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NATIONALISM AND WAR: Nationalism: Origins and Historical Evolution By Carl K. Savich
Introduction: The Return of Nationalism?
The break-up of the multi-ethnic and pluralistic states of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union beginning in 1991 led to a re-emergence and resurgence of nationalism. Political analysts such as Tim Walker argued that there was a “return of nationalism” and Misha Glenny stated that there was a “rebirth of history”. Nationalism dominated the political discourse and analysis of the Balkans. Political leaders were referred to as a “radical nationalist”, a “moderate nationalist”, an “ultra-nationalist”, “left-wing moderate nationalist”, “right-wing nationalist”, “far-right nationalist”, such as Jean-Marie Le Pen. Vojislav Seselj and Slobodan Milosevic were termed “ultra-nationalists” while Vojislav Kostunica was a “moderate Serb nationalist”: In a news dispatch for August 9, 2000, Reuters reported that “Moderate Serb Nationalist Vows to Work with West”. Moreover, the political conflict in the former Yugoslavia was explained as due to “Serbian nationalism”, “extreme nationalism”. Indeed, political analysts argued that the civil wars in the former Yugoslavia were caused by “Serbian nationalism”. In the 2001 Macedonian conflict between the Macedonian government and the so-called National Liberation Army (NLA), Albanian National Army (ANA), and the Albanian National Armada, Reuters referred to the Macedonian government as “the hard-line nationalist government of Prime Minister Ljupco Georgievski and Interior Minister Ljube Boskovski.” The Macedonian VMRO-DPMNE party was described as “moderate nationalist.” Reuters queried whether the “nationalist were out of control” in Macedonia because they were seeking to defend the sovereign nation from the so-called NLA “insurgents”. Boskovski was referred to as an “ultra-nationalist” and a “nationalist hardliner”. The terms “nationalism” and “nationalist” thus became the key descriptive and analytical terms in the nomenclature and political discourse of the Balkans conflicts. But what does the term “nationalism” mean? Is there now a “return of nationalism”? Has nationalism ever gone away only to return in the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia? How did the term originate and how did it develop?
Nationalism as a modern political ideology emerged only following the French Revolution of 1789 and developing during the 19th century. Nationalism reached its climax at the time of World War I. Nationalism is based both on group fantasy or an “imagined community” and as the product of industrialization, capitalism, and modernization. Industrialization and nationalism evolved and developed in a symbiotic relationship, each reinforcing the other. Nationalism and industrialism require uniformity, standardization, and homogeneity---ethnic, racial, religious, linguistic, and cultural. The homogeneity fostered by both nationalism and industrialization and modernization poses a threat to minorities who, as heterogeneous members of the modern nation-state, are perceived as a threat. Genocide is a by-product of modern nationalism. The logic of nationalism mandates homogeneity. Genocide is a by-product of nationalism and of industrialism and modernization. Genocide is one of the costs of modern industrialized societies. The ideology of modern nationalism makes genocide possible.
Origins: The Nation as an Imagined Community or Group Fantasy
What is nationalism? What is a nation? In “What is a Nation?”(1882), Ernest Renan argued that a nation was “a soul, a spiritual principle” and that the continued existence of a nation is the result of “a daily plebiscite”. In other words, a nation is dependent on willful consent and is in many respects an imagined political community or creation. The idea that nations are “imagined communities” would be developed by Benedict Anderson in Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991): “I propose the following definition of the nation: it is an imagined political community---and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.” Anderson agreed with Ernest Gellner that nationalism “invents nations”. Anderson noted that the citizens of nations “will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them.” The nation exists as an image of a community in the mind of the citizen. Renan argued that nations are “something fairly new in history” and not present before the 18th century. Persia, Egypt, China, even the Roman Empire, were not nations or patries. Renan noted the significance of myth and even historical error in the creation of a nation: “Forgetting, I would even go so far as to say historical error, is a crucial factor in the creation of a nation.”
Is there a pure race or pure ethnicity? Renan goes to show that there is no such thing as a pure race and that basing a nation on ethnic and linguistic criteria is just as misleading. He points out that an Englishman in the 19th century is different than an Englishman two thousand years before. The original inhabitants of Britain at the time of the Roman conquest of Britain by Caesar were Celtic tribes speaking a Celtic/Gaelic language, then became Latinized/Romanized. In the ensuing centuries, Germanic tribes, the Angles and Saxons invaded Roman Britain and brought a totally new language, culture, and even “race”. These Germanic settlers/invaders even gave a new name to the new nation, England, land of the Angles. The original Celtic Britons were expelled to Wales, a sort of ghetto for the original inhabitants of Britain. Subsequently, the Norman conquest introduced French culture and the French language, adding French to the Latin, Anglo-Saxon mix. The Normans themselves were Norsemen and Scandinavian descendants. So the contemporary Englishman or Briton of Renan’s time had almost nothing in common with the original Celtic Briton who inhabited the British isles. Renan also pointed out that France actually had very few “Franks” but is made up of a mixture of Celtic, Iberic, and Germanic. Germany is made up of Germanic, Celtic, and Slav. Moreover, language is not a defining criteria of a nation because as we can see with English, it is not the original language of the Britons, but is a mixture of Anglo-Saxon, Latin, and French. According to Renan , race has no applicability or relevance to politics. Nations are based on a people’s “rich legacy of memories” and a consent to live together, to have “common will in the present”. He argued that common suffering unified a people and convinced them to “continue a common life.” Nations are not eternal, but have only emerged following the Enlightenment. Only in recent times, during the emergence of modern nationalism, have nations become the principle units of historical analysis. Hans Kohn in The Idea of Nationalism stated that “in the age of nationalism, nations are the great corporate personalities of history.” In The Mass Psychology of Ethnonationalism (NY: Plenum Press, 1996), Dusan Kecmanovic emphasized the central role of the nation in nationalism: “The crucial issue in understanding nationalism (or tribalism, ethnocentrism, etc.) is that to nationalists … the nation (or tribe, or ethnic group) is the ultimate point of reference for social, political, and all other loyalties and actions.”
Psychologically, nationalism can be explained as the need of the individual to “protect” his or her own “sense of self”. Nationalism thus gives psychological security and meaning to an individual overwhelmed by the complexities and dislocations of modern industrialized society. Nationalism thus is based on fear and the need to find sanctuary in conformity, homogeneity, and uniformity. It is an atavistic impulse that is based in self-preservation. When the tribe is threatened by strangers who are perceived to be hostile, the tribe demands conformity and allegiance to a common bond, whether it be familial, ethnic, religious, cultural, linguistic, or racial. Vamik D. Volkan, in “The Need to Have Enemies and Allies: A Developmental Approach”, emphasized the fact that group solidarity demands the creation of “enemies” and “allies”, “us” and “them”. The identification is heightened when the group is undergoing hardship or danger. Thus discrimination and political “repression” lead to a greater degree of solidarity and group identification. Group identification relieves the doubts, anxiety and stress of the individual. As Fyodor Dostoyevsky noted in The Brothers Karamazov, the individual has “no more pressing need than the one to find somebody to whom he can surrender, as quickly as possible, that gift of freedom which he, the unfortunate creature, was born with.” This is an important factor in understanding nationalism. Uncertainty and responsibility thus are relieved in the individual when he surrenders his will to that of a larger entity. An individual can find a purpose for his or her life and an answer to his or her own doubts. Becoming a member of the tribe, the clan, the religion, the ethnicity, the state, or the nation, serves a psychological need to relieve doubt, anxiety, and responsibility. To foster and maintain group solidarity, culture and ethnicity are created as bonds. As explained by Howard F. Stein in “Culture and Ethnicity as Group-Fantasies: A Psychohistoric Paradigm of Group Identity”, culture and ethnicity are manufactured or created as group fantasies in order to cement the bond between members of the group. We create ethnicity and culture so that we may be able to maintain unity and solidarity within the clan, tribe, state, or nation.
Western and US political analysts used the term “nationalism” and “nationalist” in pejorative terms. Nationalism was what the other guy believed in. A nationalist is what the other guy is. We are patriotic citizens, by contrast, while they are “nationalists”. This propagandistic use of the term “nationalism” in US political and media discourse obfuscates and camouflages the universal nature of nationalism. Nationalism is the same everywhere. The distinction between “patriotism” and “nationalism” is a spurious one. It is based in propaganda. In fact, there is no such thing as good or bad nationalisms. All nationalisms are the same, although the degree of ideological commitment obviously can vary. So to analyze and understand nationalism, one must suspend moral judgment. There are no good or bad nationalisms. We ourselves make the arbitrary determination of what is a good and what is a bad nationalism.
Evolution
Nationalism as a modern political ideology and modern nations emerged only following the French Revolution of 1789. Carleton Hayes stated in Essays on Nationalism (1926) that “nationalism is modern, very modern.” Nationalism developed and evolved during the 19th century, reaching its highest stage in the 20th century. Elie Kedourie in Nationalism (NY: Praeger, 1961) argued that nationalism “is a doctrine invented in Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century.” Benedict Anderson, by contrast, argued that the nation has its origins in the “originary nationalism” of the “Creole pioneers” of Latin America which was “modularly” adopted by European nationalist movements and those in Asia and Africa. The “earliest mention” of the term nationalism occurs in 1774 in a work by Johann Gottfried Herder. As Anderson noted, the term “nationalism” only gained widespread use in the late 19th century. By that time, the nation became the “sole, binding agency of meaning and justification.” Peter Alter (Nationalism. Second edition. London: Edward Arnold, 1993) stated that nationalism is “one of the most ambiguous concepts in the present-day vocabulary of political and analytical thought.” Alter defined two major types of nationalism: Risorgimento nationalism and integral nationalism. Risorgimento nationalism is derived from a publication in1847 by Cesar Balbo in Turin, the capital of Piedmont. Risorgimento means resurrection in Italian. Giuseppe Mazzini of the Young Italy Movement and John Gottfried Herder are exponents of this type of nationalism. Risorgimento nationalism applies to nations that seek to establish a state. In the nineteenth century, Greece, Italy, Germany, Poland, Serbia, were examples of Risorgimento nationalism. The opposite of Risorgimento nationalism is integral nationalism, known also as “radical”, “extreme”, “right-wing”, “reactionary”, “aggressive-expansionist”, “derivative”, “militant” nationalism. Integral nationalism results after a nation has achieved independence and has established a state. Nazi Germany and fascist Italy were examples of integral nationalism. In integral states, a totalitarian system results where the government or state dominates all aspects of the society or nation. The state is one and indivisible, une et indivisible. According to Alter, one nation is Absolute over others, there is an expansionist and hegemonistic goal, Bonapartism. In 1920s fascist Italy and 1930s Nazi Germany, dictatorial leaders emerged, il duce Benito Mussolini in Italy, der fuehrer in Germany, el caudillo Francisco Franco in Spain, the poglavnik Ante Pavelic in Croatia. In fascist Italy, Mussolini was regarded as infallible: “the leader is always right” (il duce ha sempre ragione). In Nazi Germany, the slogan was: One State, One People, One Leader. (Ein Reich, Ein Volk, Ein Fuehrer).
Nationalism as the Product of Industrialization
How do we analyze nationalism? As Ernest Gellner noted, there are no major writers on nationalism and there are no major treatises or analyses of nationalism. There is no consistent or systematic theory or principles of nationalism. Why is this so? Nationalism is the a posteriori analysis of political phenomena as Eric Hobsbawm, Ernest Gellner, and Elie Kedourie have noted, because we can only know the real nation after it has emerged: The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only at sunset, at dusk. Nationalism is a descriptive or conclusory term for political phenomena. Carleton J. P. Hayes (1882-1964), wrote the seminal works Essays on Nationalism (NY: Macmillan Co., 1926) and The Historical Evolution of Modern Nationalism (NY: Richard Smith, 1931), Patriotism, Nationalism, and the Brotherhood of Man (NY: Paulist Press, 1937) and Nationalism: A Religion (NY: Macmillan, 1960).
Haynes categorized nationalism as “traditional”, “liberal”, and “integral”. Integral nationalism is derived from “nationalisme integrale” of the French nationalist author Charles Maurras. Maurras stated: “A true nationalist places his country above everything.” According to Hayes, three factors transform liberal nationalism into integral nationalism. First, a “militarist spirit engendered” in the struggle/war to unify/free “oppressed” nationalities remains and grows in the newly independent country. Once a nation achieves “freedom” or independence, only a strong military can ensure the security and viability of the state. With regard to German unification, Otto von Bismarck relied on the military to achieve political/national unity, “blood and iron”. This militarist ethos remained throughout German history with Kaiser Wilhelm I and II and after. During the Weimar period, the freikorps para-military groups dominated the political scene. Erich von Ludendorff would organize the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch with Adolf Hitler, himself a decorated corporal in World War I, while Paul von Hindenburg would appoint Hitler chancellor in 1933. National freedom and independence were achieved through war. The nationalist leaders in these countries “unwittingly fashioned a martial monster”. Second, “the feeling of superiority engendered by success” leads to extreme nationalism. Hayes perceived that the US, Germany, and Italy exhibited “the feeling of superiority”. Hayes quoted a passage from Why Men Fight (1917) by Bertrand Russell which showed the paradoxical nature of nationalism:
‘I belong,’ the oppressed[liberal] nationalist argues, ‘by sympathy and tradition to nation A, but I am subject to a government which is in the hands of nation B. This is an injustice, not only because of the general principle of nationalism, but because nation A is generous, progressive, and civilized, while nation B is oppressive, retrograde, and barbarous’…The inhabitants of nation B are naturally deaf to the claims of abstract justice…Presently, however, in the course of war, nation A acquires its freedom. The energy and pride which have achieved freedom generates a momentum which leads on, almost infallibly, to the attempt at foreign conquest, or to the refusal of liberty to some smaller nation. ‘What? You say that nation C, which forms part of our state, has the same rights against us as we had against nation B? But this is absurd. Nation C is swinish and turbulent, incapable of good government, needing a strong hand if it is not to be a menace and a disturbance to all its neighbors.’
Nationalism is always in a constant state of development/evolution, never static. Thus, war is subsumed in nationalism. Third, integral nationalism results because of the “operation of certain propagandist instruments” of Jacobin and liberal nationalism. Like Gellner and Hobsbawm, Hayes sees the creation of a national public school system and the mass newspaper and mass communication as allowing for the creation of extreme nationalism. A system of schools along with press freedom, freedom of association, yellow or popular journalism enable the state to control its citizens much more thoroughly than in agrarian, pre-industrialized societies.
Nationalism became a dominant ideology by the time of World War I. Indeed, nationalism became likened to a religion. Hayes regarded 20th century nationalism as a religion of the nation/state/government. Nationalism is “essentially religious, fanatically religious.” Hayes likens it to an “Old Testament” religion “with jealous and angry gods”, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth nationalism. A “sacred egoism” results that strengthens and tightens the national bond. When is nationalism a religion? Hayes saw its origins in the French Revolution and the Jacobin state that emerged in the 1790s. G. P. Gooch concluded: “Nationalism is a child of the French revolution.” In essence, the nation became the highest authority, the nation became God. In the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, the nation became the ultimate authority: “The principle of sovereignty resides essentially in the Nation.” A national anthem was written, a new national flag was introduced, the tri-color, religion was taken out of the schools and replaced with civic allegiance, allegiance to the nation. The nation replaces god and becomes the highest authority. Nationalism becomes a religion. Hayes saw this development in the United States, not only in France, Germany, Italy, and Russia/USSR. Hayes noted that “integral nationalism is far advanced among us.” This fact is important for the Cold War between the US and the USSR because both nations in actual fact mirrored each other as integral nationalist states. Hayes’ analysis is remarkable because he is able to take an objective view of nationalism. Hayes avoids the pitfall here of a propagandistic analysis. For Hannah Arendt (The Origins of Totalitarianism), the USSR is an integral nationalist state, a totalitarian state. According to Hayes, the US is an integral nationalist state as well. Like Revolutionary France, the US has a national anthem, a national flag, a national ideology, a public school system that inculcates secular national values, a national “prayer service” in a daily Oath of Allegiance to “one nation under God” which is “indivisible”. We can see a relationship between nationalism and the Holocaust and the Cold War in the following statement of Hayes: “It appeals to the cruder and more exclusively emotional forms of patriotism. Its love of country turns readily into hatred of the alien; its desire for prosperity into competition for territory; and the duty of national service is interpreted as a duty to maintain national unity by unquestioning assent to every decision of government.”
Communist Yugoslavia sought to eliminate nationalism by creating a supranationalist identification to Yugoslavia, a multi-ethnic, multi-national federation. The Soviet Union was a Marxist-Leninist state that sought to in theory eradicate nationalism as well. Instead, the USSR sought to create a supranational “Soviet” citizen. Moreover, the USSR was guided by internationalism to create a single global community that would do away with the state. The national state was seen as an artificial creation that would in essence wither away. In practice, however, the USSR adopted the policy of “Communist in one country”, relying on traditional notions of nationalism and the nation-state. There were contradictions in Soviet policy. As Yuri Slezkine showed in “The USSR as a Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism” in Becoming National, edited by Geoff Eley and Ronald Suny, USSR policy goals were to eliminate nationalism but the ethnic administrative units the Soviets created fostered ethnic cultures and an ethnic consciousness that exploded in nationalism, resulting in the breakup of the USSR based on modern nationalism. The same pattern occurred in Yugoslavia. By creating republics based on ethnicity, Yugoslavia was creating its own demise. These ethnically-based republics broke away and seceded from federal Yugoslavia beginning in 1991 based on nationality or ethnicity. Similarly, the creation of autonomous provinces and regions such as Vojvodina and Kosovo-Metohija in Yugoslavia, and Chechnya, Nagorno-Karabakh in the Soviet Union, only served to further secession based on ethnicity and nationality. Nationalism guided the secessionist movements in these cases. Ironically, then, communist/socialist countries such as Yugoslavia and the USSR, by seeking to weaken and destroy nationalism, in fact, only succeeded in making it stronger.
What is missing in the historiography of nationalism is an analysis of the US in the development of modern nationalism. As Seymour Martin Lipset noted, America was “the first new nation” (The First New Nation: The United States in Historical and Comparative Perspective. NY: Basic Books, 1963): “ The United States was the first major colony successfully to revolt against colonial rule.” While Thomas Jefferson evoked “the people” in the Declaration of Independence in 1776, in the US Constitution of 1789, the term “nation” appears as a defining term. The US role in the evolution and development of modern nationalism cannot be ignored.
Modern nationalism fuelled the Cold War conflict between the US and USSR because a large portion of the ideological, political, and military conflict was waged in the Third World and in newly emergent nations that gained their independence from colonial/imperialist rule. The US and USSR vied and competed with each other to present a model of national development for these emerging new nations. So in this regard, modern nationalism was crucial in fostering the Cold War conflict globally.
Nationalism and the Holocaust
To what extent is it possible to perceive a relationship between nationalism, the Holocaust, and the development and evolution of the Cold War? Is there a relationship between nationalism and the Holocaust? Are there traits of nationalisms that made it conducive to genocide? Is the Holocaust attributable to nationalism at all? Hannah Arendt, in The Origins of Totalitarianism, saw Nazism as a “supranational” movement, a movement that disdained the narrow-concept of the nation-state. As Sebastian Haffner noted, Adolf Hitler never developed a static/stable conception of the nation or state. Improvisation and expansion were the norms of the Nazi nation/state. Hitler had no constitution and he had no political mechanisms in place to ensure the continuity of the Nazi state/nation following his departure from office. With regard to the Holocaust as well, Hitler saw the destruction of Jews not in national or nationalist terms, but in global terms, as a world-wide, international crusade. Hitler used the following slogan: “Workers of all classes and of all nations, recognize your common enemy!” Moreover, as Haffner noted, the Holocaust or Final Solution to the Jewish Problem, was an obsession with Hitler that went against the national interests of Germany. Railway cars and transport was being diverted from vital military needs to transport Jews to the concentration/death camps. Hitler did not make use of Jewish labor and Jewish scientists that would have helped the German war effort. What relationship can there be between nationalism and the Holocaust when the Holocaust appeared to be irrational and “outside of history”, based on the personal obsession of one individual? Yehuda Bauer argued that the Holocaust was unique in history and unlike any other event. Was the Holocaust, then, sui generis, or the historical denouement of centuries of European “anti-Semitism”?
How is the Holocaust related to the evolution of anti-Semitism? As Michael Marrus showed in The Holocaust in History (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1987), there were two kinds of anti-Semitism in German history, the traditional and the radical. Traditional anti-Semitism was based in Christianity and relied on the Jewish rejection of the Christian religion. Radical anti-Semitism was anti-Christian, secular, pagan, and racist in nature. The latter gained prominence only after World War I when it became dominant. The term “anti-Semitism” was coined by Wilhelm Marr in 1879 when he formed the German Anti-Semitic League to battle Jewish influence in Germany politically. As Leni Yahil noted in The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry, 1932-1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), the term is based on linguistics developed in the eighteenth century that made the distinction between Indo-Germanic or Aryan language groups of Europe and the Semitic groups of the Middle East. Social Darwinism based on the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin especially as developed by Herbert Spencer for social and political life, had an impact on anti-Semitism. Benjamin Disraeli stated that “race is everything.” Race was a preoccupation of the Victorian era that had an impact on the development of nationalist thought. Houston Stewart Chamberlain published The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century in German in 1899 that argued that the Aryan race was the superior race. Chamberlain was born in England but moved to Germany where he married Richard Wagner’s daughter. Wagner himself had argued that the Jewish influence was preventing the development of a national German culture, that is was being corrupted. Chamberlain had an important impact on the Nazi Movement. The French writer Joseph-Arthur Gobineau published Essai sur l’Inegalite des Races Humaines in 1853 in which he argued that the Aryan or Germanic race was superior. These provided the racial bases for Nazism. Race or ethnicity developed in conjunction with nationalism, gaining wide-spread use in the 19th century when it gained a “scientific” basis. Race or ethnicity is a crucial component of modern nationalism. So the racism of Nazism which resulted in the Holocaust is related to nationalism. In Mein Kampf Hitler stated that Jews posed a threat to the German nation and people because the mixing of races “defiles” the pure blood of the German and thereby slowly destroys the German nation: “With the aid of all means he tries to ruin the racial foundations of the people to be enslaved…a racially pure people, conscious of its blood, can never be enslaved by the Jew.” One people, one country, one leader. Race and ethnicity become dominant only with the advent of modern nationalism. The Ottoman Empire was a multi-racial, multi-ethnic empire that only had religious distinctions, Muslim, Christian, or Jew. Nationalism changed this. Hitler’s nation of birth Austria-Hungary, was likewise a multi-ethnic, multi-racial country that valued ethnic/racial diversity as a strength. Vienna was a multi-ethnic city made up of Germans, Slavs, Hungarians, and Jews. Not surprisingly, Hitler developed his racist theories against the Jews and Slavs based on his experiences in Vienna. Austria-Hungary, Czarist Russia, and Ottoman Turkey were, however, anachronisms in the age of nationalism and all collapsed and disintegrated after World War I.
There was also an ideological basis to German anti-Semitism as noted by George Mosse in The Crisis of German Ideology. This anti-Semitism was based in nationalism, based on the German volkisch or folk concept of the nation. German Jews were perceived as alien or foreign exploiters of the German peasant. Moreover, the Jew prevented the development of the volk into a nation. In other words, the German Jew was antithetical to German nationalism. This view was developed by many German authors. The most famous and most influential work was the novel Biarritz (1868) by German author Hermann Godsche, known by the pseudonym, Sir John Redcliffe. In this novel, Godsche depicted the leaders of the 12 tribes of Israel meeting in a Prague cemetery where they plotted world domination and world control. This was the fictional evocation of a Jewish conspiracy to enslave mankind. Godsche based his fiction in part on an 1864 satire by the French author Maurice Joly in The Dialogues in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu. The concept of an international Jewish conspiracy originated following the French Revolution of 1789 when it was attributed first to a world-wide conspiracy by Freemasons. Later, it was modified as a Jewish conspiracy. In 1897, Godsche’s book was adapted by Pyotr Rachkovsky of the Russian Ochrana or secret police into The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. The Protocols were first published in their entirety in 1905 in Russian by Sergei Nilus. The book was later translated into German and other languages including English. The Protocols were shown to be a “hoax” and a “forgery” in the 1920s in the UK and in Germany. The Protocols were, nevertheless, very influential on the Nazi Movement and the evolution of German radical anti-Semitism that resulted in the Holocaust. Why were the Protocols significant? The Protocols demonstrate the nationalist/political roots of radical or political anti-Semitism. To be sure, there was much that was irrational and illogical in radical anti-Semitism, based on consensual paranoia and the psychological need to find a scapegoat, an Enemy, an Alien, an Other, a Them that threatened Us, a stranger that threatened the tribe. The pogroms or massacres of Russian Jews before World War I and the massacres of Russian and Polish Jews by the Nazis during World War II have a similar ideological basis. The massacre of Armenians in 1894-96 and in 1915 during the Armenian Genocide and the massacres of Serbs and Jews in World War II Croatia (which included Bosnia-Hercegovina) all have similar ideological origins. The Jewish population of Russia was perceived as a threat to the Russian nation and antithetical to the survival of the Russian nation and people. Similarly, the Armenians, a Christian minority group in Ottoman Turkey, were perceived as a danger and threat to the Turkish nation. The Armenians were seen as a Fifth Column that would aid the Russians in occupying Turkey. The Serbian Orthodox population of Croatia was seen as a “state within a state” and a Fifth Column that was an instrument of the Serbian government. In Nazi ideology, as enunciated by Hitler, Jews posed the greatest danger to both the German people and the German nation. This was so, according to Hitler, because Marxism/Communism, democracy/parliamentarianism, and pacifism, were all dominated by Jews. In all these instances, modern nationalism can be said to play an important role. But to understand this relationship between nationalism and the Holocaust, an analysis of the development of modern nationalism is needed and its relationship to industrialization and modernity.
Nationalism resulted from industrialization. Nationalism as an ideology served the purposes of capitalism and industrialism by providing homogeneity in culture, language, training, education, class mobility, communication. Thus nationalism and industrialism/capitalism emerged and developed symbiotically. Each needed the other for its sustenance and development. Therefore, nationalism is to be seen as a product of the modern age, the product of modernity, of modernization, of industrialization. In Nations and Nationalism, Ernest Gellner argued that in agrarian societies, there was cultural diversity and an “ethnic” division of labor. Each person learned specialized and unique skills and trades. There were many local dialects, no standardized, uniform language. Each person had an established and permanent role to play in the society, economically, politically, and socially. In other words, there was very little mobility in agrarian societies. Modern nationalism could not flourish in these agrarian societies because homogeneity---in language, communication, culture, traditions---are needed for the development of modern nationalism.
In pre-industrial, agrarian or feudal societies, there was class rigidity. In these societies, as noted by Gellner and Arendt, the Jewish population had a highly unique and specialized role to play that was important in the society. Jews functioned as merchants and bankers in these agrarian societies. Because they were a minority group in the population, they could not use their economic position to dominate the society because they were limited politically and socially. Jews thus contributed to the well-functioning of the agrarian society and were thus beneficial to the society. Similarly, the Armenians had administrative roles in the Turkish Ottoman Empire that was comparable to the role of Jews in Christian societies. The Serbian Orthodox population of Croatia originally settled in Croatia as border troops to protect Croatia and Austria and Hungary from Muslim Turkish invasions and incursions. For centuries, the Serbs played a vital role in Croatia. But with the emergence of modern nationalism and the destruction of the status quo in agrarian and feudal societies, privileged minorities lost their functions in the society and thus were no longer useful or beneficial to the society. With industrialization there resulted an overthrow of the agrarian/feudal society. Jews now lost their privileged roles as the state or government assumed their role or assigned it to the private sector. The Young Turk Revolution of 1908 within the Ottoman Empire sought to modernize the Empire and create equality within it among all of its peoples, Muslims and Christians. This revolution altered the status quo and stability of the empire. The Christian Armenians now lost the unique role they played in the society. Similarly in Croatia, with the dismantling of the military frontier zone, the Serbian population was no longer needed to defend the border. These populations thus lost their usefulness in the wake of nationalism. Was genocide the only option? According to the logic of nationalism, these minorities lost any useful role to play in the nation and thus became a liability, a serious threat and danger to the nation. Invariably, they are seen as an enemy or foreign Fifth Column that threatens the nation. German Jews are instruments of a wider Jewish “nation”, an international Jewry, that threatens Germany. Christian Armenians are instruments of Christian Russia which seeks to use them to destroy Turkey. The Serbs of Croatia are instruments of Serbia which seeks to use them to exert control over Croatia. The crucial point is that these genocides were organized and planned by national governments, by the nation or state, for the avowed interests of the nation or the state. This result is due in large measure to the emergence of modern nationalism. The Armenian Genocide of 1915 had an impact on Hitler. In 1939, prior to the invasion of Poland, Hitler rhetorically queried his military leaders: “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” Hitler asked his leaders to be ruthless in killing the Slavs and Jews, the untermenschen, or subhumans, so that lebensraum, or living space, would be created for Germans. How much the Armenian Genocide had an influence on Hitler for the Holocaust is the subject of historic debate, but Hitler understood what a government could achieve in wartime against internal “enemies”.
Nationalism and Genocide
Is genocide presupposed in nationalism? Nationalism is predicated on homogeneity---ethnic, linguistic, cultural, religious, racial--- best expressed in the Nazi slogan Ein Reich, Ein Volk, Ein Fuehrer. There is a logical necessity and imperative for homogeneity in nationalism, whether it be ethnic, racial, religious, cultural, or linguistic, that makes genocide implicit in its ideological assumptions. Gellner expressed it this way: “Just as every girl should have a husband, preferably her own, so every culture must have its state, preferably its own.” Minorities are archetypical Aliens, or Others, in this formulation. In times of war, in times of crises, the perceived danger from the Other is heightened. Even in the US during World War II, approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans, men, women, and children, were interned in detention centers, two-thirds of them were US citizens. But because Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor, the “ the dirty Japs” were a perceived threat or danger to the US nation and had to be rounded up and put in camps. Following the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, Muslim residents of the US became suspect. US analysts called for the invasion and occupation of the Arab/Muslim world to forcefully convert Muslims to Christianity, a replay of the Crusades. Anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bigotry and racism was rampant in the US. Many Muslims/Arabs (or those who looked like same) were attacked and murdered. Mosques were attacked and damaged. During World War I, German-Americans were perceived as the Other in anti-German frenzy in the US and Canada. The city of Berlin, Ontario was renamed Kitchener in honor of the British War Secretary Horatio Kitchener. Sauerkraut was renamed “liberty cabbage” while “hamburger” became “liberty meat” and “Salisbury steak” and “frankfurters” became hot dogs in the US. During the US “regime change” of Iraq in 2003, this bigoted/racist phenomena in the US was repeated. Because France had opposed the US military overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime, there was a proposal to change the name of French fries to “freedom fries”, French toast to “freedom toast”. There was a shameless and strident glee in this atavistic nationalist racism and bigotry. Racism and extermination directed at minorities evolved with nationalism. This is a phenomenon of recent origin, it has its roots in modern nationalism. The concept of destroying nationalities because they posed a military threat to the nation evolved with nationalism. In pre-industrial periods, national armies were made up of professional soldiers. The concept of a Fifth Column is of relatively recent origin. Moreover, ethnic and religious diversity and heterogeneity were pre-industrial norms. In the nationalist age, however, uniformity and homogeneity---ethnic, religious, racial, cultural, linguistic--- became the new norms.
Genocide in Kosovo?
With the break-up of Yugoslavia in 1991 and the USSR, there was a so-called revival of nationalism. Ethnic/religious/cultural/racial homogeneity were the defining characteristics of nationalism in the USSR and Yugoslavia. The inherent logic of nationalism leads to genocide. In the Serbian province of Kosovo-Metohija, there has been an organized policy of genocide against the Serbian Orthodox population and other minorities, such as Roma and Jews. This genocide has occurred after the province was occupied militarily by NATO. Over 230,000 Kosovo Serbs and other minorities have been expelled or ethnically cleansed since the NATO occupation. UNMIK has reported that approximately 75,000 to 77,000 Kosovo Serb houses have been taken over by Albanians, while 30,000 Kosovo Serb houses have been looted and burned. Moreover, there has been a planned, systematic, and organized policy to hunt down and exterminate the remaining Serbian civilians of Kosovo. This silent genocide in Kosovo is being sponsored and orchestrated by the US government. This systematic ethnic cleansing organized by the US government is covered-up through the Nazi-style policy of “gleichschaltung”, which means a “synchronization”, “phasing”, from gleich, “equal”, and schalten, “to switch”. During the Nazi era, the Nazi regime “synchronized” all aspects of German society with the Nazi government policies. The media, state organizations, government bureaus, the press, movies, all aspects of German society were switched to reflect the Nazi government position. This is what we see in Kosovo-Metohija today, a US gleichschaltung. Entire Serbian families have been massacred in Kosovo based on the nationalist imperative to create ethnic homogeneity. The Western media gleichschaltung is reflected in media reporting on the ongoing genocide in Kosovo. In an article of June 4, 2003, Reuters used the passive tense to describe the ethnically-motivated murders of a Kosovo Serbian family: “Three Serbs Die in Worst Kosovo Attack Since 2001” by Shaban Buza. Why the passive tense? Did the Serbian family just die, or were they instead murdered in a systematic policy of genocide? This is Nazi-style gleichschaltung at work. Reuters reported that “a family of three Serbs were murdered”: “This is a triple murder, a deliberate killing.” Slobodan Stolic, 80, his wife Radmila, 70, and their 53-year old son Ljubinko, had been tortured, then stabbed to death with a sharp metal object, which appeared to be an axe, and then their house was burned to conceal the evidence. Slobodan Stolic was shot in the head while Ljubinko was stabbed near the heart. Their house was then set on fire. UN spokesperson Andrea Angeli stated: “They had serious body injuries prior to the burning with a sharp object, with an axe.” The massacre was ethnically-motivated, that is, it was an “ethnic murder” meaning the Serbian family was murdered merely because they were Serbs and for no other reason. What motivated the “ethnic murder”? Twenty Serbian families were to return to Obilic. Moreover, Albanians in Obilic had demanded that the family sell their home and go to Serbia proper, allowing Albanians to take over the town. The Obilic municipality had a Serbian population of 8,000 before the NATO occupation of Kosovo-Metohija in 1999. Now there are 4,000 Kosovo Serbs left in the Obilic municipality. Human Rights Watch (HRW), Amnesty International (AI), and the International Crisis Group (ICG) censored these gross violations of human rights in Kosovo. Were these so-called independent human rights groups seeking to foster human rights, or were they seeking to foster an ethnically homogeneous Greater Albania, an independent Kosova?
The creation of a independent nation out of the Serbian province of Kosovo-Metohija is the goal of US-sponsored Albanian separatists. The US seeks to create an ethnically pure independent Kosova nation. This was the goal of Rambouillet and the NATO bombing, to allow Albanian nationalists to create an independent Kosova. The systematic murder of the Kosovo Serbian population is an ongoing policy of the US/NATO/EU to prepare the ground for an independent Kosova. The murder of the Stolic family in Obilic is part of an ongoing US-sponsored policy. On February 16, 2001, 11 Kosovo Serbian civilians were murdered and 40 injured in an ethnically-motivated murder, a “revenge attack” or “revenge murder”. The entire Cokic family was murdered in this bus attack: The father, Njegos, his wife Snezana, and their 2-year-old son, Danilo, were killed. A 220 lbs. remote-controlled bomb was detonated in the road, destroying the bus. Later, an ethnic Albanian suspect was apprehended and then allowed to “escape” by US forces at the US Bondsteel base. Kosovo Serb Branko Jovic, 70, and his wife Saveta, 65, were brutally murdered in Kosovska Mitrovica that same year. The elderly Serbian couple was axed to death. Their bodies were found by their grandchildren. The US media described this systematic and planned policy of genocide as “revenge attacks”, “revenge killings”, and “revenge” murders. But how are such murders defined under criminal law? In criminal law, a murder is still a murder even if one claims that it was in “revenge”. Revenge does not mitigate or negate murder. If such were the case, the crime of murder would become meaningless because every murder would be justified as being committed in revenge. By contrast, Hitler always claimed that the murder of European Jews was justified because of what they had allegedly done to Germany and to the German people. In other words, Hitler’s systematic murder of the Jews was motivated by revenge, they too were “revenge killings”. Indeed, Kristallnacht was in “revenge” for the murder/assassination of Ernst vom Rath, German Embassy official in Paris, by the Jew Herschel Grynszpan. This is how Joseph Goebbels and the German government rationalized and justified Kristallnacht, as a revenge attack for the vom Rath assassination. But the US media never explains this fact. The Western media never explains that “revenge killings” are murder just the same as any other killing of a human being. The Stolic mass-murder was thus part of a systematic and ongoing policy supported by the US/NATO/US to prepare the base for the creation of an ethnically homogenous independent nation of Kosova.
Nationalism and Ethnic Conflicts
The civil wars in Armenia, Azerbaijan, in Nagorno-Karabakh, Georgia, Moldova, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Croatia, and in Serbia in Kosovo-Metohija, essentially were based on a sole characteristic of modern nationalism, homogeneity. Minorities in these new states wanted their own nations or states under the principle of one people, one, territory, one state, one government. These nationalist crises exemplified the paradox discussed by Bertrand Russell in Why Men Fight. Where do you draw the line? How do you prevent the theoretical meltdown into literally thousands of new nations if the inherent logic of modern nationalism is to be followed? Gellner argued that one of the most crucial traits of a modern nation was cultural homogeneity, the “capacity for context-free communication, the standardization of expression and comprehension.” Homogeneity is the primary principle in explaining nationalism for Gellner: “It is this which explains nationalism---the principle…that homogeneity of culture is the political bond, that mastery of and acceptability in a given high culture is the precondition of political, economic, and social citizenship.” According to Gellner, “cultures” create or invent nations: “Nations neither exist nor have or do anything.” In other words, national homogeneity is created. Industrialism necessitates homogenization and a dismantling of the agrarian/feudal structure. Modern industrial society needs a mass society that is literate, that is adaptable, that is socially mobile. A modern nation needs a standard language. This is why public schools are essential. Gellner cites the Diploma Disease in modern societies from the title of a book by Ronald Dore. Education becomes an instrument of achieving homogeneity. Education becomes “universal, standardized, and generic.” A public school system makes education standardized, secular, and uniform because it is government-run, i.e., it serves the nation. Diplomas or degrees then become indicators of positions in the hierarchy. By contrast, in pre-nationalist states, birth or class or a unique function or role were marks of distinction in a society. Education thus became crucial in the emergence of modern nationalism.
In Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Second edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), Eric Hobsbawm agreed with Gellner that the term “nationalism” means “primarily a principle which holds that the political and national unit should be congruent.” There must be political and national homogeneity or congruency. Hobsbawm saw modern nationalism as requiring near total identification with the nation. The political duty of citizens to their government/polity overrides all other public obligations. In extreme cases, such as war, “all obligations of whatever kind” are overridden. There is a totalitarian aspect to modern nationalism not present in feudal/agrarian societies where there were parallel or overriding allegiances to church, or religion. Hobsbawm does not regard a nation as a primary or unchanging social entity; it is a recent development. He agrees with Gellner that a nation is the product of “invention”, an “artifact”, the result of social engineering: “Nations as a natural, God-given way of classifying men, as an inherent…political destiny, are a myth.” Hobsbawm pointed out the ideological component of nationalism: “Nationalism comes before nations. Nations do not make states and nationalisms but the other way round.” Following Hegel and Marx, Hobsbawm sees states as existing in the context of a particular stage of technological and economic development. He agrees with Carleton Hayes that mass literacy, a mass media, a mass print media, a national public school system are concomitants of nationalism. You cannot have nationalism without them. So a development toward integral nationalism is inherent in nationalism itself. The greater the homogeneity of a nation, the greater is the development of “national consciousness” and the less are minorities tolerated. Hobsbawm cited the example of a national standardized Italian language emerging only through “TV programming”, only after television had allowed the homogenization of speech. Hobsbawm maintained that nationalism is constructed from above and from below. Gellner only examined the former. The official ideologies of states and of national movements are not necessarily the best guide to what the supporters actually think or believe. We cannot assume national identification excludes or is superior to other identifications. National identification can change with time. He adopted Miroslav Hroch’s three stage developmental model of nationalism/nationalist movements. In phase A, there is cultural, literary, and folkloric consciousness but not national or political consciousness. In Phase B, pioneers or militants emerge of the “nationalist idea” such as Alexander Ypsilanti or Giuseppe Mazzini, and political advocacy or agitation begins. In Phase C, the nationalist programs acquire mass popular support. For Hobsbawm, the transition between phase B and C is crucial. The transition occurred in Ireland before there was a national state. In the Third World, the transition does not normally occur even after a national state is created. Most often, the transition occurs after the state is formed.
Was the Holocaust based in Nationalism or Hitler’s Supranationalism?
Was the Holocaust due to the emergence of modern nationalism or was it based in the supranationalist anti-Semitism of Hitler? That is, can the Holocaust be explained as the product of the development of modern nationalism? Or, on the contrary, is the Holocaust due solely to the personal intervention of Adolf Hitler, having very little to do with modern nationalism? In The Holocaust in History, Marrus noted that “Holocaust specialists have presented a strong case for the ‘centrality’ of anti-Semitism in Nazi ideology, or the ‘uniqueness’ of the Holocaust.” But how important a factor was anti-Semitism in popular opinion during the Third Reich? In The ‘Hitler Myth’: Image and Reality in the Third Reich (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), Ian Kershaw showed that anti-Semitism was of “secondary importance” as a factor shaping public opinion in the Third Reich. Haffner in The Meaning of Hitler also showed that Hitler made a systematic and concerted conscious effort to control his anti-Jewish measures and statements because he did not want to antagonize or alienate the German public or foreign opinion. Following Kristallnacht, Hitler correctly gauged that there was little German popular support for such anti-Jewish actions according to Haffner. Moreover, Hitler concealed the Final Solution from the German public. The Nazi regime used euphemisms in bureaucratic/administrative language such as “evacuations”, “cleansing actions”, “removals” to hide the fact from its own people that it was committing genocide. As Kershaw demonstrated, after 1923, Hitler began relegating anti-Semitism to secondary importance and making Marxism the primary focus. This was done because anti-Semitism did not have a broad enough appeal nationally. Was the Holocaust a product of nationalism or due solely to Hitler’s personal initiative? In The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution (NY: Knopf, 1991), Richard Breitman cited Hans Mommsen who argued that Heinrich Himmler was chiefly responsible for the escalation in the “persecution of the Jews.” David Irving exonerates Hitler entirely and blames Himmler solely for the Holocaust. According to Martin Broszat, Hitler “shaped the climate and context of decision-making” with regard to the Holocaust but only approved it when it had already begun. In Mein Kampf (part I, 1925; part II, 1926), Hitler stated that it was a mistake in wartime not to kill those who were a liability to the nation when soldiers were dying on the battlefield, i.e., Jews and gypsies should be killed during a war. In 1939, Hitler announced that if there is a war, the Jews would face destruction. But these were ideas that only Hitler had and cannot be said to have any popular basis. As Marrus noted, even within the Nazi Party or Movement, only Hitler, Julius Streicher, and Alfred Rosenberg were committed, hard-core, ideologically-driven anti-Semites. Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Goering, Reinhard Heydrich, Rudolph Hess were not motivated by anti-Semitism. In the historiography of the Holocaust, “functionalist historians” argue that culpability for the Holocaust extends to the military, the civil service, the entire state apparatus. According to Raul Hilberg, the killing machine or “the machinery of destruction” needed no operator or master plan or blueprint: “In the final analysis the destruction of the Jews was not so much a product of laws and commands as it was a matter of spirit, of shared comprehension, of consonance and synchronization.” Hilberg saw Hitler as playing a “salient” role in the Holocaust and as activating the process, but then the machinery ran on its own. This shows the ultimate triumph of the state apparatus, which provided the “machinery” for the Holocaust.
Who was responsible for the Holocaust? One can argue that the Holocaust had nothing to do with nationalism but was motivated by Hitler’s own personal obsession. The contrary argument is that the Holocaust resulted as a natural end-result of modern nationalism. Modern nationalism by its very nature demands ethnic, racial, and religious homogeneity. Thus, modern nationalism made the Holocaust possible. Similarly, modern nationalism fuels the crises in Kosovo, Georgia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Chechnya, and the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Conclusion
Nationalism is a political ideology that has originated and evolved since its emergence after the French Revolution of 1789. Nationalism is based on the creation of a group fantasy and an “imagined community” based on a common language, common religion, common race or ethnicity, and a common culture. Nationalism is also the product of industrialization/modernization/capitalism. Both industrialization and nationalism require homogeneity in the society, ethnically, racially, culturally, linguistically. Nationalism and industrialism thus developed symbiotically, each reinforcing the other. So nationalism has both an ideological component and a component based in economic, social, and political development. Ideology and industrialization require homogeneity, standardization, mobility, and uniformity. Nationalism is thus based on homogeneity and a standardization and commonality of language, race, ethnicity, and culture. The logic and ideological imperative of nationalism demands homogeneity. Genocide or the destruction and elimination of minorities or those groups who threaten the homogeneity of the nation is assumed in nationalism. The logic of nationalism thus results in homogeneity that threatens heterogeneous minorities within these nations. Genocide is a by-product of modern nationalism. We cannot blind ourselves to the fact that nationalism by its very nature requires conformity and homogeneity. Indeed, modern industrialized society itself requires uniformity, standardization, and homogeneity. So nationalism and industrialized society offer many benefits but one of the costs is antipathy towards heterogeneity in any form. Genocide is thus the inevitable by-product of modern nationalism. All rights reserved, ¿ÞÓÛÕÔØ - 2003. Design and maintenance - www.proxy.co.yu web master |
