German nationality law is the law governing the acquisition, transmission and loss of German citizenship. The law is based on a mixture of the principles of jus sanguinis and jus soli. In other words, one usually acquires German citizenship if a parent is a German citizen, irrespective of place of birth, or by birth in Germany to parents with foreign nationality if certain requirements are fulfilled.
Before the formation of the German Empire in 1871, the states that became part of the empire were sovereign with their own nationality laws, and those of the southern ones like Bavaria were relatively liberal.
However Prussia's nationality law can be traced back to the "Law Respecting the Acquisition and Loss of the Quality as a Prussian subject, and his Admission to Foreign Citizenship" of 31 December 1842, which was based on the principle of jus sanguinis. It was Prussian law that became the basis of the legal system of the German Empire, by virtue, or other wise of Prussian dominance in the process of German unification. Though the state nationality laws continued to apply, one became a German citizen simply by being a person who held citizenship of one of the many states of the German Empire.
In the 20th century, forty two years on from the creation of the "nation", or "empire" of Germany, on 22 July 1913, the Nationality Law of the German Empire and States (Reichs- und Staatsangehörigkeitsgesetz, shorthand: RuStAG) established a German citizenship, either derived from the citizenship of one of the component states or acquired through the central Reich government.
A couple of decades later and under the Third Reich, in 1934, the German nationality law was amended to abolish separate state citizenships and creating a uniform Reich citizenship, with the central Reich authorities having power to grant or withdraw German nationality. Unsuprisingly, the Nazis updated this in 1935 with the Reich Citizenship Law (Reichsbürgergesetz), the second of the so-called Nuremberg Laws, that created a new category called "state subjects" (Staatsangehörige) to which Jews were assigned, thereby withdrawing citizenship from Jews who had been citizens; only those classed as being of "German or related blood" retained Reich citizenship.
As part of Hitler's programme for including, or appropriating, territories where German language and culture was established, on 13 March 1938 the German nationality law was extended to Austria following the Anschluss which annexed Austria to Germany.
Following the fall of the Third Reich after the defeat of Nazism, on 27 April 1945 Austria was re-established and conferred Austrian citizenship on all persons who would have been Austrian on that date had the pre-1938 nationality law of Austria remained in force. Any Austrians who had held German nationality lost it. Furthermore, the Nazi amendments of 1934 and the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 were revoked by Allied occupational ordinance in 1945, restoring the 1913 nationality law, which remained in force right up until the 1999 reforms.
So, as it stands today, Article 116 of the German Basic Law (constitution) confers, subject to laws regulating the details, a right to citizenship upon any person admitted to Germany (in its 1937 borders) as "refugee or expellee of German ethnic origin or as the spouse or descendant of such a person."
Until 1990 ethnic Germans living abroad in a country in the former Eastern Bloc (Aussiedler) could obtain citizenship through a virtually automatic procedure. However, this changed from 1990 when the law was steadily tightened each year to limit the number of immigrants, requiring immigrants to prove language skills and cultural affiliation.
Article 116 entitles persons (and their descendants), who were denaturalised by the Nazi government, to be renaturalised if they wish. Those among them, who after May 8, 1945 take up residence in Germany are automatically considered German citizens. Both regulations allowed a considerable numbers of Poles and Israelis, residing in Poland and Israel, to be concurrently German citizens.
A significant reform to the nationality law was passed by the Bundestag (the German parliament) in 1999, and came into force on 1 January 2000. The reformed law makes it somewhat easier for foreigners resident in Germany on a long-term basis, and especially their children born in Germany, to acquire German citizenship.
All of this situation now comes from the post-World War II situation, overseen by the allies, where the framers of the Grundgesetz(Basic Law or Constitution) of the Federal Republic of Germany adopted laws that define citizenship according to the principle of jus sanguinis, that is birth to German parents (literally, law of blood).
To be a German citizen, a citizen of a "nation" that was unified under Prussian hegemony as recently as 1871, it is the Prussian "law of blood" that is the the essential element that applies.
For this reason, many people born outside of Germany are considered to be German, while many people born in Germany are not.
Since the 1960s, the country has admitted millions of migrant workers, who have, in fact, played an indispensable role in the economy. Although migrant workers from Turkey, Yugoslavia, Italy, Greece, Spain, and Portugal were called Gastarbeiter (literally, guest workers), many stayed in Germany and established families. They form communities, which are to varying degrees assimilated to German lifestyles. Indeed, many of the children and grandchildren of immigrant labourers regard themselves not as Turkish, Greek, or Portuguese, but as German. Nevertheless, they have had great difficulty in gaining German citizenship; and many Germans view them as Ausländer, or foreigners.
In 2000, the new laws granted restricted rights of dual citizenship to children of foreign descent who are born in Germany. This new legislation has been accompanied by intensified discussion about Germany's status as a land of immigration. All major political parties now agree that Germany is and should be a land of immigration, but they differ on many aspects of immigration policy.
Sunscreen instead of burka? That's the way it should stay.
For several days now, many Facebook and Twitter users in Germany have been confronted with a disturbing image on their profile pages: It shows bloody tire tracks running across the screen, reminiscent of the ones left by Islamic State terrorists in several European cities. It is accompanied by the slogan: "The tracks left by the world chancellor in Europe."
Angela Merkel as a terrorist -- that's the motif that the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has chosen to launch the internet portion of its campaign leading up to national parliamentary elections on Sept. 24. The right-wing populists plan to spend a large part of their 3-million-euro budget on similar publicity offenses. The party is planning a digital campaign that may well be more drastic and aggressive than anything German voters have ever seen.
The party's election posters, designed by advertising professional and prize-winning scandal author Thor Kunkel, have already stood out from those of other parties. One shows the belly of a pregnant white woman with the slogan, "New Germans? We'll make them ourselves," a reference to the party's rejection of immigrants in the country. Yet another shows a piglet with the words: "Islam? It doesn't fit in with our cuisine." Finally, the one getting perhaps the most attention states, "Burkas? We prefer bikinis."
But now the AfD, which has always been an internet-savvy party that likes to use the medium to bypass the mainstream media and communicate its messages directly to its fans, has had enough of dead-tree media. It intends to rely heavily on the web as it enters the last, intense phase of the campaign.
Provocative and Aggressive
To assist in its efforts, the party has tapped Kunkel's contacts to engage the services of advertising professionals in the United States with experience on the right-wing spectrum. The party is working together with the Texas-based agency Harris Media, which recently presented its plans to the AfD's national committee. With its provocative and aggressive campaigns, the agency has already contributed to the success of a number of controversial politicians. In Britain, it worked with the anti-EU UKIP party; in Israel, it worked with the governing Likud party; and in the United States, news agency Bloomberg has dubbed company founder Vincent Harris "the man who invented the Republican internet."
Harris, a Christian conservative, married and still under 30, recently made a personal visit to AfD headquarters in Berlin to monitor progress on the German project, party officials report. Harris founded his agency in 2008 in his college dorm room. A short time later, he led the online arm of the campaign for Ted Cruz, at the time a relatively unknown Republican from Texas who hoped to ride Tea Party backing to a seat in the Senate. With Harris' help, Cruz saw the number of his internet supporters skyrocket, he established contact with influential bloggers and ultimately won the election. The Republicans have become regular customers of Harris' ever since. Trump's team even engaged the agency for projects, with Vincent Harris telling Trump's favorite media site, Breitbart, "we're going to hopefully keep doing stuff for them in the future." One Harris project aimed at Trump fans can still be found on the web today. It's a polemical "commercial" that shows the Germany of the future as an Islamized state, with Cologne's cathedral depicted as a mosque and an Oktoberfest where neither alcohol nor pork are served. At the time, Harris told the Berliner Morgenpost newspaper that Islamist extremism was an important issue. Besides, "I love Germany," he told the paper.
This AfD ad reads: "New Germans? We'll make them ourselves."
These days, three of his employees march into the AfD offices in Berlin at 8 a.m. each morning, coffee-to-go cups in hand, and play grunge music for the staff and summon "priority meetings." Above all, though, the advertising professionals make clear to their German clients that far from all Americans are fans of political correctness. One Harris staffer is reported to have asked an AfD politician why the party isn't campaigning with "Germany for Germans" as its slogan? It put the AfD staffer in an awkward position. Germany for the Germans? No, he said, that's a nationalistic slogan that even the AfD would prefer not to use. The AfD also brought in a party staff member from Düsseldorf to explain Germany's very strict internet privacy laws to the Americans. But the party has remained mum about how strictly those rules will be observed.
Help from an Influential Friend
To place advertisements on Google or Facebook, AfD now no longer has to go through the German subsidiaries of the internet giants. Here in Germany, the party has recently been facing a lot of resistance from those offices when it tries to buy ads. Now the team at Harris Media just places quick calls to the companies' headquarters in Silicon Valley, sources say, where the agency is very well networked as a result of its many successful political campaigns for the Republicans. AfD's orders are then simply put through to Germany from the United States.
And when it comes to advertising, staff at the American company think in entirely different dimensions than their AfD colleagues, who in the past were happy if their populist Facebook posts collected over 1,000 reactions. Now, with Harris' help, the image with the bloody tire marks has reached a massive number of users, AfD representatives say proudly -- including potential voters. One of the most important goals of the AfD's digital campaign is to make people less shy about identifying with the right-wing populist party. As part of that effort, the party has invited its fans to make solidarity videos and is encouraging them to frame their profile photos with AfD symbols. In the coming days, many Facebook users in Germany will also be seeing a new, small blue ad on their timelines. "Twelve years are enough," it will say, with a photo of Angela Merkel with a grumpy look on her face. To prevent putting off users, the party will not include its logo. It's only after the user clicks on the ad that it is revealed it has been placed by Alternative for Germany.
It
is immigration that is the elephant in room because the living
standards of the huge majority of people in rich countries critically
depend on the existence of the most draconian control over their labour
markets through immigration control!
But this is also a politics of scapegoating those who are not of our blood and blaming them for our fears, insecurities, self-loathing and the mess we are in!
Christopher Hitchens described conspiracy theory as the "exhaust fumes of democracy": the unavoidable result of a large amount of information circulating among a large number of people.
Some psychologists believe that a search for meaning is common in conspiracism. Once cognized, confirmation bias andavoidance of cognitive dissonance may reinforce the belief. In a context where a conspiracy theory has become popular within a social group, communal reinforcement may equally play a part.
In his book The Open Society and Its Enemies, the philosopher Karl Popper used the term "conspiracy theory" to criticize the ideologies driving historicism. Popper argued that totalitarianism was founded on "conspiracy theories" which drew on imaginary plots driven by paranoid scenarios predicated on tribalism, chauvinism, or racism. Popper acknowledged that genuine conspiracies do exist, but noted how infrequently conspirators have been able to achieve their goal.
In what was called "The Panic of 1873", a global financial crisis that triggered a depression in Europe and North America that lasted from 1873 until 1879, and even longer in France and Britain. In Britain, for example, it started two decades of stagnation known as the "Long Depression" that weakened the country's economic leadership. The Panic was known as the "Great Depression" until the events of the early 1930s set a new standard.
In Germany it was the Jews who got the blame, especially from the small investors who made losses in the crash. The real causes were American post-Civil War inflation, rampant speculative investments especially in railroads, the demonetization of silver in Germany and the United States, a large trade deficit, ripples from economic dislocation in Europe resulting from the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71). This was the same Franco-Prussian War that had created the ideal conditions for the unification of Germany as a nation dominated by Prussia. The conflict between the Second French Empire of Napoleon III and the German states of the North German Confederation led by the Kingdom of Prussia was caused by Prussian ambitions to extend German unification and French fears of the shift in the European balance of power that would result if the Prussians succeeded. Some historians argue that the Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck deliberately provoked a French attack in order to draw the independent southern German states—Baden, Württemberg, Bavaria and Hesse-Darmstadt—into an alliance with the North German Confederation dominated by Prussia, while others contend that Bismarck did not plan anything and merely exploited the circumstances as they unfolded. None, however, dispute the fact that von Bismarck could not have been unaware of the potential for new German alliances, given the situation as a whole. Following unification, a liberalized incorporation law in Germany gave impetus to the foundation of new enterprises, such as the Deutsche Bank, and the incorporation of already established ones. Euphoria over the military victory against France in 1871 and the influx of capital from the payment by France of war reparations fueled stock market speculation in railways, factories, docks, steamships – the same industrial branches that expanded unsustainably in the United States. It was in the immediate aftermath of Otto von Bismarck's victory against France that he began the process of silver demonetization. The process began on 23 November 1871 and culminated in the introduction of the gold mark on 9 July 1873 as the currency for the new united Reich, replacing the silver coins of all constituent lands. Germany was now on the gold standard. Demonetization of silver was thus a common element in the crises on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. On 9 May 1873, the Vienna Stock Exchange crashed, unable to sustain the bubble of false expansion, insolvencies, and dishonest manipulations.
Property losses in the Chicago and Boston fires of 1871 and 1872 did not help, and other factors put a massive strain on bank reserves, which plummeted in New York City in September and October 1873 from $50 million to $17 million.
Why blame Jews?
There is a history that goes back centuries that blames "the Jews" for political and economic setbacks or crises, and this strategy often functioned to effectively distract any wider scrutiny or attention from the actual causes, and those responsible for those causes.
This is what the Anti-Defamation League is saying . . .
But, who are the Anti-Defamation League?
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL; formerly known as the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith) is an international Jewish non-governmental organization based in the United States.
Describing itself as "the nation's premier civil rights/human relations agency", the ADL states that it "fights anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry, defends democratic ideals, and protects civil rights for all", doing so through "information, education, legislation, and advocacy"
The Anti-Defamation League has drawn criticism and controversy over its priorities. Noam Chomsky accuses them of "having lost entirely its focus on civil rights issues in order to become solely an advocate for Israeli policy". The ADL has been accused by some of conflating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. This is clearly an ideological battleground! In such zones of contestation it is not unusual to encounter a "canard", meaning (from the old French) something that QUACKS, a DUCK (French), and is also used as a term for a HOAX! These matters clearly relate to what is termed an "Antisemitic canard"!
A "canard" is a hoax, and for nasty nationalism a hoax is highly functional, including the myth that world banking is dominated by the Rothschild family, that Jews control Wall Street, and that Jews control the United States Federal Reserve. The ADL notes that the canard can be traced back to the prevalence of Jews in the money-lending profession in Europe during the Middle Ages, due to a prohibition against Christians in that profession.
So, since at least the Middle Ages, antisemitism has featured elements ofconspiracy theory. In medieval Europe it was widely believed that Jews poisoned wells, had been responsible for the death of Jesus, and ritually consumed the blood of Christians.
The second half of the 19th century saw the emergence of notions that Jews and/or Freemasons were plotting to establish control over the world. Forged evidence has been presented to spread the notion that Jews were responsible for the propagation of Communism, the most notorious example being The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (1903). This HOAX is an antisemitic fabricated text purporting to describe a Jewish plan for global domination. It was first published in Russia in 1903, translated into multiple languages, and disseminated internationally in the early part of the 20th century.
According to the claims made by some of its publishers, the Protocols are the minutes of a late 19th-century meeting where Jewish leaders discussed their goal of global Jewish hegemony by subverting the morals of Gentiles, and by controlling the press and the world's economies.
The publication of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in 1903 is widely considered to mark the beginning of contemporary conspiracy theory literature.
The
Nazis sometimes used the Protocols as propaganda against Jews; it was
assigned by some German teachers, as if factual, to be read by German
schoolchildren after the Nazis came to power in 1933, despite having
been exposed as fraudulent by The Times of London in 1921. Henry Ford funded printing of 500,000 copies that were distributed throughout the United States in the 1920s.
It is still
widely available today in numerous languages, in print and on the
Internet, and continues to be presented by some proponents as a genuine
document. A recent example is the 2001 re-printing of Henry Ford's antisemitic
text, The International Jew in Egypt, with the same octopus imagery on
the front cover.
Included in this canard are not only writings that seek to accuse Jews of trying to control the world, but also graphic imagery depicting Jews, or their supporters, as trying to control the world.
Examples of this imagery include Nazi cartoons that depict Jews as octopuses, encircling the globe.
Such antisemitic conspiracy theories became central to the worldview of Adolf Hitler. Antisemitic theories persist today in notions concerning banking, Hollywood, the news media and a purported Zionist Occupation Government.
The stab-in-the-back myth . . .
"12,000 Jewish soldiers died on the field of honor for the fatherland."
A leaflet published in 1920 by German Jewish veterans in response to Dolchstosslegende. This was the stab-in-the-back myth, a notion widely believed and promulgated in right-wing circles in Germany after 1918, that the German Army did not lose World War I on the battlefield but was instead betrayed by the civilians on the home front, especially the republicans who overthrew the monarchy in the German Revolution of 1918–19. Advocates denounced the German government leaders who signed the Armistice on November 11, 1918, as the "November Criminals" (German: Novemberverbrecher). When the Nazis came to power in 1933, they made the legend an integral part of their official history of the 1920s, portraying the Weimar Republic as the work of the "November criminals" who used the stab in the back myth to seize power while betraying the nation. The Nazi propaganda depicted Weimar as "a morass of corruption, degeneracy, national humiliation, ruthless persecution of the honest 'national opposition'—fourteen years of rule by Jews, Marxists, and 'cultural Bolsheviks', who had at last been swept away by the National Socialist movement under Adolf Hitler and the victory of the 'national revolution' of 1933"
During World War I, the German Military High Command administered Judenzählung (German for "Jewish Census"). It was designed to confirm allegations of the lack of patriotism among German Jews, but the results of the census disproved the accusations and so were not made public.
Conspiracy theories may be emotionally satisfying, by assigning blame to a group to which the theorist does not belong and so absolving the theorist of moral or political responsibility in society.
Likewise, Roger Cohen writing for The New York Times has said that,"captive minds; ... resort to conspiracy theory because it is the ultimate refuge of the powerless. If you cannot change your own life, it must be that some greater force controls the world."
Sociological historian Holger Herwig found in studying German explanations for the origins of World War I,"Those events that are most important are hardest to understand, because they attract the greatest attention from myth makers and charlatans."Another variation of this notion is an accusation that Jews are cowards who evade military service. With the rise of racist theories in the 19th century,"another old anti-Semitic canard served to underline the putative 'femininity' of the Jewish race. Like women, Jews lacked an 'essence'".
In Genocide and Gross Human Rights Violations, Kurt Jonassohn and Karin S. Björnson wrote:
"Historically, Jews were not allowed to bear arms in the most of the countries of the diaspora. Therefore, when they were attacked, they were not able to defend themselves. In some situations, their protector would defend them. If not, they only had a choice between hiding and fleeing. This is the origin of the anti-Semitic canard that Jews are cowards."
In Stalin's Soviet Union, the statewide campaign against "rootless cosmopolitans" – a euphemism for Jews – was set out on 28 January 1949 with an article in the newspaper Pravda (Truth):
"unbridled, evil-minded cosmopolitans, profiteers with no roots and no conscience... Grown on rotten yeast of bourgeois cosmopolitanism, decadence and formalism...non-indigenous nationals without a motherland, who poison with stench...our proletarian culture."
Hoax and counter-hoax
Holocaust denial is also considered an antisemitic conspiracy theory because of its position that the Holocaust is a hoax designed to advance the interests of Jews and justify the creation of the State of Israel.
Nasty nationalism . . .
Nationalismhas a dark side in Germany and German philosophers have played their part in this political and cultural phenomenon over the the last two hundred years or so.
An article in the New York Review of Books by Jan-Werner Müller from 2016, is an acute analysis of this phenomenon in a contemporary context:
Here is where German intellectuals come into the story. Journalists and academics have had a hard time understanding why the Pegida movement emerged when it did and why it has attracted so many people in Germany; there are branches of the Pegida movement in other parts of Europe, but they have gathered only marginal support thus far. Those who suggest it is driven by “anger” and “resentment” are being descriptive at best. What is remarkable, though, is that “rage” as a political stance has received the philosophical blessing of the leading AfD intellectual, Marc Jongen, who is a former assistant of the well-known philosopher Peter Sloterdijk. Jongen has not only warned about the danger of Germany’s “cultural self-annihilation”; he has also argued that, because of the cold war and the security umbrella provided by the US, Germans have been forgetful about the importance of the military, the police, warrior virtues—and, more generally, what the ancient Greeks called thymos (variously translated as spiritedness, pride, righteous indignation, a sense of what is one’s own, or rage), in contrast to eros and logos, love and reason. Germany, Jongen says, is currently “undersupplied” with thymos. Only the Japanese have even less of it—presumably because they also lived through postwar pacifism. According to Jongen, Japan can afford such a shortage, because its inhabitants are not confronted with the “strong natures” of immigrants. It follows that the angry demonstrators are doing a damn good thing by helping to fire up thymos in German society.
Jongen, who is now deputy leader of the AfD in Baden-Württemberg, was virtually unknown until this spring. Not so Sloterdijk, one of Germany’s most prominent philosophers (and undoubtedly the most prolific) whose work has also become well-known in the US. Sloterdijk regularly takes on controversial subjects such as genetic engineering and delights in provoking what he sees as an intellectual left lacking in humor and esprit. His books, which sell extremely well, are not so much driven by clear-cut arguments as suggestively offering philosophical, and often poetic, re-descriptions of recent history, or even the history of the West as a whole. Like in Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality—a continuous inspiration for Sloterdijk—these re-descriptions are supposed to jolt readers out of conventional understandings of the present. However, not much of his work lives up to Nietzsche’s image of the philosopher as a “doctor of culture” who might end up giving the patient an unpleasant or outright shocking diagnosis: Sloterdijk often simply reads back to the German mainstream what it is already thinking, just sounding much deeper because of the ingenuous metaphors and analogies, cute anachronisms, and cascading neologisms that are typical of his highly mannered style.
Sloterdijk has distanced himself from Jongen’s self-declared “avant-garde conservatism.” But the “psycho-political” perspective Jongen adopts is one of Sloterdijk’s philosophical trademarks. In his 2006 volume Rage and Time, in which he also takes his cues from Nietzsche, Sloterdijk argued that in the West thymos had been largely forgotten because of the dominance of eros in consumer capitalism, with the result that envy and resentment dominate the inner lives of citizens. He echoed Francis Fukuyama’s argument in his The End of History and the Last Man that pacified liberal democracies generally fail to find a proper place for “thymotic energies,” and Sloterdijk has said explicitly that, in confrontations with Islam, the West needs to rediscover the role of thymos. Just like Jongen, who criticizes the EU for being “post-thymotic,” Sloterdijk longs for Europe to assert itself more forcefully on the global stage and fears that the refugee crisis will weaken the continent—to the delight, he says, of the US (“that’s why Obama praises Merkel,” as Sloterdijk put it in an interview published at the beginning of 2016).
Nasty nationalism is not to be referenced or linked as it is a term used here to explore some of the features of nationalism and populism that are manifesting themselves today across Europe and the European cultural and political geographies that result from what must be called something like European expansionism. People who are worried about migration, immigration usually feared more than emigration, should consider the presence of hundreds of millions of people descended from European migrants in the so-called "new worlds"in the Americas, Australia and New Zealand!
Amongst the varieties of nationalism it is often the case that what is presented is a binary juxtaposition of "Civic nationalism" with "Ethnic nationalism", but the problem is, obviously, that they are both monumental ideological constructions, used for various, and nefarious, purposes.
Ethnic nationalism, according to the Wikipedia page on varieties of nationalism is also known as ethno-nationalism, and is a form of nationalism;
wherein the "nation" is defined in terms of ethnicity. The central theme of ethnic nationalists is that "nations are defined by a shared heritage, which usually includes a common language, a common faith, and a common ethnic ancestry". It also includes ideas of a culture shared between members of the group, and with their ancestors. However, it is different from a purely cultural definition of "the nation," which allows people to become members of a nation by cultural assimilation; and from a purely linguistic definition, according to which "the nation" consists of all speakers of a specific language.
Whereas nationalism in and of itself does not necessarily imply a belief in the superiority of one ethnicity or country over others, some nationalists support ethnocentric supremacy or protectionism. This type of nationalism seems to be embedded in the populist revival of "nationalism" in stark contrast to the ideas associated with Civic nationalism that defines the nation as;
an association of people who identify themselves as belonging to the nation, who have equal and shared political rights, and allegiance to similar political procedures. According to the principles of civic nationalism, the nation is not based on common ethnic ancestry, but is a political entity whose core identity is not ethnicity. This civic concept of nationalism is exemplified by Ernest Renan in his lecture in 1882 "What is a Nation?", where he defined the nation as a "daily referendum" (frequently translated "daily plebiscite") dependent on the will of its people to continue living together.
Civic nationalism is a kind of non-xenophobic nationalism that is claimed to be compatible with liberal values of freedom, tolerance, equality, and individual rights. Ernest Renan and John Stuart Mill are often thought to be early liberal nationalists. Liberal nationalists often defend the value of national identity by saying that individuals need a national identity to lead meaningful, autonomous lives, and that liberal democratic polities need national identity to function properly.
Civic nationalism lies within the traditions of rationalism and liberalism, but as a form of nationalism it is contrasted with ethnic nationalism. Membership of the civic nation must be voluntary, as in Ernest Renan's classic definition of the nation in What is a Nation? (1882). Renan argued that factors such as ethnicity, language, religion, economics, geography, ruling dynasty and historic military deeds were important but not sufficient. Needed was a spiritual soul that allowed as a "daily referendum" among the people. Civic-national ideals influenced the development of representative democracy in countries such as the United States and France.
German philosopher Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach does not think liberalism and nationalism are compatible, but she points out there are many liberals who think they are. She states:
Justifications of nationalism seem to be making a headway in political philosophy. Its proponents contend that liberalism and nationalism are not necessarily mutually exclusive and that they can in fact be made compatible. Liberal nationalists urge one to consider nationalism not as the pathology of modernity but as an answer to its malaise. For them, nationalism is more than an infantile disease, more than "the measles of mankind" as Einstein once proclaimed it to be. They argue that nationalism is a legitimate way of understanding one's role and place in life. They strive for a normative justification of nationalism which lies within liberal limits. The main claim which seems to be involved here is that as long as a nationalism abhors violence and propagates liberal rights and equal citizenship for all citizens of its state, its philosophical credentials can be considered to be sound.
Civic nationalism has also been associated with developments, ideas and ideologies that manifested themselves in the cultural context of the Bourgeois ascendancy resulting from the temporary removal of the ancien regime in France during the French Revolution.
The back-story to things as they are include the sequences of revolution and counter-revolution that have shaped the type of nationalism referred to as:
Romantic nationalism
Romantic nationalism is the form of nationalism in which the state derives its political legitimacy as an organic consequence of the unity of those it governs. This includes, depending on the particular manner of practice, the language, race, culture, religion, and customs of the nation in its primal sense of those who were born within its culture. This form of nationalism arose in reaction to dynastic or imperial hegemony, which assessed the legitimacy of the state from the top down, emanating from a monarch or other authority, which justified its existence. Such downward-radiating power might ultimately derive from a god or gods (see the divine right of kings and the Mandate of Heaven).
Among the key themes of Romanticism, and its most enduring legacy, the cultural assertions of romantic nationalism have also been central in post-Enlightenment art and political philosophy. From its earliest stirrings, with their focus on the development of national languages and folklore, and the spiritual value of local customs and traditions, to the movements that would redraw the map of Europe and lead to calls for self-determination of nationalities, nationalism was one of the key issues in Romanticism, determining its roles, expressions and meanings.
In
continental Europe, Romantics had embraced the French Revolution in its
beginnings, then found themselves fighting the counter-Revolution in
the trans-national Imperial system of Napoleon. The sense of
self-determination and national consciousness that had enabled
revolutionary forces to defeat aristocratic regimes in battle became
rallying points for resistance against the French Empire (1804–14). In
Prussia, the development of spiritual renewal as a means to engage in
the struggle against Napoleon was argued by, among others, Johann
Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814), a disciple of Kant. The word Volkstum, or
"folkhood", was coined in Germany as part of this resistance to French
hegemony.
Fichte expressed the unity of language and nation in his thirteenth address "To the German Nation" in 1806:
The first, original, and truly natural boundaries of states are beyond doubt their internal boundaries. Those who speak the same language are joined to each other by a multitude of invisible bonds by nature herself, long before any human art begins; they understand each other and have the power of continuing to make themselves understood more and more clearly; they belong together and are by nature one and an inseparable whole.
Only when each people, left to itself, develops and forms itself in accordance with its own peculiar quality, and only when in every people each individual develops himself in accordance with that common quality, as well as in accordance with his own peculiar quality-then, and then only, does the manifestation of divinity appear in its true mirror as it ought to be; and only a man who either entirely lacks the notion of the rule of law and divine order, or else is an obdurate enemy thereto, could take upon himself to want to interfere with that law, which is the highest law in the spiritual world!
The aim of the German nation, according to Fichte, was to "found an empire of spirit and reason, and to annihilate completely the crude physical force that rules of the world." Like Herder's German nationalism, Fichte's was wholly cultural, and grounded in the aesthetic, literary, and moral.
Sadly, the nationalism propounded by Fichte in the Addresses would be appealed to over a century later by the Nazi Party in Germany, which sought in Fichte a forerunner to its own nationalist ideology. Like Nietzsche, the association of Fichte with the Nazi regime has tended to influence readings of Fichte's German nationalism in the post-war period.
This reading of Fichte was often bolstered through reference to an unpublished letter from 1793, Contributions to the Correction of the Public's Judgment concerning the French Revolution, wherein Fichte expressed anti-semitic sentiments, such as arguing against extending civil rights to Jews and calling them a "state within a state" that could "undermine" the German nation.
However, attached to the letter is a footnote in which Fichte provides an impassioned plea for permitting Jews to practice their religion without hindrance. Furthermore, the final act of Fichte's academic career was to resign as rector of Humboldt University in protest when his colleagues refused to punish the harassment of Jewish students. While recent scholarship has sought to dissociate Fichte's writings on nationalism with his adoption by the Nazi Party, the association continues to blight Fichte's legacy.
The
ideas of Rousseau (1712–1778) and of Johann Gottfried von Herder
(1744–1803) inspired much early Romantic nationalism in Europe. In 1784
Herder argued that geography formed the natural economy of a people, and
that their customs and society would develop along the lines that their
basic environment favored.
From its beginnings in the late 18th
century, romantic nationalism has relied upon the existence of a
historical ethnic culture which meets the romantic ideal; folklore
developed as a romantic nationalist concept. The Brothers Grimm,
inspired by Herder's writings, put together an idealized collection of
tales, which they labeled as authentically German. The concept of an
inherited cultural patrimony from a common origin rapidly became central
to a divisive question within romantic nationalism: specifically, is a
nation unified because it comes from the same genetic source, that is
because of race, or is the participation in the organic nature of the
"folk" culture self-fulfilling?
Romantic nationalism formed a key
strand in the philosophy of Hegel (1770–1831), who argued that there
was a "spirit of the age" or zeitgeist that inhabited a particular
people at a particular time, and that, when that people became the
active determiner of history, it was simply because their cultural and
political moment had come. Because of the Germans' role in the
Protestant Reformation, Hegel (a Lutheran) argued that his historical
moment had seen the Zeitgeist settle on the German-speaking peoples.
Following the
ultimate collapse of the First French Empire with the fall of Napoleon,
conservative elements took control in a Europe where the balance of power between the great
powers of dominated continental politics of the first half of
the 19th century.
The
conservative forces held sway until the Revolutions of 1848 swept
across Europe and threatened the old order. Numerous movements developed
around various cultural groups, who began to develop a sense of
national identity. While initially, all of these revolutions failed, and
reactionary forces would re-establish political control, the
revolutions marked the start of the steady progress towards the end of
the Concert of Europe under the dominance of a few multi-national
empires and led to the establishment of the modern nation state in
Europe; a process that would not be complete for over a century and a
half.
The watershed year for romantic nationalism was 1848, when these nationalistic revolutions occurred in 50 countries across the continent.
Known in some countries as the Spring of Nations, People's Spring, Springtime of the Peoples, or the Year of Revolution, this series of political upheavals throughout Europe in 1848 remains the most widespread revolutionary wave in European history. These revolutions were essentially democratic and liberal in nature, with the aim of removing the old monarchical structures and creating independent national states. In Germany the German revolutions of 1848–49 including an opening phase which was called the March Revolution and were initially part of the Revolutions of 1848 that broke out in many European countries.
These were a series of loosely coordinated protests and rebellions in the states of the German Confederation, including the Austrian Empire, and which stressed pan-Germanism, demonstrated popular discontent with the traditional, largely autocratic political structure of the thirty-nine independent states of the Confederation that inherited the German territory of the former Holy Roman Empire.
The middle-class elements were committed to liberal principles, while the working class sought radical improvements to their working and living conditions. As the middle class and working class components of the Revolution split, the conservative aristocracy defeated it.
Ludvig and Lola
The first protests . . .
The first protests occurred in Bavaria and instigated by Catholic conservatives scandalized by King Ludwig I because of his open relationship with his favourite mistress Lola Montez, a dancer and actress unacceptable to the aristocracy or the Church.
She tried to launch liberal reforms through a Protestant prime minister, which outraged the state's Catholic conservatives. On February 9, conservatives came out onto the streets in protest. This February 9, 1848 demonstration was the first in that revolutionary year. It was an exception among the wave of liberal protests. The conservatives wanted to be rid of Lola Montez, and had no other political agenda. Liberal students took advantage of the Lola Montez affair to stress their demands for political change. All over Bavaria, students started demonstrating for constitutional reform, just as students were doing in other cities.
Ludwig tried to institute a few minor reforms but they proved insufficient to quell the storm of protests. On March 16, 1848, Ludwig I abdicated in favor of his eldest son Maximilian II, and was the only German ruler who abdicated in the 1848 revolutions. Although some popular reforms were introduced, the government regained full control.
On March 13, 1848 university students mounted a large street demonstration in Vienna, and it was covered by the press across the German-speaking states. Following the important, but relatively minor, demonstrations against Lola Montez in Bavaria, this was the first major revolt of 1848 in German lands occurred in Vienna on March 13, 1848. The demonstrating students in Vienna had been restive and were encouraged by a sermon of Anton Füster, a liberal priest, on Sunday, March 12, 1848 in their university chapel. The student demonstrators demanded a constitution and a constituent assembly elected by universal male suffrage.
Emperor Ferdinand and his chief advisor Metternich directed troops to crush the demonstration. When demonstrators moved to the streets near the palace, the troops fired on the students, killing several. The new working class of Vienna joined the student demonstrations, developing an armed insurrection. The Diet of Lower Austria demanded Metternich's resignation. With no forces rallying to Metternich's defence, Ferdinand reluctantly complied and dismissed him. The former chancellor went into exile in London.
The Revolution in Vienna was a catalyst to revolution throughout the German states. Popular demands were made for an elected representative government and for the unification of Germany.
In March 1848, crowds of people gathered in Berlin to present their demands in an "address to the king". King Frederick William IV, taken by surprise, verbally yielded to all the demonstrators' demands, including parliamentary elections, a constitution, and freedom of the press. He promised that "Prussia was to be merged forthwith into Germany."
On March 13, after warnings by the police against public demonstrations went ignored, the army charged a group of people returning from a meeting in the Tiergarten, leaving one person dead and many injured.
On March 18, a large demonstration occurred. After two shots were fired, fearing that some of the 20,000 soldiers would be used against them, demonstrators erected barricades, and a battle ensued until troops were ordered 13 hours later to retreat, leaving hundreds dead. Afterwards, Frederick William attempted to reassure the public that he would proceed with reorganizing his government. The King also approved arming the citizens.
On March 21, the King proceeded through the streets of Berlin to attend a mass funeral at the Friedrichshain cemetery for the civilian victims of the uprising. He and his ministers and generals wore the revolutionary tricolor of black, red, and gold. Polish prisoners, who had been jailed for planning a rebellion in formerly Polish territories now ruled by Prussia, were liberated and paraded through the city to the acclaim of the people. The 254 persons killed during the riots were laid out on catafalques on the Gendarmenmarkt. Some 40,000 people accompanied these fallen demonstrators to their burial place at Friedrichshain.
A Constituent National Assembly was elected and gathered in St. Paul's Church in Frankfurt am Main on May 18, 1848. Officially called the all-German National Assembly, it was composed of deputies democratically elected from various German states in late April and early May 1848.
The deputies consisted of 122 government officials, 95 judges, 81 lawyers, 103 teachers, 17 manufacturers and wholesale dealers, 15 physicians, and 40 landowners. A majority of the Assembly were liberals. It became known as the 'professors' parliament,' as many of its members were academics in addition to their other responsibilities. The one working-class member was Polish and, like colleagues from the Tyrol, not taken seriously.
Starting on May 18, 1848, the Frankfurt Assembly worked to find ways to unite the various German states and to write a constitution. The Assembly was unable to pass resolutions and dissolved into endless debate.
Prussia, meanwhile had another agenda. On May 22, 1848, another elected assembly sat for the first time in Berlin. They were elected under the law of April 8, 1848, which allowed for universal suffrage and a two-stage voting system. Most of the deputies elected to the Berlin Assembly, called the Prussian National Assembly, were members of the burghers or liberal bureaucracy. They set about the task of writing a constitution "by agreement with the Crown."
The outcomes of the revolutionary activities now no longer presented the likelihood of serious political consequences, so the rulers of the German states gradually realised that their positions were no longer under threat. The King of Bavaria had stepped down, but that was only partly the result of pressure from below. As the threat of an armed uprising receded, the monarchs realized unification would not be realized. They were unwilling to give up any power in its pursuit. As princes quelled rebellions in their territories, they followed the example of Prussia, recalling their elected deputies from the Assembly.
Only Prussia, with its overwhelming military might, was able to protect the Frankfurt Assembly from military attack by the princes. But Prussia had its own interests in mind.
The powerlessness of the Frankfurt Assembly was reflected in the debate over the Danish Conflict of 1848. Like many other events of 1848, the Danish conflict was sparked by a street demonstration. On March 21, 1848, the people of Copenhagen hit the streets to demand a liberal Constitution.
The majority in the Danish province of Holstein and in the southern part of Schleswig were German-speaking. The citizens of Kiel and Holstein were unsure of what was occurring in Copenhagen. They revolted to found a separate and autonomous province with closer relations with the German states. On March 24, 1848, they set up a new provisional, autonomous government in Holstein and raised a Schleswig-Holstein army of 7,000 soldiers. Unification opinion in the German states supported annexing the provinces of Schleswig and Holstein.
Prussia sent an army to support this independence movement, and ignored the Frankfurt National Assembly when Great Britain and Russia applied international pressure to end the war. The Prussians signed a peace at Malmö, requiring them to remove all Prussian troops from the two duchies and agree to all other Danish demands. The Treaty of Malmo was greeted with great consternation in Germany, and debated in the Assembly, but it was powerless to control Prussia. On September 16, 1848, the Frankfurt National Assembly approved of the Malmo Treaty by a majority vote. Public support for the National Assembly declined sharply following this vote, and the Radical Republicans publicly stated their opposition to the Assembly.
Prussian sidelining of the Frankfurt National Assembly
After many diversions, the Frankfurt National Assembly took up the issue of a German constitution but it was all too little, too late. In October 1848, King Frederick William IV of Prussia unilaterally issued a monarchist constitution. Under this new monarchist constitution, a Prussian Assembly was established. The Assembly was a bicameral legislature, consisting of a Herrenhaus (House of Lords) or upper house, whose members were selected by the provincial governments, and a Landtag (Country Diet), whose members were elected by male suffrage but were seated only through a complicated system of electoral committees. Otto von Bismarck was elected to this first Landtag. The Landtag was founded to undercut the authority of the Frankfurt National Assembly.
The end of the Frankfurt National assembly and the collapse of progressive constitutional reform in Germany!
In an attempt to regain some authority, in April 1849, the Frankfurt Assembly offered King Frederick William IV the crown as German emperor.He turned it down, saying he would accept a crown only by the grace of God, not "from the gutter". The Frankfurt National Assembly had been founded partly following the revolutionary events in Vienna, Austria, which resulted in the fall of Prince Metternich. Its strongest support came from the southern provinces, where there was a tradition of opposition to the local tyrants. After Austria crushed the Italian revolts of 1848/1849, the Habsburgs were ready to deal with the German states. Unable to muster an army and lacking broader support, the Assembly could not resist Austrian power. The Frankfurt National Assembly was dissolved on May 31, 1849.
Renewed revolutionary action
However, a renewed revolutionary upsurge occurred in the spring of 1849, with uprisings beginning in Elberfeld in the Rhineland on May 6, 1849 and that soon spread to the state of Baden, when a riot broke out in Karlsruhe. In May 1849, the Grand Duke was forced to leave Karlsruhe, Baden and seek help from Prussia. Provisional governments were declared in both the Palatinate and Baden. In Baden conditions for the provisional government were ideal: the public and army were both strongly in support of constitutional change and democratic reform in the government. The army strongly supported the demands for a constitution; the state had amply supplied arsenals, and a full exchequer.
The Palatinate did not have the same conditions. The Palatinate traditionally contained more upper-class citizens than other areas of Germany, and they resisted the revolutionary changes, and the army did not support the revolution, and in any case, it was not well supplied. The provisional government of the Palatinate sent agents to France and Belgium to purchase arms but they were unsuccessful because France banned sales and export of arms to either Baden or the Palatinate.
Democrats
of the Palatinate and across Germany considered the Baden-Palatinate
insurrection to be part of the wider all-German struggle for
constitutional rights.
Meanwhile, Austria and Prussia withdrew their delegates from the Assembly, which was little more than a debating club. The radical members were forced to go to Stuttgart, where they sat from June 6–18 as a rump parliament until it too was dispersed by Württemberg troops.
Marx and Engels involved in the fray!
Frederick Engels took part in the uprising in Baden and the Palatinate. On May 10, 1848, he and Karl Marx traveled from Cologne, Germany, to observe the events of the region. From June 1, 1848, Engels and Marx became editors of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Less than a year later, on May 19, 1849, the Prussian authorities closed down the newspaper because of its support for constitutional reforms.
In late 1848, Marx and Engels intended to meet with Karl Ludwig Johann D'Ester, then serving as a member of the provisional government in Baden and the Palatinate. He was a physician, democrat and socialist who had been a member of the Cologne community chapter of the Communist League. D'Ester had been elected as a deputy to the Prussian National Assembly in 1848. D'Ester had been elected to the Central committee of the German Democrats, together with Reichenbach and Hexamer, at the Second Democratic Congress held in Berlin from October 26 through October 30, 1848. Because of his commitments to the provisional government, D'Ester was unable to attend an important meeting in Paris on behalf of the German Central Committee. He wanted to provide Marx with the mandate to attend the meeting in his place. Marx and Engels met with D'Ester in the town of Kaiserlautern. Marx obtained the mandate and headed off to Paris.
Engels remained in the Palatinate, where in 1849 he joined citizens at the barricades of Elberfeld in the Rhineland, preparing to fight the Prussian troops expected to arrive against the uprising. On his way to Elberfeld, Engels took two cases of rifle cartridges which had been gathered by the workers of Solingen, Germany, when those workers had stormed the arsenal at Gräfrath, Germany. The Prussian troops arrived and crushed the uprising in August 1849. Engels and some others escaped to Kaiserlautern. While in Kaiserlautern on June 13, 1849, Engels joined an 800-member group of workers being formed as a military corps by August Willich, a former Prussian military officer. He was also a member of the Communist League and supported revolutionary change in Germany. The newly formed Willich Corps combined with other revolutionary groups to form an army of about 30,000 strong; it fought to resist the highly trained Prussian troops. Engels fought with the Willich Corps for their entire campaign in the Palatinate.
The Prussians defeated this revolutionary army, and the survivors of Willichs Corps crossed over the frontier into the safety of Switzerland. Engels did not reach Switzerland until July 25, 1849. He sent word of his survival to Marx and friends and comrades in London, England. A refugee in Switzerland, Engels began to write about his experiences during the revolution. He published the article, "The Campaign for the German Imperial Constitution." Due to the Prussian Army's ease in crushing the uprising, many South German states came to believe that Prussia, not Austria, was going to be the new power in the region. The suppression of the armed uprisings in support of the constitution, especially in Saxony, the Palatinate and Baden were short-lived, as the local military, aided by Prussian troops, crushed them quickly. Leaders and participants, if caught, were executed or sentenced to long prison terms.
This was the end of the German revolutionary uprisings that had begun in the spring of 1848.
In the politics and philosophy associated with an increasing dominance of Prussian influence, and opportunities to create conditions for the unification of Germany that also served Prussian interests, the scope for the development of a civic and democratic nation state was limited.
The rise of a conservative and "backward looking" reaction rather than a revolutionary movement, more a response to modernity and industrialisation in Germany, as much as anything, partly filled this vacuum.
This "folkish" movement, was a populist interpretation and reaction to the perceived ills of a culture and society threatened by the modern, the urban and the industrial, and with a heavily romantic focus on folklore and the "organic";
a "naturally grown community in unity", characterised by the one-body-metaphor (Volkskörper) for the entire population during a period from the late 19th century up until the Nazi era. The term völkisch derives from the German word Volk (cognate with the English "folk"), corresponding to "Ethnic Group" of a population and people, with connotations in German of "people-powered". According to the historian James Webb, the word also has "overtones of 'nation', 'race' and 'tribe'…" The term völkisch has no direct English equivalent, but it could be rendered as "ethnonationalistic", "racial-nationalistic" or "ethno-racialist".
The völkisch "movement" was not a unified movement but "a cauldron of beliefs, fears and hopes that found expression in various movements and were often articulated in an emotional tone. The völkisch movement was "arguably the largest group" in the Conservative Revolutionary movement in Germany. However, like "conservative-revolutionary" or "fascist", völkisch is a complex term ("schillernder Begriff"). In a narrow definition it can be used to designate only groups that consider human beings essentially preformed by blood, i.e. by inherited characteristics.
The defining idea, which the völkisch movement revolved around, was that of a Volkstum (literally "folkdom", with a meaning similar to a combination of the terms "folklore" and "ethnicity"). Volkstümlich would be "populist", or "popular", in this context.
The völkisch movement had its origins in Romantic nationalism, as it was expressed by early Romantics such as Johann Gottlieb Fichte in his Addresses to the German Nation published during the Napoleonic Wars, from 1808 onwards, especially the eighth address, “What is a Volk, in the higher sense of the term, and what is love of the fatherland?," where he answered his question of what could warrant the noble individual's striving "and his belief in the eternity and the immortality of his work," by replying that it could only be that "particular spiritual nature of the human environment out of which he himself, with all of his thought and action... has arisen, namely the people from which he is descended and among which he has been formed and grown into that which he is".
A number of the völkisch-populist movements that had evolved during the late 19th century in the German Empire, under the impress of National Romanticism, developed along propagandistic lines after the German defeat in World War I, and the word "the people" (Volk) became increasingly politicized.
The same word Volk was used as a flag for new forms of ethnic nationalism, as well as by international socialist parties as a synonym for the proletariat in the German lands. From the left, elements of the folk-culture spread to the parties of the middle classes. But whereas Volk could mean "proletariat" among the left, it meant more particularly "race" among the center and right.
The völkisch ideologies were influential in the development of Nazism. Indeed, Joseph Goebbels publicly asserted in the 1927 Nuremberg rally that if the populist (völkisch) movement had understood power and how to bring thousands out in the streets, it would have gained political power on 9 November 1918 (the outbreak of the SPD-led German Revolution of 1918–1919, end of the German monarchy). Adolf Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf (My Struggle): "the basic ideas of the National-Socialist movement are populist (völkisch) and the populist (völkisch) ideas are National-Socialist."
Blood and soil . . .
An even nastier slogan to emerge from this type of nationalism was the slogan Blood and soil (German: Blut und Boden) expressing the nineteenth-century German idealization of a racially defined national body ("blood") united with a settlement area ("soil").
By it, rural and farm life forms are not only idealized as a counterweight to urban ones, but are also combined with racist and anti-Semitic ideas of a sedentary Germanic-Nordic peasantry as opposed to (specifically Jewish) nomadism.
The German expression was coined in the late 19th century, in tracts espousing racialism and national romanticism. It produced a regionalist literature, with some social criticism. This romantic attachment was widespread prior to the rise of the Nazis. Ultranationalists predating the Nazis often supported country living as more healthy, with the Artaman League sending urban children to the countryside to work in part in hopes of transforming them into Wehrbauern (lit. "soldier peasants"). The doctrine not only called for a "back to the land" approach and re-adoption of "rural values"; it held that German land was bound, perhaps mystically, to German blood.
Peasants were the Nazi cultural heroes, who held charge of German racial stock and German history—as when a memorial of a medieval peasant uprising was the occasion for a speech by Darré praising them as force and purifier of German history. This would also lead them to understand the natural order better, and, in the end, only the man who worked the land really possessed it.
Urban culture was decried as a weakness, "asphalt culture", that only the Führer's will could eliminate — sometimes, as a code for Jewish influence.
Perhaps the most important point Michael Albada makes in this paper has to do with;
the profound malleability of nationalism as a political ideology. Through careful emphasis and omission, writers actively manipulated portrayals of Fichte to justify an extremist and destructive ideology. Since nationalism is not bound to any particular doctrine or model of organizing politics, society, or the economy, it can be harnessed by a wide range of interests. Nationalism does not require sound logic, but only passionate intensity. Even the most dangerous ideology can gain credibility by bending national symbols, heroes, and rhetoric to its will. Movements that seek to legitimize themselves through the use of national rhetoric therefore deserve the deepest skepticism.
Chanting Nazi slogans including “Sieg heil” and “blood and soil” and giving the Nazi salute
A group of some 100 white nationalists marched on the University of Virginia campus in Charlottesville, VA, Friday night carrying tiki torches and chanting Nazi slogans including “Sieg heil” and “blood and soil” and giving the Nazi salute.
The march was a prelude to a larger planned “Unite the Right” rally on Saturday to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee in a park in Charlottesville. Leaders of the “alt-right” are scheduled to speak before an audience of hundreds of right-wing activists.
At one point during Friday night’s rally, a brawl broke out when demonstrators — nearly all white men — surrounded a small group of counterprotesters who were peacefully surrounding a statue of Thomas Jefferson at the center of campus. Counterprotesters reported being hit with pepper spray by marchers; according to the Washington Post, one counterprotester also used a “chemical spray” against marchers. “They completely surrounded us and wouldn’t let us out,” local activist Emily Gorcenski told the Guardian.
The "blood and soil" chants began Friday night when torch-bearing protesters marched at the University of Virginia and clashed with counterprotesters.
Update
A woman places flowers at an informal memorial to 32-year-old Heather Heyer, who was killed when a car plowed into a crowd of people protesting against the white supremacist Unite the Right rally, August 13, 2017, in Charlottesville, Virginia.
This article by Jane Coaston was posted on Vox Apr 26, 2019
President Donald Trump is still defending his infamous remarks in the wake of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, when he said, “You also had some very fine people on both sides.”
The latest attempt came Friday: “I was talking about people that went because they felt very strongly about the monument to Robert E. Lee,” Trump told reporters. “People there were protesting the taking down of the monument to Robert E. Lee. Everybody knows that.”
What Trump should have known about Unite the Right
The Unite the Right rally, which was scheduled to take place on August 12, 2017, was the most visible display of white nationalist and white supremacist hate en masse in the United States in years. And it was branded as such long before it took place.
The Unite the Right rally was the third such event in Charlottesville in 2017 — and each of these rallies was led and supported by self-proclaimed white nationalists and racists, apparently invigorated by an April 2017 decision by the Charlottesville City Council to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee from Lee Park.
At the time, Confederate statues and monuments across the country were under increased scrutiny, especially following the murder of nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, by an avowed racist who enjoyed Confederate symbology.
In May 2017, white nationalist Richard Spencer led a rally and torchlit parade through Lee Park, where attendees chanted “You will not replace us” and “Blood and soil.” In response, the chair of the Charlottesville Republican Party released a statement saying, “Whoever these people were, the intolerance and hatred they seek to promote is utterly disgusting and disturbing beyond words.”
In July 2017, members of Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan also protested against the removal of the Lee statue in Charlottesville, with one member telling USA Today that he was protesting the “cultural genocide” of white people he believed was behind the call for the statue’s removal.
So by August 2017, when the Unite the Right rally was scheduled to take place, it was fairly clear that the organizers behind the rallies on behalf of keeping the Lee statue in place had a very specific ideological bent. That was clear in a police affidavit detailing who was expected at Unite the Right — including roughly 250 to 500 Klansmen and more than 150 “Alt-Knights,” the military division of the Proud Boys.
The affiliations of the organizers were also clear. Jason Kessler, a “pro-white” activist, filed the permits for the rally.
On a radio show before the event, Kessler said, “the number one thing is I want to destigmatize Pro-White advocacy. … I want a huge, huge crowd, and that’s what we’re going to have, to come out and support not just the Lee monument but also white people in general, because it is our race which is under attack.”
In fact, going back through the promotional materials for Unite the Right, it is fascinating just how little the statue of Lee, or honoring Confederate veterans, seemed to matter to the organizers and attendees of Unite the Right, an event that, despite its name, had nothing to do with conservatism writ large.
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