Nationalism under Suspect

All normative statements in favour of nationalism share the conception of the nation as an ethical community. “The discourse of nationalism asserts that humanity is divided into distinct nations, each with its own separate past, present and destiny. Human beings can only fulfil themselves if they belong to a national community, the membership of which remains superi­or to all other forms of belonging - familial, gender, class, religious, region­al, and so on” (Ozkirimli 2005, 2).

A discussion of the two main theoretical traditions explaining the emer­gence of nationalism, that is ‘ethnicist’ and ‘modernist’ ones, falls beyond the scope of this text. Our approach in this text remains within the mod­ernist school⁷ exemplified by the famous Gellner’s definition of nationalism as “a political doctrine which holds that the political and national unit should be congruent” (Gellner 1983, 1, our emphasis).

The definition calls for thinking of the ways how the congruence can be achieved in practice. Generally speaking, ‘adjusting boundaries to the ethnic’ and ‘filling boundaries with the appropriate ethnic’ come out as the two basic paths. The first path evokes the processes such as redrawing boundaries, separation, irredentism, or territorial autonomy, if none of the previous is attainable. The second one refers to the creation of a unified nation by assimilating ethnic minorities.

This way of treating nationalism could be very useful for the sake of the project, along with another definition of nationalism, which is practical and thus amenable to operationalisation. Jonathan Hearn suggests that “[n]ationalism is the making of combined claims, on behalf of population, to identity, to jurisdiction and to territory” (Hearn 2006, 11, original empha­sis). The author further specifies that one can speak of nationalism when all three kinds of claims are present. Articulated by “smaller social groups in the name of a larger population”, the claims seek to evoke common iden­tity (on the basis of biology, descent, culture, language, history, religion). They attempt at “translating identity into laws” on a specified territory (all quotations Hearn 2006, 11). “The crux is that there needs to be a real place where jurisdiction can secure identity” (Hearn 2006, 12). We find it useful that operationalisation embraced in this project be based on the logic of the claims in the name of population: who makes the claims, on behalf of which group, and what is their nature.

Another useful tool of analysing nationalism is relational typologies which treat nationalism according to the way nationalists define their relationship to other (not only) ethnic groups. Brubaker (cited in Hearn 2006, 122-123) makes an enlightening distinction between: (1) nationalizing nationalism of previously marginalised nations which “seeks to use state power to consoli­date its ‘ownership’ of the state”; (2) homeland nationalism of the kin-state which “seeks to protect and support the interests of its co-nationals who are marginalized minority within another (usually neighbouring) state”; and (3) minority nationalism “in which marginalized groups demand state recognition and certain cultural and political rights on the basis of their nationhood”.⁸

Inspired by the relational approach, Deegan-Krause identifies several types of nationalism among Slovaks after 1989. Even though not including the nationalism of Slovak Magyars, his enumeration is worth quoting in full:

“Peripheral nationalism against a domestic majority:

Czechs. Some Slovaks viewed the position of Slovaks within the common Czechoslovak state as peripheral and subordinate to the position of Czechs. Some of these Slovaks sought a for­mal renegotiation of the relationship between the two re­publics or even the dissolution of the common Czechoslovak state.

Peripheral nationalism against regional or global institu­tions: the West. Some Slovaks believed that Slovakia’s territo­rial and cultural integrity stood at risk in the face of closely interrelated threats from the European Union, NATO, and their member states as well as by their foreign economic actors.

Peripheral nationalism against a foreign state: Hungary.

Some Slovaks sought to combat what they perceived to be a threat of Hungarianization faced by Slovaks in the Hungarian- majority areas near the country’s southern border and by Slovaks still living in Hungary.

State-building nationalism against a homeland minority: Hungarians. Some Slovaks supported state-building efforts to expand the use of Slovak as an official language in the realms of administration, education, and culture primarily at the expense of offerings in the Hungarian language.

State-building nationalism against a non-homeland minor­ity: Roma. Some Slovaks saw the country’s large Roma pop­ulation as a barrier to an integrated Slovak state. Proposed solutions ranged from the assimilation of Roma into Slovak society through language and cultural instruction to the for­mal dissimilation of Roma and their isolation away from Slovaks and other groups.

State-building nationalism against co-nationals: Non­nationalist Slovaks. Some Slovaks argued that the process of building of a truly Slovak state faced its greatest danger from those members of the Slovak group who were insufficiently conscious of or loyal to the Slovak nation. These suspicions of disloyalty led to calls for a variety of measures that ranged from the increase of national consciousness to withdrawal of “anti-Slovak Slovaks” from public life.” (Deegan-Krause 2004, 658-659).

To sum up this section, the essence of nationalism is based on exclusion and inclusion. Its principal political expressions include making statements on who belongs to the nation and who does not. Setting up criteria for and emphasising implications of (not)belonging to the nation are quintessential to nationalist politics along with the means of achieving the congruence of the ethnic and the political, if one is to remain within the modernist approach to nationalism. Therefore, similarities and differences in expres­sions of nationalism among various suspects of national populism in Slovakia should be meticulously examined within the framework of this project.

POST-COMMUNIST NATIONAL POPULISM IN ACTION

Having separated in the sections above the populist radical right, populism and nationalism as concepts, the natural goal of this section is to outline how those got intermingled in post-communist Slovakia, thus resulting in both ‘movement’ and ‘situation’ of national populism. As it has been stressed throughout this text, but perhaps should be repeated, to grasp national populism in Slovakia we should treat separately nationalism and populism of individual actors in order to understand their affinities.

Before embarking upon this task it would be useful to revisit tradition­al explanations of (re)emergence of nationalism and populism under post­communism. We will resort to Blokker as an illustrative example even though we can’t help to object to his approach of treating nationalism and populism interchangeably, or, more precisely, considering populism largely as a political style of nationalism. Blokker (2005) presents the explanations at issue as falling into two broad categories - modernizatonist and histori- cal-determinist.

The former approach understands emergence of the phenomena in ques­tion as “as a radical form of protest against the degradation of the quality of life and widespread social dislocation and unemployment”, and as “a direct result of the ‘valley of tears’ that characterizes the post-communist transformation from a communist, centrally planned system, to a democrat­ic, market society. The ‘social costs’ of the transition and the still ‘incom­plete’ nature of modernization make a large number of ‘modernization los­ers’ susceptible to mobilization by populist movements” (Blokker 2005, 371).

The latter group of explanations rests on assumption that “populism and its naturalist, exclusivist portrayal of the nation is the result of the re-emer­gence of deeply, culturally ingrained perception of social belonging, and of the foundations of the polity, in which the social whole is considered prior to the individual, and in which local culture is valued differently from Western culture” (Blokker 2005, 371).

A normative conclusion on which both groups of explanations inevitable converge is that in order to overcome populism and nationalism, post-com­munist societies are bound to political modernisation. That would mean adopting western liberal-democratic political institutions and its notion of citizenship based on ‘civic nationalism’.

Appealing as it is, this kind of normative assumptions usually lacks a ‘roadmap’ for arriving at the desired destination. Western liberal democra­cies are remarkably diverse in terms of institutions and their operation. We believe that the essence of their ‘liberal-democraticness’ is to be identified in the underlying political culture. Moreover, as far as of political culture is concerned, the lack of ‘roadmaps’ and ‘blueprints’ becomes even more frightening than it is in the case of the institutions.

Nevertheless, we consider crucial that this project address the remedies most often proposed by the liberal scholars - civic nationalism and consti­tutional patriotism. The project should attempt to assess the realistic avenues for ‘arriving’ at the ‘normatively desired’ state of things against the backdrop of various conditions facilitating the success of the national populism in the country.

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