How Steep is the Price of Nationalism? Just Ask America (and Britain)

The last decade will be remembered for two things, above all. One, a virus of the body: Covid. Two, a virus of the mind and spirit: nationalism.
Nationalism has long been regarded as a folly, a kind of special stupidity, antithetical to civilization — at least by sane and thoughtful people. And the last decade or so has provided us with a kind of perfect, terrible experiment. Is nationalism really as bad as its critics suggest? Really as dangerous, stupid, self-destructive? Is it really that much of a mistake — one to be put in the pantheon of the most foolish choices a society can make?
History doesn’t often give us near-perfect natural social experiments. That is because, unlike in the lab, conditions in the real world are difficult to control for. Societies don’t often make clear-cut choices, and choose totally disparate trajectories than others close enough to them, in socioeconomic variables, to be considered something of a “control group.” So when history does give us something close to lab conditions — well, we had better learn something.
Now, the last few years of modern history have been something just like that — a strange set of circumstances, in which something very much like lab conditions has emerged, something close to a laboratory run experiment taking place in the real world.
The perfect, terrible experiment before us — if we are curious and careful enough to see clearly — is this. Two of the world’s most powerful rich countries chose the path of nationalism — extreme, hardcore nationalism, in fact.
America elected Trump, and Britain chose Brexit. These are two of the most significant, strange, and bizarre decisions in modern history. Nobody much, remember, predicted them — because they put America and Britain in a special class amongst rich countries — those who’d chosen hardcore nationalism. It was true that the nationalist wave swept the globe — affecting India and Brazil and Turkey amongst others — but in the class of rich nations, Britain and America alone chose nationalism. France and Germany and Canada, for example, all resisted the nationalist tide, as did Sweden and Spain. Yes, nationalism made inroads everywhere — but only in America and Britain did it rise to the very top of politics, society, and culture, shaping those societies completely and totally.
Furthermore, America and Britain didn’t just go halfway towards nationalism — they went all in, and then some, as far towards the end of the spectrum as it was possible to go. That’s important for history’s experiment, too, because it creates as clear cut a distinction as is possible to have among countries, which doesn’t often exist. If the spectrum was something like internationalist and cosmopolitan on the one side, and nationalist on the other, most rich countries retained their positions, roughly, while Britain and America plunged right off the charts.
Britain and America provide, in other words, a perfect experiment. If we were ranking societies on a scale of 1 to 10 in a variable called nationalism, they’d be a 10, while most other rich countries would rank maybe a 2 or 3. What would our ranking be made of? Well, if we were smart, we could base it on many, many things.
The first way that America and Britain went ultra-nationalist was, of course, politically. Trump made America a place that rejected even allies and partners on the international stage, insulting and mocking countries like…Germany and France. This is just what Britain did, too, insulting and attacking a baffled EU, which wondered what it had done to make Britain (and America) so hostile to it.
As a result, the average person, who’d long harbored suspicion towards society’s minorities, exploded in a paroxysm of what can only be called hate. Europeans were treated with open hostility in Britain, by the government, media, becoming second-class pariahs, just as poor, desperate migrants were hunted in the streets in America by Gestapos and then put in concentration camps. And the average white person tolerated and applauded all this. Why? What on earth had happened to decivilize these societies?
The answer to that question lay in how demagogues had reshaped culture and society. Trump and Farage had led these countries’ white majorities to believe fervently that the cause of their decline was hated minorities. In America, that was Muslims and Mexicans and Jews and Latinos, in Britain, it was Europeans. And so the cultural mood in society changed. The made-up term “globalist” became some kind of insult (among fools, anyway) as if belonging to the world was a bad thing. Literal neo-Nazis and neo-fascists like Steve Bannon were treated, by the media and politicians, like Platonic philosopher-kings — not bigoted, violent, idiot-man-children.
The average white person came to believe that they occupied a kind of privileged, special place in the world. They were not equals. With anyone else. Any other country, any minority. They were supreme. After all, that is what they had been not so long ago, when America was an apartheid state, when Britain was an empire. Those feelings, that craving for supremacy, is a dangerous thing, because the longer it lasts, the longer it takes to ebb, and in these societies, it had lasted centuries. America had been born a slave state, and Britain had helped it build a trans-national slave empire. These ugly, bizarre, foolish sentiments were awakened in the average person, all over again — “Make America Great Again!!” “Take Back Control!!”
America and Britain were now in the throes of the true process of nationalism — societies that grew consumed by the belief that some people are inherently better than the rest. Now the true corrosion began — society’s morals and ethics began to change, or regress to some point in history in the past, best left behind. Nationalism, at its root, is just this — a certain kind of attitude, a moral one.
So this certain moral logic came to consume society: some people — us — are inherently better than others — them. But that only raises the question: why? The answer to that is always the same: some are weak, and a few are strong, and the strong deserve to survive, and the weak don’t. Again, that only raises the question: why? The answer — and there is only one possible answer left — is that the weak are liabilities and burdens on the strong, who hold them back from their inherent, destined “greatness” or supremacy or superiority. Therefore, the moral and ethical duty of the strong becomes to punish and annihilate the weak.
And soon enough, that underlying moral psychology becomes a political cause and social attitude.
You might say: “So what, Umair?! That’s all just abstraction and theory!! Grow up!! It doesn’t even mean anything!!” Ah, but it does. Consumed by the attitude that the strong should prevail by punishing the weak, these societies were unable to invest. In anything that they desperately needed, like healthcare, retirement, education, childcare — and so living standards plummeted viciously. There are only three societies in the world in which incomes, savings, life expectancy, and happiness have all fallen over the last decade, and the other one is North Korea.
And then along came Covid.
What do you think societies in which the attitude “Only the strong survive! The weak should perish!! That is how we become Great Again, by cleansing away weakness and impurity, with hate and anger and brutality!!” were going to do when a pandemic hit? The obvious answer is: they weren’t going to do enough to stop it spiraling out of control.
If you want a vivid example of that, when Covid hit, the British government, by now made of fools, incompetents, and crackpots, endorsed a theory of “herd immunity,” and encouraged the virus to spread. Epidemiologists — who understood herd immunity is a thing that emerges when we have a vaccine — were horrified. But nobody listened to them. In America, the situation was even worse. Trump denied a virus existed, and then pretend it was no worse than the flu — and the aftershocks of those lies resonate right down to today, where patients in Covid ICU wards in Red States lie on their deathbeds…denying Covid exists.
Fast forward a few months, and America had the worst Covid outcomes in the world, while Britain had the worst Covid outcomes in Europe. That’s hardly a coincidence. The world’s countries with the worst Covid outcomes were led by nationalists — Brazil, India, and so on. It wasn’t a coincidence, it was a relationship. And yet the relationship was hard to see. Or was it?
Nationalism, properly understood, is the social attitude that “we are the chosen people.” The strong ones. It demands that weakness, therefore, be eliminated. That the vulnerable and minorities be treated with contempt and scorn, as liabilities and burdens. That those who wish to belong to the chosen must therefore display the qualities of ruthlessness, selfishness, brutality, thoughtlessness, cruelty, and indifference — all of which are what make a people and a person strong (no matter what noble patriotic appeals might gild the poisoned lily).
It was eminently predictable, therefore, that countries like America and Britain were to be shattered by Covid. And that’s exactly what happened.
Today, just a few days before Christmas, nearly 300,000 Americans have died of Covid. 64,000 Brits have. Compared to much of the rest of the world, even adjusted for population, these are shocking, horrifying, staggering numbers. If America had acted like South Korea, for example, just 3200 people would have died.
But it didn’t. It didn’t because it couldn’t. It couldn’t because it chose nationalism, which is a polite way of saying an ugly thing. By now, I’ve explained that ugly thing to you — the idea that some people are inherently better than others, because they are strong, while the rest are weak. What else is that idea called, by the way? When it becomes violent enough, we call it fascism. And yet the moral logic remains precisely the same. Nationalism, in that sense, has long been said to be by thoughtful people, fascism’s seed.
So. What does history’s latest natural experiment tell us? Is nationalism really as bad as people like me — and everyone sane and thoughtful, really — were warning, so many years ago, and for the last few years? Let’s tally up the score. What’s the price of nationalism?
The price of nationalism is all the following. Hundreds of thousands needlessly dead. The economic depression that already accompanies it. Plummeting living standards, even before the pandemic. The disintegration of trust and respect, decaying into hate and rage — the tearing apart of social bonds. The explosion of ignorance and stupidity, by way of demagogues and literal fascists glorified as great intellectuals. Startling falls in happiness, life expectancy, income. The vicious slashing of public investment, and the tearing up of social contracts. The cultural and social regression of backwardness, brutality, ruthlessness, indifference, rage, hate, and cruelty all now celebrated as desirable virtues. The alienation of international friends and allies The average person believing fervently in all the above — so fervently that to this day, while mass death wracks these societies, enough of them won’t cooperate to help stop it. Society plunging downwards to a level of development more reminiscent of a third world autocracy than a modern democracy.
The results of history’s latest, greatest natural experiment are these. Is nationalism as dangerous as people like me warned, we hated “globalists” and “liberals” and “cosmopolitans” and whatnot?
Take a hard look at Britain and America. At how they lead the world in Covid deaths. At how people’s lives have fallen apart — and yet the average person is now stupid and foolish enough that they support their lives being taken apart. At how inequality spirals, while longevity falters. At how they are something like the world’s first rich failed states, in which people have traded rage for enlightenment, ignorance for decency, brutality for thoughtfulness, indifference for care, and so politics has failed completely to advance one inch. In which social contracts have failed catastrophically — and yet can only be torn up further.
Britain and America aren’t really countries anymore. They’re punchlines, dire lessons we give to students, astonishing examples of deliberate self-destruction, warnings to the world and the future. Of what happens when the stupidity of nationalism comes to poison society. It is a toxin so strong that it can wreck even the most powerful bodies politic and social in just a handful of years.
What’s the price of nationalism? Becoming America, the world’s laughingstock, or Britain, Europe’s punchline. Becoming a failing state, in which people have become stupid and dull enough to back the engines of their own ruin. Mass death. Self-destruction, by way of fascism, authoritarianism, ignorance, rage, cruelty, indifference.
It’s not remotely theory anymore, but hard, grim, brutal reality, for which we have America and Britain to thank.
Nationalism, it turns out, really is the most foolish decision society can make. Because what it does in the end, as it has always done, is unmake that very society.
Umair
December 2020

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