Shared Fate: The Bond Between Nationalism and Democratic Elections
Nationalism is complex. The core of it is about liking, having sympathies, caring, being loyal to, and giving preference to your fellow compatriots. It creates a strong feeling of community together with strangers you have never met and, in 99.9% of cases, will probably never meet. It is not about hating foreigners. The big nationalist project aims to make you care about millions of your compatriots, and in the case of India and China, it even reaches a billion. Nationalism creates a feeling of a shared fate, and it is the only reason why democratic elections matter. This is the brightest side of nationalism. If we don’t care about each other, then what is the difference between who gets elected to lead the country? Nationalism can turn ugly too. It can go into extremes and turn into ultranationalism which easily transforms into fascism and can lead to wars and genocides. This is the worst thing that can possibly happen.
The narrative about nationalism is one of the greatest advances of human history. It creates a strong bond between total strangers of the same national identity. In recent decades, because the idea behind nationalism was somewhat blurred and brought into extremes, people misinterpreted it to the level of animosity.
“People imagine that without nationalism we would all be living in some kind of liberal paradise but much more likely, without nationalism, we would be living in tribal chaos because the big project of nationalism is to make a lot of strangers care about one another and be able to cooperate,” says Hebre University History professor Yuval Noah Harari (Central European University,2019).
Harari brings the example of his nation, Israelis. He says that Israel is a relatively small country with only 8 million people. Though Harari claims that he doesn’t know 99.9% of these people but he still cares about them.
Populists Killing Nationalism
“I think that you cannot have democracy, at least in the world of today, without a strong sense of nationalism because if you don’t feel connected, if you don’t feel that you have a shared fate with the other people in your country, there is absolutely no reason in the world to accept the verdict of democratic elections. It makes sense only if you think that they care about you, and you care about them,” says Harari (Harari, 2021).
Populists that come into power divide the people. They demonize their political rivals. Thus people are afraid of the “inner enemy,” basically each other, more than any outside threat. Armenia, Israel, Brazil, and the United States are good examples of that. In the US, Republicans and Democrats are more afraid of each other than the Russians or the Chinese. In Armenia, people are more afraid that the pre-revolutionary powers will come to power than outside real threats like Turkey and Azerbaijan.
“Populists are people, leaders, who say that the country is divided into two camps. There are the real people, my supporters, and there are the enemies of the people, all those on the other side of the political aisle. They are not really part of the people. They are enemies. They are traitors. This runs contra to the nationalist project, and this is one of the reasons that democracy is in trouble, is collapsing,” says Harari (Harari, 2021).
Populists are not nationalists or patriots. They really are tribal leaders. They inflame hatred and ruin the sense of community. Suppose there is no feeling of having a common fate. In that case, democratic elections simply don’t matter because the elected leader becomes the leader of those who elected him/her, and all the others simply lose. “Nationalism, properly understood, evokes a sense of community, a fellow feeling of shared responsibility for one another as members of a national community, a civic project. That sense of community, solidarity that holds it together is under siege today. In that sense, the authoritarian populists who inflame racial hatred and tribalism are not nationalists in the sense of building solidarity or a sense of community,” says Harvard philosophy professor Michael Sandel (Harari, 2021).
The foundation of any nation-state is nationalism. If nationalism is trembling by deliberate efforts of populists, then the nation-state trembles too. This may result in civil wars. Harari explains that “in some countries, the collapse of the nation leads to civil war. Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen. There are many examples. In the US, Brazil, and Israel, it is not a civil war yet, but you see that people hate their fellow citizens much more than they hate and fear anybody else, and it’s not an accident. It is fueled deliberately by these populist leaders” (Harari, 2021).
Contradiction between Nationalism and Globalism
To build a well-functioning nation-state, collaboration and cooperation with foreigners are of primary importance. Nationalism, in the sense of loving your compatriots, strengthens the nation-state, and cooperation with foreigners makes it safe and prosperous. Thus, there is really no contradiction between nationalism and globalism. The best nationalist should be a globalist.
“Nationalism is about loving your compatriots, and in the 21st century, the only effective way to guarantee the prosperity and safety of your compatriots is to cooperate with foreigners, with other nations. So, I think that today good nationalists should also be globalists,” claims Harari (Central European University,2019).
References
Yuval Noah Harari (2021). Michael Sandel and Yuval Noah Harari in conversation. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NbChMEoGFE
Central European University (June 5, 2019), Yuval Noah Harari n Nationalism, Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVG0SEyylso
