What's always fascinated me about nationalism is the way it makes people so crazy.
There's something about the way in which we've all been indoctrinated into the idea that a mythological social identity called 'the nation' is so very important that I just can't leave alone. I say mythological with one hundred percent certainty because there are lots of books to back me up on this.
The nature of myths is that they tend to be based on a kernel of truth, but are exaggerated beyond their original meaning into something more appropriate to whatever purpose they're meant to serve. Eventually, the myth starts to assume something like an air of truth as more and more individuals believe it.
There's heaps of examples. The divinity of Christ, the 'We are all new Zealanders' mantra, Buck Shelford's gonads, 2 cups of milk in every block. All these 'facts' are also myths that have taken on lives of their own.
So how does this relate to nationalism? If you take race out of the question then nations are really just ideas that people subscribe to, and all too often get really passionate about. This passion usually isn't a bad thing if it manifests through something like commitment to a national team, or dedication to helping out a fellow national, but seems to go all pear-shaped when you see it in some freakin munter with a death-wish.
And of course I write that to all the kinderfascists out there who dislike anyone non-white from doing at all well. Sure, I’m envious that someone like Tze Ming can write better than I, but I’m never going to stalk her because of it. Or, not again that is.
Face facts boys, if you’re a white bloke with no skills, no education and no prospects, it’s not a Sikh cab drivers fault. He’s just doing the job you’re too freaking stupid, lazy or loaded on P to have done yourself.
But having said this, these fools are hardly less short-sighted than nation-builders of the ‘We are all New Zealanders’ mould. One of the great achievements of the last twenty years has been the project to diversify New Zealand out of the social rigor mortis that was the Muldoon years. All that borrowing for flashy election promises was insane, and something that ‘the mainstream’ did not pay for.
Let’s face facts, when the big drive to cut public spending was made in the 80s the people who suffered were not ‘the mainstream’. It was Māori who saw unemployment double when they were laid off from government departments in droves. It was vulnerable people on benefits who found themselves eating Weetbix for dinner. I still hate those things.
What careful years of study has proven to me is that a concept like ‘the mainstream’ is not the all-pervasive panacea it is meant to be. In reality, ‘the mainstream’ is a band of citizens within the overall New Zealand nation. ‘The mainstream’ is actually an exclusive set of self-referential identity markers you can usually sum up with the phrase, white, male and middle-class. But, as a rallying point for nation-building it’s just Orwellian enough to have a wide purchase. Or, put another way, it is a myth.
The National Front is just the very extreme (and one might say insane) end of the same nationalism the use of the term ‘mainstream’ also represents. But the latter by gentlemen in well-cut suits.
To go back to the books, ‘mainstreaming’ is a synonym for ‘civic nationalism’, an idea that is used to argue that ‘the mainstream’ is culturally and morally neutral, or of representing a ‘broad church’. This idea has however been debunked by a large number of authors, because something like ‘the mainstream’ will always exclude some people. Consequently, the inclusive society ‘the mainstream’ is meant to represent ends up leaving all sorts of people out of the picture.
Or even worse, it acts to force all people who don’t fit into ‘the mainstream’ to have to conform to the so-called neutral values of the majority. And sorry, ‘the mainstream’ has never spoken for or to me, and never will.
It’s going to be a long three years...