International Reports 2/2020

Source: © Francois Lenoir, Reuters. Lenoir, © Francois Source: Source: © Kai Pfaffenbach, Reuters. Pfaffenbach, © Kai Source: Nationalism Simple Explanations Why Nationalists in Europe Grow Stronger Wilhelm Hofmeister 6 Yielding resentments against the European Union as well as alleged threats: Nationalist parties gained increased electoral success throughout the last years in many member states of the European Union, while challenging their democratic underpinnings and developments. The underlying causes are manifold and vary regionally. How could a promising political response be shaped? Overview Despite these warnings by the generation who had experienced the war, by the beginning of Nationalism was the great evil of the 20th century the new century nationalism had infiltrated in Europe. It arose as an emancipatory movement Europe’s party systems once again. In Austria, in the 19th century and inspired the first demo- the nationalist Freedom Party (FPÖ) became cratic processes in Europe, but quickly mutated a member of the governing coalition in 2000. into an ideology that justified competition among Two years later, the chairman of France’s Front states in the age of imperialism and described National, Jean-Marie Le Pen, advanced to a run- the differences between nations in chauvinistic off election for the presidency, and in 2004 he and racist terms. We all know how that ended. mobilised a majority to reject the EU’s consti- “Nationalism is the cause of most political con- tutional treaty. This made nationalism’s anti- flicts since the 19th century and a necessary con- Europe position obvious. The stigmatisation dition for the success of National Socialism since and partial isolation of Austria by the other EU 1930,”1 writes Rolf Ulrich Kunze, who empha- members after the centre-right People’s Party sises that nationalism “tends to radicalism and (ÖVP) formed a coalition with the Freedom escalation, and especially to combination with Party did not stop nationalism. Austria, France, universal racism and anti-Semitism,” while it and, gradually, other countries in Europe saw “legitimises deep interference with human and nationalist parties achieve increasingly sizeable civil rights, especially the rights of minorities and, electoral successes. But it was not until rightist, under the name of a fictional autarchy within populistic, Eurosceptic parties won about one the free global economic system […] National- fifth of the seats in the European Parliament in ism favours populistic deinstitutionalisation of 2014 that the broader European public became political culture, and is a danger to the stability of aware that nationalism had gained new adher- constitutional organs, legitimised by representa- ents in almost all parts of the continent. tive democracy in the constitutional state and at the inter-governmental, supranational level.” In Besides the Front National, renamed as Ras- reaction to the devastating consequences of the semblement National in 2018, and the Freedom Second World War, the major post-war European Party, this group includes the Sweden Demo- political leaders, among them Konrad Adenauer, crats, the Finns Party, the Danish People’s Party, consciously pursued European integration as an the United Kingdom’s UKIP, the Party for Free- instrument by which to overcome nationalism. dom in the Netherlands, Italy’s Lega (formerly In a 1946 speech, Adenauer characterised the known as Lega Nord), Hungary’s Jobbik, and romanticisation of the nation as a cause of the Greece’s Golden Dawn. Similarly, Poland’s Law catastrophe,2 and in 1953 he said, “If we were to and Justice, and Hungary’s Fidesz parties, one insist in today’s world that the traditional terms originally conservative and the other originally of nationalism should be maintained, it would liberal, have integrated nationalism as a very mean abandoning Europe.”3 successful mobilisation factor. The Alternative Nationalism 7 Fig. 1: Results for Nationalist Parties in Recent European Elections (in Per Cent) Source: Own illustration based on figures of national electoral authorities, map: Natural Earth p,. for Germany (AfD) party was initially shaped by A second assumption must also be relativised: several eurosceptic economics professors, but that nationalist parties grew stronger because has since come under the sway of right-wing of socioeconomic factors and social inequal- populists. But even at the beginning, the AfD ity. This is also a limited explanation because was, at its core, a party that used nationalist sen- nationalist parties have gathered strength even timent to generate opposition to European unity. in economically prosperous European countries with relatively good distribution indexes: the At the very latest since the election of May 2014, Nordic countries, the Netherlands, Austria, and if not before, the “monster” of nationalism was Germany. So, these parties cannot be combatted clearly perceived everywhere in Europe. That with new distribution mechanisms alone, either. year deserves emphasis because the so-called migration crisis, which is frequently cited as a In the European Parliament elections of May trigger for the rise of nationalist parties, did not 2019, the nationalists did not do as well as they develop until a year later. The crisis alone there- had hoped. One reason was because more people fore does not explain rise of nationalist parties – went to the polls to reduce their influence. Even which, of course, also means that restricting so, nationalists received about one quarter of migration will by itself not effectively combat parliamentary seats. This confirms that national- nationalism. ist parties now mobilise a substantial proportion 8 International Reports 2|2020 of European voters. Even countries such as Ger- territorial element, there is no sense in referring many and Spain, that had long felt immune to to a “nation” – or doing so is dangerous because nationalism, saw the rise of new nationalist par- it evokes a kind of community that does not rep- ties. Also in Portugal, a party using nationalist resent social reality. rhetoric, Chega! (Enough!), received a seat in the October 2019 parliamentary elections. In the era of globalisation, In view of these developments, questions arise the “nation” is gaining new in many parts of Europe: Why is nationalism importance, since the inter- mobilising such great numbers in Europe? And how can people be warned of, and protected national order is based on the against, the unavoidable, disastrous conse- cooperation of nation states. quences of nationalism? The search for answers must begin with an examination of nationalism’s seductive message. The nation consists of all citizens of the state. Nationalism and Nation But at the moment, nationalists in Germany and elsewhere are attempting to define the “nation” All nationalism is based on a fiction, and that fic- as those adhering to a particular identity. It is tion is the nation. The nation does not exist as a noticeably difficult for them to cite supposed social entity, but only as a concept. Nations are elements that those in their “nation” share and imagined associations created by nationalists, that distinguish them from other nations. To as Benedict Anderson established in his well- simplify things, they fall back on old patterns, by known 1983 book on the origins of nationalism.4 trying to weed out those whose origin, language, And a few years later, the British historian Eric J. skin colour, religion, etc. supposedly preclude Hobsbawm added: “Nations do not make states them from belonging to the identity-based com- and nationalisms but the other way round.”5 munity. For example, the former co-chairman of Germany’s AfD, Alexander Gauland, said in Nationalism is a concept of differentiation, cre- 2016 that the German national football team’s ating false identities and true bogeymen, since Jérôme Boateng, whose father is from Ghana, enemies are needed to highlight the in-group’s is perceived as “foreign”; a year later he threat- idea of itself and to distinguish it from others. ened to “get rid of” Aydan Özoğuz, a German Back in 1882, when nationalism was enjoying its politician of Turkish origin who serves as deputy first peak, French author and philosopher Ernest chairwoman of Germany’s Social Democratic Renan identified nationalism’s reductionist Party, by sending her back to Anatolia. In the worldview when he wrote, “There is no nation face of such attempts to exclude individuals, without falsifying one’s own history.”6 This it is important to emphasise that a nation of means that nationalist movements everywhere course includes immigrants and descendants have written the history of their “nation” so as of immigrants. The German “nation” therefore to construct some sort of commonality, a joint encompasses all members of Germany’s World- destiny, or a common purpose. In the national- Cup-winning 2014 national football team, ist movements of Catalonia and other regions including Lukas Podolski and Miroslav Klose, today, this is still clearly evident.7 who were both born in Poland; Jérôme Boateng from Berlin; and Mesut Özil, who was born in Of course it must be admitted that, despite their Gelsenkirchen to Turkish immigrants. imaginary character as social units, nations do in fact exist – but only if the term is used to Nation and nationalism are indispensable ele- refer to a certain form of modern territorial ments of modern statehood, and particularly in state: the “nation state”. Without including this the era of globalisation, the “nation”, i. e., the Nationalism 9 nation state, gains new importance, since the Nationalism and the Longing international order is based on the cooperation for Recognition of nation states.8 In this respect, we are not experiencing a “return” to nationalism, as is some- There is no clear answer to the question of why times asserted. However, we are increasingly many people in Europe are turning to nation- experiencing a return of those forms of national- alist ideas and electing nationalist, anti-liberal, ism that have led to the catastrophes of the past.

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