From Justin Raimondo at antiwar.com:
Nationalism versus globalism: Which side are you on?
Nationalism in on the rise in every region of the earth. In the face of an increasingly globalized world, the banners of tribe, tradition, and particularism are being unfolded in unabashed defiance. From Paris to Peoria the battle-cry is heard: Preserve our sovereignty!
Nationalism has had a bad reputation ever since the 1930s, when it was associated with colored- shirt-wearing thugs, militarism, and war: raging across Europe, it ignited a horrific conflagration. The pan-European idea was created largely in reaction to this bloody history, and yet the result has been a counter-backlash of nationalism, a new sort that has little if anything to do with its historical antecedents.
In the West, this current wave of nationalism, for the most part, is relatively pacific: instead of promoting aggression across borders it is intent on making those borders impenetrable. The old Bismarckian nationalism was statist and super-centralist as well as expansionist; the new nationalism is often (though not always) libertarian, decentralist, and uninterested in foreign adventurism (i.e. “isolationist”).
The best example of this is the new nation of Catalonia, which is seeking to part peaceably with Spain. With their own language, a long tradition going back to medieval times, and a relatively healthy economy compared to the rest of the Iberian peninsula, the Catalonians long to break free. The Spanish central authorities have reacted with all-too-predictable hostility, threatening to send in the tanks – and the European Union (EU) has taken Madrid’s side, declaring that an independent Catalonia will be isolated both economically and diplomatically.
Here is a classic case of the new nationalism in its purest form: arrayed against it are not only the centralists in Madrid but the super-centralists in Brussels.
If the Catalonians exemplify the new nationalism, then the EU represents the hyper-centralist and imperialist character of globalism –an open conspiracy by the transnational elites to crush all particularities beneath the iron heel of homogeneity. Indeed, one of the EU’s intellectual architects, Alexandre Kojeve, longed for a “universal homogenous state,” which he believed was inevitable. (Kojeve, by the way, inspired Francis Fukuyama’s vision of the “end of history,” which the neocons took to heart.) In the wake of World War II, as the nations of Europe heaved themselves up out of the rubble, European intellectuals and policymakers sought out a program that would make the rise of nationalism impossible. The “family of Europe” fit the bill.
To continue reading: For Brexit!
