Abstract. The article seeks to define the relationship between nationalism and racism in modem times. First, it defines racism as one of the principal nineteenth‐century ideologies, sharply focused and centred upon the human body itself as its most potent symbol. Then it discusses nationalism as a much more loosely constructed faith which made alliances with most nineteenth‐century ideologies such as liberalism, conservatism and socialism. When nationalism allied itself with racism it made racism operative ‐for example, within the integral nationalist movements from the end of the nineteenth century onwards. The article discusses how this alliance came about, and its consequences. It concludes that racism was never an indispensable element of nationalism. Moreover, it was not merely a form of discrimination, but a determinate way of looking at men and women which presented a total picture of the world. If nationalism made racism a reality, racism came to dominate nationalism once an alliance between the two movements had been consummated.
Both during and after the 1914–18 war, shell-shocked men joined others labelled as deviants in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Stereotypes were available to cope with an avalanche of psychiatric casualties, the treatment of whom was uncertain and mostly ineffective. When lost for aetiology or proven treatment, both doctors and those who wrote about manliness and morale converged on a notion of shell shock which located it within the degenerate categories well known at the time.
After the Second World War the failure of German nationalism seemed more obvious than its promise. The German nationalism which came to the fore in the interwar years seemed to have wiped out the promise of earlier times: a patriotism based not upon domination and aggression but upon ideals of citizenship and the recognition of individuality. I want to examine the differences between the old patriotism and the new nineteenth-century nationalism through its effect upon personal relationships. The freedom of choice in such relationships seems basic to all freedoms, and yet the transition from patriotism to nationalism has rarely been examined from this point of view. During the eighteenth century the idea of friendship came to symbolize the autonomy of personal relationships, not merely in a vague and general manner, but as part of a highly self-conscious cult based upon the free interplay of personalities and the acceptance of individual differences. Such a cult could exist side by side with eighteenth-century patriotism, while the all-encompassing claims of modern nationalism challenge the coexistence of the nation with the autonomy of personal relationships.However, in order to understand the meaning of this transition in our context, we must first analyze some of the basic forces which led to the victory of the new over the old. The promise of individual freedom and lack of aggressive intent, predominant as German nationalism strove to transform itself from theory to reality, gave way, during the nineteenth century, to the attempt at integral nationalism. Both the promise of German nationalism and its failure
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