Everything you learned about the horrors of nationalism and the importance of multilateral and supranational organizations like the United Nations is wrong, says JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin.
Much of the West has been taught to denigrate the idea of faith in a system of independent sovereign states after World War II and to support systems that undermine them. But the truth is that the most likely source of hate, bigotry and oppression in the 21st century doesn’t come from nationalists, but from liberals and leftists who seek to impose their ideas on the world by any means necessary.
He’s joined in this week’s episode of “Think Twice” by Yoram Hazony, author of the seminal 2018 book The Virtue of Nationalism, which has just been republished in an updated edition. He points out that though modern liberals have accepted the idea that Adolf Hitler’s Nazism was a natural consequence of German nationalism, the truth is that it was a scheme for imperial domination, much like the ambitions of Napoleon and Stalin.
It had nothing to do with the notion of an international order of independent sovereign states that, as Hazony writes, is the best recipe for freedom, despite the fact that all countries are flawed. He also points out that the contemporary push to downgrade national freedom in favor of globalism and the rule of international organizations, like the United Nations or the European Union, is another instance of that same desire for imperial rule in which elites in one place seek to dominate other nations.
Hazony believes that the anti-Zionism and antisemitism directed at Israel is, in large measure, derived from the resentment of Marxists and Europeans who have lost faith in the rights of their own countries to national independence and sovereignty feel about the Jewish state’s willingness to fight for its right to exist and thrive. In this way, Israeli nationalism is viewed as unacceptable and paradoxically linked to the intolerance of the Nazis when, in fact, Zionism is a rational and much-needed response to the powerlessness and lack of national sovereignty of the Jews during the Holocaust.
The intolerance of these anti-nationalists on the left for those, like Israelis, who resist their diktats, is similar to the way true believers in an ideological faith regard those who resist their ideas, he said. That, along with traditional antisemitism, is fueling the fires of hatred against Israel.
Hazony, who leads the Edmund Burke Foundation, which has organized several National Conservative conferences in Europe and the United States since his book was first published, acknowledged that he was troubled by the growth of anti-Israel sentiment among some American conservatives since the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Most American conservatives have embraced U.S. President Donald Trump’s version of nationalism, which is very supportive of Israel. But some figures, labeled by Hazony as “alt-right,” seek to push Jews out of the conservative movement and are hostile to the Jewish state. That’s creating a problem for the Trump administration. Their need to keep their electoral coalition intact may be setting up a situation where they need to confront people like former Fox News host and current political commentator Tucker Carlson, but are “hesitant” to do so. But the author said he still has hope that it will do so in a firm way.
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