"A key tenet of nationalism is that foreign ideas, inputs, and opinions are unwelcome. They pollute the pure nation and distract it from self-improvement. The only resolutions to social problems are those that arise from within the nation, while, at best, foreign ideas are suspicious, icky, and unlikely to work. At worst, foreign ideas are intended to undermine and destroy the nation."
This is correct. The MAGA ideology is an extremely simple obsession with borders. It can be summed up as follows: Everything outside the border is bad. Everything within the border is good. If something within the border is bad, however, then it must have come from the outside.
Reasoning from there, we find justifications for: mass deportations, travel bans, arbitrary immigration restrictions, tariffs, and other trade barriers.
To be clear, some of the MAGA policy moves are just fine on their own. However, because they are rooted in this simple, absolute ideology, rational policy moves will never be enough; they will never be sufficient.
It will never be enough to crack down on illegal immigration, for example, or on quasi-legal asylum claims, which is why the administration nearly banned legal refugees and is steadily making it harder and harder to immigrate legally.
That will also never be enough, which is why the administration is pivoting to blanket travel bans for temporary visitors as well: a gradual backdoor rewrite of immigration law via executive order.
But understand that this, too, will never be enough, so next in line for deportation will be legal immigrants, followed swiftly by naturalized citizens.
A minor quibble: I do not believe this is an exercise in “self-improvement.” Rather, it’s an appeal to nostalgia, a false conception of how “great” America used to be. It’s not a forward-looking mindset, its backward looking.
This is really powerful work, Alex. The way you connect the abstract “fuzzy” promises of nationalism to concrete downside risks—refugee‑generation, genocide, and a higher propensity for interstate war—forces readers to confront the actual historical track record rather than vibes.
The groupthink point landed especially hard for me: once foreign ideas and people are treated as pollution, you don’t just get uglier rhetoric, you get a polity that literally can’t update when reality changes. That’s exactly why the same ideology that cheers “sovereignty” and “social cohesion” also keeps reaching for trade barriers, border closures, and cultural central planning, even when those tools are obviously self‑destructive.
What I’d love to see more people on the right grapple with is your core risk argument: even if you think nationalism occasionally delivers short‑run policy wins, you’re buying them with a tail risk that includes mass expulsions, great‑power war, and leaders who view nuclear weapons as tools of tribal destiny. That’s a terrible trade when there are cheaper ways—religious freedom, open association, liberal markets—to get whatever “social cohesion” is actually worth having.
It is good that you mention Greenland as an example, because there are many important things to say about Greenland. It is actually a case that demonstrates that not even Greenland has full sovereignty or, in quotation marks, full “destiny” over its own territory.
Greenland is highly dependent on how people around the world behave when it comes to carbon footprints, emissions, pollution, and ecological practices. As a largely ice-covered region, Greenland is directly affected by global human activity.
One could even argue that if we do not act as global ecological citizens, large parts of Greenland could disappear in the future due to melting ice. This clearly shows that territorial sovereignty means very little when ecological processes are global in nature.
Another important issue concerns the natural resources in and around Greenland. These are resources that humanity as a whole depends on, not just the local population. From this perspective, it may actually be more reasonable to argue that Greenland would benefit from being part of a world federation, where certain resources are managed through global frameworks in cooperation with local governments and responsible actors.
Such an arrangement could ensure that resource management benefits both the people living in Greenland and humanity as a whole, while also providing stronger protection against environmental destruction and short-term exploitation.
I also read Anthony Smith when I was studying nationalism more closely, and I have to say that I was several times disappointed by his way of writing. After the Cold War, he imagined that the world would become more nationalistic, in the sense that more people would primarily focus on having their own nation rather than on globalization or regional integration, such as the European case.
The problem is that much of his writing is simply incorrect. For example, it is not true that nations are completely unique in most cases. If we look at Germany and Austria, or Sweden and Norway, there are many similarities as well as long periods of shared history. The same applies to India and Pakistan, which can be said to share at least 5,000 years of history as regions of the Indian subcontinent.
It is also absurd to argue that nations have their own “destiny.” Nations, just like cities and other social structures, are dependent on how they manage global problems and challenges. There is no such thing as national sovereignty when it comes to climate change. It does not matter if 80 percent of the world’s countries do everything necessary to reduce pollution, improve air quality, and transition to climate-friendly energy if the remaining 20 percent refuse to act.
Because of these global challenges, national-level politics is simply not sufficient. Humanity cannot solve or manage global problems through nationalism alone. We therefore need other ideas and processes, such as cosmopolitanism and world federalism.
There is also the question of freedom and self-realization. As a European citizen, I have more freedom to cooperate with others and to develop myself than I would have if I were limited to a single nation-state.
The idea of “free nations” becomes absurd if freedom is restricted only to nations instead of being expanded at the global level, where more people could be included in cooperation and solidarity.
Finally, when it comes to thinkers like Hazony, there is hardly any need to engage with them in depth. His writings are so filled with recycled ideas, inaccuracies, and simplistic claims that he mainly serves as an example of why nationalism is so problematic and unrealistic. He merely repeats old arguments that have already been disproven in practice, in institutions, and in economic and other realities.
The case of Ukraine is particularly interesting when it comes to nationalism. Many academics and opinion makers now argue that the nationalism present in Ukraine—at the level of rhetoric, ideas, and politics—is more liberal and civic in character compared to Russian nationalism, which is largely based on anti-liberal and imperial ideas.
At the same time, there is a clear paradox. While nationalism is built on the idea that every nation should be free, sovereign, and independent, the Ukrainian case points in the opposite direction.
Ukraine is currently highly dependent and interdependent, especially in relation to the European Union. A majority of Ukrainians support EU membership, which in practice means supporting Ukraine’s integration into a supranational structure in areas such as legislation, governance, democracy, and citizenship.
More broadly, the idea of nationalism—understood as humanity being divided into nations with a special and exclusive loyalty to those nations—is problematic for several reasons. One key problem is empirical. At present, there are only 193 internationally recognized states, that is, members of the United Nations.
Yet according to nationalist principles, every ethnic, social, or political group should have the right to form its own nation-state. If taken seriously, this would imply, for example, that Native American groups could establish their own independent states, or that Tamils in India should have the right to create their own nation.
In this sense, nationalism is unrealistic in the contemporary world: the number of existing states is far smaller than the number of nations that would exist if the original logic of nationalism were consistently applied.
It is interesting that Ernest Renan, already at the end of the 19th century, argued that the nation was not eternal and would not last forever. He believed that there would come a time when the nation would be replaced by some kind of European confederation. One can therefore argue that Renan, in a way, anticipated the creation of the European Union.
In my own case, the situation is the following. I moved to Sweden from Bosnia in 2003. In 2007, I became a Swedish citizen, and at the same time a citizen of the European Union. This is because citizenship in an EU member state automatically entails EU citizenship as well.
EU citizenship is not merely a symbolic idea or a piece of paper; it is a practical reality. It grants concrete rights and freedoms shared with people in countries such as Latvia, Germany, and Greece. As citizens of the Union, we enjoy the same fundamental freedoms and rights.
This is the case despite the fact that the EU is neither a nation nor a state. In political science, it is often described as something in between an international organization and a supranational federation. At present, the EU can be described as largely confederal and, in some respects, comparable to the United States before the American Civil War.
One of the key reasons the European Union was created was the devastating historical experience of nationalist politics in Europe, which led to the deaths of millions of people. The underlying idea was to integrate Europe politically, economically, and socially, so that more people would come to identify themselves as Europeans while still remaining Swedes, Latvians, Greeks, or members of other national communities.
In this sense, the European Union serves as a strong example of how it is possible to integrate both people and nations, and to create a higher level of empathy, freedom, and solidarity than what is achievable if human belonging is limited solely to the nation-state.
It is common in political writing to distinguish between nationalism and patriotism. In such discussions, nationalism is often defined in ethnic terms, or as ethno-nationalism, while patriotism is described as civic or even liberal nationalism, where nationhood is based on civic values and liberal principles rather than ethnicity.
However, I think there is another important distinction between nationalism and patriotism that deserves more attention. Nationalism—regardless of whether it is ethnic or civic—is always centered on the nation as such. It does not naturally extend to other levels of belonging, such as cities, regions, or the world as a whole.
For this reason, I believe it is useful to distinguish not only between nationalism and patriotism, but also between civic nationalism and civic patriotism. A civic patriot, for example, can feel attachment and responsibility toward Boston, the United States, and the world at the same time. A civic nationalist, by contrast, is primarily or exclusively oriented toward the nation itself.
As a result, civic nationalists have difficulty creating solidarity, empathy, and civility at the global level. Civic patriots, on the other hand, are capable of building institutions, norms, and forms of cooperation that connect the local, national, and global levels of human action, governance, and collective responsibility.
That is why, on a personal level, one can oppose immigration not only by referring to ethnicity or culture, but also by appealing to liberal or democratic values. One can oppose more liberal immigration policies, or even global free movement, by arguing that people should not have the right to move freely across the world. Instead, one may believe that people should only have the right to move within nation-states, and that nations themselves have the right to decide how they want to control migration.
This illustrates the difference between a civic nationalist and a civic patriot. A civic patriot can say: I am a citizen of my nation, but I am also a citizen of the world. I want my nation to be integrated with others, and I want to share the same rights and freedoms as other human beings across the planet, including the right to move freely as a law-abiding global citizen.
Great article! Random question but have you seen the uptick of nationalists becoming socialists as well? I mean look at the post-Keynesian camp for example, there seems to be more and more nationalist PKs everyday. There was the Jubilee guy who's a white nationalist post-Keynesian borderline socialist and also Nick Fuentes recently recommended Minsky.
"A key tenet of nationalism is that foreign ideas, inputs, and opinions are unwelcome. They pollute the pure nation and distract it from self-improvement. The only resolutions to social problems are those that arise from within the nation, while, at best, foreign ideas are suspicious, icky, and unlikely to work. At worst, foreign ideas are intended to undermine and destroy the nation."
This is correct. The MAGA ideology is an extremely simple obsession with borders. It can be summed up as follows: Everything outside the border is bad. Everything within the border is good. If something within the border is bad, however, then it must have come from the outside.
Reasoning from there, we find justifications for: mass deportations, travel bans, arbitrary immigration restrictions, tariffs, and other trade barriers.
To be clear, some of the MAGA policy moves are just fine on their own. However, because they are rooted in this simple, absolute ideology, rational policy moves will never be enough; they will never be sufficient.
It will never be enough to crack down on illegal immigration, for example, or on quasi-legal asylum claims, which is why the administration nearly banned legal refugees and is steadily making it harder and harder to immigrate legally.
That will also never be enough, which is why the administration is pivoting to blanket travel bans for temporary visitors as well: a gradual backdoor rewrite of immigration law via executive order.
But understand that this, too, will never be enough, so next in line for deportation will be legal immigrants, followed swiftly by naturalized citizens.
A minor quibble: I do not believe this is an exercise in “self-improvement.” Rather, it’s an appeal to nostalgia, a false conception of how “great” America used to be. It’s not a forward-looking mindset, its backward looking.
It’s a decel, not accel.
This is really powerful work, Alex. The way you connect the abstract “fuzzy” promises of nationalism to concrete downside risks—refugee‑generation, genocide, and a higher propensity for interstate war—forces readers to confront the actual historical track record rather than vibes.
The groupthink point landed especially hard for me: once foreign ideas and people are treated as pollution, you don’t just get uglier rhetoric, you get a polity that literally can’t update when reality changes. That’s exactly why the same ideology that cheers “sovereignty” and “social cohesion” also keeps reaching for trade barriers, border closures, and cultural central planning, even when those tools are obviously self‑destructive.
What I’d love to see more people on the right grapple with is your core risk argument: even if you think nationalism occasionally delivers short‑run policy wins, you’re buying them with a tail risk that includes mass expulsions, great‑power war, and leaders who view nuclear weapons as tools of tribal destiny. That’s a terrible trade when there are cheaper ways—religious freedom, open association, liberal markets—to get whatever “social cohesion” is actually worth having.
It is good that you mention Greenland as an example, because there are many important things to say about Greenland. It is actually a case that demonstrates that not even Greenland has full sovereignty or, in quotation marks, full “destiny” over its own territory.
Greenland is highly dependent on how people around the world behave when it comes to carbon footprints, emissions, pollution, and ecological practices. As a largely ice-covered region, Greenland is directly affected by global human activity.
One could even argue that if we do not act as global ecological citizens, large parts of Greenland could disappear in the future due to melting ice. This clearly shows that territorial sovereignty means very little when ecological processes are global in nature.
Another important issue concerns the natural resources in and around Greenland. These are resources that humanity as a whole depends on, not just the local population. From this perspective, it may actually be more reasonable to argue that Greenland would benefit from being part of a world federation, where certain resources are managed through global frameworks in cooperation with local governments and responsible actors.
Such an arrangement could ensure that resource management benefits both the people living in Greenland and humanity as a whole, while also providing stronger protection against environmental destruction and short-term exploitation.
I also read Anthony Smith when I was studying nationalism more closely, and I have to say that I was several times disappointed by his way of writing. After the Cold War, he imagined that the world would become more nationalistic, in the sense that more people would primarily focus on having their own nation rather than on globalization or regional integration, such as the European case.
The problem is that much of his writing is simply incorrect. For example, it is not true that nations are completely unique in most cases. If we look at Germany and Austria, or Sweden and Norway, there are many similarities as well as long periods of shared history. The same applies to India and Pakistan, which can be said to share at least 5,000 years of history as regions of the Indian subcontinent.
It is also absurd to argue that nations have their own “destiny.” Nations, just like cities and other social structures, are dependent on how they manage global problems and challenges. There is no such thing as national sovereignty when it comes to climate change. It does not matter if 80 percent of the world’s countries do everything necessary to reduce pollution, improve air quality, and transition to climate-friendly energy if the remaining 20 percent refuse to act.
Because of these global challenges, national-level politics is simply not sufficient. Humanity cannot solve or manage global problems through nationalism alone. We therefore need other ideas and processes, such as cosmopolitanism and world federalism.
There is also the question of freedom and self-realization. As a European citizen, I have more freedom to cooperate with others and to develop myself than I would have if I were limited to a single nation-state.
The idea of “free nations” becomes absurd if freedom is restricted only to nations instead of being expanded at the global level, where more people could be included in cooperation and solidarity.
Finally, when it comes to thinkers like Hazony, there is hardly any need to engage with them in depth. His writings are so filled with recycled ideas, inaccuracies, and simplistic claims that he mainly serves as an example of why nationalism is so problematic and unrealistic. He merely repeats old arguments that have already been disproven in practice, in institutions, and in economic and other realities.
The case of Ukraine is particularly interesting when it comes to nationalism. Many academics and opinion makers now argue that the nationalism present in Ukraine—at the level of rhetoric, ideas, and politics—is more liberal and civic in character compared to Russian nationalism, which is largely based on anti-liberal and imperial ideas.
At the same time, there is a clear paradox. While nationalism is built on the idea that every nation should be free, sovereign, and independent, the Ukrainian case points in the opposite direction.
Ukraine is currently highly dependent and interdependent, especially in relation to the European Union. A majority of Ukrainians support EU membership, which in practice means supporting Ukraine’s integration into a supranational structure in areas such as legislation, governance, democracy, and citizenship.
More broadly, the idea of nationalism—understood as humanity being divided into nations with a special and exclusive loyalty to those nations—is problematic for several reasons. One key problem is empirical. At present, there are only 193 internationally recognized states, that is, members of the United Nations.
Yet according to nationalist principles, every ethnic, social, or political group should have the right to form its own nation-state. If taken seriously, this would imply, for example, that Native American groups could establish their own independent states, or that Tamils in India should have the right to create their own nation.
In this sense, nationalism is unrealistic in the contemporary world: the number of existing states is far smaller than the number of nations that would exist if the original logic of nationalism were consistently applied.
It is interesting that Ernest Renan, already at the end of the 19th century, argued that the nation was not eternal and would not last forever. He believed that there would come a time when the nation would be replaced by some kind of European confederation. One can therefore argue that Renan, in a way, anticipated the creation of the European Union.
In my own case, the situation is the following. I moved to Sweden from Bosnia in 2003. In 2007, I became a Swedish citizen, and at the same time a citizen of the European Union. This is because citizenship in an EU member state automatically entails EU citizenship as well.
EU citizenship is not merely a symbolic idea or a piece of paper; it is a practical reality. It grants concrete rights and freedoms shared with people in countries such as Latvia, Germany, and Greece. As citizens of the Union, we enjoy the same fundamental freedoms and rights.
This is the case despite the fact that the EU is neither a nation nor a state. In political science, it is often described as something in between an international organization and a supranational federation. At present, the EU can be described as largely confederal and, in some respects, comparable to the United States before the American Civil War.
One of the key reasons the European Union was created was the devastating historical experience of nationalist politics in Europe, which led to the deaths of millions of people. The underlying idea was to integrate Europe politically, economically, and socially, so that more people would come to identify themselves as Europeans while still remaining Swedes, Latvians, Greeks, or members of other national communities.
In this sense, the European Union serves as a strong example of how it is possible to integrate both people and nations, and to create a higher level of empathy, freedom, and solidarity than what is achievable if human belonging is limited solely to the nation-state.
It is common in political writing to distinguish between nationalism and patriotism. In such discussions, nationalism is often defined in ethnic terms, or as ethno-nationalism, while patriotism is described as civic or even liberal nationalism, where nationhood is based on civic values and liberal principles rather than ethnicity.
However, I think there is another important distinction between nationalism and patriotism that deserves more attention. Nationalism—regardless of whether it is ethnic or civic—is always centered on the nation as such. It does not naturally extend to other levels of belonging, such as cities, regions, or the world as a whole.
For this reason, I believe it is useful to distinguish not only between nationalism and patriotism, but also between civic nationalism and civic patriotism. A civic patriot, for example, can feel attachment and responsibility toward Boston, the United States, and the world at the same time. A civic nationalist, by contrast, is primarily or exclusively oriented toward the nation itself.
As a result, civic nationalists have difficulty creating solidarity, empathy, and civility at the global level. Civic patriots, on the other hand, are capable of building institutions, norms, and forms of cooperation that connect the local, national, and global levels of human action, governance, and collective responsibility.
That is why, on a personal level, one can oppose immigration not only by referring to ethnicity or culture, but also by appealing to liberal or democratic values. One can oppose more liberal immigration policies, or even global free movement, by arguing that people should not have the right to move freely across the world. Instead, one may believe that people should only have the right to move within nation-states, and that nations themselves have the right to decide how they want to control migration.
This illustrates the difference between a civic nationalist and a civic patriot. A civic patriot can say: I am a citizen of my nation, but I am also a citizen of the world. I want my nation to be integrated with others, and I want to share the same rights and freedoms as other human beings across the planet, including the right to move freely as a law-abiding global citizen.
https://glibe.substack.com/p/liberalism-nationalism-europe-reflections
Great article! Random question but have you seen the uptick of nationalists becoming socialists as well? I mean look at the post-Keynesian camp for example, there seems to be more and more nationalist PKs everyday. There was the Jubilee guy who's a white nationalist post-Keynesian borderline socialist and also Nick Fuentes recently recommended Minsky.