Why is nationalism often linked to racism, can you not be nationalistic and not be a racist?

Answer 1

This is why... I wrote this paper for my German History class at UTA and got an "A" for my efforts.

Nationalism:
The Defining Link between Adolf Hitler and the German People

Adolf Hitler was adored by his people. They did his bidding, even to the point of killing some six million Jews. No one seems to completely be able to explain why this phenomenon existed. There are so many theories that it makes one’s head spin.
One idea that seems to make logical sense is that of nationalism, a term derived from the word nation, “ ‘the collectivity of persons who have the same origin and, in general, speak the same language and posses a common tradition.’ ” It is a collective group consciousness. According to E.J. Hobsbawn, in his book, Nations and Nationalism since 1780, it is an “imagined community” 1.
Even though the concept of nationalism alone does not completely eradicate the confusion of so many theories about Adolf Hitler’s rise to power, it does seem that it comes closest to being an umbrella concept under which all others can reside. Hobsbawn explains the significance of language, religion, history and expansionism within the entire concept of nationalism. However, though valid they may be, his explanations seem rather nebulous. Perhaps the entire concept of nationalism is vague, at best.
Nationalism is a relatively new concept. It is not tribalism, even though it is a descendent of it. It does and does not have to do with boundaries… areas of land. Great Britain, is a nation, a small relatively insignificant land mass, and yet, because of its expansionism, includes Australia, Canada, New Zealand and many more small land masses, cumulatively called the United Kingdom, or the British Commonwealth. Therefore, nationalism equivocates both imagination and expansionism.
Nationalism does not stop here. There are other factors engaged in the concept. There are people involved, and these people must be willing to accept and act upon their nationalistic belief system. Often times they are neither well educated, intellectual, or astute as to just what their government is doing. Ignorance is, therefore, a factor in the role of nationalism. Hobsbaun continues, “We know too little about what went on, or for that matter, what still goes on in the minds of most relatively inarticulate men and women, to speak with any confidence about their thoughts and feelings toward the nationalities and nation-states which claim their loyalties.” 2
In Benidict Anderson’s book, Imagined Communities, Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, the author states, “Nation, nationality, nationalism-all have proved notoriously difficult to define, let alone to analyze.”3 This statement rings very true and it means that perhaps, we shall never have a perfect, concise definition of the word, ‘nationalism’. None the less, Anderson goes on to say, “With certain ferocity, Gellner (another historian) makes a comparable point when he rules that ‘Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self consciousness; it invents nations where they do not exist.’”4 This is exactly what Adolf Hitler did. He invented a nation which had not existed before his ascent to power.
Germany possessed some of the primary elements of this particular style of nationalism when Hitler took over on January 30, 1933. Almost all of the German populace were already considering themselves members of the Heimat. However, the expansionism quotient, was missing and the volk were very insecure as to their “imagined community” or nation on the world stage.
Possibly, the word ‘nation’ has one of its closest approximations in the German word, Heimat. The seeds of German nationalism are present in this word. Celia Applegate explains, “ …Heimat is where one is born, where one receives an education, comes to a conciousness of selfhood, adjusts oneself to family and society, or constructs a ‘social entity’.” Heimat, according to Applegate, connects the past with the presence, with the image of “‘homey tranquility and happiness,’” Heimat is a homeland…a part of an ‘imagined community’. Therefore, it is a part of nationalism. 5
Next we should find a definition for the German word, volk. In Martin Broszat’s book, German National Socialism, 1919-1945, he defines it as “…volk meaning people.” The word and its adjective counterpart, volkisch , tend to mean “…German extreme rightist movements and radical splinter groups whose most significant charisteristic was their opposition to Western tradition-often to capitalism…They emphasized antisemitism and anti-Catholicism.” 6
In Daniel Goldhagen’s book, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, the comparison between anti-Semitism and ‘nationalism’ is made. He considers nationalism to be very analogous to anti-Semitism. “The nationalistic beliefs and emotions themselves lie dormant and, like anti-Semitism, can be activated easily, quickly, and often with devastating consequences, when social or political conditions are such as to provoke them…the expression of nationalism, particularly in Germany, has gone hand in hand with the expression of anti-Semitism…” He deems nationalism and anti-Semitism to be very dangerous next door neighbors.7
The German people, under the liege of Adolf Hitler, so steeped in nationalism and anti-Semitism, had a strong sense of just who they were. “In Hitler’s phrase, Germany consisted of ‘Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuehrer’. i.e., one people/nation, one state, one government.”6 The volk were a part of the national community of Deutchland. They were superior to all other people.
Hitler took full advantage of this volkisch, nationalistic fervor. In 1934, unemployment was at an all time high, due mostly to the Great Depression, and the people, his people, needed someone to boost their sagging morale. Hitler gave them just that. The early Nazi membership included Germans from all walks of life. “Many of them were people whose lives and careers were unstable or indeed shattered.”9
Adolf Hitler declared war on unemployment, and promulgated state programs “that were designed to cement the ‘community of the people’ by bringing together youths with diverse backgrounds.”10 Hitler especially targeted the young. They were the ones left behind, mostly adrift during the period after World War I. They had no real ties to the past or the future. Because they were the most impressionable, and the easiest to mold into his model of the perfect Aryan state, or nation, called Deutchland, the Nazis spent a great deal of time, energy, and money on them .
“Diverse backgrounds” did not mean Jewish. It meant German…of the German nationality…the volk. In 1933, Hitler proposed “ ‘purging the nation and particularly of the intellectual classes of influences of foreign origin and racially foreign infiltration.’ He stated before representatives of the educated German elite ‘that immediate eradication of the majority of Jewish intellectuals from the cultural and intellectual life of Germany had to be carried out to assure Germany’s obvious right to the intellectual leadership of its own kind.”11 This spelled out a nationalistic platform. Nationalism means a group thought process of feeling superior to any outside people or perceived enemies.
Let us go back to the definition of the word nation, “the collectivity of persons who have the same origin and, in general, speak the same language and possess a common tradition.”
First of all, Hitler was working upon the assumption that Germany was a “nation”, and therefore its people (the volk) had the “same origin”, and had an “obvious right” to “leadership of its own kind”. This meant that the leadership of Germany should be carried out by Germans, not foreigners, and certainly not Jews. Hitler was appealing to the German people’s sense of none other than nationalism. Hitler utilized this approach when dealing with German men and women alike. They were informed that “their bodies belonged to the Volk.”12 That translates to…their bodies belong to the nation, to the German State, to Hitler. Hence, they must accept Hitler’s brand of nationalism as their creed, and unbelievably, they did just that, due to the fact that the basis for nationalism was already in place.
In his book, Ordinary Men, Reserve Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, Christopher Browning states that these brainwashed people were, “influenced and conditioned in a general way, imbued in particular with a sense of their own superiority and racial kinship as well as Jewish inferiority and otherness…”13 Their superiority was their German heritage, their nationality, hence, ‘nationalism’.
Browning goes on to write of the mass slaughtering of thousands upon thousands of Jews, the murders being performed by ordinary male citizens of Germany. He argues that the “dichotomy of racially superior Germans and racially inferior Jews, central to the Nazi ideology, could easily merge with the image of a beleaguered Germany surrounded by enemies.”14
The Germans were supposedly of the white race but they were not and are not a race, in and of themselves. However, they were a nation, set aside by the rest of the Western world due to World War I, and were made to feel not superior, but inferior because of their losing the war. Perhaps, they needed, psychologically, as a homogeneous group of people, to feel superior, as a nation, to another lesser group, in order to compensate for that loss. The Jews were, unfortunately, in their immediate proximity, and therefore were easy prey for them.
Adolf Hitler was very aware of this budding racism, he took complete advantage of it, and he utilized several ploys with which to cause the following explosion of anti-Semitism.
His best ploy was his speaking ability. Through it, Hitler seemed to possess an amazing capability to replace almost any existing doctrine with his own particular brand of nationalism and racism. One that was easily replaceable was religion.
Hitler was very astute in targeting women in this realm. Women were the keepers of the home, the foundation of religiosity. “As mothers they raised their children with religious values and as churchgoers they outnumbered the men.”15
These women were swept away by the Nazis, their grand ceremonies and their mysticism. The thousands of red and black flags were visually used to generate extreme nationalism on the part of the viewers. All of the pomp and circumstance quickly took the place of whatever religious beliefs these women might have held.
When Hitler became Chancellor, he easily defeated his religious competition. He told his followers, “I promise you a new Reich (kingdom) on earth!” He then went on to preach about “the inseparable trinity of state, movement, and Volk”.16 There is that word volk again…the people, the state, the nation, and collectively, nationalism.
Nationalism, racism and Christianity were amalgamated together to mobilize hatred for the Jews. The Jews’ sin of being “Christ killers” could no longer be removed by religious salvation. They were not German. They were the descendents of chimeras, half man, half beast, conceived from the fall of the Atlanteans and their sexual wanderings. There was no redemption for them. “The symbolic power and metaphorical implications of the new master concept of race gave anti-Semitism an explosive new change.”17
The Atlanteans were a mythological people whose country supposedly sank into the ocean long, long ago. German anti –Semitics took this mythological story, expanded it, and created one in which the Jews were blamed for this disaster and came about as a result of it. Since Atlantis sank, it makes one wonder just how Germans became their descendents. There is no historiographic evidence that I know of to support this notion.
Let us remember that Germany was not a “race”; it was a nation. “Race” was an artificial genetic elevation of nationalism, exaggerated upon by Hitler and the Nazis, with mythological lore and Charles Darwin’s assistance…“an imagined community”, i.e., the Heimat.
In his book, Hobsbawn comments, “The links between racism and nationalism are obvious. ”18 Here, he is in agreement with Goldhagen. Racial hatred fits hand in glove with the nationalistic stance of group superiority to all outsiders, not a part of one’s homeland or, in this case, Heimat. However, this may or may not be a true statement. It evokes Anthropology, and pre-history information which is mostly speculative. Never the less, this ‘Volkisch consciousness’, the ‘imagined community’ of the volk, became a pre-requisite for being German, and for being a Nazi. To be a Nazi was to be German. To be German was to be a Nazi. One could not be one without being the other. This was full blown nationalism.
Germany had become a very “abnormal society” fraught with racism and hatred for any one who was not German. The concentration camps were very indicative of the acting out of this hatred. 19A stamp of approval was placed upon these camps and their resident killers by the German government. Nationalism made it acceptable to kill the Jews, those beastly monsters who had invaded the Reich.
In the book, Many Kinds of Courage, An Oral History of World War II, by Richard Lidz, the publisher of Voices of World War II, a thirteen hour cassette presentation of actual audio from people who experienced the Nazi take over, one can read the words of Dr. Kurt Lange, a Jewish medical student in Berlin at the time of the “Night of the Broken Glass” in 1938. He and his wife escaped. They were two of the small number of fortunate Jews to escape Nazi Germany and come to the United States. In this first hand account, Dr. Lange states, “Socialism was something most people wanted, especially with the unemployment situation as it was, and nationalism-even extreme nationalism is a basic German characteristic…Using the appeals of socialism and nationalism, a demagogue like Hitler, who was also a fantastic speaker, could bring the masses to a frenzy and attract them to the National Socialist movement…It became increasingly clear that the Nazi leadership was not doing much that was of concrete benefit to the German people. Instead they appealed to their imagination, to their nationalism, to their myth making tendencies.” 20
In Ian Kershaw’s judgment, Nazism was much more than a product of excessive capitalism. “It was the outgrowth of extreme socio-political unrest and disaffection, with a most heterogeneous mass following ideologically integrated only through radical negative protest (anti-Marxism, Anti-Weimar, anti-Semitism) coupled with a chiliastic, pseudo-religious vision of a ‘national community’ (Volksgemeinschaft).” 21
A “national community” is an “imagined community”, because, by definition, that is what a nation is. Therefore, it is nationalism.
This nationalism was centred upon the widespread German volkisch belief that Germany, as a nation, deserved better treatment than it had received from the Allies at the end of World War I. The sad truth was that this belief was true. The German people were dealt a grievous blow by the enforcement of the Treaty of Versailles. Little did its authors know that the result of such harsh treatment would promote such extreme nationalism on the part of the Germans, and the rise of Adolf Hitler.
All of Hitler’s oratories elucidated this ideology. “Another fixed theory in the area of politics is the geopolitically-colored concept of the necessity and the mission of the German Bodenpolitik (settlement policy) which gave the nation the right to the acquisition of large areas in the East.”22 Hitler began with his disregard for the Treaty of Versailles, and then started expanding Germany’s “living space”. Czechoslovakia had a large German population and had been a part of Germany before the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler wanted it back. In 1938, he with the help of Neville Chamberlain, peacefully re-annexed Sudetenland. He then brought the entirety of Czechoslovakia into the fold.
Expansionism became a vital exponent of Hitler’s nationalistic platform. In 1933, Hitler had no problem convincing his top generals that he needed more armed forces to carry out his grand plan. “Hitler, for his part, lost no time in making plain to his cabinet that military spending was to be given absolute priority.”23
He immediately set about to re-arm Germany. He totally disregarded the Treaty of Versailles and ignored any concerns voiced by France, Great Britain or the United States. He was concerned only about the volk, the collective consciousness of the German people.
On September 1, 1939, he invaded Poland with the help of the Soviet Union. Poland became a part of greater Germany. Hitler and the Nazis went forward to perform the military acquisitions of Austria, Luxenbourg, Belgium, Holland, Norway, Denmark, and of course, France. .Adolf Hitler eventually conquered more land mass than either Napoleon or Alexander the Great. 24 There is no probable doubt that this was expansionism, and thus nationalism on an incredibly grandiose scale.
In some of the conquered countries, there was a sense of German nationalism already in place. In Austria, in the 1920’s, “…the overwhelming majority of their inhabitants want to join Germany.”25
The nationalism created by the Nazis in all of these conquered countries promulgated an enormous force to be reckoned with by the United States and Great Britain. Over fifty five million people died because of it.
Expansionism, according to Ian Kershaw was not totally a new phenomenon in Germany at the time of Hitler’s reign. He sites Fritz Fisher, another historian who “demonstrated the aggressive, expansionist war aims of Germany’s elites in the First World War…”26Once again, this is a reminder that the seeds of ‘nationalism’ had already been planted before Hitler came into power.
The Nazis were very smart men. They were opportunists. These seeds of nationalism were fully exploited. Kershaw goes on to say, “Since the Nazi diagnosis of Germany was in essence one of attitudes, values, and mentalities, it was these which they were attempting to revolutionize psychologically by replacing all class, religious, and regional allegiances by massively enhanced national awareness…”27 National awareness is nothing more than ‘nationalism’.
This “enhanced national awareness” was basically infused into the German populace through the use of propaganda. The Nazi propaganda machine became invaluable in accelerating this volkisch sentiment.
Propaganda served to justify the Nazis attack on all non-Germans in many ways, one of which was sterilization. Their hatred for anyone who was not one hundred percent German was expressed in this way. Blacks were targeted. So were Gypsies. The presence of Blacks in the German culture was called “the black curse”. Numerous posters were distributed to press this point. The Nazis saw any cross bred children , the products of unions between blacks and Germans to be a curse upon the homeland or Heimat. “In 1920 a certain Dr. Rosenberger asked: ‘Shall we silently accept that in future instead of the beautiful songs of white, pretty, well formed, intellectually developed, lively, healthy Germans, we will hear the raucous noise of horrific, broad skulled, flat nosed, ungainly, half human, syphilitic half castes on the bank of the Rhine?’” 28
These “Rhineland Bastards” were sterilized. So were the off springs of Gypsies, Sorbs, Kasubians, and Poles. The motive behind the sterilizations was to preserve the purity of the German race promoted by the “Institute for Anthropology, Heredity, and Eugenics in Berlin”.29
Nazi propaganda was used to promote the abuse of all prisoners in the concentration camps. It served as a tool to persuade the public that these prisoners deserved their mistreatment, regardless of their crime. Nationalistic pride justified these horrific death camps. “…the community-alien groups within the population were accepted and even approved provided that they were applied within a framework that was outwardly legal.”30
Prisoners in the concentration camps were considered to be guilty of treason, communism, homosexuality, or Jewry. If they were not guilty of those criminal offences, then they were probably mal-contents, foreigners, or just plain bad people. Regardless, they deserved their fate. Nationalism had convinced the German people that anyone who was not a loyal German, AKA Nazi, was not worthy of life. These prisoners were often used as slave labor, and thousands were literally worked to death.
Many large German companies collaborated with the Nazis in this horrible devastation of human life, including industrialists like I.G. Farben. These huge corporations were completely cognoscente of what was going on, but flatly did not care. “War was good for business…” So was slave labor. All of this inhumanity was performed under the guise of nationalism.
The horror of the concentration camps is best expressed by Goldhagen in his book, Hitler’s Willing Executioners. He makes it quite succinctly clear that in the history of mankind, there has unequivocally never been a genocide of such a colossal scale as that of Nazi Germany. He states that “Among the Germans who ruled directly over the empire of torment and death, cruelty became normative and well-nigh universal.”31
Few Germans protested or disapproved of the Nazi’s abhorrent behavior, and those who did fell as subjects to conformity. There was no one group of people in the entirety of the German nation who either cared enough or had the courage to stand up to the dictator, Adolf Hitler and his associates.
The absolute horror of Nazi Germany can never be explained away by any one ideology, but, at least, the extreme nationalism which was fed and nurtured by the Nazis under the tutelage of Adolf Hitler makes it a little more comprehensible.
Nationalism is not evil exclusively unto itself, but under the right circumstances, as in Germany in the early part of the twentieth century, it can become a vicious, malicious tool for a modern dictatorship, borne from within that wonderful, sacred concept revered so much in the United States, called democracy.

Answer 2

In Greece we use two terms that look alike but are not the same: Ethnicism and Ethnism. I do not know if there is something similar in English. The first term is the nationalist who is imperialist. In most countries such people might be concerned as Fascists and so racists also. The second term means the man who loves his country he is just a patriot and not a racist or something like this. Now the second term is almost never used now days and i believe that this is happening in other countries to. The thing is that if somebody tries to talk for his country and against globalisation then some "wise and democratic" people treat him as he is a Nazi or he talks for a curse or something. So, my opinion is that whoever loves his country, wants to keep his tradition and remember his history and is also open minded and does not afraid of the foreigners is not a racist but a necessary person for the society

Answer 3

Because nationalism is the greatest love of ones country.

The race angle is very simple. Black people have never founded one prosperous country in the history of the world. Countries controlled primarily by black folks are riddled with disease, starvation and low life expectancy. If you love your country you will try to avoid this by keeping minorities out.

Liberals will say nationalism is about hate for others, but there has never been any evidence of this. Nationalism stems from the love of your own, not the hate of another.

See liberals don't mind black nationalism, whites being slaughtered in South Africa, the Black Panthers, or black athletes giving the "black power" salute at the Olympics; they only hate white culture.

In short, yes you can be nationalistic without being a racist, but you'd also be foolish.

www.nationalist.org

Answer 4

I am a Scots Nationalist Isupport the SNP - Scottish National Party) who wants independence for Scotland from the rest of the UK. My best friends are Polish & Brasilian, my wife is also Brasilian. So, I am a Nationalist, but certainly not a racist. I hope this answers your question. Many of my friends from other countries that have come to Scotland also vote SNP. There are loads of Asian members for example. It's different in the USA though where that bunch of Nazi's the Republicans have "Homeland Security". If you ask me that sounds too much like "Fatherland Security" for my liking.

Answer 5

Nationalism is tied to organisations like the Nazis and the National Front in the UK and France. Those organisations are all racist so that's where the connection comes from. I think that nationalism leads to racism so easily because it is a bit jingoistic and self centered.
If you were nationalistic about a nation that was multicultural, it wouldn't be that racist, as long as you treated each member of the nation equally. However, you might still harbor racist feelings, and dismiss members of your nation as "some of the good ones" as opposed to those of the same race in their home country.

Answer 6

We can thank the far left for obscuring the true meaning of nationalism. No, it is not racism and yes you can be nationalistic w/o being a racist.

Answer 7

The desire to seek political independence (nationalism) and the animosity towards other races (racism) are two separate issues. You can definitely be a nationalist and not a racist.

Answer 8

You can be a Nationalist w/out being a racist. The liberals don't think you can't. There are alot of bad in each race. More of us Americans need to stand up for AMERICA, because we are loosing it day by day

Answer 9

Nationalism is the next step up from patriotism (according to the dictionary).
Why should it be racist to be patriotic?
Perhaps the people who are racist disguise their opinions by claiming they're patriotic / nationalistic.

On the other hand a number of immigrants feel the need to define their own origin by displaying flags etc on their cars ,T shirts etc. They're being patriotic for their country of origin but it can offend others.

Answer 10

Of course being nationalistic and patriotic is not being racist. You should be encouraged to show national pride, not fear being called 'racist' in doing so. Labour tries to slap down English nationalism when people are told to take down their England flags from their houses during a football tournament. People flying flags from cars were banned by local councils form flying it because of 'health and safety'. They reckon it may fly off and injure somebody. Absolute bull. Fly your England flag and wear your shirt with pride and tell the polictically correct idiots to p*** off. I have black friends, asian friends but still show national pride.

Answer 11

Yes you can be nationalistic and not be a racist, but perhaps you'd need to call yourself a multi-nationalist. Nationalists tend to be racist as they believe in the country just being here for white British people. The fact that we have genuine 'ethnic' British people being born and living here (and have done for years) seems to escape them.