Nationalism and Its Origins

From a western perspective the attitude of the Hezbollah rebels towards their fellow Lebanese citizens appears pretty callus. However, the current conflict in Lebanon demonstrates that Arabs tend to have a different attitude towards nationalism than people from European backgrounds.

In their determination to inflict damage on Israel, the Hezbollah rebels are provoking the Israeli’s into bombing Lebanese citizens. Since the Israelis are the ones being attacked, and have superior firepower, they are, not surprisingly, inflicting heavy damage on Lebanon. So far the Lebanese casualties have far exceeded Israeli losses, so the Hezbollah rebels are willing to sacrifice a lot their countrymen and infrastructure for a propaganda victory over Israel.

To a Westerner, this seems like a cowardly and wasteful strategy but it is sensible to many Arabs because they place more importance on their religious sect and extended family than on their fellow countrymen. Steve Sailer points out that there is extensive inbreeding in many Arab countries and that the loyalty to the extended family is much stronger than loyalty to the state.

Modern nationalism has its origins in Germanic tribalism and Roman governance and has slowly evolved into its modern form over the last 1500 years. The strongest states in Europe over the last 150 years have been France, Britain and Germany – all states with strong Germanic origins.
Nationalism reached its most infamous excesses in the Third Reich of the 1930s and 1940s. The French state first emerged under the Franks, a Germanic tribe which crossed into Gaul around 4OOAD. The British state was built up by the Anglo-Saxons between 500AD and 1750 at the expense of the less unified Celts.

In modern history books England is portrayed as a multi-cultural melting pot of people from Celtic, Germanic, Latin and Scandinavian backgrounds. However, recent DNA studies indicate that the ‘English’ are predominantly of Germanic origin with roots in Friesland, in what is now Holland. The Germanic English are also quite distinct from the modern Welsh who are of Celtic origin.

Nationalism has never been as strong in Southern Europe. Although the Romans have contributed to the development of the modern state, Rome itself was a city-state. For a developed country, modern Italy is characterised by a high degree of loyalty to the extended family and prosperous Northern Italy is characterised by an unusually high number of small family firms. The Italian state was formed out of necessity in the 19th century to protect the Italian city-states from French domination.

The Western nation state has been difficult to transplant into non-western countries with only a few East Asian countries, like South Korea and Japan, and the odd oil-rich Arabian monarchy, able to establish stable first world states through western-style nation building.

In nationalistic countries loyalty to the state comes before loyalty to the extended family. Nationalistic states tend to excel in warfare as seen in the Naval prowess of the British and Americans, and the tactical competence of the German Army from 1860-1945.

Where dictators of countries without a strong tradition of nationalism, or proto-nationalism, try to develop empires though military force, they usually fail- obvious example, Saddam Hussien.

In weak states with strong families the best military strategy is to adopt guerrilla tactics and use your enemies unity and firepower against them. The more Israel bombs Lebanon, the more support Hezbollah gets from Muslims in Middle-Eastern Countries. This strategy makes perfect sense when you don’t have any loyalty to your country as a whole.