I've just gotten tired of all illusions americans have on the subject of Nation and Nationalism and Nationality, and since I had to explain the same thing several times to several people, might as well just make one graphic about it.
There is no such thing as American Nationalism, because there is no American Nation.
How do I figure that?
First let's discuss the ever "controversial" issue of Nationalism, which liberals turned into a buzz-word to associate something with Nazism and Fascism, when that is clearly not the case. Nationalism in its nature is not even a political idea.
Nationalism, in its pure sense, is nothing more or less than love for your Nation, its people, history, culture, traditions and land, and the desire to help it develop further and protect it from any threat, which is a natural feeling, as all people defend what is dear to them.
Nationalism has nothing to do with ideas of superiority/inferiority (introduced in mix with Nationalism and some other aspects to form National-Socialism and Nazism), it is solely what I described above. It is no different than loving a parent. All arguments of "how can you be proud of something you have no control over" are void because we also have no control over what family we are born to, who our parents are, but we love them (some exceptions, of course, exist, which find their parallels amongst people who dislike their own nation for one reason or another), it is the same kind of love that one experiences for his or her Nation.
Some might argue that what I am describing is Patriotism, but that is not the issue. Patriotism is a feeling of duty before the Government. Often Patriotism and Nationalism oppose each other, but sometimes they go hand in hand (Nationalist States such as Israel and China).
To further stress this point I will give an example from Russian history during World War I, when many German commanders were removed from the Russian Empires army, because of the fear, that their Nationalist feelings (for Germany) might overcome their Patriotic feelings (for Russia), and that they might turn. The Nazi Germany coup attempt "Operation Valkyrie" is another example of this.
Sometimes people fight against the government, for the sake of the Nation, and this in some cases led to the establishment of National States.
Some confuse the terms of Peoples and Nations. Personally my take on People is as a general name for a multitude of nationalities that are native to the same land, for example - Russia, where other native nationalities are a minority in under 20% of the total population. Here I agree with views of Ivan Ilyin who reasoned that not all nationalities are capable of self-governing existence, and if they ever become "independent" than it is a sign of some outside influence that pulls their strings. In Russia, the dominating nation - Russians, have always ruled and been the leading nation, uniting all minor nationalities under itself with a united government. However, you can't call the entirety of its citizens members of the Russian Nation, because they are of different nationalities, however, you can call them a Russian People - the collective of all nationalities native to Russia, that is governed by the Russian Nation.
Here I want to make a slight detour from the subject and discuss a little interesting concept. English is rather primitive and names of nationalities work as both nouns and as adjectives, however, Russian has word constructs for each use. Немец (German - noun), Немецкий (German - adjective), the 'цкий' turned it into an adjective. That is how most of these work in Russian, however, for some reason people generally use the word Русский (Russian) as BOTH a noun and an adjective, when in reality, its structure suggests it to be only an adjective. This is a big oversight, and people tend to forget the noun name of our Nation - Русич (Rusich - Russian - noun).
As such I believe that the name of the Russian Nation (Русская Нация
is Rusiches (Русичи
, while as Russians (Русские
is an adjective that is used to describe the entire collective of nationalities in Russia or people who have been "Russofied", for the lack of a better english term, a none-agressive process of nationalities accepting Russian culture and integrating into it, which was the key behind Russian expansion and what made it unique (also agree on this point with Ivan Ilyin) compared to western expansionism that was based on aggressive denationalization (Brittish Empire and early germans for instance).
And back to the topic, already described one understanding of the concept of People. There is also another concept, by Ustrialov, with which I also agree, that there is a people in a sense of belonging to some State. As such the term "Soviet People" was in no way an attempt at denationalization, but a State construct, that described the collective of all peoples (first concept) and nations that were part of the Soviet Union. We will come back to this concept later as we'll come closer to the subject of this graphic.
The ever popular issue is of the nature of Nation and Nationality. Some insist that a Nation is just blood and heritage ("I livez in USA but I haz german granny and italian mama, oh and a japanese dad, so I am German/Italian/Japanese"), others insist on land being the key factor ("I livez in France so I am French, despite having arabian blood"), while others say that only culture matters ("I livez in australia but in a Russian cultural community so I iz Russian!!"). I had the displeasure of hearing those exact comments.
However they are all completely false. Blood is not enough if you were born in some other country and grew up intaking its culture and mentality. Land is a ridiculous notion as the sole-defining character of nationality and is closer to the State People concept than anything else and as such has nothing to do with nationality. And culture alone cannot defy ones nationality, but it does bring one closest to being integrated into a nation, but not completely, the example of this is Russofication.
None of these aspects alone are enough to defy ones nationality.
I have my own concept on the matter of national identification that is based on Genetics, Psycho-Genetics and Psychology, specifically cultural-historical psychology, founded by Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky. I am still nurturing this concept, but I will tell you the gist of it:
Key aspects that define a persons nationality are his heritage (genes carry constructs of national-mentality), culture he was raised in (which helps develop the persons mentality, and triggers active development of national-mentality, if genes of same nationality, as the culture of which surrounds the person, are present) and subsequent from that - land (where the dominating culture is more prudent and as such has more influence than small pockets outside of it).
Thus we come to the conclusions, that: blood alone is not enough, because it becomes a useless factor if the person intakes a completely different culture (for example it doesn't matter if your grandma was Irish, and you were born and raised in Italy, you will be for the most part of Italian mentality); land alone is not enough (if you were raised in France, and then moved to Germany, you are still French, irregardless if your heritage is French or German); culture alone is not enough (living in a cultural community that exists in a completely different country, example Russian in Australia, cannot replace the influence of culture in its native land where its roots took place and formed).
So to estimate ones nationality we must ask these questions: what is the persons heritage and where he was born and raised.
Now we finally come to the issue of America.
Americans are a result of various nationalities, with already established and naturally evolved cultures, mixed together and expanded over a territory, known today as USA. As such it became a cultural mess, that was organized only through the establishment of a State. As such, there is no such thing as an American Nation, because it is an artificial collective of people and not a naturally evolved one (unlike the Native Americans btw), and there is no such thing as American Culture, because culture is a nation-developed construct in the coarse of its history, while as in USA everything was organized by the State. All aspects of american "culture" take their roots in the established political system.
So what are americans? Not a nation, but a State People (remember, we discussed it above?), an artificial construct.
So why is there no such thing as American Nationalism? Because there is no such thing as an American Nation. What trully is prominent in USA is Patriotism (duty to the state), since americans are a State People. Americans will never have a fight of Nationalism against Patriotism, however, what they do have is an internal Patriotism fight between Patriots who believe that the modern state has gone astray from the original concepts of the Founding Fathers, and Patriots who believe that the modern state still follows them.
This is also why Racism is more prominent in USA. Since there can't be nationalism in USA, due to lack of a nation, and no heritage being prominent enough to claim itself the leading nationality (unlike in Russia, where the Russian Nation leads, in USA this would lead to multiple wars for dominance between representatives of various heritages) David Lane had to develop a concept based on a broader concept than Nation which would be Race, therefor finding a key unifying factor for heritages of nationalities who belonged to a single Race (described as the White Race). This concept could only be born in USA (because even in Hitlers nazi views, while the Aryan Race was superior, he viewed Germans as the pinnacle of the Aryan Race and as such the concept of Nation was dominating over Race) and I happen to dislike it a lot, because of how it made its way into Europe and Russia, where we don't HAVE a problem of a lack of nation, which is the sole reason why the concept was born in the first place!
And, honestly, Australia also falls under the very same problems due to its nature. So there is no Australian nation either, an Australian People (State People) - sure, but a nation? No (except natives).
So... I honestly got a bit lost now but I think I said all I had to say, so I will finish thusly:
Everyone who were born and raised in USA, who claim to be "German/Russian/Polish/Jewish" or any other sort of combos - STOP. YOU'RE NOT. Most of you have no CLUE about cultures of nations you claim to be a part of, let alone true mental connection, so even if you learned those languages and traveled to those nations, you'd still be an outsider and considered an American and nothing more! Extreme cases of this results in shit like wapanese, blaisians, wiggers and etc. Which are really annoying.
I had to argue once with one Australian (who looked more Chinese than anything else), whos ancestors were part of the White Armies that fled into China and then traveled to Australia and formed cultural communities, and he tried to prove himself to be Russian, but he failed miserably at it! He knew virtually NOTHING about Russia and presented more mentality of an Australian than anything else (while sporting a Chinese face).
I honestly never wish to have an argument of that nature again because to me it felt insulting to have some moron claim himself to be Russian while he had no clue about it and even included hideous stereotypes as "being Russian".
The United States
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Originally Posted by OneWolf
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