Nationalist Politics Research Articles

Trespassing boundaries between national identities: the metamorphosis of Vojtech Tuka from a Hungarian academic to a Slovak prime minister

ABSTRACT Béla Tuka started his career as a Hungarian academic, but later he transformed into a Slovak nationalist politician, and renamed himself Vojtech Tuka. In 1939, he became the prime minister of the Nazi-oriented Slovak State. This study intends to reveal, how national narratives struggled to interpret this life path. After national explanations of trespassing the cultural boundaries between Slovak and Hungarian national identity did not prove to be coherent and convincing, the memory of Vojtech Tuka has been disregarded by both (opposing) national groups, mutually, since it questions the organic existence of nations and their boundaries.

A Matter of Respect: A Review Essay about Respect and Loathing in American Democracy: Polarization, Moralization, and the Undermining of Equality

Abstract In their new and theoretically innovative book, Respect and Loathing in American Democracy, Jeff Spinner-Halev and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse argue that the nation's politics suffers from a lack of respect among political opponents. In making their argument, they build a lot of bridges: between the normative and empirical sides of Political Science, between qualitative and quantitative research, and between contemporary scholarship and many of the seminal works from an earlier era. To address the respect deficit, they call for greater attention to civic education and—perhaps counterintuitively—less attention to politics.

Metadiscourse and metalinguistic talk about script choice in Serbia: chasms and consequences for criticality

In Serbia, script diversity remains the norm whereby Serbian is routinely written in both the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets. This is not free of political contestation. Metadiscourses construct Cyrillic as the authentic script and central to ethnoidentity or, alternatively, as indexing dangerous nationalism, conservatism and Russian-leaning politics. On the flip side, metadiscourse associates Latin with modernity and progress, but for some with unwelcomed Western influence. But how do individuals themselves understand script preferences? This paper takes a folk linguistic approach to investigate whether the metalinguistic talk of Serbian individuals about script preferences is indeed informed by political metadiscourse. The data concern not only the stated preferences of individuals but also, borrowing from theory of mind, metatalk about how people explain the script preferences of others. The paper shows that the ideological oppositionality presupposed in metadiscourse tends not to be validated in metalinguistic talk, reminding us to be cognisant of chasms between societal-level metadiscourse and the lived experiences of individuals, and to avoid assumptions about the reach and impact of critical metadiscourse.

Gender Fluidity Versus Homohysteria: How Young Chinese Male Fans Consume Athletic Bromance

This article investigates how young Chinese male fans interpret and engage with mediated athletic bromances, drawing from interviews with university students who follow sports games closely. The research uncovers complex dynamics wherein these fans contextually embrace and delegitimise the homoerotic aspects of mediated athletic bromances as they navigate their sports consumption. This phenomenon reflects the multifaceted experiences of young men in contemporary China, where the market and the party-state co-create a tapestry of overlapping, yet conflicting gender expectations. The findings illuminate the intricate relations between consumer culture and nationalist politics crafted in present-day China, as well as their specific manifestations within sports fandom.

Recapturing the Past: The Role of Historical Memory in Polish and Hungarian Populism

Collective memory is a driving force in populist and nationalist politics. The emotional appeals of a shared history, particularly relating to notions of victimhood and resistance, are deeply influential in national identity formation. In this essay, Hungary’s Fidesz party and Poland’s Law and Justice party (PiS) are explored in relation to their tendency to manipulate history to construct self-serving collective memories. Both Fidesz and PiS successfully employ selective interpretations of historical events to not only mobilize support but also to quell dissent, employing emotive appeals and moral justifications deeply rooted in the national psyche. In order to combat the illiberal and anti-democratic tendencies of populist manipulations of collective memory, this essay argues that strong civil societies and the promotion of alternative narratives of collective memory are necessary. Editorial Note: This final version of this piece was to be titled "The Past Reimagined: The Role of Historical Memory in Polish and Hungarian Populism". Due to an editorial error, a draft title was published in the print edition. In the spirit of continuity between the print and online edition, we have kept the title of the print edition's in the online version, but have included this note to explain the discrepancy. Our apologies to the author for the error.

Public health as critique: examining the caste of filth and disease in Katherine Mayo’s Mother India

Drawing on Dalit writer Kanwal Bharti’s 2019 translation of Katherine Mayo’s Mother India (1927), this essay argues that through the employment of a radical anti-caste reading practice, the original text yields a powerful critique of Hindu caste structures and Hindu supremacist ideologies that assume a new significance in contemporary India. An against-the-grain reading of Mayo’s emphasis on life and health as opposed to casteized purity, when unmoored from the author’s original intentions, offers a vision of public health that operates in conjunction with the social, and can be reclaimed to the advantage of the marginalized and dispossessed. In its emphasis on the impact of colonial modernity on marginalized lives in colonial India, the text finds an intriguing alignment with radical anti-caste politics. This solidarity between what is widely recognized as a colonialist critique on the one hand, and radical anti-caste thought on the other, I argue, is a reminder of the uneasy relationship between colonial politics, Hindu nationalism, and anti-caste politics that sought to use colonial rule to strategically counter Hindu supremacy.

Beyond exit: how populist governments disengage from international institutions

Abstract There is a widespread belief among scholars and policy-makers that populism has fuelled a unilateralist backlash because of its emphasis on nationalism, popular sovereignty and identity politics. Although a few populist governments have indeed withdrawn from some international institutions, this ‘disengagement hypothesis’ needs to be scrutinized and unpacked. In this article, we develop a framework that distinguishes between four types of institutional disengagement—criticism, obstruction, extortion and exit—and show that populist governments use them in a fluid and tactical way to navigate between the radical and pragmatic imperatives of populist politics. Our comparative case-study of the Hungarian executive under Viktor Orbán (since 2010) and the Trump administration in the US (2017–2021) demonstrates that both governments have frequently used criticism, obstruction and extortion to disengage from international institutions but have only rarely exited from them. The article thus deepens our understanding of the impact of populism on both individual institutions and the multilateral order more broadly, and helps policy-makers develop strategies to counter the adverse effects of populism.

Black nationalism, British socialism, and transnational newspapers between Britain and the Caribbean, 1975–80

ABSTRACT This article analyses how socialists in the mid to late 1970s sought to develop an alternative model of black nationalist politics through transnational publishing ventures. This article focuses on a black workers’ newspaper that was edited by Caribbean socialists in London and simultaneously distributed in Britain and Jamaica. Analysing Flame for the first time suggests that black self-organisation and the practices of the British left should be understood as a story of turbulent interdependence, despite the two being differentiated in previous studies. It shows how working-class radicalism in the Caribbean was an important catalyst for the development of black peoples’ movements in 1970s Britain and the formation of new national identities. Transnational relationships between the Caribbean and Britain were more extensive during the 1970s than previously assumed. However, like previous movements to organise black opposition to capitalism through left-wing organisations during the 1930s and 1940s, Flame flickered briefly before its main sponsor withdrew support.

STRATEGY FOR THE PREVENTION OF WORLD WARS IDEAL POLITICAL MAP OF THE WORLD, FROM 195 TO 21 MEGA-FEDERATIONS

Wars have always caused millions and millions of dead, destroyed peoples' wealth and held development back. Geopolitics, alternative history, futurology or nationalist politics tackle this problem by creating regional paintings, but the results are low compared to expectations, the war due to border disorder is still intense. This research aims to develop a conceptual framework, based on five principles: historical, linguistic, religious, cultural and geopolitical, through which to create a theoretical direction, a map of the world close to the ideal IPMW (Ideal Political Map of the World). The concept of megastates, economically and nationally stable, such as: Brazil, the United States, China, Russia, India or the European Union currently existing, can expand worldwide, materializing in 21 countries with large areas and large populations, encouraging globalization, trade, free movement but above all an optimal framework of the balance of power.

Sexing the history of Indian anti‐colonial internationalism: White women, Indian men and the politics of the personal

AbstractIn contrast to the wealth of literature on the gendered and sexual politics of Indian nationalism, studies on the internationalisation of Indian anti‐colonial nationalism are rarely informed by the twin themes of gender and sexuality. As Indian activists traversed international political spaces in the early twentieth century, they frequently entered into sexual relations with white women. This article explores the possible political consequences of such sexual contact through a study of the personal lives of Arathil Candeth Narayanan Nambiar and Manabendra Nath Roy and their relationships with the largely unknown German‐born sisters, Eva and Lu Geissler.

Assimilationism, Sexual Nationalism, and the Backlash Against Gender and Sexuality

Fifteen years ago my co-authors and I wrote an article discussing the politics of sexual nationalism in the Netherlands (Mepschen at al., 2010). We argued that gay and lesbian emancipation had come to center almost solely on the political idea of the “integration” of alleged sexual and religious others into the Dutch moral community. We pointed out that the Dutch case was exemplary of wider European developments. In various European countries we have witnessed complex transformations in the relationship between the nation and the question of sexual democracy (Fassin, 2012). Lesbian and gay rights and discourses have been weaponized to frame Western Europe as the “avatar of both freedom and modernity” (Butler 2008, 2) and depict its Muslim citizens and others with a migration background as backwards and homophobic. In the words of the queer theorist Jasbir Puar (2007), who coined the term ‘homonationalism,’ gay rights have been recast as an “optic, and an operative technology” in the production and disciplining of Muslim Others (See also Rahman 2014.) Cases of homophobia among Muslim and migrant citizens are highlighted, treated as archetypal, and cast within Orientalist narratives that underwrite the superiority of European secular modernity. Homophobia is increasingly represented as peripheral to Western European culture (Mepschen 2017). As I see it, we still live in the same historical moment: the notion of sexual nationalism is more relevant than ever. But at the same time, things are changing. Before we get to that, a short overview of what has been discussed in the last fifteen years.

Unmasking Southern White evangelicalism in U. S. history education: Racialized theopolitical discourses at work

White evangelical churches and organizations play a significant role in mobilizing congregants as participants in the white Christian nationalist movement. This fusion of faith and politics has made white evangelicals “ambassadors” of white Christian nationalism (Miller, 2022). This paper interrogates the history, theology, and politics of white Christian nationalism to understand its influence in the U. S. educational system, specifically its implications for K-12 history curriculum in public schools. Beginning with current legislation around critical race theory, this paper traces the intersection of evangelical and conservative discourse in the Southern United States. This historical analysis shows how the white, Southern evangelical record on race and racism accommodates the theopolitical ideology of the white Christian nationalist movement. This paper argues the current white evangelical challenges to critical race theory and demands to teach “alternative histories” about America’s racial past not only limits discussions around race and power in classrooms but distorts the curriculum with white Christian nationalist tenets disguised as truth.

Locating Subalternity in Tribal Politics in India with Special Reference to Uttar Pradesh

The study of tribal politics in India has broadly followed two patterns. The first is the preoccupation of scholars with the question of integration of tribals into the 'mainstream' or the 'real political process' which is almost coterminous with the imaginary of what can commonly be referred to as the 'learning process' of 'nationalist politics'. (1) The second approach is an offshoot of the first and scholars have been preoccupied with the question of the impossibility of resolving the issues faced by tribals within the first framework. Accordingly, this framework tries to take out the discourse of tribal politics from what is perceived as a 'narrow and partial' approach to study the contribution made by the 'people on their own' as Ranajit Guha puts it. The subaltern Studies Collective started by Guha in the 1980s provided a trenchant critique of nationalist politics. With tribal communities getting increasingly embroiled in political action with development induced displacement in post Independent India, such an approach has gained further traction. (2) The paper makes a limited attempt to study the interaction of tribal politics in one of India's largest states, Uttar Pradesh, vis a vis, attempts to incorporate them into the 'mainstream' through various practices that lie at the intersection of the 'public' and 'private' by placing religion at the centre of identity formation. Historically tribal zones in India have remained under the influence of Christian missionaries and Naxalites. Hindu organisations started work among tribals from the 1990s and their activities can be seen as a countervailing influence against the Christian missionary activities. One of the most popular tropes used by Hindu organisations was that of a creation of a ‘national identity’ among the tribals which was quintessentially a political process. Although anthropologists have long studied the process of Hinduisation' among tribal communities. The paper will show the changing nature of state practices in India vis a vis the tribals who are identified as 'subalterns' and thus be useful for comparative studies across states.

To Have and to Hold

Heritage politics in Turkey came under global scrutiny in July 2020 following the conversion of the Hagia Sophia Museum in Istanbul back into a mosque, and then again in October 2020 after the confiscation of ancient and modern seed collections residing at the British Institute in Ankara. In the accounts of several Turkish and international critics, these two events were presented as kindred, reactionary maneuvers aimed at galvanizing nationalist fervor, and Turkish claims on biological and cultural property were pitted against universalist ideals of conservation. Drawing on long-term ethnographic and archival research on the Turkish conservation bureaucracy, this article analyzes the role of plants and antiquities in Turkish metanarratives of loss, sovereignty, and modernization, and it offers an anthropological account of everyday conservation work in Turkey that challenges the purported divide between universalist science and nationalist politics that very much mimics the contours of a civilizational split.

The Student Labor Camp Movement, Postcolonial Development, and the Shaping of Citizens-to-Be in Independent India, 1954–65

The Government of India organized over ten thousand student labor camps for the purposes of village development between 1954 and 1965. This camp movement functions as a key to the novel idealizations of youth in the postcolonial world and the shifting development agendas of independent India. The image of the toiling and vigorous camper committed to serving the newly created nation-state came to be constructed as India's model citizen-to-be, and this figure embodies the emergent forms of postcolonial nationalist politics and ideologies of the 1950s and 1960s. This youthful labor force was depicted in the developmentalist imagination of India as literally building and metaphorically embodying the nation-state and its ideologies of physical fitness, secularism, anti-casteism, and national discipline. This article will argue that camp life negotiated a hierarchy of citizens that made the educated youth the agent of development and the villager the object of development. The running of these camps by volunteer movements such as the National Cadet Corps, the Bharat Scouts and Guides, and the Bharat Sevak Samaj brings to light how the developmental apparatus in India worked or did not work in practice for the students and the poorer classes.

Visionary or Voyeur: Lionel Wendt and the Contradictions of Late Colonial Modernity in Ceylon

The voyeuristic qualities that permeate the vast oeuvre of Ceylonese photographer Lionel Wendt (1900-1944) are a point of contention within scholarship on his work. Scholars counter claims of voyeurism by underscoring his national belonging to Ceylon, his anti-colonial politics, or the global modernist influences on his aesthetic. Many of these analyses rely on Wendt’s biography to contextualize the formal qualities of his photographs. While his biography is important for establishing his influences and motivations as a photographer, it can overshadow the insight offered by the images themselves. This paper draws on a selection of Wendt’s photographs to chart a dialogue between their formal qualities and the political and cultural context of their production, such as a modernist visual arts movement in Ceylon, and a changing political economy as the island approached independence from colonial rule. I argue for a more robust definition of Ceylon modernism that accounts for its relationship to the social modernity during the late colonial era. I then recalibrate the question of voyeurism through an examination of the most common recipient of Wendt’s gaze: the laborer. I pair a formal reading of Wendt’s photo series Men at Work with a discussion of Ceylon’s labor movement, including its contested and antagonistic relationship to the growing nationalist politics of the period. Through my analysis, I foreground the contradictions so characteristic of late colonial modernity in Ceylon, as well as the limitations of binary anti/post-colonial discursive frameworks in which Wendt has been understood.

Religion, Identity and Tribal Sub-national Politics in India

What is the role of religion in tribal politics? Does religion shape tribal political imagination? If so, how and in what manner? Politically, tribal movements since the colonial period have been deeply rooted in religion, and even in post-independent India, they continue to inspire and shape tribal politics. The article argues that tribal politics and religion interact in complex ways. First, the article shows how groups and organisations incorporate religious ideas within their political ideology. Second, religion and politics also come into conflict with one another in terms of the use and interpretation of religious beliefs and commitments for political ends, mainly when it involves the use of violence. This is examined through the case of the Mizo movement for independence in northeast India, where religion was interwoven with the politics of identity, nationalism and violence.

Balance of Threat Analysis in Resolving the Diplomatic Crisis of Qatar and Saudi Arabia in 2017-2020

The regional closeness of Persian Gulf countries faced a threat due to Qatar's foreign policy approach. Despite having the lowest military expenditure among Gulf countries, Qatar diverged from Saudi Arabia's policy of fostering stability in the Persian Gulf region to distance itself from groups deemed a threat to the domestic politics of other Gulf nations. Qatar's pursuit of greater democratic freedoms and a more moderate approach to international relations prompted Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations to impose a diplomatic blockade in 2017. Despite this, Qatar's flexible foreign policy helped it avoid a prolonged domestic crisis. Establishing ties with nearby countries like Iran and Turkey and acquiring fighter aircraft from France and the United States garnered international support beyond its region. This research will examine Qatar's efforts to navigate the diplomatic crisis using a balance of threat approach—a key concept in Neorealism theory that posits an anarchic international structure requiring countries to navigate the global political stage for survival.

‘The sanctuary of them all’: the politics of manpower and nationality in the armies in exile in the United Kingdom, 1940–4

Abstract Historians have long remarked upon the political significance of the Allied armies from Continental Europe which were established on British soil during the Second World War. Much less attention has been devoted to the implications of maintaining and expanding these forces amid the very particular circumstances of wartime exile. This article examines three aspects of the tension between the imperatives to secure as many men as possible for military service while maintaining the distinctly ‘national’ character of the force as a whole. The failure to mobilize emigrants and expatriates is examined in the first section, while the second section shows how soldiers could use national identities to their own advantage and pass between foreign armies. The final section examines the far-reaching political consequences of the often-obscured ethnic diversity within the ranks, focusing particularly on Jewish soldiers.

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