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Mais, Oui!

What our little experiment has shown the world (assuming the world has watched) is, first, that even under the best imaginable conditions, divided countries are hard-pressed to become nations, and second, that even in a successful and individualistic society, “civic nationalism” doesn’t cut it with most people. They seem to need and want a “real” […]

What our little experiment has shown the world (assuming the world has watched) is, first, that even under the best imaginable conditions, divided countries are hard-pressed to become nations, and second, that even in a successful and individualistic society, “civic nationalism” doesn’t cut it with most people. They seem to need and want a “real” nation. ~Andrew Cunningham

I would go further and say that it is especially in a “successful and individualistic society” that civic nationalism doesn’t cut it.  It is, unfortunately, usually the only thing being offered, because no one is inclined to imagine a different kind of national identity or a different kind of bond uniting the people within a polity.  But civic nationalism is uniquely unsatisfying to a people who have often already attenuated or shucked off their other, stronger identities and who are only relatively recently rediscovering or attributing political significance to their language and history.  In the end, it has everything to do with a sense of belonging and whether one has a stronger sense of belonging in a nation defined by language, a shared history and some kind of cultural distinctiveness or whether one has a stronger sense of it in a “multicultural and multilingual” federation.  The weaker sense of belonging will eventually yield if it is not constantly reinforced and unless its rivals are continually beaten down and undermined.  A civic nationalism is among the most fragile of all.  Like an ideological nationalism, it survives because of the enforced absence of as many natural attachments as can possibly be pushed to the margins.

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