Identity Hunters
Written by: Miriam Yakobashvili Crimea, Russia’s “centre of spiritual unity,” as claimed by Putin, has been inhabited by the Crimean Tatars for centuries. The ethnic group has lived on the peninsula throughout the Ottoman period as well as after Catherine II’s takeover in 1783. In an effort to Russify the region, and as a part of Stalin’s ruthless ethnic policies, the General Secretary accused […]
Written by: Kristýna Kvitkova “Half a century ago, the world had a chance to stop a ruthless aggressor and missed it. I pledge to you: We will not make that mistake again,” stated President George H. W. Bush on 20th August 1990 following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.The “mistake” he vowed to never repeat was the Munich Conference. In September 1938, Adolf Hitler threatened to start a war in Europe by invading Czechoslovakia in order to annex the Sudetenland, a Czechoslovak frontier […]
Written by: Luke Matthews The key belligerents of the Pacific War, the United States and the Empire of Japan, engaged in a mutually constitutive identity construction that branded “the other” as savage and necessarily killable. This was based on conceptions of racial and civilizational hierarchy, with each side contending that the other was its direct […]
Written by: Tommaso Rabitti It’s been at least five years since Matteo Salvini, leader of Italy’s nationalist Lega party, has earned himself a place in the pantheon of European populists. His notoriety precedes him, foreign observers having attached strong labels to him: ‘the Italian Trump’, ‘modern fascist’, or, for many more still, simply a buffoon. […]
In a meeting with an IRA gun smuggler the historian Richard English noted how easily the Republican could explain Irish history: “the Brits – they’re the problem, and will be. They have been since 1169, and will be until such time as they leave”
Rule 50 of the Olympic Charter states, “no kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas.” Despite a clear attempt by the International Olympic Committee to create an a-political sporting event, the very exercise of holding the Olympics in South Korea is politically charged.
The recent death of over 200 Russian mercenaries in Syria has exposed the use of private military contractors in Russia’s wars, an affair that lay dormant after the Ukrainian conflict. Crucially, it has highlighted the use of nationalism as a rallying point for recruits and the creation of a discourse of duty to fight for the country.
Nationalism is back. In the last two years, nationalists have conquered the core of conventional politics in an electoral resurgence that has brought it back from the fringes. Its support, discourses and arguments draw on old logics but directly address grievances born out of global effects of the economic revolution that begun in the 1980s. While 2017 saw the consolidation of nationalist successes in the West, 2018 will see their ideas put to the test.
History is one of the battlegrounds of nationalist movements. In their attempts to naturalize the nation and to control who belongs to it, nationalists mythologize some events while silencing others. In France, the return of nationalism in last year’s elections is indicated by the place that the pretended need for a “roman national” occupied in the electoral debates.
Identity Hunters 