3 ms·
It should be pretty clear from the author's discussion of etymology and usage that "civic nationalism" is an oxymoron.
by notacoward 5y ago
It should be pretty clear from the author's discussion of etymology and usage that "civic nationalism" is an oxymoron.
- zhdc1 5y agoAnd yet, it's very possible that the author (a historian, not a political scientist) is completely wrong. Civic nationalism is very much considered to be a legitimate form of nationalism. And the author's concept of a nation as a shared ethnic background in historical perpetuity completely ignores why the concept of the "nation state" became a thing in the first place - 19th century European nationalists needed an ideology to organize highly diverse (linguistically, religiously, as well as ethnically) populations under a single administration. It´s worth keeping in mind that nationalism also emerged as a reaction to the success of the United States, and part of the reason for it's popularity was that it served to counteract the Enlightenment-based concept of principles-based government (political naturalism), which was seen as one of the main causes for the French revolution (see Lafayette's Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and Paine's Rights of Man).