The world is looking on in amazement at the uproar in the United States that has followed President Donald Trump’s executive order, which denies entry to citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries.
The President’s order was the fulfilment of a campaign promise to “ban Muslims” from entering the US, which was part of the nationalistic fervour that fed Trump’s popularity and won him the White House.
One tongue-in-cheek definition that explains the difference between nationalism and patriotism states: a patriot is proud of his country for what it does and a nationalist is proud of his country no matter what it does. The first attitude is derived from a feeling of responsibility, while the second is rooted in blind arrogance.
Writer George Orwell stated that nationalism is “the worst enemy of peace”. He believed that nationalism feeds feelings of your country’s superiority over all others and in every regard, while patriotism is an expressed pride in your national values, beliefs and way of life.
While patriotism comes from feelings of affection, nationalism is rooted in rivalry and resentment. In broad terms, nationalism is militant, while patriotism fosters peace. While a patriot feels that everyone in the world is their equal, a nationalist views only the people of their own country as their equal.
Because nationalism makes you contemptuous of other nations and blind to any of their virtues, it feeds militant attitudes. For this reason, nationalists are very preoccupied with borders and with securing them in order to keep everyone deemed inferior out.
Trump’s top advisor, Steven Bannon, proclaims himself a nationalist and exemplifies the mistake most nationalists make in believing that they can disguise themselves as patriots and not be discovered.
But the “America First” theme of Trump’s presidency is nationalism sloganized and writ large, and arises from the notion that Americans are more important than other people in the world. Some of Trump’s directives and policies and the people he has chosen for cabinet and advisory positions signal a nationalist agenda.
A fool-proof way to tell the difference between nationalism and patriotism is to remember that Hitler was a nationalist and Mahatma Gandhi, a patriot.
Guyana, as a whole, does not contribute to nationalistic fervour, but there are elements within our country whose speech and actions appear closely aligned with nationalist tendencies. For instance, leaders of nationalist movements always try to find justification for past mistakes and it is Orwell again who stated: “The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.”
The PNC-led Coalition ran its election campaign on a platform of forgetting its past and, to date, the PNC has never owned-up to the election rigging, racism, party paramountcy, and the thuggery and violence which marked its 28-year dictatorship.
In fact, since its return to power, the PNC-led Government seems intent on continuing from where it left off and appears indulgent of African Guyanese groups which are attempting to make themselves more entitled than others by trying to stake out indigeneity claims.
No other Africans in the West – not in Brazil, America, Suriname, or anywhere else – have ever done so, perhaps, out of due regard for the inviolable rights of the Americas’ First Peoples.
Indian Guyanese are still seen as outsiders and aliens by these groups, and even as usurpers who arrived “late” and have inherited what is not rightfully theirs, whereas, like immigrant communities everywhere, our fore-parents came with their values and beliefs, worked hard and settled here, and paved the way for the full citizenship of their descendants.
Indian Guyanese are equal to every other citizen with respect to all legal and human rights and are entitled to an equal share in the national patrimony. Denying these rights to any Guyanese group or citizen can be rightfully viewed as prejudice, based on nationalist feelings. Indian Guyanese have endured open cultural and political violence for half a century and many fled to North America, some as refugees, as recently as the turn of the century from the Buxton-centred racial/political violence.
They fled race-led nationalism in Guyana and have made safe homes in Canada and the US. Many of them are on the frontlines in the battle to make sure that the US does not go down the path of Guyana because of their experience here where nationalism, with all its inbuilt prejudices, is actually justified and encouraged by several political and cultural leaders.
The events unfolding in the US should be vital lessons for the nationalists in our midst.
