01 April 2022

Nationalism's deadly allure

In my book, Political Visions and Illusions, I treat nationalism as an ideology that makes too much of nation, according it the reverence rightly belonging to God alone. When I was still teaching, I openly admitted to my students that I had a certain blind spot with respect to nationalism. I could easily see the moments of truth in liberalism, conservatism, socialism, and democratism, but I found it more difficult to do so with respect to nationalism. I understand in principle that solidarity among people sharing similar characteristics is a genuine good. In our society, which claims to value diversity and encourages a navel-gazing focus on individual identity, we need a countervailing emphasis on the things that bring us together. This applies to nations as well as to the other communities of which we are part. But national solidarity can also breed unhealthy conformism and a tendency to vilify those deemed outside the nation. Moreover, it tends to suppress those other communities by demanding an ultimate allegiance we owe only to God.

My paternal roots are in Cyprus, which has a Greek-speaking, Orthodox Christian majority and a Turkish-speaking, Sunni Muslim minority. Prior to the division of the island nearly half a century ago, the ratio between the two communities was approximately 4 to 1. When the island became independent in 1960 after 82 years of British rule, many Greek Cypriots thought this a second-best status to outright union (enosis) with Greece. I told the story of Cyprus last year in this post: Dampening the culture wars, 9: Cyprus. Here is a brief excerpt:

Amongst the Greek population of Cyprus there began a movement to unite Cyprus with Greece (enosis). In 1914 Britain actually offered the island to Athens as an incentive for it to enter the war on the side of the Triple Entente. But King Constantine I (1868-1923) was brother-in-law to the German Kaiser and was reluctant to take his country into the conflict. When Greece finally did join the Entente in 1917 following the King's abdication, the offer had expired and was never extended again. In 1931 Greek Cypriots launched an uprising in favour of enosis and in the process burned down Government House, the seat of the colonial governor. A referendum on enosis was held by the Church of Cyprus in 1950 in which a large majority of Greek Cypriots voted in favour. (Turkish Cypriots were excluded, and the ballot was not secret!) On 1 April 1955 the National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters (EOKA) launched a guerrilla war against the British led by General George Grivas (1897-1974). This further poisoned relations between the Greek and Turkish communities in the island. The war ended in 1959, and the island became the independent Republic of Cyprus the following year.

Naturally Turkish Cypriots were unenthusiastic about their homeland becoming part of a greater Greece in which their own minority status would be vastly diminished.

Some of my relatives were intimidated and threatened by the EOKA terrorists. One of my father's sisters found herself in this situation, and our immediate family brought her over to the States to live with us until she married a Greek American the following year. Sad to say, the guerrilla war divided Greek Cypriot families over the wisdom of uniting the island with a supposed Greek motherland of which it had never been part. That Greece might have drained the island's resources through taxation and other means did nothing to dampen the aspirations of the pro-enosis Greek nationalists. Despite ethnic nationalists' aspirations to unite all Greeks within one political community, they could only divide and cause misery as flesh-and-blood human beings got in the way of their all-consuming goals.

Even the civic nationalism characterizing such countries as France and the United States has its dangers. Americans aim to be inclusive in their understanding of their nation, and this is entirely laudable. At its best, to be an American means, not to belong to a particular racial stock, but to adhere to certain ideals associated with the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the other founding documents. In his efforts to enfranchise American blacks, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., could appeal to the Constitution and to the best ideals of his fellow citizens. This would be much more difficult to accomplish in a nation thought to be formed around a particular genetic stock. 

Nevertheless, I dislike seeing national flags in church sanctuaries, although some Christians defend the practice for modest reasons. But flags always symbolize something, and that something is not necessarily innocuous. During a visit to Cyprus in the 1990s, I was not happy to see Orthodox churches and monasteries flying the flag of Greece outside their buildings, in what appeared to be a noxious holdover from the church's encouragement of EOKA terror four decades earlier.

Now, as I see what is happening between Russia and Ukraine, and especially Patriarch Kirill's tepid call for peace while supporting Putin's toxic nationalism, I am reminded of what happened in Cyprus two generations ago. In its quest to unite and to make nations whole, nationalism tears communities apart and leaves misery in its wake. Like the other secular ideologies, it does not respect the legitimate pluriformity of authorities making up an ordinary society: everything, including state, church, marriage, family, school, labour union, business enterprise, and so forth, must be subordinated to the nation, deemed to claim our ultimate loyalty.

Despite my admitted blind spot, I freely admit that we can affirm the legitimacy of loyalty to nation, however it be defined. But in all things we need to be discerning. We must constantly be alert to the peril of crossing the often indistinct line between proper allegiance and idolatrous devotion.

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