What is Ethnonationalism?
Ethnonationalism holds that a nation is above all a people with a common ancestry, language, customs and history. It does not define the nation mainly by citizenship or by shared laws and values. From this it follows that the state should serve the ethnic nation, either by giving it a country of its own or by giving it a leading place in the country where it lives. The idea has driven independence movements and the birth of new states. It has also been used to justify discrimination, expulsion and mass killing of minorities.
Core beliefs
- The nation is a community of descent, language and culture.
- Each people has a right to rule itself in its own homeland.
- The state should protect the identity and interests of the main ethnic group.
- Shared heritage creates trust and duties that mere citizenship does not.
- Mixing of peoples within one state may weaken unity and the national culture.
- Loyalty to the ethnic nation can outweigh loyalty to other groups or to universal ideals.
History
Roots lie in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In Germany, Herder wrote about the unique spirit of each people and its language, and Fichte called on Germans to unite as a nation. The Revolutions of 1848 and the unification of Italy and Germany spread the idea of the nation state. After 1918, the peace treaties redrew central and eastern Europe using ethnic lines, but left many minorities in the wrong state. Ethnic nationalism took a murderous form in Nazi Germany, whose racial ideology led to the Holocaust. During the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, forces of several sides carried out ethnic cleansing, and in Bosnia the court rulings found that the killings at Srebrenica in 1995 amounted to genocide. Scholars such as Walker Connor and Anthony D. Smith later studied why ethnic ties remain so strong.
Variants
Scholars often split nationalism into civic and ethnic kinds, with civic versions based on citizenship. Even within ethnonationalism the range is wide. Cultural versions focus on language and heritage and are mostly peaceful, such as many revival movements for stateless peoples. Separatist forms seek a new state. Dominant group forms seek to hold power in an existing state. Racial and exclusionary forms, the most dangerous, treat other groups as threats. Scholars also dispute whether the split between civic and ethnic nationalism is really so clear.
Criticisms
Critics say that ethnic groups are rarely pure, that borders almost never match peoples, and that trying to make them match leads to expulsions, ethnic cleansing and war. They argue that it treats rights as depending on ancestry and so cannot give equal citizenship to minorities. Liberals say individuals should not be judged by descent. Supporters reply that a shared culture is what makes democracy and welfare work, and that smaller nations need their own states to survive, as the case of colonised peoples showed. They also stress that wishing to keep a culture is not the same as hatred of others.
In practice
Ethnonationalism shapes politics in many regions, in both democracies and dictatorships. It appears in parties that stress national heritage, in citizenship laws based on descent, and in separatist movements. On the 12 axes it scores at the top toward National identity on Culture, and strongly toward Strong leader, Order and Central. It has no fixed economic stance, so its Ownership and Markets scores sit near the middle.