Globalization or Nationalism?

[Mad Deadly Worldwide Communist Gangster Computer God]

Civic nationalism.

No such thing, every nationalism has some sort of ethnic identity at its heart - there is always some ideal placed around shared culture, symbolism, historical mythology. Sure, nationalisms can be more or less inclusive, but at the end of the day, they always revolve around something resembling ethncity.

Most dictionary definitions of "ethnic" tend to include some type of racial or tribal component, so I think there IS merit in distinguishing "civic" nationalism.  One can be very nationalistic about American culture (maybe our individualist spirit that values liberty and Western liberal democracy that goes back to the Founding Fathers?), symbolism (the flag?), historical mythology (the more fantastic elements of the American Revolution?), etc. and still totally reject the idea that a White American or American of European ancestry (as most "original" Americans were) is any more "American" than a first generation Latino American who totally buys into those cultural, symbolic and mythological components.

Well, I probably aren't going to explain it very well, but if we assume that "ethnic" requires some component of shared ancestry; what we mean by that is really hard to pin down.

Plenty of ethnic identities happen even without their necessarily being an actual shared ancestry, and even where there is, how specific do you get? Is European an ethnicity? British? Scottish? are they all ethnicities?

At the end of the day, both nationalism and ethnicity boil down to some perception of shared, let's say, "values" and identity.

But then, maybe I'm just a bit too postmodernist on this.

Well, I do have some preference for the countries that my own ancestors came from.  I care far more about the prosperity of Norway and Poland than I do Israel or China, because I have no connection to the latter two countries.  But, I don't believe that anything should come at the expense of US sovereignty.  The United States should not be lopping off parts of its military or parts of its economy and giving it to other countries.  That's why I'm against the US exerting as much influence in global affairs as it does.

But nobody looks like a nationality.  America in particular is a melting pot and is becoming more diverse each year.  An American can be of someone of any race, religion, or background.  What holds a culture and a nation together are shared values.

[Xing]

In general, globalization by far. While there are certainly some economic implications of globalization that can end up being troubling (access to more markets can lead to more outsourcing and exploitation of cheap labor), the potential social implications of nationalism are FAR worse.

[Mercenary]

Globalism.

Nationalism is generally bad. Globalism has bad elements but overall is a positive. I dislike centralized power and tend to prefer things local as possible (local farmers market over big agriculture, city gov over state or fed, small mom and pop over.mega retail chains, etc) but I like openness. I get a leader putting their people first, they should, but we shouldnt just ignore or dismiss others because they happen to be from another country. I dislike a one world government but a world council is fine by me, basically a very loose global confederation would be my ideal. I think there should be relatively unrestricted travel and immigratiom among the nations of the world as well as trade. I like local traditions and culture and think they should be cherished and protected but that isnt a reason to be closed off.to the world. Would be good to have a basic level of universal human rights. Freedom of travel being chief among those.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

I think this question deserves a non-glib answer from myself, because I feel strongly on the issue:

I think all human beings as a birthright are entitled to reach their full potential. By that I believe all people should be able to get education, healthcare, housing, the chance to raise a family and retuire in relative comfort. A global system that doesn't work towards that goal - and indeed reinforces the differences that already exist between peoples strikes me as deeply immoral.

Look at it from a Rowlsian perspective: if you didn't know anything about your circumstances of birth, but you had an option to design the system you are going to be born into; would you chose the nation-state system, where the majority of all newborns are born in countries that automatically condemn them to poverty unless they are blessed with a combo of luck/intelligence/ambition? I would assume not, you would design an egalitarian system where humans are entitled to the same privileges.

And the economic effect of nationalism is crippling. Not even tariffs, even though they are dumb and almost never work and have distorted the world economy (and I know everybody is like OMG globalist elites, but the actual elite's attraction to anti-protectionism is skin-deep, the equivalent of sadly bemoaning tariffs every G20 meeting). Not even the expense and fundamental uselessness of most military stand-offs, where enormous amounts of time and brainpower is invested in bickering over random islands.

And culturally it's even worse. Far from "protecting cultures" nations instead brutalise them, forcing all inhabitants to pretend they share the same values, that there is something inherent about being British or Mexican or Black or White or Chinese or Russian or Ukrainian that no other peoples share; that your countries success is equivalent to your personal success and pretending there are no universal values that all humans share. To me nationalism represents the destruction of minority cultures (Israel, France, Turkey represent three notorious cases of urban elites pushing their project on the proles) and forced conformity to some false narrative (e.g. China cutting off its entire citizenry from the outside world to protect its elites, again justified in reactionary nationalism; literally every act of ethnic cleansing the world over).

And I don't think this can stop by nations "just being nice to each other". One, because the global elite uses the sort of quasi-globalised world we have at the moment to take advantage of nationalism. This is the key killer of the left atm - because the elite can flit between locales they can undermine everybody. Country A has a nice labour regulation? Well sorry, but Country B is undermining you and attracting investment, better cut that to steal investment from them; and while there at it, could B cut its tax? k thanks. And two, because politicians genuinely don't have incentive to promote historic injustice (because they only need voters, not moral victories) they simply don't (this is actually related to one of the worst parts of quasi-globalism, the phenomena of non-voting migrant underclasses common in Europe, the US and Gulf (yeah I know Gulf citiizns don't vote, but they have a hell a lot more rights than the people they enslave)).

(Incidentally, despite all this I know it's just an ideal, I know that humanity is not prepared, and especially the opening of borders would be folly without major investment into the poorer regions of Africa)

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Anyway the ideal that globalisation and nationalism are opposites is... amusing. Clearly you people do not know your history.

[OneJ]

A mixture of Civic nationalism (putting America first, having a high level tolerance, etc.) and globalization (participating in trade, helping other countries, etc.). So I am probably lean Civic nationalist/patriot.

Nationalism doesn't have to be bad like what some might want you to believe. When some think of it, they think of the "dark" side (racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia, etc.). Nationalism doesn't have to be any of those things. There should be nothing wrong about taking pride in your own country and putting it on the #1 spot.

I may not be proud of some of the things America has done since the very beginning, but this country is where I was born. This is the country in which my family lives in. This is a country with a diverse background whether it be political ideology, ethnicity, accents, stories, etc. This is a country that actually attempts to work with other nations like trade and aid.

Because of all that + some more, I am very proud to confirm that I am a proud citizen of America.

[Kingpoleon]

A mixture of Civic nationalism (putting America first, having a high level tolerance, etc.) and globalization (participating in trade, helping other countries, etc.). So I am probably lean Civic nationalist/patriot.

Nationalism doesn't have to be bad like what some might want you to believe. When some think of it, they think of the "dark" side (racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia, etc.). Nationalism doesn't have to be any of those things. There should be nothing wrong about taking pride in your own country and putting it on the #1 spot.

I may not be proud of some of the things America has done since the very beginning, but this country is where I was born. This is the country in which my family lives in. This is a country with a diverse background whether it be political ideology, ethnicity, accents, stories, etc. This is a country that actually attempts to work with other nations like trade and aid.

Because of all that + some more, I am very proud to confirm that I am a proud citizen of America.

American nationalism declares that our nation should be put ahead of the world. It declares that America is not just great, but America is good because it is great.

Civic nationalism in America declares that let not the country be put before the world, nor the world before the country. It declares that America is great because it is good.

[IceAgeComing]

Although as Al says the two things aren't opposites: I would say that "globalisation" (I prefer Internationalism myself; which is probably the Left way of looking at the thing) fits my views better.

My position is that decisions should be made at the lowest level possible: which would involve lots of decisions probably being decided at a lower level; but a few (climate change comes to mind: as would boring things like common safety standards for products and the like) would be decided at a much higher level.  There'd still be a place for the nation state in this system but it would have much less importance as local and regional governments would gain more power: while things that genuinely impact continents or the world as a whole ought to be treated at those levels.  Naturally these things would all be democratically run; not the unelected talking shops that lots of trans-national organisations are (the EU is the only one that comes to mind as having a democratic element).  Its pie in the sky (one of those things that I theoretically believe but never really has any chance of happening) but that vision influences my decisions - its why I support Scottish Independence and the EU for example - the latter needs reforms to make it more democratic (empower the parliament: transition the Commission towards being more like a proper government, that sort of thing) but those things would realistically require the Union to gain powers in a few areas.  Internationalism doesn't mean deciding everything multi-nationally or having a ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT that's unitary, its about people coming together and treating globally important issues as multi-national issues rather than assuming that the nation state is the best model to solve everything.

I won't get into "civic nationalism doesn't really exist" here; if there's demand I'll post something about that.

I want there to be a global government one day (preferably by the United States peacefully absorbing the rest of the world gradually), so pro-globalization.

It's not always executed well, though.

this is nationalism though (as well as quite imperialist, thinking about it); although a very odd form.  Although the American left (like the country as a whole) is incredibly nationalist so I ought not to be surprised.

To reply to your second, long post: you make the assumption that the English speaking world identify with America more than the rest of the world which is... an odd thing to think: in terms of what people in those countries expect from a government they are probably closer to Europe than the states.  There's also the fact that a unitary global government would be a disaster and probably more likely to lead to some kind of conflict than your worry about "states rights" - just look at all of the states that had some kind of unitary government that have fragmented over it...  Basically what you're doing is taking your American-centric way of viewing the world and assuming that the entire world works that way, when it doesn't.

[SUSAN CRUSHBONE]

globalisation has both upsides and downsides, nationalism has only downsides

[parochial boy]

Although as Al says the two things aren't opposites: I would say that "globalisation" (I prefer Internationalism myself; which is probably the Left way of looking at the thing) fits my views better.

My position is that decisions should be made at the lowest level possible: which would involve lots of decisions probably being decided at a lower level; but a few (climate change comes to mind: as would boring things like common safety standards for products and the like) would be decided at a much higher level.  There'd still be a place for the nation state in this system but it would have much less importance as local and regional governments would gain more power: while things that genuinely impact continents or the world as a whole ought to be treated at those levels.  Naturally these things would all be democratically run; not the unelected talking shops that lots of trans-national organisations are (the EU is the only one that comes to mind as having a democratic element).  Its pie in the sky (one of those things that I theoretically believe but never really has any chance of happening) but that vision influences my decisions - its why I support Scottish Independence and the EU for example - the latter needs reforms to make it more democratic (empower the parliament: transition the Commission towards being more like a proper government, that sort of thing) but those things would realistically require the Union to gain powers in a few areas.  Internationalism doesn't mean deciding everything multi-nationally or having a ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT that's unitary, its about people coming together and treating globally important issues as multi-national issues rather than assuming that the nation state is the best model to solve everything.

I won't get into "civic nationalism doesn't really exist" here; if there's demand I'll post something about that.

I want there to be a global government one day (preferably by the United States peacefully absorbing the rest of the world gradually), so pro-globalization.

It's not always executed well, though.

this is nationalism though (as well as quite imperialist, thinking about it); although a very odd form.  Although the American left (like the country as a whole) is incredibly nationalist so I ought not to be surprised.

To reply to your second, long post: you make the assumption that the English speaking world identify with America more than the rest of the world which is... an odd thing to think: in terms of what people in those countries expect from a government they are probably closer to Europe than the states.  There's also the fact that a unitary global government would be a disaster and probably more likely to lead to some kind of conflict than your worry about "states rights" - just look at all of the states that had some kind of unitary government that have fragmented over it...  Basically what you're doing is taking your American-centric way of viewing the world and assuming that the entire world works that way, when it doesn't.

This is an excellent post. The only thing I would quibble with is the term "internationalism", as I think that implies that the nation state would still be the base component of governance.

I suspect we might disagree about "civic nationalism" but will leave that topic alone.

[Mopsus]

I think this question deserves a non-glib answer from myself, because I feel strongly on the issue.

Your post made several valid critiques of nationalism, but it left me wondering what your vision of globalism entails.

I think everyone can agree that we have the same primary needs (food, water, shelter, sanitation), and most of us agree that everyone should have affordable access to those things, but trouble arises when we then make the leap to believing that our so-called "material needs" are our ultimate needs. Now I'm not going to accuse globalists of inventing this belief: avarice has always been a part of human nature, and has long appealed to Community and Tradition as a means of masking its true intent. Be that as it may, community and tradition are the public's best levers for controlling private power (ambitious men often destroy things by pretending to defend them), and economic globalization (as well as its ideological counterpart, which goes by many names) has done undeniable harm to communities and traditions.

If we're to avoid the individualist trap, we must acknowledge that material goods are not final goods, but means to an end, which end can be referred to generically as "the Good Life". Here again though, we run into troubled water, as there are dozens of different conceptions of the Good Life. Fortunately, we have a surprisingly easy "out": as long as those conceptions work for those who practice them, they're all right. Which brings us up to what is, in my mind, the question that differentiates globalists from nationalists: Should those who practice a particular form of the Good Life have the right to support and perpetuate it through the state, or must the state remain neutral on questions of the human condition, leaving each of us to strive alone?

I know my answer.