Tag: nationalism

Types of nationalism

There are many different types of nationalism in the world today: from old nation-state civic nationalism to postcolonial, post-communist and neonationalisms.

Nationalism remains one of the strongest sources of identity in the world today, but there are many different varieties of nationalism and national identities, so it might be useful to distinguish between different types to help understand this complex concept.

A starting point for this is to distinguish between civic and ethnic nationalisms

Civic and ethnic nationalism

Civic Nationalism is where nationalism is tied up with the idea of being a citizen of a particular nation state, rather than ethnicity.

An example of this is the United States where several different ethnic groups are united through citizenship to the same nation. This makes sense in modern America, as the State was formed out of a long history of migration, and America is often described as a ‘nation immigrants’ and something of a ‘melting pot’ for different ethnic groups.

Ethnic nationalism is where ethnicity is the principle form of belonging to the group rather than citizenship.

There are many examples of where ethnic national identity can come into conflict with civic national identity.

An example of this is the Serbs and Croats in the former Yugoslavia. Their sense of ethnic nationalism (rather than a sense of civic nationalist belonging to the former Yugoslavian state) eventually led to conflict and the formation of two states for each ethnic group: Serbia and Croatia.

Even in Britain, supposedly one of the most tolerant and inclusive civic societies in the world, there is widespread racism between different ethnic groups, and even evidence of institutional level racism, as evidenced with the Windrush Scandal and more recently the Metropolitan Police have been found to be STILL racist.

Types of Nationalism

McCrone (1998) Mcrone (1998) argues that while the above distinctions might be a useful starting point, nationalisms today are more complex and he distinguishes between four types of nationalism in the world today:

  1. The ‘old’ modern nation state
  2. Postcolonial nationalism
  3. Neonationalism
  4. Post-Communist nationalism

The Modern Nation State

Most Western European nations and the United States of America emerged out of modernity, with the Enlightenment, and the decline of religious thinking.

Various historical factors in the 17th to 19th centuries contributed to the formation of these ‘old nations’ such as capitalism, industrialisation and economic growth and the breakup of the Ottoman and Russian Empires.

In many cases new civic nation states were formed along the lines of shared ethnic identities but these were never enough alone to establish a modern nation: it was a combination of ethnicity, and the social changes brought about with modernity.

Postcolonial nationalism

In colonies and postcolonial countries elites often appealed to national identity to try and gain support and unify populations around new nations, as was the case in many countries throughout Africa and Asia.

In many cases, however, this proved difficult as the populations of such countries were ethnically diverse and thus divisions and sometimes overt conflict was the result.

In some cases, such as India, the transition to a secular state unified (to an extent) around democracy was successful, in other cases, such as Iran, the secular state failed to deliver what people wanted a religious state unified around Islam emerged after the Iranian revolution of 1979.

McCrone refers to the ‘dialectic with the other’ to describe the process of nation-building in many postcolonial societies:

Early states would define themselves against the coloniser (the other), but then themselves become authoritarian like the original colonising power, in which case an opposition movement (or movements) would emerge along religious or ethnic lines defining themselves against that new state-power.

Neo-nationalism

Neo-nationalism refers to nationalist independence movements in Western stateless societies such as those found in Scotland, Quebec or the Basque country.

This type of nationalism tends to emerge in societies with strong civic-states and can often be given a boost by strong economies, as with the case of Scottish nationalism and the discovery of North Sea oil.

They also tend to emerge in countries which are embedded within more global institutions such as the European Union or the North American Free Trade Association, and they may not want full independence, rather calls for more devolved powers so they have more political and economic freedom are just as likely.

This is a modern type of nationalism, more civic and pragmatic than being based on a shared sense of ethnic identity.

Post communist nationalism

Nationalism became the focus for the dissatisfaction felt by many living under Communist regimes in the mid to late 20th century and with the collapse of the Soviet Union, dozens of new nations were formed, although many of these witnessed tensions and in some cases over conflicts in the years and decades to come.

In some cases nations formed on the basis of shared ethnic identities which had been ‘suppressed’ under communism, and in other cases opportunist leaders sought to engineer a sense of national identity, and in most cases new nations formed out of a mixture of these two things.

Brubaker (1996) identifies three types of post-communist nationalism

  • The nationalising state – This is where a new nation state tries to persuade its new citizens to share a common identity based on citizenship
  • National minorities – these are groups which have a primary sense of identity with another, typically neighbouring state. For example, Hungarians in Romania.
  • National homelands – these are the territories which people who have a particular sense of nationalistic identity identify as their home. For example Romania is the national homeland for Romanians who live in Hungary.

There is not a perfect fit between all three of these which helps to explain the many conflicts around nationalism in this region since the collapse of the USSR.

map of new countries in former Yugoslavia
The formation of several nation-states out of the former Yugoslavia illustrates the complexity of post-communism nationalism.

The future of nationalism

Nationalism remains the strongest political identity. It is more important today to more people than socialism, for example and has not declined in importance like many commentators suggested it would.

Nationalism is a flexible ideology, and so possibly we can expect it to remain and become even stronger as one of the main responses to a globalising world where forces tend to undermine already existing identities.

Signposting

This material should be of relevance to anyone studying the Culture and Identity module as part of A-level sociology

To return to the homepage – revisesociology.com

Sources

McCrone (1998) The Sociology of Nationalism

Brubaker (1996) Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe

Part of this post was adapted from Haralambos and Holborn (2013) Sociology Themes and Perspectives 8th Edition.

Nations and Nationalism in Developing Countries

Many new nations in the global south struggled to find national unity following independence because of ethnic and religious divisions within their national borders.

Most countries classified as developing today were once colonies of European countries and achieved independence at some point during the 20th century.

The development of nationalism followed a very different path to that of European nationalisms, and was very much influenced by the politics of many years of colonial rule.

During the 16th to 19th centuries European powers travelled to the Americas, Asia and Africa and subjected those regions to colonial rule, setting up colonial administrations, sometimes staffed by a mixture of Europeans and willing allies from the colonized regions (who were often given a European education to facilitate these roles).

When the Europeans set up their administrations they did not take into account existing political and ethnic divisions among the local populations and so each colony was a collection of peoples and maybe old local states brought together under and arbitrary boundary created by external powers.

The straight lines of African borders are a result of European colonists ‘carving up’ Africa themselves, with no respect for existing ethnic groups.

When former colonies achieved independence they often found it hard to create a shared national identity because of these divisions and in the 2020s many postcolonial states still struggle with internal rivalries and conflicts and competing claims to political authority.

In some countries nationalism based on shared ethnic identity did play a significant role in helping to achieve independence, such as in Rwanda and Kenya, but this was often limited to small groups of urban elites and intellectuals.

Many nationalist movements emerged in Africa in the 1950s and 1960s which promoted independence from European domination, but once liberation had been achieved the leaders of these movement in practically every country found it almost impossible to create a sense of national unity. It didn’t help that these leaders had usually been educated in Europe or the USA and so there was a vast gap between them and ordinary people in their countries.

Many African countries saw overt conflicts around ethnic and religion divisions and some ended up in overt Civil War, such as in Sudan, Zaire and Nigeria.

Nationalism in Sudan

Sudan is a good example of how one post colonial nation struggled to find national unity given the ethnic and religious divisions following independence.

About 40% of the population were Muslim Arab, mainly habiting the north, while the rest were mainly black and followed traditional religions with a minority being Christian, mainly in the south.

Following independence, Arab Nationalists took power and started a programme of national integration based on Islam as the national religion Arabic as the national language, which 60% of the population did not speak and saw the new government as imposing a national identity on them.

Civil war broke out in 1955 between the new government in north and the south, and it wasn’t until 1972 that a peace accord granted some level of autonomy to the south, but these were annulled in 1983, leading to more conflict until 2005 when a new agreement finally granted the south regional autonomy.

After a few years a referendum in 2011 gave the south full autonomy and a new nation: South Sudan was created, but disputes over the border continued.

However the sad story doesn’t end there: in 2013 a further civil war broke out within South Sudan which lasted five years until a power sharing agreement was reached in 2018, then a coalition government formed in 2020.

Colonialism: A barrier to national identity?

Many ex colonies struggled to create a clear sense of nationhood following colonialism and independence, and in some cases, like Sudan, the original independence nations fragmented into smaller nations, reflecting the intense political and ethnic differences within these ex-colonies.

The process of establishing nation states has gone much more smoothly in those areas outside of Europe which were never fully colonised or which had high degrees of ethnic unity, for example in China, Japan, Korea and Thailand.

Signposting

This material is relevant to students taking the Global Development option as part of the second year of A-level sociology.

It might also be relevant to the the topic of nationalism and identity within the Culture and Identity module.

Sources

Map of Africa: Eric Gaba (Sting – fr:Sting), CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, via Wikimedia Commons

Nations without States

Many national identities do not have formal nation states with full autonomy: examples include the Welsh, the Basques, the Kurds and the Palestinians.

Nations without states consist of well-defined ethnic groups who identify together as a nation but lack an independent political community and autonomous self-governing body.

Nations without states exist within existing nation states, and sometimes across more than one already existing state. Examples include separatist movements in Israel/ Palestine and the Basque country in France and Spain.

Guibernau (1999) identifies two basic types of nations without states depending on the relationship the ethnic group has with the state or states in which it exists.

Map of Kurdish people in Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran.
The Kurdish People are one of the larges stateless nations.

‘Nations’ recognised by nation states

An established nation state may accept the cultural differences of its ethnic minority populations and allow them some freedom to manage these. For example Scotland and Wales within Britain have the freedom to manage some of their own institutions.

Scotland has its own parliament and independent legal and education system. It also has the power to set a different rate of Income tax to England. Wales also has its own parliament and education system, and the welsh language is prominent in public institutions (formal documents are published in both English and Welsh), although Wales is not quite as devolved as Scotland.

Similarly the Basque country and Catalonia are both recognised as ‘autonomous communities’ within Spain and they have their own parliaments with some degree of autonomy.

But in both the cases of Britain and Spain most of the political power is located in the main national governments in London and Madrid: military power is controlled by these, for example, and not devolved!

Other nations without states have higher degrees of autonomy with regional bodies which have the power to make major political decisions without being fully independent. Examples here include Quebec in Canada and Flanders in Belgium.

In all of the above cases, these ‘nations without states’ have nationalist movements which advocate for full autonomy.

There is a possibility that Scotland will become fully independent in the future: there is a lot of support for the Scottish National Party who campaign for full independence, and although they lost their referendum on independence in 2014 they may well win another one in the future.

Nations not recognised by nation states

There are other examples where ‘nations’ are not formally recognised and the formal nation state in which they exist may use force to suppress the minority group.

Examples such situations include:

  • Palestinians in Israel
  • Tibetans in China
  • Kurds in parts of Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq.

The capacity for these groups to build their own formal nation states depends on many factors, but mainly the relative power of the nation state(s) within which they exist and any other nation states elsewhere in the world they may form alliances with.

The Kurds for example have a ‘Parliament in Exile’ in Brussels, and also a ‘safe haven’ in Northern Iraq which was established after the Gulf War of 1990-91 and consolidated after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, so you might say they are on their way to establishing nationhood.

The Dalai Lama is the center of the movement for Tibetan Independence from China, based in Dharamshala in India, but the Tibetans have much less chance of having their autonomy recognised given the immense power of China, even though Tibet was once a distinct country before China took it over in 1951.

Signposting

This material should be relevant to anyone studying the nationalism and identity aspect of the culture and identity module, taught as part of most A-level sociology specifications.

Sources

Giddens and Sutton (2021) Sociology 9th edition

Montserrat Guibernau (1999) Nations Without States: Political Communities in a Global Age.

Where are the Kurds? Map

Nations as Imagined Communities

nations are socially constructed entities.

Benedict Anderson (1983) defines a nation as an imagined political community: imagined both as inherently limited and sovereign.

There are three defining characteristics of a nation:

  1. It is imagined because most members of even the smallest nations never meet most other members, yet they feel like they belong to the same community.
  2. It is limited because nations include some people and exclude others. No nation claims to include all of humanity.
  3. It is sovereign because nations claim political independence and the right to self-governance on the part of the people who belong to them.

The nation is a social construction: it exists in as far as the people who perceive themselves as part of it imagine it.

The origin of nations 

Anderson argued that the first European nation states were formed with the emergence of national print languages, in the early to mid 16th century, shortly after capitalist entrepreneurs started producing mass print runs of books in national languages rather than the more elitist Latin. 

One event which symbolises the start of this process is Martin Luther’s 1517 presentation of his religious views in German rather than Latin, and it was in the region around today’s Germany and also England that the first national languages were produced. 

Gradually greater numbers of people started to communicate with each other in national print languages rather than local dialects.

early printing press
The printing press laid the foundation for nations as imagined communities.

Nations as imagined communities 

National Print languages helped to develop early nation states, political entities which then went on to develop their own mass publications and further standardised national languages in doing so. 

Nation states also contributed to the imagination of national identity by developing maps (thus making visible the boundaries of nations), and standardising calendars and clock time. 

Also important was the decline of the idea of the Divine Right of Kings and the emergence of democracy: previously the Catholic church had power over large swathes of Europe, which had been something of a barrier to the formation of national consciousnesses. The gradual separation of the church from the state laid the foundation for the imagination of the nation as a sovereign, political community. 

As nations developed through the centuries more institutions and ceremonies were developed that further reinforced the idea of a shared national identity, some of them having their origins in government, some in the private sector.

Examples of things which enhance a sense of national identity include:

  • Great works Works of literature such as those by Shakespear, whose plays had a mass audience. 
  • Standing militaries and conflicts. War is a time when mass populations get behind their nations, the Falklands war in the 1980s may have been a good example of this. 
  • Many political parties in the 20th century came to power on the back of overtly nationalist ideologies, Nazi Germany is an obvious example of this. 
  • Sending national teams to global events such as the World Cup and Olympic Games. 

The industrial revolution and capitalism were essential to the emergence of nations and ideas of nationalism because without these the printing press and mass communications would not have been developed.

map of Europe 1740
Early maps of Europe reinforced a sense of national identity.

The difference between racism and nationalism

Racism is based on ‘dreams of eternal contamination’ an is based on certain peoples having fixed, biological characteristics which form the basis of inclusion and exclusion in terms of racial groups. It is not possible to become part of a race which one is not born into.

Nationalism is not based on ideas of certain people having fixed biological traits which automatically exclude them. Anyone can potentially become part of a nation, irrespective of who their parents or grandparents are.

Early ideas of nationalism may have been tied up with colonialism and racism, but nationalism and racism are not the same thing!

The nation as a positive source of identity

Anderson claims that we have lived in the ‘era of nationalism’ since the 16th century: since World War II every successful revolution has defined itself in nationalist terms and we can thus say that nationalism is the most universal value of our times.

He argues it is difficult to dismiss as problematic an idea that has such importance to so many people and forms the basis for modern global political relations in the form of Nation States.

Certainly the idea of Nationalism is very relevant today as the examples of Brexit, and the United Kingdom’s recent immigration bill which puts the British Nation before the European Convention on Human Rights demonstrate.

He recognizes that the origins of nationalism may well have been racists, but his distinction between nationalism and racism reminds us that nations do not have to be imagined at all in racist terms. The idea of British Values possibly demonstrates this.

Evaluations

Anderson may understate the relationship between nationalism and racism: many nationalisms are based on ideas of ethnic purity.

Anderson did not apply his ideas to the mass media or the internet. Mass communications online may do more to enhance cross border global identities compared to national identities.

National Identity may be less important today given that many people’s sense of self is more tied up with their sense of gender identity or simply their interests!

Signposting

This material is mainly relevant to the Culture and Identity option, taught as part of A-level sociology.

To return to the homepage – revisesociology.com

Sources

Benedict Anderson (1983) Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism

Part of this post was adapted from Haralambos and Holborn (2013) Sociology Themes and Perspectives 8th Edition.

Printing press image source: By Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki – DANIEL CHODOWIECKI 62 bisher unveröffentlichte Handzeichnungen zu dem Elementarwerk von Johann Bernhard Basedow. Mit einem Vorworte von Max von Boehn. Voigtländer-Tetzner, Frankfurt am Main 1922. (self scanned from book), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17927966

Europe in 1740: Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=767922

Captain Tom’s 100th Birthday: A Quintessentially British Occasion?

Today is Captain Tom’s 100th Birthday, an event broadcast live to the nation by BBC Breakfast between 8.00 a.m. to 8.30 a.m.

Captain Tom really is the perfect media hero for our times, and the construction of ‘our national hero’ was levelled up this morning as it turns out Captain Tom seems to be a huge fan of many of the symbols which signify classic conservative ideas about ‘Britishness’.

Honestly, it was all there, crammed into a 30 minute slot on BBC breakfast this morning….

The Armed Forces and the Fly By…

We know him as Captain Tom, but he’s now been given the honorary title of ‘Colonel’, so take your pick (he doesn’t mind). He got a special fly by this morning, and really seemed to love it!

You can check out the fly-by and most of the rest of the BBC ”Tom show’ below…

The historical Link to World War II

There aren’t many WWII veterans alive, but Captain Tom is one of them, and WWII – that’s deep in the conservative idea of the nation!

I guess this link is even more popular because of the fake similarities with ‘fighting’ Coronavirus.

His love of the Royal Family

Captain Tom thanked the Royal Family (who he thinks are wonderful) for their letters of support.

This ‘deferral to authority’ goes along with being in the armed forces I guess. Very much part of Conservative Britishness.

The countryside village in which he lives

Ironically the only thing not British about the village is the name – Marston Moretaine, maybe that’s the result of a French twinning project?

But everything else about it seems quintissentially British – it’s bang in the middle of Oxford and Cambridge, so proper ‘home counties’, lovely fields and a church.

It’s basically a cross between ‘Midsommer Murders’ but without the murders, the Vicar of Dibley and Last of the Summer Wine, with the poor people hidden from site.

His Love of Cricket

Tom is a lifelong cricket fan, and he was today presented with an honorary membership of the England Cricket Club, and gifted a hat by Michael Vaughn, once captain of England.

Is there a sport that says ‘conservative England’ more than cricket?

You’ll Never Walk Alone

A number one in 1963, and Liverpool Football Club’s Anthem – you don’t get much more British than early 1960s pop music and one of our longstanding Premier League clubs!

The Grandchildren

Honestly, they seem to come across as perfect. His grandson’s got that ‘healthy rugby build’ about him, and his granddaughter just seems so perfectly sweet. Framed with Captain Tom’s daughter (presumably their mother) you get the impression of the perfect British nuclear family, albeit stretch out by one generation.

And let’s not forget the NHS

It was Captain Tom’s efforts to raise money for NHS that propelled him to media stardom, and the NHS is part of our ‘national identity’ too, especially recently!

What are we celebrating exactly?

This morning was a ‘pause for celebration’, and fair enough in some respects, but what are we celebrating?

I personally think I witnessed something extremely hyperreal on BBC Breakfast today. The media seems to have used Captain Tom’s 100th birthday as a chance to reinforce conservative ideals about Britishness, ideals that don’t really exist outside of the upper middle class echelons of society.

Maybe this is because Captain Tom (he went to a grammar school in the 1920s!) and media professionals are both of the upper middle class, that this kind of celebration of traditional British identity comes so naturally to them.

I also thought Captain Tom’s efforts were about raising money for the NHS and helping to tackle Coronavirus, but this seems to have just got lost somewhere along the way?

And let’s not forget that 1/7 NHS workers aren’t even British, but they’re risking their lives for us.

A few sociological observations on England’s progress through the World Cup…

Sociological analysis of the World Cup as a media-construction and a bizarrely inclusive kind of nationalism…

I don’t care too much for football, and I’m most certainly not an English nationalist, and yet I’ve got thoroughly caught up in, and even enjoyed watching England’s progress through this 2018 World Cup (England-Colombia accepted, at least until the very final kick of the ball).

In this post I just present a few sociological musings on the World Cup 2018…..

Come on England

The World Cup is most definitely a media spectacle…

It strikes me that what I’m enjoying is not just the football, it’s the whole month-long media-spectacle surrounding the event: without the media-hype I just don’t think it would be the ‘World-Cup’…. I mean let’s face it, there’s at least 30 minutes ‘studio discussion’ before the group-stage games, and now England are the semi-finals, this pre-amble has increased to 90 minutes, not to mention all the coverage during the day, on T.V. and radio, not to mention social media.

And of course, this year, the ‘youngster’s in the squad have upped the media-integration even more, with (well-managed) use of social media and goal-celebration dances taken from Fortnite….

There’s even instructions out on how to do it… as in this Guardian article

Celebrities co-opting the World-Cup?

Then of course there’s the inevitable celebrities and their ‘support messages’…as in this BBC 1 minute long trailer… I do wonder how many of these celebs even like football?

Celebrities world cup

In fairness, I do know that Russel Brand is a genuine ‘fan’ so fair play, he’s ‘earned’ his place in video, but the rest of the them… this might just be a vessel for self-promotion?

The role of the BBC in constructing ‘World Cup Fever’ ?

Is it just me, or is ITV coverage just a bit ‘wrong’? I don’t actually even regard ITV as a legitimate part of the process of World Cup construction… it’s more of a passenger IMO, it’s just not the same as the BBC.

I mean Gary Lineker is about as ‘England in the World Cup’ as you can get (at least in the last three decades), and there’s no adverts, so you just get to soak up more the atmosphere, and it’s not just Garry: Breakfast Time does a pretty good job hyping up the event too.

BBC world cup
Would it even be a World Cup without Gary ‘crisp-muncher’ Lineker’?

And yet it’s not quite hyperreality!

For all the media-construction, and even talk of ‘hyping it up’, I can’t quite bring myself to call this a truly hyperreal event (as some postmodernists might argue) … because the games take place, well, in place, and there’s clear rules and a time-limit, and I can pop out there for myself if I want to!.

England in the World Cup: A ‘friendlier’ sort of nationalism?

Of course the number of England flags draped out of people’s windows increases during the World Cup, as do the number of on-display beer-belly and football-tattoo combos, but this isn’t a small-minded, intolerant, closed kind of nationalism, it’s a ‘liminal’ type of sports-specific nationalism that’s maybe a little less angry and a little more vulnerable than your Brexit nationalism?

England flags world cup

I definitely think there’s something nationalist about the event: I mean being taken back through our nation’s footballing history is a mainstay of the narrative in the media-coverage, it’s even takes ‘solid form’ in our ex-England players fronting BBC’s coverage, and then of course… ‘football’s coming home’. OK, going down the home homeland route of analysis maybe a bit strong, but then again?!

Certainly the way the World-Cup is constructed in the media, it’s a very inclusive, multicultural, open to all ages, and family-friendly event. A ‘soft-brexit’ kind of nationalism if you like, having said that, I’m sure there are plenty of places and pubs in the UK where those England flags and those tattoos are most definitely not expressing an open and tolerant idea of England!

Anywhere, I’ll leave it there for today, just a few sociological ramblings….

Come on England!

Who are the alt-right?

The Unite the Right Ralley in Charlotsville back in August 2017 was attended by various right wing groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, Skin heads, Neo-Nazis and various Militias, but the most newly formed in attendance, the so-called ‘alt right’, a disparate group of clean cut, smartly dressed, young white men, the latest ‘wave’ of white U.S. white nationalists who are unafraid to express their racist views.

The alt-right is an eclectic, decentralized movement of extreme-conservative, who want a white-only ethno-state: they mainly operate online, via forums such as Reddit and 4chan, sharing memes which support Donald Trump and Hitler, as well as those disparaging Barrack Obama.

But who are these young men, and how do they develop their racist views?

This article in the Washington Post is based on interviews with six young men, tracing their trajectories as members of the alt-right. The following themes stand out:

  1. Many self-radicalised on the internet, finding others with similar views, and they went through stages of meeting others at local and regional meetings and gradually learnt not be ashamed of their racist views.
  2. Thought most members don’t blame impersonal economic factors, many feel that there are no jobs for white people any more – they go to Walmart and McDonalds and see mainly ethnic minorities working in such places.
  3. There are also deeper ‘structural reasons’ – the decline of factor jobs, and the feeling of being left behind, having had the ladder kicked away, and feelings of loneliness and alienation.

NB – these are just the stand-out factors, there are also middle-class people in the movement.

The Charlotsville Rally represented a culmination of a movement that’s been brewing for years online, many drove hundreds, some thousands of miles to get there, possibly emboldened by Donald Trump, they came armed for violence, and of course were met by it.

Whatever you think of the alt-right, the underlying causes which have given rise to it, and the communications networks which maintain it aren’t going anywhere, so I think we can expect this to be a potent force in US politics for years to come.

NB – It reminds me of the kind of white nationalism expressed by the BNP, but just a step-up!

 

 

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