Ross Douthat recently suggested that President Trump had failed to adequately address the coronavirus crisis, and that this failure was difficult to explain given Trump’s emphasis on protecting our borders from foreign threats. I see his point, but I also believe that Douthat has somewhat misunderstood Trump’s core values. In order to fully explain why I’ll need to make a rather long digression discussing the difference between patriotism and nationalism. This distinction is easiest to see by looking at some examples from around the world.
Patriotism means love of one’s country. An Indian patriot loves the people who live in India. In contrast, an Indian nationalist loves Indian Hindus, both inside and out of India. A Chinese patriot loves the people who live in China; a Chinese nationalist loves the Han people, wherever they live. The same concept applies to Russian patriots and nationalists, Hungarian patriots and nationalists, Japanese patriots and nationalists, Turkish patriots and nationalists, etc. For nationalists, minorities such as Muslims, Kurds, Roma, Koreans, and others don’t quite count.
In America, patriots love all ethnic groups, whereas nationalists favor white Americans. Patriots see African-Americans and Hispanics as real Americans. Immigration from Africa is not seen as something that would change America; rather a lack of immigration from Africa would change America, gradually reducing the African-American share of the population. Nationalists drive through neighborhoods with non-white faces and say that they don’t feel like they are in America. In their hearts, they wish it were a more white country. American patriots see African-Americans and Hispanics as a valuable asset, whereas nationalists see them as a liability.
There are of course many other differences between patriots and nationalists:
1. Patriots favor free trade while nationalists favor protectionism.
2. Patriots favor immigration while nationalists oppose immigration (outside their ethnic group.)
3. Patriots favor freedom and democracy, whereas nationalists try to suppress the political power of minorities and (when in power) favor more authoritarian policies.
4. Patriots are serious people, while nationalists tend to make childish jokes about violence against those that they see as not on their side.
5. Patriots favor an honest account of their country’s flaws so that it can learn from its mistakes, whereas nationalists promote a fake history that covers up embarrassing incidents from the past. Here it’s useful to recall the different approaches to history in Japan and Germany. The Germans recoiled from nationalism after WWII and honestly confronted their mistakes. The somewhat more nationalistic Japanese did this to a much lesser extent.
I see dishonesty as a core nationalist concept, as the ideology cannot easily survive in an environment of honest inquiry. Thus nationalist governments hide their true intentions in order to appear patriotic. It’s embarrassing to admit that some people in your country just don’t count. And the structure of nationalism requires a belief that the dominant ethnic group is somehow superior (even if only morally, as in the cases where the dominant group is less well educated). When nationalists are in power, this requires covering up failures in order to make the nation seem “great again”.
I believe this is what Douthat gets wrong about Trump. President Trump’s core beliefs don’t revolve around this or that policy issue; they are based on a vision of American greatness, especially white American greatness. An honest engagement with the coronavirus epidemic would have required an admission of weakness. An admission that the US government had been asleep at the wheel, that the crisis might cause a recession, that many Americans might die. This conflicted with Trump’s belief that he was making the nation great again. At a local level, this same dynamic led the Wuhan government to initially cover up the epidemic.
Douthat portrays “cosmopolitans” as ideologues that are obsessed with ideas like “open borders”. That may be true of a few cosmopolitans, but most (like me) are pragmatists who were quite comfortable with reasonable measures to control the epidemic. Douthat seems to believe that while Trump is a highly flawed figure, there is a core of Trump’s nationalist agenda that is good. He might view the description of nationalism in this post as a crude caricature, just as I view his description of cosmopolitanism as an over-simplification.
Communists sometimes argue that places like the Soviet Union did not represent true communism, and that Marx’s ideal was never really tried. But I’m not interested in any sort of mythical “true communism”, what matters to me is actual existing communism as was practiced in the 20th century. Similarly, I view “true nationalism” as a chimera. All that matters is the actual nationalism we see in India, Russia, China, Hungary, Turkey, Japan and the United States. Or the earlier nationalism of Mussolini, Hitler, Peron, Stalin and similar historical figures.
When people try to describe a “good nationalism” they are generally either describing patriotism, or are confused about what’s good for a country, as when they promote protectionist economic policies. I wish conservative intellectuals like Douthat would give up on nationalism, as his core beliefs are (in my view) more closely aligned with patriotism. Similarly, people who favor the Nordic economic model should stop talking about “socialism”, and use a term that better describes highly free market economies with extensive social welfare systems, perhaps social democracy.
READER COMMENTS
Garrett
Mar 10 2020 at 1:46pm
“Nationalism” and “Socialism” are useful buzzwords because they rile up the other side. This makes it easier to identify the enemy. You can say things to your team like “stupid Republicans think we want to be the Soviet Union when we really want to be like Norway because they aren’t really listening to us. Also for what it’s worth Cuba is doing great,” or “stupid Democrats think we want to be Nazi Germany when we really want to be like America in the 50’s because they aren’t really listening to us. Also for what it’s worth Duterte is really making his country great.”
Loquitur Veritatem
Mar 10 2020 at 1:49pm
I disagree with your characterization of patriotism and nationalism. You say, for example:
I would say that an Indian patriot loves his country in the abstract, that is, the values that he believes it stands for. An Indian nationalist is someone who not only loves his country but wants it to be respected and treated fairly by the rest of the world; that is, he wants an India that is (inter alia) capable of defending itself against external threats and vigilant against the importation of anti-Indian values.
An Indian Hindu, to take your specific example, may be a patriot and a nationalist. The same is true the citizens of other nations, not least including Americans. I am an American patriot and an American nationalist. As a white person of British-French-German descent, I haven’t the least bit of animus to any American of a different racial, national, or ethnic origin as long as that person supports the values upon which America was founded and wants to defend those values (and his fellow-Americans’ liberty and prosperity) against foreign free-loaders and enemies.
Given that, I would say that Bernie Sanders is an American in name only, while Thomas Sowell is an American to the core. Other examples abound, but you get the idea.
Scott Sumner
Mar 10 2020 at 5:23pm
You can define terms how you like, but I am talking about actual nationalism as it’s practiced in the real world by people like Modi. That’s nothing like the positive picture that you try to paint.
Christophe Biocca
Mar 10 2020 at 2:10pm
You’ve defined patriotism so narrowly that few Americans qualify. Take #1:
Most Americans (like most humans) subscribe to a mercantilist-lite outlook, and hence favor protectionism. This isn’t because they think it’ll hurt minorities, it’s because they’ve got inaccurate beliefs about how trade works, and due to those beliefs they think they can make the country (and everyone in it) better off by taxing imports.
Seems weird to tie a label like “patriotic” to an understanding of specific economic concepts.
Scott Sumner
Mar 10 2020 at 5:24pm
Polls suggest that most Americans think trade is good for America.
Christophe Biocca
Mar 10 2020 at 8:25pm
If you’re talking about the Gallup poll on trade, it’s worth looking at the phrasing of the question:
That is, the mercantilist position on trade (exports good, imports bad) is taken as a given in the question itself. It’s so ingrained in common understanding that even the people trying to write a neutral question about whether trade is good end up baking in mercantilist assumptions.
So, sure, people are more positive about trade, but they’re still so using a mental model that poorly maps to reality, and predict that tariffs can help the economy. Otherwise “patiently tries to explain to the pollster that exports are a cost and imports are the benefit” would be the most popular response.
Andre
Mar 10 2020 at 2:31pm
“In America, patriots love all ethnic groups, whereas nationalists favor white Americans.”
I disagree. To me this appears to be bubble thinking. You’re conflating nationalists with white nationalists; they’re not the same at all. It’s similar to thinking that Trump voters must be racists.
How about steelmanning the other side: nationalists believe the country ought to prioritize its own citizens.
Scott Sumner
Mar 10 2020 at 5:25pm
I am talking about actual existing nationalism as it’s practiced all over the world, not some idealized version that you might prefer.
Thomas Sewell
Mar 11 2020 at 12:00am
I agree. I think Scott has missed the mark here. He’s describing a strawman version of “nationalism” and then trying to justify it via an appeal to specific nationalists who also have additional beliefs.
Here’s an actual definition of nationalism:
As much as I’m against many forms of nationalism, there’s nothing inherent in it about a specific race at all unless you begin by assuming a nation only consists of one specific race.
So for what it’s worth, here’s a definition of nation:
I’ve added the emphasis on the word “or”, which is the key word that Scott and parts of his social/literary circle seem to forget about. An American nationalist would promote the unique american culture of those living in the nation, ignoring their skin color unless they’re also a racist (like too many on the left who believe that’s all that matters).
P Burgos
Mar 13 2020 at 11:15pm
While I don’t agree with everything in the post, I think that Sumner is describing something real about many of the nationalist groups around the world today. It really does seem to be the case that the currently existing nationalist groups and movements around the world aren’t just about their own country and/or ethnicity, but rather the “us” versus “them” mentality is integral to those movements. I think it makes sense to try to use language to distinguish between groups for which an “us” vs. “them” worldview is an essential glue versus groups that are self focused but don’t feature that same kind of mentality.
Michael Sandifer
Mar 11 2020 at 4:03am
Prioritizing ones own citizens makes for bad economics. Trade and immigration restrictions, for example, make countries weaker economically.
Andre
Mar 11 2020 at 6:09am
“Prioritizing ones own citizens makes for bad economics.”
Not prioritizing means taxes get equally divided across the world’s 7+ billion. Regardless of the tax rate you pick, that leaves next to nothing for a social safety net and other basic services for the country that fails to prioritize.
The claim strikes me as ludicrous. I doubt taxes spread globally would go very far. Trying to figure out the outcome would be an interesting conceptual exercise, but I have a hunch any system that doesn’t prioritize its own citizens would crumble politically.
Under the assumption that most people would live in countries that would prefer to take than give, pretty soon we’d be under a totalitarian thumb or back to throwing rocks at each other.
nobody.really
Mar 10 2020 at 3:14pm
“No high minded man, no man of right feeling, can contemplate the lumbering and slovenly lying of the present day without grieving to see a noble art so prostituted….
No fact is more firmly established than that lying is a necessity of our circumstances — the deduction that it is then a Virtue goes without saying. No virtue can reach its highest usefulness without careful and diligent cultivation — therefore, it goes without saying that this one ought to be taught in the public schools — even in the newspapers….
[Skillful lying is] the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man’s best and surest friend.”
Mark Twain, “On the Decay of the Art of Lying,” 1885
Weir
Mar 11 2020 at 1:02am
“What is the Third Estate? Everything. What has it been heretofore in the political order? Nothing. What does it demand? To become something.”
Emmanuel Sieyes, “Qu’est ce que le Tiers-etat?” 1789
A plausible candidate if someone wanted to find the core or the root or the fons et origo.
Let’s look at it from the point of view of King Louis. Democracy isn’t something you approve of. But you’re not going to be able to huff and puff that all these democratic rabble-rousers are exactly like Mussolini and Hitler. Mussolini and Hitler haven’t been born yet.
You’re King Louis, and you just like the way things used to be, before all the recent unrest. Until 1788, the parliament hadn’t met since 1614. And all was right with the world.
Or let’s take the point of view of a young Elizabeth Warren voter instead. You think studious and intelligent people like yourself have been ignored for too long.
Bailouts for students? That’s the kind of policy that a compassionate leader is going to get behind, because students are the backbone of society. The honest American student deserves recognition, for once, and protection and a sympathetic ear.
Now I could huff and puff that this Elizabeth Warren voter is secretly a white nationalist. I could try to intimidate the student with that particular tactic. But something like a national liberation movement for indebted students, a nationalist movement for graduates, isn’t really about ethnicity, is it? It would be pretty obvious that I was changing the subject from class to race. It would be pretty obvious that I was just trying to bully these kids into silence. They need to know their place. The government was working fine before these kids barged in trying to burn everything down.
Sovereigns and subjects. The court and the country. Elites and masses. The enlightened ruler and the benighted peasantry. Clear away all the ink about how we represent true democracy in its streamlined, uncorrupted form, uncorrupted by any mere election results, and we’re taking about class. We’re saying that democracy doesn’t need a parliament because true democracy is permanent rule by my own class, because my class is just objectively correct. We don’t have to justify ourselves to people who don’t count, and we don’t need their consent.
Mark Z
Mar 10 2020 at 3:34pm
I think the equation of nationalism with ethno-racial supremacy is excessive, perhaps more analogous to equating socialism with communism. I also don’t really see how your take helps explain Trump’s response to the epidemic. Is he behaving in a way that suggests he’s trying to protect white people? I don’t think so. I think a simpler, if less dramatic, model for explaining Trump’s behavior is: “stock market up, good, stock market down, bad.”
Self-identified nationalists like Ramesh Ponnuru disagree with your definition, and debates over the ‘true’ definition of nationalism (or socialism) are probably fruitless. We might defer to consensus, but then I expect the majority of Americans who self-identify as nationalists are not white supremacists.
The core problem isn’t really whether people are using the ‘correct’ definition – annoying as it is when people try to substitute private definitions for consensus definitions – but the internal consistency of one’s definition. The main issue with the socialist saying “we want Scandinavia, not Venezuela” is that if Scandinavia countries are are socialist, then socialism must be consistent with the privatization of many public services, social security, low corporate income tax rates, billionaires, and big companies earning large profits for their rich shareholders. Most American socialists don’t seem to believe these particular things are consistent with socialism. Their particular policy views contradict the claim that Scandinavian countries are socialist. I don’t doubt nationalists are inconsistent between their abstract definition and particular views as well. I’m generally more concerned about the persistent use of motte and bailey type definitions/arguments than about which definition is correct, especially for words so divisive that a broad consensus definition is impossible.
Scott Sumner
Mar 10 2020 at 5:43pm
See my reply to others.
Daniel Kahn
Mar 10 2020 at 3:38pm
Your post is heavily reliant on your definitions. I’m a rootless cosmopolitan but to give nationalism its due there are other more positive definitions to consider. Here’s one from Michael Brendan Dougherty as patriotism in an irritated state:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/nationalism-definition-loyalty-irritated/
Scott Sumner
Mar 10 2020 at 5:38pm
It might help if I used an analogy. Suppose I criticized 20th century communism. Someone might ask “Exactly what do you mean by communism? Are your referring to the ideas of Karl Marx?”
Here’s how I’d respond to that question: “No, I’m referring to actual existing communist regimes in the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba, Cambodia and Eastern Europe.”
When I criticize nationalism, I’m referring to actual existing nationalistic regimes in a number of countries, both today and in the interwar period, not to what a writer in the National Review regards as nationalism.
Is a good nationalism possible? Is a good communism possible? I can’t rule out that possibility, but it seems highly unlikely to me.
Alexander Turok
Mar 10 2020 at 10:01pm
The comparison is flawed because the countries cited as examples of communism were run by governments that considered themselves communist. In contrast, the “actual exist nationalistic regimes” you cite seem to have no unifying factor other than you desiring to tar some by associating them with others. Some were openly ethnic nationalist, others, like Peron’s regime in Argentina, were nationalistic but not ethno-nationalist, others like Stalin’s were neither and harshly suppressed self-described nationalist movements.
Brian Donohue
Mar 10 2020 at 3:41pm
The thing is, patriotism doesn’t bind like nationalism. Try telling Kurds that they should just be good Iraqis, Iranians, Turks, or Syrians depending on where Woodrow Wilson drew some lines.
For good or ill, nationalism is a powerful force in this world. Most patriotism is built on a foundation of nationalism, apart from a couple of oddballs like the USA, which was built on ideas.
Scott Sumner
Mar 10 2020 at 5:43pm
Lots of our institutions were built on fairly disreputable concepts, but evolved to something better. Even the family was built on a regressive institution where wives were property, and evolved to something better. People may first unite for nationalistic reasons, but should strive to discard the nationalism and adopt patriotism. For instance, the Japanese should strive to overcome their historical attitudes toward Koreans, and begin regarding ethnic Koreans in Japan as being just as valuable citizens as the ethnic Japanese.
sty.silver
Mar 10 2020 at 4:13pm
Arguing what nationalism is is, of course, pointless. Fundamentally, nationalism is a sound/word that people can utter or write to communicate something.
However, your tone makes it sound like your descriptions are meant to be more than just a working definition. I strongly suspect that you don’t mean to claim that the word fundamentally means anything. So is your claim that
– The description matches how these terms have been used historically, i.e., people who described themselves as nationalists/patriots largely had these views?
– The description is useful because it makes Trump a clear-cut nationalist?
or something else, or both, or is it just meant to be a working definition after all?
Scott Sumner
Mar 10 2020 at 5:32pm
I am using the term to describe actual, real world nationalism, both in the interwar period and today. That’s why I provided specific examples.
Alan Goldhammer
Mar 10 2020 at 5:45pm
I thought this to be a well thought out piece. It’s pretty much in tune with my thoughts about Trump’s thinking. Jill Lepore in her recent history of America book covers similar themes (it’s a very well written and interesting book BTW). My favorite political scientist Richard Hoffstadter also covered similar themes and of course we have the great and short book by Eric Hoffer, “The True Believer” that discusses these two ideological approaches.
Alexander Turok
Mar 10 2020 at 8:09pm
Can you give an example of a difference between what you call “patriotism” and what the man on the street calls “liberalism?” With the exception of your “patriots” favoring free trade, you could replace “patriots” with “liberals” and it would be indistinguishable from something a self-identified liberal would write.
So basically patriotism is the love of the people who happen to inhabit a state. I notice you don’t even specify citizenship, merely inhabiting a state is all that should matter. Do there even exist Hungarian, Japanese, and Turkish “patriots?” Hungarian nationalism arose in opposition to the Austrian state. When Hungary became independent it was the near-unanimous opinion that it should attempt to claim the areas of neighboring countries populated by ethnic Hungarians. Nobody said “hey, no, it’s the state borders the Allies drew that really matter.” Turkey, Hungary, and most of the states of Eastern Europe were justified as ethnically-based nation-states. If ethnicity didn’t matter they wouldn’t have been created in the first place.
This sentence gives away the game. You recognize that if 13% of Americans are black and less than 13% of immigrants are black, that would gradually change America. If you were to apply this consistently you’d have to say that this applies to all groups, if 61% of Americans were white and less than 61% of immigrants were white, this would gradually change America too. What you’re doing here is trying to disguise liberal identity politics in the mask of color-blind “patriotism.” Dishonesty is a core “patriot” value.
What kind of “nationalist” was Stalin? What ethnic group was he interested in favoring?
Michael Sandifer
Mar 11 2020 at 4:22am
Stalin publicly condemned nationalism, but in reality there were many examples of ethnic cleansing. Stalin’s distrust of minorities was not equal, and I believe he was going to begin a large campaign to purge Soviet Jews before his death, after decades of attacks on Jews as “rootless cosmopolitans”.
One big reason nationalists lie is because, just like with communism, the nationalist approach to economics doesn’t work well. It’s inherently inferior to neoliberalism, and so nationalist leaders feel the need to lie to cover their failings.
In fact, if you look at nationalist leaders around the world, you’ll almost exclusively find their economies doing more poorly than previously, and that was before the pandemic.
Alexander Turok
Mar 11 2020 at 12:03pm
That does not answer my question. Stalin’s Russia was an internationalist regime both in theory and in practice, with many non-Russians including Stalin himself in positions of power. No self-described nationalist at the time, whether Russian or non-Russian, would have been a fan of his regime.
Historically speaking classical liberal economics was often associated with nationalism and the broader right-wing in general. Many libertarians today see an advantage to emphasizing their alignment with the left, understandable since the Left is the “Strong Horse” and National Review-style conservatism is the “Weak Horse.
I haven’t seen this. India’s economy’s doing fine.(Which doesn’t in any way excuse the human rights violations.) Turkey’s economy is in a dump but you could hardly blame nationalism for it; Turkey’s been “nationalistic” since its birth, the competition there is between secular and Islamic flavors of nationalism. China has slowly moved away from internationalist Marxism toward a civically-based nationalism and it was doing fine until corona.
Michael Sandifer
Mar 11 2020 at 4:12am
Very well-written post. The approach is thoughtful and fair.
Josh S
Mar 13 2020 at 1:22am
Your points on nationalism remind me of Umberto Eco’s points on fascism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism#Umberto_Eco). I’d argue Trump fits his definition fairly well:
Lack of coherent ideology.
Rejection of modernism and rational thought.
Action without thinking.
Treating disagreement and critique as treason.
Racism and fear of diversity or people who are different.
Appeals to a frustrated middle class.
Obsession with plots, conspiracies everywhere. Scapegoating of minorities.
Contempt for the weak.
Machismo, disdain for women and “nonstandard” sexual habits.
Demands for fealty and conformity at the expense of individual will.
Delegitimizing legislative bodies, under pretense of corruption.
Newspeak, impoverished vocabulary (e.g. “fake news”).
I don’t see anyone arguing for “true fascism” though clearly there’s a large subset of Americans who will gladly vote for fascism as it exists in the real world.
Hazel Meade
Mar 13 2020 at 1:54pm
I’m not sure if nationalism necessarily need imply ethnocentrism, but there is certainly a strong overlap between ethnocentrists and nationalists. I think the main difference is that patriots just love their country, while nationalists want their country to dominate others – militarily or economically. Often nationalism involves an ethnocentric component though, and there is definitely a large component of ethnocentrism among Trump’s supporters on the right. Like there are really (at least) 3 categories – patriots, nationalists, and ethno-nationalists. Trump supporters fall in all 3 categories. It’s a spectrum.
Comments are closed.