THE SOUND of lusty Germans filling World Cup stadiums with the refrain of what much of the world still thinks of as
Deutschland über Alles has provoked mixed reactions. Despite the best efforts of the enforcers of political correctness, it will never be possible for any of the current generations of Englishmen or women (or many other Europeans, for that matter) to dissociate the sound from the nation’s still unpleasantly recent past.
Certainly, it’s not the Horst Wessel Lied, and the anthem’s words (“Bloom, in the glow of happiness, Bloom, German fatherland!”) are almost bathetically bucolic by comparison with the old, troublingly blunter: “Germany, Germany, above everything in the world!” But there’s something about the sight of muscular Aryans and blonde-plaited Fräulein belting out the familiar tune that prompts some to reach instinctively for the tin helmet and the map of Poland.
But to others, me included, the development is a welcome one. It marks another small, symbolic victory in the unending struggle of people everywhere to preserve their national sovereignty. It says much, too, about the enduring nature of national identity. Despite centuries of efforts to extinguish it, the nation remains the unit in which most peoples, especially those in Europe, invest their loyalties. You can read too much into the behaviour of football fans, as we English know only too well. But the guiltless embrace of patriotism by football-loving Germans fits with a general perception in recent years that Germany is close to being a normal nation again.
Nationalism, of course, has long been a dirty word. It is generally deemed to have consigned Europe to almost continuous war between the early 19th century and the mid-20th century. And so it did.
But as with so many attempts to extirpate evil, the desire to crush its baleful consequences overreached. It was not just nationalism, but patriotism that was suppressed. The idea that your country can stand for something benign became unsayable, even with nations whose past fully entitled them to make such a claim.
The conviction took hold, in the governing and opinion-forming classes in the West, that the nation state itself was somehow an abomination, an intrinsic threat to peace and stability. So for half a century, emboldened political leaders in Europe made larger and larger efforts to snuff it out.
But while you can submerge nationhood in a tight web of supranational institutions, you can’t destroy the basic allegiances that animate the hearts of men. You can take the soul out of a country but you can’t take a country out of the soul. And the risk has always been that the more you attempt to suppress the idea of a nation, the more you will foster resentment and the very sort of indignant nationalism that has proved so tragically costly.
The European Union, of course, is not alone. The post-Second World War multilateral settlements designed to promote international co-operation between sovereign nations have become, in the dreams of many, an even larger opportunity to suppress the nation itself. There are political and cultural elites everywhere who regard the nation state as an unhealthy anachronism, who want to bury national pride and identity beneath an avalanche of deracinated, brotherhood-of-man, why-can’t-we-all-just-get-along-together mush. It is a conviction founded on a moral relativism, of course — no one nation is any better than any other — and promulgated by diplomats, business leaders and entertainers who have long since shaken off the irritating shackles of their own nationhood to play on a much larger global stage. To these people the United Nations is the highest achievement of humanity, and they would happily subjugate the will of peoples everywhere to its rule.
What is so striking about this effort to extinguish national identity and the popular will is that it is persistent, and through history repeatedly reveals itself in different ways. Marx regarded the nation as a capitalist construct, another manifestation of false consciousness to distract alienated labour from its true plight. The Soviets certainly did their bit to eliminate national boundaries, but the vigorous and renewed national pride in Eastern Europe is testament to the enduring failure of global communism.
Radical Islam wants the umma to replace national communities — and is willing to eliminate nations by violence. And I suppose, for reasons of absolute fairness, and as a Catholic, that I should also acknowledge that the Church has had a long history of adopting a bluntly political interpretation of its universalist claim, though today it has, fortunately come to happier terms with the nation state.
In some parts of the world, of course, popular allegiance is paid to even smaller units of society — tribes and ethnic groups. Indeed in places like Iraq, we should wish there were a stronger nationalism.
But the principle remains that voluntary loyalty to one’s own group is the most powerful popular coagulant. Belief in the supremacy of national sovereignty is not at all, as its critics claim, an inevitable driver of racism or nationalism. Even if, like the Dixie Chicks, you claim not to be able to understand the very idea of patriotism, you should at least acknowledge that, for most people, the nation is the primary political unit, the one that legitimises the governing of their nation.
Nor is support for the principle of a world of free sovereign nations consonant with economic isolationism. Globalisation has worked (and it has been the greatest antidote to poverty the world has ever seen) because it has been driven by consumer choices, individuals acting freely to promote their own welfare, not by elites.
Indeed, economic integration remains the best way to promote global co-operation and genuine prospects for peace. It gives people a tangible stake in each other’s futures in a way no supranational ideal or multilateral institution ever could.
