Nationalism is illiberalism

The argument

The argument distinguishes democracy from majoritarianism and places nationalism firmly in the second camp. Nationalism in democracies is inherently majoritarian: whatever the majority decides, goes. That can sound like democratic principle, but liberal democracy has always consisted of two things rather than one, majority rule together with a set of protections the majority cannot simply vote away. Nationalism keeps the first and discards the second, which is why it is described here as illiberal. The rights of the minority are not recognised in any way, because within the nationalist frame there is no standing from which a minority could claim them. The mechanism by which dissent is suppressed follows from the same move. If the nation has a single will, then to disagree with it is not to hold a different view but to stand outside the nation altogether. Those that do protest are cast as speaking against "the will of the people" and portrayed as traitors to the nation, and signs of difference are persecuted rather than tolerated. This is not an excess of nationalism but its logic working normally, since difference is exactly what the claim to a unified people denies. The final step turns on the fact that the unified people does not exist. There is rarely a single united people all sharing the same characteristics and views, so the will of the people is never simply read off the population; it has to be asserted by someone. That creates the opening for demagogues, who pretend to speak for "the people" and, having claimed that authority, take control and persecute any who disagree with them. Once opposition can be recast as treason and the person defining the national will is beyond challenge, the competitive contest that makes a democracy a democracy has gone. On this account nationalism does not merely constrain democracy, it ends up destroying it, which is why the nation is understood here as a form of coercion.

Context

Political figures like Donald Trump, Xi Jinping, Viktor Orban, and Naredna Modi call themselves nationalists. Those who oppose their politics, seeing them as dictatorial and anti-democratic, now fear that nationalism promotes illiberal anti-democratic politics.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The nation is the foundation of democracy. Nations are based on the idea of self-determination and the idea that political legitimacy comes from the people. This means that citizens can always attack their government for failing to live up to democratic claims. Rejecting nationalism doesn't mean rejecting the nation. Many critics of nationalism in fact feel that the so-called nationalists are the ones betraying the nation by oppressing large parts of the population and enriching themselves at the costs of the nation. Most believe that it is possible to love one's nation while rejecting dangerous nationalism.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The nation is the foundation of democracy.