S.A”,
the United States, with five times the population of the UK, has experienced only a tiny handful of home-grown
Islamic terrorist incidents compared to UK which, given the size of its
population and the easy access to guns, is quite remarkable.
The first step to attenuating the danger of home-grown
terrorism in the UK is for the country to regain its own sense of self; to
regain a sense of pride not for its tolerance but for what it is not prepared to tolerate; to make young
people growing up in Britain proud to be British rather than proud to be
Moslem. In short, if a country doesn’t
offer young people something to believe in, there are lots of other people who
will.
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