WM asked me about nationalism in a private message and suggested I copy/paste the reply here, so I did that.
I’d say on a macro scale, most examples of nationalism will devolve into this kind of milieu. It’s a problem that’s common to all the “isms” of the modern era: when you put a set of man-made ideas on a platform, you risk turning them into objects of worship. This degenerates into tribalism, where the object of worship ceases to matter and the act of worship is all that’s left: thus, in the “communists vs. fascists” struggle, there’s a certain point where they become interchangeable and it no longer matter what communism and fascism espouse, but rather what individuals call themselves.
I’d say on a macro scale, most examples of nationalism will devolve into this kind of milieu. It’s a problem that’s common to all the “isms” of the modern era: when you put a set of man-made ideas on a platform, you risk turning them into objects of worship. This degenerates into tribalism, where the object of worship ceases to matter and the act of worship is all that’s left: thus, in the “communists vs. fascists” struggle, there’s a certain point where they become interchangeable and it no longer matter what communism and fascism espouse, but rather what individuals call themselves.
Two examples are the Protestant/Catholic schism in Ireland in the late 20th century and the Sunni/Shiite schism in post-Saddam Iraq. In both of those instances, insofar as I know, the issue wasn’t really the theological differences between Protestantism and Catholicism or Sunni and Shiite Islam. Rather, it was about who called themselves what: it had more to do with grouping and identity than the nature of the identity. Thus, in Ireland, you have the Irish Republican Army claiming themselves Catholic from a tribal/ethnic point of view but not adhering to any of the doctrines of Catholicism.
As for imperialism, I’d say the Turks are a good example of an empire breaking up for the sake of nationalism. The Ottomans unified the Middle East (excluding Persia) under the banner of a “Muslim empire,” wherein the ethnicity of the various peoples under Ottoman rule didn’t matter as much as their religion did. When the Ottomans lost World War I and the Allied Powers took away their territories, the Turks withdrew the claim to a region-wide Muslim empire and focused on forming an ethnically-determined nation-state, where a secular government and nation were considered one entity by their Turkish ethnicity and language. While this claim to unity works great for the Turkish people, it causes problems when you consider that various other ethnicities inhabit the Anatolian peninsula-- and some have been there for centuries or even millennia before the Turks came.
As for my own take on Nationalism, I think that taken to its extreme, it becomes idolatry. Government and society must be separate for a country to be healthy, and Nationalism like Fascism and Communism inevitably leads to an idolatry of the state that creates an unhealthy and abused population-- for example, the Chinese after Mao Zedong’s takeover. While it’s good, right, and productive to love one’s country to a certain degree, love of country cannot be the only thing that unifies a people because it puts too much power in the state. In this regard, I think religion, culture, and even ethnicity are invaluable because they can provide a wholly societal order for people to take pride in that has nothing to do with the state.
Just to clarify a couple things in light of this thread, I don't think that nationalism itself is necessarily a bad thing, but worship of the state is dangerous to living in a free society and peaceful international community. I appreciate Black Graphic T's point about how if nationalism didn't exist, we'd still be in a colonial era. I think that's very true and it's something I haven't really thought about before, so thanks for sharing that.
I'd also like to say that I don't really think nationalism is harmful to free thought, either. For example, Heidegger was still allowed to be one of the most important and influential philosophers of the twentieth century even when the Nazis were in charge of Germany. Likewise, the USA has always been nationalistic, but has likewise always produced authors, poets, artists, philosophers, and theologians with poignant and diverse insights about the human experience.
Well, crap. I made a serious post. I was doing so well until now.