Anarchism and Nationalism - Anarchist Opposition To Nationalism

Anarchist Opposition To Nationalism

Social Anarchists militantly oppose nationalism, as they equate the nation with the state. Contemporary Social Anarchists consider nationalist-anarchism to be a contradiction, and recent fusions of anarchism and nationalism have been characterized as outside the larger anarchist movement. The general perception of nationalism; its approach to the of liberation of a people by means of a national identity based around shared culture, values, language, history and symbols; has shifted from being considered a left-wing ideology at the beginning of the 20th century, to being seen as a right-wing ideology today. Post Colonial Anarchism in particular denounces nationalism for its statism and links to authoritarian ideologies. Other contemporary anarchists oppose all nationalism and national liberation struggles from a class struggle perspective.

A critique of nationalism from an anarchist point of view is Rudolf Rocker's book Nationalism and Culture. American anarchist Fredy Perlman wrote a number of pamphlets that were strongly critical of all forms of nationalism, including Anti-Semitism and the Beirut Pogrom, a critique of Zionism, and The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism, which argues that nationalism is a process of state formation inspired by imperialism, which capitalists, fascists and Leninists use as a mean of controlling their subjects.

Andrew Flood wrote in An Anarchist Perspective on Irish Nationalism,

Anarchists are not nationalists, in fact we are completely against nationalism. We don't worry about where your granny was born, whether you can speak Irish or if you drink a green milkshake in McDonalds on St Patrick's Day. But this doesn't mean we can ignore nations. They do exist; and some nationalities are picked on, discriminated against because of their nationality. Irish history bears a lot of witness to this. The Kurds, Native Americans, Chechins, and many more have suffered also - and to an amazingly barbaric degree. National oppression is wrong. It divides working class people, causes terrible suffering and strengthens the hand of the ruling class. Our opposition to this makes us anti-imperialists. ... So fight national oppression but look beyond nationalism. We can do a lot better. Changing the world for the better will be a hard struggle so we should make sure that we look for the best possible society to live in. We look forward to a world without borders, where the great majority of people have as much right to freely move about as the idle rich do today. A worldwide federation of free peoples - classless and stateless - where we produce to satisfy needs and all have control over our destinies - that's a goal worth struggling for.

The Anarchist Federation views nationalism as an ideology totally bound up with the development of capitalism, and unable to go beyond it:

...At heart, nationalism is an ideology of class collaboration. It functions to create an imagined community of shared interests and in doing so to hide the real, material interests of the classes which comprise the population. The ‘national interest’ is a weapon against the working class, and an attempt to rally the ruled behind the interests of their rulers ... Anarchist communists do not simply oppose nationalism because it is bound up in racism and parochial bigotry. It undoubtedly fosters these things, and has mobilised them through history. Organising against them is a key part of anarchist politics. But nationalism does not require them to function. Nationalism can be liberal, cosmopolitan and tolerant, defining the ‘common interest’ of ‘the people’ in ways which do not require a single ‘race’. Even the most extreme nationalist ideologies, such as fascism, can co-exist with the acceptance of a multiracial society, as was the case with the Brazilian Integralist movement. Nationalism uses what works – it utilises whatever superficial attribute is effective to bind society together behind it.

More recently post-left anarchist Fredy Perlman wrote a work on the subject of nationalism in 1984 called The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism In it he argues that "Leftist or revolutionary nationalists insist that their nationalism has nothing in common with the nationalism of fascists and national socialists, that theirs is a nationalism of the oppressed, that it offers personal as well as cultural liberation." And so "To challenge these claims, and to see them in a context," he asks "what nationalism is - not only the new revolutionary nationalism but also the old conservative one." And so he concludes that nationalism is an aid to capitalist control of nature and people regardless of its origin. Nationalism thus provides a form through which "Every oppressed population can become a nation, a photographic negative of the oppressor nation" and that "There's no earthly reason for the descendants of the persecuted to remain persecuted when nationalism offers them the prospect of becoming persecutors. Near and distant relatives of victims can become a racist nation-state; they can themselves herd other people into concentration camps, push other people around at will, perpetrate genocidal war against them, procure preliminary capital by expropriating them."