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The Economist considers itself center-right, and is classically liberal (free trade, individual liberty). Breitbart caters to nativist sensibility, and while th

The Economist considers itself center-right, and is classically liberal (free trade, individual liberty). Breitbart caters to nativist sensibility, and while there might be a thoughtful, reasonable standard-bearer for nationalism, I haven't seen one. Perhaps such a publication would act as a pressure valve and reduce the prominence of the nativist garbage rags? Likely I'm too optimistic.

blahblahthrow 8y ago
What's the value of a less extreme nationalist press, except to espouse the same values but make them more palatable to moderates and lead them down the slippery slope to extremism? For better or worse the "ideal" world of nationalists would be a massive, traumatic revision of the current state of affairs, aimed at ethnic minorities and vulnerable people for benefit of white people. It seems like an inherently extreme and racist philosophy.
- vnorilo 8y ago
  While I am firmly in the open borders camp, I'm willing to consider nationalist arguments. I can see why people see value in national sovereignity or cultural preservation. I agree there's a very thin line separating it from racist drivel. That is where I draw the line - nationalist: can debate, nativist: not worth my time.
  - blahblahthrow 8y ago
    What is the national culture of America? Would nationalists deport all the people of European ancestry and give the land back to it's original inhabitants? What culture is preserved by stopping people moving between Mexico and Texas, which are pretty culturally similar and until recently were the same country? I don't there's a narrow line, I think there's no line and they're just branding to try and save face.
    - vnorilo 8y ago
      I should clarify that I'm from Finland, which gained independence from Russia in a clearly nationalist context. Not to belittle the troubling consequent alignment with Germany in WW2 which we tend to try to explain with "we didn't know Hitler was so evil" and the existential threat by Stalin. Regardless, national pride can take several forms. You could learn folk song and dance. Or you can wield torches in a skinhead march. I'd very much like to reclaim the concept from the latter.
      - blahblahthrow 8y ago
        It feels like you're moving the goal posts - "celebrating national pride" is something you can do without banning people from your country or marginalizing them. Nationalism seems fundamentally opposed to multicultural society - it's not about people electing to do folk song and dance, and multiculturalism doesn't prohibit celebrating culture.
        vnorilo 8y ago
        Nationalism does not directly lead into those things. My understanding is that's primarily about national sovereignity. Nativism is about discrimination of people based on origin or ethnicity. Obviously there are overlaps in the supporters of these ideologies. I am neither a nationalist nor a nativist myself.
      - jnurmine 8y ago
        Well, you must understand the historical context... It wasn't like Finland wanted to roll with Hitler. They were forced to, by the aggressiveness of the Soviet Union and the inaction of the Allied forces. First, the Soviet Union had just become best buddies with the Nazis (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and its secret addendum). Second, after demands to cede Finnish territory were rejected, Soviet Union staged a false flag attack and threw eventually overall about a million troops at Finland. The attack was repelled but Finland had to cede roughly 12% of its territory. Third, the Soviet Union was clearly not done, so what could Finland do? The horrors of 1939 were bound to happen again; Soviets were gearing for war and one could not really expect the weak and submissive Soviet population to make any kind of change for the better within their nation, that much had been taken care of by the death camps, deportations the secret police, tight control of the media, etc. The only actor who could realistically provide substantial help against the inevitable rematch with the Soviet madman was Nazi Germany, a nation run by another madman. Had USA, UK and the Allies sent troops or at least enough material, or pressured the Soviets to drop their ambitions of annexing a neutral country, Finland would not have needed any help from the Nazis. As it was, Allied help on a meaningful level did not happen. The neighbouring neutral Sweden helped the most, for obvious reasons: if Finland fell, they would be next. So, yes, it was an existential threat. However, as crude as it may sound, given the circumstances, Hitler being evil or not was surely not even considered.
  - ummonk 8y ago
    It's ridiculous how strongly people object to the idea of preserving national culture or being nativist, when so many of them turn around and focus so heavily on cultural preservation and nativism when talking about gentrification and housing policy on a local level.
    - 13415 8y ago
      That's because the people who argue most fervently for "national culture" are at the same time often strongly opposed to contemporary culture (arts, poetry, classical music, etc.) and don't produce anything of cultural value themselves, whereas the people who actually advance the culture of their country tend to be indifferent or fairly cosmopolitan (as a tendency, of course there are exceptions). Most people in the political center are able to recognize the cognitive dissonance of these self-proclaimed "nativists" and object to their hypocrisy. Gentrification, on the other hand, is a real-world problem for anyone who lives in a big city and has nothing to do with local culture or nativism. People can literally no longer pay their rents.
      - sarcasmOrTears 8y ago
        Not easy to produce things of value when you get thrown out for your opinion from essenyial platforms, like venues, banking services, payment providers, college campus, etc
        13415 8y ago
        That's totally ridiculous and not even worth discussing. Unless you're a full-blown Nazi, terrorist, or communist and your main goal in life is trolling and spreading hatred, you'll have zero problems with any of the above essential platforms. Just to give you a sense of how wrong you are, I'm working at a university and one of my colleagues is a fully convinced communist and another colleague is an overtly racist Social Darwinist. They are luckily the exception, but that's just because they defend fringe positions that most people do not and never will endorse. Big surprise. The center portion of the normal distribution is larger.
AnthonyMouse 8y ago
The problem seems to be that on many platforms, advocating something like enforcing existing immigration law gets you downvoted and shouted down as though you were advocating gassing the Jews. It seems to be even less tolerated than more extremist comments, because actual-Nazi comments get publicized as "look how terrible The Other Side is" whereas a more reasoned right-wing position might actually convince people. For example, the top level comment in this thread has been flagged to death even though its gist is that people should look for news from multiple perspectives. And when you have that kind of populist sentiment attacking anything that questions the party line, reasoned counterargument gets mushed into the same outlets that carry extremist conspiracy theories because they're the only ones not being cowed. Which naturally leads to the kind of polarization we've been seeing lately where both sides move away from the middle.
acdha 8y ago
I was thinking less of the flavor and more the credibility as journalism. Even most people who disagree with the WSJ editorial positions would agree that they don’t just print bald-faced lies. I’m not sure what that’s look like for nativism since so much of that movement has been based on mistruths but it’s definitely not Breitbart.

blahblahthrow 8y ago

What's the value of a less extreme nationalist press, except to espouse the same values but make them more palatable to moderates and lead them down the slippery slope to extremism? For better or worse the "ideal" world of nationalists would be a massive, traumatic revision of the current state of affairs, aimed at ethnic minorities and vulnerable people for benefit of white people. It seems like an inherently extreme and racist philosophy.

vnorilo 8y ago
While I am firmly in the open borders camp, I'm willing to consider nationalist arguments. I can see why people see value in national sovereignity or cultural preservation. I agree there's a very thin line separating it from racist drivel. That is where I draw the line - nationalist: can debate, nativist: not worth my time.
- blahblahthrow 8y ago
  What is the national culture of America? Would nationalists deport all the people of European ancestry and give the land back to it's original inhabitants? What culture is preserved by stopping people moving between Mexico and Texas, which are pretty culturally similar and until recently were the same country? I don't there's a narrow line, I think there's no line and they're just branding to try and save face.
  - vnorilo 8y ago
    I should clarify that I'm from Finland, which gained independence from Russia in a clearly nationalist context. Not to belittle the troubling consequent alignment with Germany in WW2 which we tend to try to explain with "we didn't know Hitler was so evil" and the existential threat by Stalin. Regardless, national pride can take several forms. You could learn folk song and dance. Or you can wield torches in a skinhead march. I'd very much like to reclaim the concept from the latter.
    - blahblahthrow 8y ago
      It feels like you're moving the goal posts - "celebrating national pride" is something you can do without banning people from your country or marginalizing them. Nationalism seems fundamentally opposed to multicultural society - it's not about people electing to do folk song and dance, and multiculturalism doesn't prohibit celebrating culture.
      - vnorilo 8y ago
        Nationalism does not directly lead into those things. My understanding is that's primarily about national sovereignity. Nativism is about discrimination of people based on origin or ethnicity. Obviously there are overlaps in the supporters of these ideologies. I am neither a nationalist nor a nativist myself.
    - jnurmine 8y ago
      Well, you must understand the historical context... It wasn't like Finland wanted to roll with Hitler. They were forced to, by the aggressiveness of the Soviet Union and the inaction of the Allied forces. First, the Soviet Union had just become best buddies with the Nazis (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and its secret addendum). Second, after demands to cede Finnish territory were rejected, Soviet Union staged a false flag attack and threw eventually overall about a million troops at Finland. The attack was repelled but Finland had to cede roughly 12% of its territory. Third, the Soviet Union was clearly not done, so what could Finland do? The horrors of 1939 were bound to happen again; Soviets were gearing for war and one could not really expect the weak and submissive Soviet population to make any kind of change for the better within their nation, that much had been taken care of by the death camps, deportations the secret police, tight control of the media, etc. The only actor who could realistically provide substantial help against the inevitable rematch with the Soviet madman was Nazi Germany, a nation run by another madman. Had USA, UK and the Allies sent troops or at least enough material, or pressured the Soviets to drop their ambitions of annexing a neutral country, Finland would not have needed any help from the Nazis. As it was, Allied help on a meaningful level did not happen. The neighbouring neutral Sweden helped the most, for obvious reasons: if Finland fell, they would be next. So, yes, it was an existential threat. However, as crude as it may sound, given the circumstances, Hitler being evil or not was surely not even considered.
- ummonk 8y ago
  It's ridiculous how strongly people object to the idea of preserving national culture or being nativist, when so many of them turn around and focus so heavily on cultural preservation and nativism when talking about gentrification and housing policy on a local level.
  - 13415 8y ago
    That's because the people who argue most fervently for "national culture" are at the same time often strongly opposed to contemporary culture (arts, poetry, classical music, etc.) and don't produce anything of cultural value themselves, whereas the people who actually advance the culture of their country tend to be indifferent or fairly cosmopolitan (as a tendency, of course there are exceptions). Most people in the political center are able to recognize the cognitive dissonance of these self-proclaimed "nativists" and object to their hypocrisy. Gentrification, on the other hand, is a real-world problem for anyone who lives in a big city and has nothing to do with local culture or nativism. People can literally no longer pay their rents.
    - sarcasmOrTears 8y ago
      Not easy to produce things of value when you get thrown out for your opinion from essenyial platforms, like venues, banking services, payment providers, college campus, etc
      - 13415 8y ago
        That's totally ridiculous and not even worth discussing. Unless you're a full-blown Nazi, terrorist, or communist and your main goal in life is trolling and spreading hatred, you'll have zero problems with any of the above essential platforms. Just to give you a sense of how wrong you are, I'm working at a university and one of my colleagues is a fully convinced communist and another colleague is an overtly racist Social Darwinist. They are luckily the exception, but that's just because they defend fringe positions that most people do not and never will endorse. Big surprise. The center portion of the normal distribution is larger.

AnthonyMouse 8y ago

The problem seems to be that on many platforms, advocating something like enforcing existing immigration law gets you downvoted and shouted down as though you were advocating gassing the Jews. It seems to be even less tolerated than more extremist comments, because actual-Nazi comments get publicized as "look how terrible The Other Side is" whereas a more reasoned right-wing position might actually convince people. For example, the top level comment in this thread has been flagged to death even though its gist is that people should look for news from multiple perspectives. And when you have that kind of populist sentiment attacking anything that questions the party line, reasoned counterargument gets mushed into the same outlets that carry extremist conspiracy theories because they're the only ones not being cowed. Which naturally leads to the kind of polarization we've been seeing lately where both sides move away from the middle.

acdha 8y ago

I was thinking less of the flavor and more the credibility as journalism. Even most people who disagree with the WSJ editorial positions would agree that they don’t just print bald-faced lies. I’m not sure what that’s look like for nativism since so much of that movement has been based on mistruths but it’s definitely not Breitbart.