1 What Is Nationalism? Nationalism is a political, social, and economic system characterized by the promotion of the interests of a particular nation, especially with the aim of gaining and maintaining sovereignty (self-governance) over the homeland. The political ideology of nationalism holds that a nation should govern itself, free from outside interference and is linked to the concept of self-
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1
What Is Nationalism?
Nationalism is a political, social, and economic system characterized by the promotion of the
interests of a particular nation, especially with the aim of gaining and maintaining sovereignty
(self-governance) over the homeland. The political ideology of nationalism holds that a nation
should govern itself, free from outside interference and is linked to the concept of self-
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determination. Nationalism is further oriented towards developing and maintaining a national
identity based on shared, social characteristics, such as culture and language, religion and
politics, and a belief in a common ancestry. Nationalism, therefore, seeks to preserve a nation's
culture, by way of pride in national achievements, and is closely linked to patriotism, which, in
some cases, includes the belief that the nation should control the country's government and the
means of production.
What are the types of nationalism?
Ethnic nationalism.
Civic nationalism.
Expansionist nationalism.
Romantic nationalism.
Cultural nationalism.
Revolutionary nationalism.
Post-colonial nationalism.
Liberation nationalism.
Nationalism centers on a country's culture, language, and often race. It may also include shared
literature, sports, or the arts, but is primarily driven by cultural associations. And, it promotes the
nation at the expense of others. Nationalist countries or leaders don't join international
organizations or associations, and maintain a superior view of themselves to the detriment of
other nations. Nationalism has a positive view of conquering other nations as it sees itself as the
ultimate nation. Any ideologies that undercut or contradict the nation are opposed.
Europe and nationalism: A country-by-
country guide
10 September 2018
Across Europe, nationalist and far-right parties have made significant electoral gains. Some have
taken office, others have become the main opposition voice, and even those yet to gain a political
foothold have forced centrist leaders to adapt.
In part, this can be seen as a backlash against the political establishment in the wake of the
financial and migrant crises, but the wave of discontent also taps into long-standing fears about
globalisation and a dilution of national identity.
Although the parties involved span a broad political spectrum, there are some common themes,
such as hostility to immigration, anti-Islamic rhetoric and Euroscepticism.
So where does this leave Europe's political landscape?
Catalonia
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Catalonia has been part of Spain since its genesis as a united state in the 15th century, when King
Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile married and united their realms. The area
first emerged as a distinct entity with the rise of the County of Barcelona to pre-eminence in the
11th century. In the 12th century, the county was brought under the same royal rule as the
neighbouring kingdom of Aragon, going on to become a major medieval sea power..
Initially retaining its own institutions, the region was ever more tightly integrated into the
Spanish state, until the 19th century ushered in a renewed sense of Catalan identity, which
flowed into a campaign for political autonomy and even separatism. The period also saw an
effort to revive Catalan as a language of literature.
The use of Catalan - a language as close to regional languages of southern France like Occitan as
it is to Castilian Spanish - has equal status with Castilian and is now actively encouraged in
education, official use and the media. However, Castilian predominates in Barcelona, and is still
the first language of a narrow majority of Catalans, who are nearly all bilingual.
Variants are also spoken in the region of Valencia to the south, and on the Balearic islands,
leading many Catalan nationalists to regard all three regions- as well as the traditionally Catalan-
speaking Roussillon region of France - as forming the "Catalan Countries". Catalan is the
national language of Andorra.
When Spain became a republic in 1931, Catalonia was soon given broad autonomy. During the
Spanish Civil War, Catalonia was a key Republican stronghold, and the fall of Barcelona to Gen
Francisco Franco's right-wing forces in 1939 marked the beginning of the end of republican
resistance. Under Franco's ultra-conservative rule, autonomy was revoked, Catalan nationalism
repressed, and use of the Catalan language restricted.
The pendulum swung back with the emergence of a democratic Spain after Franco's death.
Catalonia now has is its own parliament and executive - together known as the "Generalitat" in
Catalan - with extensive autonomy.
Separatist fervour soared in 2010 after a ruling by Spain's constitutional court set limits on
Catalan claims to nationhood. The region's president at the time, Jose Montilla, said the ruling
had "attacked the dignity of Catalans".
Spain's painful economic crunch also fueled enthusiasm for sovereignty. Many Catalans believe
their affluent region pays more to Madrid than it gets back, and blame much of Spain's 2008 debt
crisis on the central government.
A regional government backed by the two main separatist parties held a non-binding
independence referendum in 2014, with 80% of those taking part voting "yes". It called another
set of elections in 2015 to reinforce its mandate, and a further referendum followed in October
2017 that again backed independence by a large margin.
The Spanish government maintains that Catalonia had no constitutional right to break away, and
temporarily imposed direct rule on the region after the government in Barcelona declared
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independence. But fresh Catalan elections in December 2017 returned a majority for pro-
independence parties, although a pro-Madrid party emerged as the single largest group in
parliament.
Germany
Formed just five years ago, in 2017 the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) entered the
federal parliament for the first time. From its beginnings as an anti-euro party, it has pushed for
strict anti-immigrant policies and tapped into anxieties over the influence of Islam. Leaders have
been accused of downplaying Nazi atrocities.
Their success has been interpreted as a sign of discontent with Chancellor Angela Merkel's open-
door policy for refugees. At the height of the migrant crisis, Mrs Merkel lifted border controls
and almost a million people arrived in 2015, many of them Muslims from Syria, Iraq and
Afghanistan.
An AfD rally attracted 5,000 people last month, although some 20,000 held a counter-protest
Despite her CDU/CSU bloc seeing its worst result in almost 70 years, last year's elections were
enough for Mrs Merkel to secure a fourth term as chancellor and form another coalition with the
SPD party. For AfD, their status as the largest opposition party gives them their biggest platform
yet. But the AfD's rise has also seen a change in tone from Mrs Merkel - in her first major speech
of her new term she said that the "humanitarian exception" of 2015 would not be repeated, as
well as promising to beef up border security and boost deportations.
September 21, 2018
For three hours every month, they set up shop right next to the flower stand. There are only four
people, a table and an umbrella from which a blue T-shirt hangs. It's emblazoned with the party's
logo and the words, "Nobody's perfect, but Brandenburgers come pretty damn close." Here, at
the weekly farmers market in Woltersdorf, a 40-minute drive by car from Berlin, Kathi Muxel,
the district chair of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party for the Oder-Spree region, says:
"We're the only ones who come here, even if there's no upcoming election. People appreciate
that."
Several times a week, AfD adherents plant their umbrella somewhere in the area. Some take the
day off from work, while others are self-employed and can set their own schedule. They wait for
the people to show up -- and they always do -- and then they talk. They bring up their annoyance
with expensive street lights in the town of Neuzelle, or the planned move of the recycling center
in the Berlin suburb Erkner, or the "federal government's dishonesty" when it spoke of a mob
attack in Chemnitz. After all, they say, there were reports that no mob attacks actually took place
at all.
In federal elections last September the party scored 22.1 percent of the vote here in the eastern
German state of Brandenburg, putting it only slightly behind Chancellor Angela Merkel's
conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU). It's possible that Alexander Gauland, the
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candidate for the Oder-Spree electoral district, was responsible for some of that success. But
what has been decisive is the proximity to ordinary voters that the AfD has cultivated. And it's
not only here that the far-right populists are firmly rooted, but in many other places around the
country as well.
German election: How right-wing is
nationalist AfD?
13 October 2017
The nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) has entered parliament in Germany for the first
time, winning 12.6% of the vote and more than 90 seats. Founded in 2013 as an anti-euro party,
it has dramatically shifted its focus to immigration and Islam and is increasingly seen as far-right
in tone. Is it far-right? Yes. Leading AfD figures made extremist statements before and during
the 2017 election campaign. Since the vote, Alexander Gauland has talked of fighting an
"invasion of foreigners" and their campaign openly focused on Islam and migration. AfD sees
Islam as alien to German society. Some of their rhetoric has been tinged with Nazi overtones.An
AfD election poster in Berlin says "Stop Islamisation." They sit in the same political family as
France's far-right National Front and Austria's far-right Freedom Party - as well as the populist,
anti-Islam Dutch Freedom Party (PVV) of Geert Wilders. Nigel Farage, former leader of the
UK's anti-EU party UKIP, took part in their election campaign.
AfD started out as an anti-euro party, but their anti-immigrant rhetoric now puts them in the far-
right camp. But their brand of nationalism is less extreme than that of Germany's NPD, seen by
many as a neo-Nazi group.
AfD's big success has been in challenging Angela Merkel's decision to let in around 1.3 million
undocumented migrants and refugees, mainly from the Middle East, since 2015.
When the numbers of migrants arriving in Germany surged in 2014-2015, AfD made that the
focus of its party platform. There were contacts with the anti-immigration Pegida movement,
which staged weekly marches against what it called "the Islamisation of the West". Pegida took
hold mainly in eastern cities such as Dresden, and it is in the ex-communist east that AfD has
had its biggest successes, attracting more men than any other party. Odd perhaps, in that the
biggest concentrations of immigrants are not in those areas.
AfD adopted some of Pegida's anti-establishment rhetoric, such as the slogan "Lügenpresse"
("lying press"), which was used by the Nazis.
Challenging Islam as 'not German'
AfD adopted an explicitly anti-Islam policy in May 2016 and its election manifesto (in German)
had a section on why "Islam does not belong to Germany". "Burkas? We like bikinis," read one
of its most garish posters. AfD would ban foreign funding of mosques in Germany, ban the
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burka (full-body veil) and the Muslim call to prayer, and put all imams through a state vetting
procedure. An estimated three million people of Turkish origin live in Germany, most of them
Muslims.
AfD has also built its success on challenging taboos and flirting with racism. Ahead of the
election Alexander Gauland stirred controversy by saying the government's top integration
official, Aydan Özoguz, could be "disposed of in Anatolia". Ms Özoguz is a German of Turkish
origin. Mr Gauland also drew criticism for declaring that Germans should be "proud" of their
soldiers in both world wars. While SS units were notorious for German atrocities in World War
Two, the regular armed forces also committed many war crimes.
Ms Petry tried to end the taboo on the Nazi-era term völkisch, which comes from the German
word for people but was hijacked by the Nazis to define those they saw as belonging to the
German race.
Its anti-euro policy echoes the Euroscepticism of other populist parties in Europe. More powers
must return to the nation states, AfD says, opposing all "centralising" moves in the EU, and
anything that smacks of Euro-federalism. If the EU fails to reform and continues centralising,
AfD says, the party will seek to pull Germany out of the EU.
France
Despite the efforts of leader Marine Le Pen to make the far-right National Front palatable to
France's mainstream, she was comprehensively defeated by Emmanuel Macron for the
presidency in May 2017. Marine Le Pen is anti-EU, opposed to the euro and blames Brussels for
mass immigration. In 2010 she told FN supporters that the sight of Muslims praying in the street
was similar to the Nazi occupation in World War Two.
Since their loss in the presidential election, the FN suffered an underwhelming result in
parliamentary elections, winning a small handful of seats while Mr Macron's party dominated.
More recently the party has renamed itself as the National Rally, with Ms Le Pen saying she
would seek to gain power through forming coalitions with allies.
Despite a heavy defeat in the presidential runoff, the Front National’s chief concerns have
become part of the national debate. France’s far-right Front National will not disappear from the
political landscape just because Marine Le Pen has lost the presidential race.
Le Pen might have been squarely beaten in the presidential runoff by the independent centrist
Emmanuel Macron – as voters from the right and left joined forces to block her – but she was
still projected to have won up to 11m votes. Le Pen immediately vowed that she would radically
overhaul and reinvent her political movement, leaving open the possibility the Front National
could be renamed.
This was a staggering, historic high for the anti-European, anti-immigration party that during the
campaign was slammed by political opponents as racist, xenophobic, antisemitic and anti-
Muslim despite Le Pen’s public relations efforts to detoxify its image in recent years.
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The party’s presence at the heart of French politics – where its ideas are regularly appropriated
by mainstream parties – is now so taken for granted that Le Pen’s presence in the presidential
final round was accepted as inevitable by the political class for years. It was not met by the shock
and mass street protests that greeted her father’s reaching the final in 2002.
Political scientists have warned that no one should write off the French far right after Marine Le
Pen’s presidential loss. The Front National has slowly been gaining ground for the last 45 years
and its steady electoral increases must be seen in the long term. The issues that the party has
sought to focus on and capitalise from – the terrorist threat, the refugee crisis, immigration, mass
unemployment, deindustrialisation, voters who struggle to make ends meet – are unlikely to
instantly disappear.
“The Front National is not finished,” said Jean-Yves Camus, director of the Observatory of
Radical Politics at the Jean-Jaurès foundation in Paris. “We have no reason to believe that the job
market will change for the better in the next few years. We have no reason to believe that the
negative impact of globalisation will stop during the years to come. So there might be a drop in
the Front National vote, but if the situation is bad in 2022 [at the time of the next presidential
election], they could rise again.”
Since Marine Le Pen took over the Front National leadership from her father six years ago, the
party has steadily increased its electoral fortunes, making gains in every local, European and
regional election. It has built up a grassroots presence of local officials and increased
membership. Its rhetoric and chief concerns – including immigration and Islam’s place in France
– have taken up more and more space in French national debate and have been appropriated by
the mainstream right and even the left.
Her niece, the member of parliament Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, is more hardline, more Catholic
and socially conservative than her aunt and more interested in alliances with rightwing
politicians than in attempting to win voters from the left. She is seen as having a strong future in
the party but is not in an immediate position for a power grab. The number of votes for Le Pen in
the presidential first round showed that she had increased her party’s support in a swath of the
deindustrialised north and north east as well as the party’s heartlands in the south, but also in the
centre and rural and peripheral areas in and outside small towns. In the first round, the Front
National was the biggest party among the working class and had increased support in the public
sector, in areas such as the police. It also increased its vote among 35- to 49-year-olds.
Italy
Inconclusive elections and months of uncertainty have culminated in two populist parties - the
anti-establishment Five Star Movement and right-wing League - forming a coalition government.
Their rise from the political fringes comes in a country badly hit by the 2008 financial crisis and
which then became the main destination for North African migrants.
Formerly known as the Northern League, The League has switched focus from its initial goal of
creating a separate northern state to leading a country it once wanted to leave.
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Their joint programme for government includes plans for mass deportations for undocumented
migrants, in line with The League's strong anti-immigration stance.
Visiting Sicily, Italy's new interior minister and League leader Matteo Salvini said the island
must stop being "the refugee camp of Europe".
Both parties are unhappy with the euro, and with few ruling out more elections the next vote
could provide a major headache for the European Union.
Sweden
The anti-immigration Sweden Democrats (SD) made significant gains in the 2018 general
election. They won about 18% of the vote, up from 12.9% last time. The party has its roots in
neo-Nazism, but it rebranded itself in recent years and first entered parliament in 2010.
Meanwhile, the centre-left Social Democrat party of Prime Minister Stefan Lofven has seen
support ebb away. The Social Democrats are a party associated with generous social welfare and
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tolerance of minorities, while the SD opposes multiculturalism and wants strict immigration
controls.
Like many of the countries featured here, though, the picture is complex. Sweden has welcomed
more asylum seekers per capita than any other European country and has one of the most
positive attitudes towards migrants.
In Sweden, Populist Nationalists Won on
Policy, but Lost on Politics
The far-right Sweden Democrats have long pushed to reduce immigration. Now they’re getting
what they wanted—and it’s costing them voters.
Sep 12, 2018
Benjamin R. Teitelbaum
Assistant Professor of International Affairs at the University of Colorado
Never mind the headlines: Sunday’s election in Sweden was a major setback for the far
right. The populist-nationalist Sweden Democrats may have seen their percentage of the vote
increase from 13 percent in 2014 to just shy of 18 percent this year, but they and many experts
anticipated a much higher share; some even predicted that they would become the largest party
in the country. Such an outcome would have been in keeping with their history of rapid growth,
of more than doubling their previous tally in every election since 1998. Instead, they posted
unexpectedly meager gains, which will do little to strengthen their influence in a deadlocked
parliament where all other parties, center-right as well as left, refuse to negotiate with them.
And yet, this conclusion is the result of what some may consider a troubling bargain. In past
contests, the Sweden Democrats’ keystone political cause of reducing immigration had been
used to stigmatize the party. This year, multiple parties —including the center-left Social
Democrats and center-right Moderates—included calls for reduction in their platform.
The anti-immigration position was normalized even as it was neutralized. At the center of this
drama is an unusually complicated political party. When compared to other nationalist forces in
Europe, the Sweden Democrats appear relatively moderate. They expel members who make
explicitly racist or anti-Semitic statements, claim to reject ethno-nationalism, endorse a pathway
toward full civic and cultural membership for Sweden’s minorities, have shown little love for
global strongmen such as Russian President Vladimir Putin or President Donald Trump, and are
headed by Jimmie Åkesson—a blushing mother-in-law’s dream with gentle mannerisms. But if
style and policy place the Sweden Democrats on the softer side of global anti-immigrant
movements, their history does not: They were born in 1988 from the merger of a tax-populist