Nationalism is typically seen as the preserve of right-wing politics, and it has long been a cornerstone of authoritarian and fascist governments around the world. In democratic countries the term “nationalism” is linked to national chauvinism – a belief in the inherent superiority of one’s own nation and its citizens – but the picture is more complex than it first seems.
For starters, there is little to differentiate patriotism from nationalism except for degree of intensity. Most of us, however, can recognise the difference between love for one’s own homeland and the harsher, often exclusive or xenophobic tenets of extreme nationalism. Patriotism is a low degree nationalism, but radical nationalism often turns into xenophobia.
The picture is further complicated by substate or minority nationalism, an entirely different beast often associated more with left-wing and progressive ideals. Many political parties and ideologies – in Europe, the Americas and elsewhere – use the term “nationalist” without any connotations of far-right beliefs. Instead, they present the nation as an emancipatory force that strives to achieve self-determination for a particular territory.
Examples include the National Party in Suriname (founded in 1946), the Basque Nationalist Party (1895), the Scottish National Party (1934) and the Galician Nationalist Bloc (1982). Some of Europe’s prominent left-wing movements, such as Irish party Sinn Féin, are fervently nationalist, while others, such as the Welsh Plaid Cymru, embrace eco-socialist principles.
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This does not mean that minority or substate nationalisms are immune to the influence of the radical right. Belgian party Vlaams Belang and the Catalan Alliance are two contemporary examples of far-right minority nationalism. Looking further back, the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Flemish National Union occupied similar political space during the interwar period.
Despite these nuances, nationalist ideology can often slide easily into fascism. The resurgence of ethnic nationalism in the late twentieth century has also reinforced this association, often channelled through the concepts of nativism and populism to bring about movements as diverse as Trump’s “Make America Great Again”, Putin’s irredentism and Hindutva nationalism in India.
Few would question fascism’s emphasis on the nation, or that nationalism is a pillar of any fascist worldview. However, the relationship between nationalism and fascism remains underexplored. My research aims to remedy this by looking closely at the link between the various conceptions of nation and the ideological contents of fascism.
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Ethnic nationalism and the birth of fascism
Fascist ideology has often been regarded as the inevitable outcome of nineteenth-century forms of ethnic nationalism. Spurred by European imperialism and the Great War, the principle of the nation became increasingly chauvinistic, racist and xenophobic.
This ethnic turn of nationalism would be decisive in making it an instrument of fascism, as well as a core argument of the diverse versions of the radical right, from “fascistised” conservatism to more blatant forms of authoritarian government.
In most theories of fascism, nationalism is implicitly linked to a single-issue expression that conceives the nation as an organic reality, one where the criteria for inclusion are based on “objective” truths such as language, blood and soil, history and tradition.
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However, elements such as ancestry, history and territory are certainly not exclusive to fascist or authoritarian concepts of the nation. Many of those ingredients can also be found in liberal and Republican definitions of the nation, which usually take for granted the “cultural community” within whose ethnic and territorial borders the community of citizens would be built.
Indeed, many of Europe’s rising progressive political forces – such as Sinn Féin in Ireland – can trace back their origins to radical nationalism in the early twentieth century but promote a tolerant, open view of society that is the antithesis of fascism.
It is therefore true that every fascist is a nationalist, but not every nationalist is, even potentially, a fascist. This raises the question of exactly how fascism harnesses nationalism to achieve its aims. In my view, there is a specifically fascist concept, and usage, of nationalism.
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Fascist nationalism, in five points
Fascists see the nation as a single organic entity binding people together, not just by their ancestry but also by the triumph of will. As such, it is the driving, unifying force that mobilises the masses towards a shared goal. But fascists also have to appropriate nationalism for their own ends.
In order to serve fascism, the concept of nation has to be coherent with the main tenets of fascist ideology: the idea of revolution, the corporatist imagination of social order, the purity of race (defined in either biological or cultural terms) and the social relevance of irrational values. The diversity of nationalist traditions also accounts for much of fascism’s geographical heterogeneity.
Although the components provided by nationalism are old, fascism combined them to create something new. This created what is known as the “generic” fascist concept of the nation, which can be broken down into at least five specific characteristics:
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A paramilitary view of social ties and the national character: The nation exists in a permanent state of military readiness, meaning the martial values of discipline, unity of command and sacrifice are placed above all individual rights. The whole social order and the nature of its bonds are cast in a paramilitary mould, meaning society itself becomes a barracks.
This also accounts for fascism’s strong tendency towards territorial expansionism, the pursuit of empire and war – these all provide a common cause to keep the nation permanently united and mobilised.
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A Darwinian “survival of the fittest” view of national and international society: This leads to the exclusion of others (defined variously by traits such as race, culture, language, and so on), the belief in the limitless sovereignty of one’s own nation, and the justification of violence against its enemies, both internal and external. This leads to imperialism as a natural consequence of the affirmative character of the nation.
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The nation above all else, including religion: Fascist governments have always been, in theory, independent from religion. Wherever they seized power, most fascist movements arrived at some sort of agreement with the Church, but fascism ascribes God and religion a subordinate place (either explicitly or implicitly) within its hierarchy of principles. The nation is always at the top.
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Unity of state, culture and nation: As far as the relationship between the nation and the state is concerned, the fascist nation is neither above nor beneath the state. It is both identified with the state, and transcends it: a “national-statism”.
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Blind belief in a charismatic leader: The idea of the fascist nation requires absolute trust in a singular, all-powerful leader. In Nazi Germany this was known as the Führerprinzip, the idea that the word of the Führer transcended any written law.
This transforms the nineteenth-century figure of the national hero or founding father into something far more transcendent. The fascist leader assimilates and embodies the qualities of all the national heroes who came before.
