A National Moment

Ben Wildsmith

If patriotism is, as Johnson had it, the last refuge of the scoundrel, it is offering flimsy sanctuary nowadays.

The paradox of life in the internet age is our interconnectedness online causing division in the real world. As we grasp on to ideas and theories originating online, entering into new loyalties with people around the world who share them, we become suspicious of our neighbours.

Physical proximity has, historically, required us to find common cause with those around us. We must share space and resources, so hammering out a worldview most of us can sign up to is a key tenet of survival.

This is how the nation state is supposed to work – large enough to punch its weight in the world, but not so unwieldy that governance is impossible.

Nations are exercises in discipline. For those in power, and we who tolerate them, nationality requires an investment of hope. We must believe that the constitutional foundations represented by our flags are being held to and respected.

If that contract is perceived to have been broken, people start to chafe against the compromises inherent in national life.

When we can’t be bothered with all that sacrifice, empathy, and tolerance, we are tempted to shrink back into a pre-national state of tribalism; a condition that requires nothing more of us than blood and violence.

Here too, the internet has created a new paradigm. Nationhood historically saw the amalgamation of tribes into a larger, more powerful entity. It was an exercise in imaginative expansion. By pooling our stories, traditions, skills, technology, recipes etc. people sought to create something beyond what had been possible in separation.

The information age has made all of those defining traits available to everyone, everywhere all the time.

We no longer need to be cheek-by-jowl to share our culture, it has been packaged-up, digitised, and sent around the world in the time it would take to arrange a choir practice.

Culture and resources are hoovered up into global platforms that monetise the human experience and dispense it globally with cold efficiency. Money dribbles back to producers by the grace of international capital, not the power of nations.

So, the nation, once our grand idea, now seems powerless to defend what we hold dear; unable to project the values we relied upon to create it in the first place.

This seems to have fostered a new, transnational tribalism that is rapidly causing previously patriotic people to become treasonous.

The criticism of Keir Starmer’s position on the Iranian war differs from any we have seen before. Alongside the usual protests against military action on grounds of pacifism, there is a sizeable cohort of people whose loyalty is to Donald Trump as the saviour of western civilization.

For these people, failure to engage fully in the war represents a humiliating abdication of responsibility to support white, ostensibly Christian, interests wherever they are in play.

This sort of thinking – internationalised tribalism – is usually put forward by those who are most vocal about their professed patriotism.

Ruinous

The war itself is ruinous for us here in Europe. Having rejected Russian gas supplies, we have now lost production from the Gulf, and inflation with attendant interest rises is surely on the way.

The USA, which produces oil and gas, profits from the war whilst we become poorer still. For those with union flags and ‘Christ is King’ in their X bios, however, financial hardship is a price worth paying for their idea of patriotism.

It’s difficult to imagine where the UK’s place is in this fantasy. Do these patriots see the UK as a franchise operation = wholly dependent on the USA but allowed to keep its own branding? Keep calm and carry on, unless Donald says not to…

Sorry, but bollocks to that. The disintegration of the UK as a political unit looks more likely by the day.

With Plaid Cymru, the SNP, and Sinn Fein predicted to run their respective governments by summer, the seams will fray yet further as this war rumbles on and we shall all be forced to reflect upon where we stand.

It might be that the malign giants of world affairs consign us all to misery whatever we do. If that’s the case, though, I’d rather suffer with my neighbours here in Wales, where our values still just about cohere us, than in the service of American oil companies and shysters peddling white supremacy.

Malign

Patriotism is not a virtue in itself. Even when sincerely held, it is a malign force if attached to a failed state.

The sheer tawdriness of life at the top of UK society has perverted pride in it to such an extent that even its flag-enthusiasts can no longer aim their loyalty to within 3000 miles of Buckingham Palace.

A new government in Cardiff needs to recognise this as a national moment. People have seen their loyalties betrayed; they are angry. Here, in a manageable, small democracy, we must try again to prove nations can work for all within them.

If we don’t, we’ll be patriots for whoever is pointing the gun.