Rise of Nationlism

Nationalism is instrument often used as means to gaining power and taking control of a nation. In history this has happened time and time again and sometimes with explosive results which has led to conflicts and wars in the last few hundred years. You would have thought by now we would have learned the lesson of the past but so powerful is that tool that politicians carry on using it all around the world.

The catalyst for the rise of support of nationalism is often some kind of injustice as can be seen by looking at world history, and it sometimes accompanied by world economic crisis such as in 1930's Germany which saw the rise of the National Socialist German Workers' Party. Over the years we have seen similar parties in other counties such as Italy, Spain and Portugal all using nationalism as away of gaining and keeping power. In fact the the tactic has been used throughout the world by states and terrorists and the practice is use today.

Although sometimes the idea of nationalism is well intended and has mass appeal the reality is different as we have seen recently in our own history in Northern Ireland and before that in Central Europe. There is always something that makes it turn sour and nasty. Maybe it something to do with the idea "that power corrupts" but it something more than that which in the case of nationalism. It is common that every nationalist party is on the far left or the far right of politics and may be that is the problem the movement naturally attracts extremists.

Using the socialist tag is often a good way of getting into power used by Nationalist the other one is the republican tag, all of which have been used to good effect, although the gives you more scope for taking control through forced nationalisation of industry and control of government institutions. Whatever means are used to win power the results are often the same as are the methods of control, if you don't like something you either threaten it to it does what you want or destroy it or take it over.

Nationalism is often confused with national pride by many and that used Nationalists to good effect making it seem unpatriotic not to support the movement. As soon as you oppose them you become outsider from the nation you live in and a second class citizen. In the worse cases this can lead you to be bullied and to be victimised by the state. This occurs when national pride becomes almost fanatical in nature as occurred  in countries like Germany.

The use of social injustice as trigger and as a device used by Nationalist is interesting and at the same time contradictory. Since nationalistic policies are often divisive creating more injustice rather than doing anything to solve the problem of injustice in society.  This occurs because of the polarisation that it causes in society which is combined with black and white political thinking where often the people in power think they know better than the people what might be good for them. This interestingly results in leadership that believes in complete control of the political strings of power.

Over the next few years we are going to see a rise in nationalism throughout Europe and some of it isn't going to be nice. This will be caused from pressures within individual nations as well as pressures from outside nations. What ever the reason the only real way to tackle injustice in society comes as whole and can only be done from the centre of the political movement and not from the nationalistic extremes. As in the past nationalism is as big a threat to society as it has always been.