Nationalism and Post-Nationalism
Unlike nationalism, post-nationalism has mostly existed in the minds of its promoters.
Since the June 9 elections in the EU, the enemies of nation-states and of their supporters, nationalist political parties, have been put on notice. Long under attack from EU officials, the nation-states are fighting back and are here to stay, irrespective of plans to undermine them, which originate in Brussels or in the minds of ideologues advocating the so-called “post-national formations”(Juergen Habermas).
European politicians like Emmanuel Macron seem to believe that the role of the nation-state is finished and that it should be replaced by that of “post-national formations”, like a federal EU. They see the latter as the only type of organisation which could be conducive to a new era in progressivism.
The nation-state has first been identified as a target to destroy since the launch of communist ideology in the 19th century.
Communism was guided by the writings of Friedrich Engels, “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State”, which appeared in 1884. It falsely assumed that the origin of the family, for example, is tied to that of capitalist society; that private property is the source of all evil and of social inequalities; and that the state is the instrument designed to protect the right of capitalists to disenfranchise and exploit the working classes.
In time, this book became the bible of communists around the world and was used as the basis to nationalise all property in Russia after the victory of the 1917 proletarian revolution there. Nor were families spared the efforts of communist authorities to affect their viability. This was achieved mainly by using children to spy on their parents and denounce them to the secret police, and by educating them in state schools dominated by the teaching of one ideology: Marxism-Leninism.
True marxists also viewed the state as the political instrument of the bourgeoisie and, as such, they were envisaging its demise as a precondition of making way for the worldwide victory of communism.
The attachment of citizens - proletarians included - to the nation-state was almost always very strong, however, including during the two world wars. The period following the Second World War, which witnessed the birth of the welfare state , further enhanced its attractiveness. This inaugurated a period of unprecedented prosperity in the West. For the first time, the state took responsibility for the security and well-being of all its citizens, regardless of their social class.
All went well until the 1970’s, when an ideological collusion between the post- socialist Left and economic liberalism took place. Together, they crafted a new ideology which -once again- favoured a dictatorship of sorts (I have called it a “dictatorship of minorities”). Its proponents, which included journalists, politicians, Eurocrats, academics and advocates of economic globalisation such as bankers and corporation managers, wanted to implement a new, more just and egalitarian, as well as ecological world order. In practice, these people cultivate an intense contempt for ordinary folk, local communities, culture and tradition, whom they regard as obsolete and a stumbling block for their political agenda.
Decades ago, these worrisome developments alerted nationalists around Europe, whose predecessors had fought and died in their struggle for freedom and democracy against feudalism and absolutism. They rightly regard this new ideology as leading to a new kind of totalitarianism, which in its consequences is as bad and as detrimental to the freedom and democracy achieved in Western societies as last century’s communist menace.
The nationalists understood, rather correctly, that post-nationalism cannot really exist for long except in the minds of its promoters, and that if such an ideology is allowed to run its course, as Brussels Eurocrats intend, it could only lead to dystopian societies, where families and local communities are destroyed, national culture disappears and the citizens of hitherto prosperous countries become just an amorphous mass who can more easily be manipulated.
We can conclude with a high level of certainty that every such “post-national formation” - the EU included - can only end up as a totalitarian type of society, in which citizens are stripped of their identity and freedoms and are subjected to waves of unchecked immigration to their lands.
Moreover, the recent involvement in Ukraine has clearly proved that supranational entities such as the EU can guarantee neither peace, nor the continued prosperity of their inhabitants.
These days, the main question in almost all states of the European Union is: why go down this path instead of bringing back to health the good old nation-state ?
The answer to this question is going to be provided by the leaders of European nationalist parties fighting for the survival of their nations in the decades to come.