Latest / Thinking Class / #111 - Prof. Azar Gat - Why Ethnicity Is Inescapably Political And Nationalism Endures: Lessons For Britain & The West

Transcript

#111 - Prof. Azar Gat - Why Ethnicity Is Inescapably Political And Nationalism Endures: Lessons For Britain & The West · Thinking Class

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, classmates, and welcome to Thinking Class.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm John Gillam, and in this episode, I'm joined by Professor Azar Gatt, one of the world's leading scholars of nationalism, war, and political identity.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Professor Gatt is Professor Emeritus at Tel Aviv University and the author of several major works on conflict and political order, including war in human civilization and, most notably for this conversation, Nations, the long history and deep roots of political ethnicity and nationalism.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: In that book and in our discussion today, Gatt challenges one of the most dominant assumptions of modern political thought, that nations are merely recent inventions, artificial constructs, or the superficial products of elite manipulation.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, Gatt argues that nationalism and political ethnicity have deep historical, cultural, and even evolutionary roots, stretching far beyond the modern era.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Together, we think out loud about why nationalism surged in the modern age but why it did not begin there, the difference between ethnic and civic nationalism and the vulnerabilities of each, how political ethnicity has asserted itself in diverse societies, nations, and all empires, the emergence of England and how national identity and political ethnicity interacted across the British Isles, whether multicultural governance can override inherited ethno-cultural bonds or merely postpone their reassertion, why contemporary examples suggest that political ethnicity never truly disappears.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: This is a truly important conversation, classmates, because debates about nationalism, identity, and belonging now sit at the centre of political life across Britain, Europe and the wider West, yet they are often discussed without historical depth, clarity, or intellectual seriousness.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Professor Gatt will help to restore that depth, showing why these questions endure.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: If you value long-form historically grounded conversations about culture, politics, and civilization, consider subscribing to Thinking Class on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: You can also find essays, reflections, and further reading on Substack.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy the show, classmates.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Professor Azar Gad, welcome to Thinking Class.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for joining me.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for inviting me.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it is my pleasure.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: I've been reading one of your books of late, Nations, The Long History and Deep Roots of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism, and that's what we're going to speak about today.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think the salience of ethnicity and political life and the roots of nationalism are important to understand because across the West there are battles raging between those styled as ethno-nationalists, those that are civic nationalists, and I suppose on the fringe, but an influential one, those that believed that nations are a social construct.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: You're uniquely suited to the task of helping us understand the roots of nationalism and political ethnicity because of your work.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: But perhaps we begin with your motivations.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't necessarily a topic that in 2025 people would pick up and run with.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: So what motivated you over 10 years ago to write a book on these topics?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: So so nothing more than intellectual curiosity regarding the main phenomena of human behavior, of human uh of human nature, of human uh culture.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I I wrote, I've written books on the phenomenon of war, on the phenomenon of ideological fixation, which is relevant here to our subject as well.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I just like to get to the bottom of things.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: And also, yes, I did feel uh 15 years ago, that 20 years ago, when I began working on the uh book, uh, that uh this that there was a uh a deep misconception about the uh about the deep roots of nationalism.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: As you said, it uh by so-called modernists that have uh gained some kind of dominance over the field uh since say the uh during uh the 20th century and especially since the 1980s, uh the uh phenomenon is uh viewed as uh as uh con as superficial, as uh as um uh the construed perhaps even as a manipulation.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: So um so I I think I felt that there was a need to get to the bottom of things, and and I might say that developments uh over the past two decades have have uh shown how salient the subject actually is.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's let's dive into some of the definitions that I suppose you're alluding to here.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: So you've referred to the modernists, the the modern view of nationalism, and within your book you refer to the traditional view of nationalism and you compare these.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: So perhaps we can begin with that.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: What what do the modernists believe about nationhood compared to the traditionalists?
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: So let's start with the modernists, even though it's uh reverse order.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: The modernists uh claim that uh that the national phenomenon is a recent one, that it's a product of uh there is uh some divergence of opinion here, it's a product of uh the printing revolution which created this kind of uh some kind of uh imagined community.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh not in the sense that it's uh in the sense that people share concepts now.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: There is this uh the common outlook uh created by print.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: People share culture on a large scale and so forth and and become uh become connected with one another.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: So this is one view, another view, another modernist view is that uh the whole phenomenon started either in the uh with the French Revolution, the uh introduction of uh popular sovereignty, or alternatively with uh with the Industrial Revolution, uh the movement to the cities, the erosion of uh traditional local communities, uh the uh kind of uh communication created by uh by modern media, say, uh beginning with uh newspapers and all that, uh basic education, all this brought people closer together.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and the view is that before modernity, people living in the countryside had very little uh connection, uh social connections beyond the the rural community, beyond the village, at most the province.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't uh it's not only that they didn't uh feel connection or any kind of affiliation with the with the countrymen, they barely knew uh to what uh what uh nation, what uh the national or what uh state society they belonged, except for the vaguest of uh of concepts.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: So in this uh the in this um rural society, people were scattered around the countryside and very little connection with uh with other people in the country, the sense of belonging was very low and so forth.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: So this is this is the modernist view.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, it uh got it uh gained in strength following World War I, the horrendous World War II, the horrendous expressions of uh nationalism in terms of uh ethnic uh strife, uh wars, uh conquests, and obviously Nazism.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so both uh both an intellectual view and an ideological uh view um coalesced here to produce what we know as modernism.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: The traditional view, sometimes naive, obviously, so it needs to be uh updated.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: The traditional view uh looks at nations as something very old.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: It assumes that countries that you know, an English nation, a Scottish nation, and a uh a Polish nation, a Russian nations are all very old.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, no nation is uh constant in the sense that A, it uh uh uh goes through all kinds of transformation, cultural transformation with time, and B, some nations uh appear, some disappear in history, some uh some fuse into larger identities and so forth.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: So this is so the so-called modernist versus, and and the modernist view has gained the ascendancy, spreading far beyond the narrow study of nationalism into other fields, uh broader uh fields of uh sociology, history, uh the the uh the the arts and so forth, cultural studies.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: I but I will pause before continuing to ask you questions to reflect on uh how widespread uh the modernist view is and that uh I I I propose to people to go and speak to almost any graduate of any subject that is here in the United Kingdom.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'll use them as an example because it's my country.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: You can pretty much always plot where they uh are going to exist on the political map and their attitudes towards nationhood, um, inclusivity, and you can probably determine where people sit by what they say, and many will say, look, this isn't our nation, we just live here, and so ultimately everyone's welcome.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but but but the sharpening of opinion here is a product of the past, say, twenty-twenty-five years with with the pressures of immigrations, with pressures of uh European unification, all of these have the sharpened attitude.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: So you up you're obviously right about the situation now.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: It was less so during the real dominance of modernism during the 80s and 90s, I would say.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, uh uh effectively what you're starting to say is that uh nationalism, uh contra to what the modernists suggest, and this is a a quote from your book, uh, is not a a modern invention, the superficial product of political manipulation.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: And uh whilst modernists will turn towards the 19th century, which is when all of these technological advancements took place that that allowed people to communicate and all these people moved to the cities, as you said, nationalism underwent a boom, and the modernists will say that's because of political manipulation and all of those things you've already said.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: But you have a different explanation.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: What is that?
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: So, first of all, perhaps I should say that uh that nationalism has been uh radically transformed and reinforced politically by the process of modernization.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: Modernization is the most important transformation of humanity since the transition to agriculture and the rise of states millennia ago.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not the uh the the uh the modernist argument is partly true and partly false.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so it we need to distinguish here.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so maybe we'll get to the where the to the part that the modernists got right later on, but first to where they got uh things uh wrong.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: And uh the and I should also say that manipulation is always there, but you manipulate what is manipulable.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's not that you can manipulate uh people to anything, you can manipulate something which exists as a powerful uh force within the human psyche, within the social psyche.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: So this is open to manipulation.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's not that you are manipulating, you know, uh like Lim Slate here.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh this is not the case.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: So now if we go to the so to the roots of the phenomenon, uh you know, uh the when when people talk about nationalism, they often use the term tribalism more as uh more as uh you know a metaphor, uh but it's not a metaphor at all.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh people have uh strong kin culture connection.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: I call them kin culture because uh if we begin at the tribal level, uh humanity lived in our species, Homo sapiens lived in tribes uh for uh hundreds of thousands of years before the emergence of states.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: And the people in the tribe shared two common denominators.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, they were kin.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: Most of the marriage universe was within the tribe.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and on top of that, they were related by a common culture, which above all meant language, uh sometimes dialect, uh language, but which uh which within both these aspects, the biological, the keen uh relations between the people and the shared culture, uh both of them contributed to this sense of a identity, be solidarity, uh which we see everywhere.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, uh we saw everywhere in in tribal societies, and what what when the state states emerged and they emerged in stages across the globe.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: So uh the first states emerged some 5,000 years ago.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh, but this was Egypt and uh Mesopotamia and so forth, but but some of the states are very recent.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: So for example, the the the states of uh northern of the Scandinavian countries or of Japan only emerged uh 1,000 or 1500 years ago, depends on depending on the state.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: So they all lived in tribal societies.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: So once states emerged, first of all, it was easier for them to emerge in an ethnic space that was uh in a particular ethnic space.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh obviously the states one once it arose held to and and strove to to unify the realm.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: So in terms of uh of synchronizing various cults and deities, uh there was uh the tendency uh to create uh a standard uh language uh above uh the various dialects, especially a written uh language.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but it's not the case of uh so so for example, let's take the first state ever.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: The first state ever, some 5,000 years ago, was ancient Egypt.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: Now, ancient Egypt was a national state.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: It was united by a common language.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it had uh it was uh populated by an Egyptian uh people of, as I said, uh shared language.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh various cults within the uh within the Egyptian state were, as I said, syncrisized, uh syncrisized by uh partly by the states, um mostly by the state.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: And please note that there was the Egypt per se as a nation state, the first state and the first nation state.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: And beyond that, we had uh the Egyptian Empire, and there was a difference here, and which everybody knew in Egypt, outside Egypt, it was clear where Egypt is and where the where the Egyptian Empire was, in the same way that people knew very well where Britain was and where the Britain Empire was.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: So we have a nation state, we might have empires, and empires, contrary to another uh uh view by modernists, empires were not ethnically blind.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh they were mostly almost uh almost uh uh everywhere dominated by a particular imperial people or ethnos, which was uh which was the mainstay of the empire.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: So in the Russian Empire it was it was the Russian people, in the Assyrian Empire it was the Assyrian uh people, and in the Persian Empire it was the Persian uh people within the empire.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: It was clear who to whom, as it were, the empire belonged, so to speak.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: And on which part of the empire, which uh on which of the peoples within the empire the uh the uh rulers could uh rely uh the most.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh in the Hellenistic empires it was uh it was the Greek and Macedonian element, which also enjoyed an elevated status in terms of citizenship.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: So uh so with the first empire, the the first national state, the first state that we have, Egypt, we already have this template of uh of a national state.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: Now, as I said, there were other templates.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: For example, we also already mentioned empires, but uh another template was the city-state.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: And again, what's uh special about the city-state is that uh A.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the city-state itself was composed of a particular ethnos, had a particular language and particular pantheon.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, there were foreigners.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh in most period cases, they were regarded as foreigners, sometimes tolerated within the polity, sometimes over time went the process of uh of acculturation into the city-state.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: But the uh the people of the city-states were belonged to a particular ethnos.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, uh the city-states divided among them a particular uh the ethnic space.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: So for example, with the Greek city-states, they were all independent uh polities, but they all knew that they belonged to an Hellenic uh ethnos.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: And they when when faced with uh, and they were obviously fighting each other uh all the time, but when faced with a foreign threat, uh like the Persian, uh the the common uh connections between them often express themselves in a kind of alliance against a for a foreign threat.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: I should also add one more thing.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh let's take the Roman Empire, for example, which which was uh long-living and stretching over 1,000 years.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh sometimes in such an empire, a process of cultural uh of acculturation might take place.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: So over time, after, you know, often after uh repeated revolts have been uh been suppressed, uh there would be an assimilation into the dominant culture.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: So for example, throughout Western Europe, most notably in Spain and uh and uh France or Gaul and previously in Italy, uh Latin uh replaced the original Celtic languages uh in uh Celtic in Gaul and most of Spain.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: Others, other languages in Italy, they it it replaced them.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: And with them, which they there is uh practically very little uh Celtic uh words in in uh French or in Spanish.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh all of these are of as you know as as is known as Roman languages descended from uh from Latin.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: And and over time all the the uh local population of these countries uh began to regard themselves as Romans, especially as they had the barbarians across the border and they really did not want them in.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: So all this uh so contrary to what uh to what uh these the the modernist uh theorists uh Gellner said that uh that uh nationalism has no deep roots.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: In the human psyche the uh the opposite is true.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and uh and nationalism has a very deep root in the human psyche and uh amusingly Gellner uh separately reported how he how he's moved to tears when he hears uh the uh folk songs of his native uh Bolivia.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there's a there's a home for everyone uh in in the end.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh I'll I'll bring up some examples from our own country in response to what you said there.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: So our own being my own, uh Great Britain.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: So you've mentioned the British Empire, you made a few uh references to both the Empire and indeed the island of Britain and the the islands of the British Isles.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure I will get in trouble from some of my Irish friends for referring to them as that.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: But uh in the Empire, some of the examples that you referenced was when India was colonized, for example, though colonised, I think, is probably a bit too strong of a term insofar as the numbers were just infinitesimally small, but it was certainly governed by uh Brits and the British Raj.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: And the Indians who were part of the elite at first thought they could there was a there was an equality, a parity between them, and then suddenly realized they were part of the outer circle, which led them to become disaffected, and their own political ethnicity came to the fore, and a nationalist movement sprung off the back of it.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then in our in our own country, you've talked about the development of petty states through uh kin culture relationships that happened following the arrival of the Saxons, the Dutes and the Angles, all from the uh Elba and Weser Triangle uh in northern Germany, southern Denmark.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, whilst they all spoke intelligible dialects, they did consider themselves initially as not exactly the same um people because they're from different parts.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: But as the Venerable Bede, St.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: Bede, um, appealed to the English peoples, the English-speaking peoples knew exactly who the other was on the island, which were the Britons, which were the Celts.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how English identity formed.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: They saw themselves as one people, and then through Christianity managed to create the institutions in which to hold that nation together once they had fought off other others that arrived, like the Danes.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: And over time, after a thousand plus years, it's been become an intermingled ethnic group that is proudly Anglo-Saxon.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I myself know that I am derived from the Saxons.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: I know I have Norse blood, and I know I have Norman blood.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: And yet uh it's quite funny because when I think about my own history and the history of the nation, the things I feel most strongly about are things like the the Saxon foundations.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, yet uh the Normans, even though they created modern England, modern Britain, and created these everlasting institutions and themselves gave up their own ethnic um affinities over time to become English and intermingled with them and intermarried and all the rest of it, is I think most English people still see that as some sort of a tragedy, even though we have that blood within us, um, which is which is quite amusing.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and I think just a few more examples of how political ethnicity rears its head, particularly here in modern Britain, is that we have leading politicians of different ethnic backgrounds who um will refer to themselves as British, but they also do refer not infrequently to their own ethnic backgrounds and and uh uh ethnic affinities.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: So we've had a a First Minister of Scotland called Humza Yusuf.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: He is of Pakistani origin, and he's referred to himself as the son of the soil of Pakistan, but then in front of the cameras, he will refer to himself as Scottish.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um we have a a co-leader of a new uh left-wing party called your party, she's called Zara Sultana Sultana, and she uh refers to herself as um, well, says the reason why she is here is because weeb, the Brits, were there, and that she's effectively here to um uh visit some kind of ethnic punishment on the on the English and the British for what she considers past crimes.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: So while she calls herself British, she also refers to white British as the other.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I think one final example, we have a deputy prime minister called David Lamy.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: He is of Guyanese descent, and he has lobbied for reparations from Britain to his the the the origin uh to his own origins, his origin country.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: So even those who are now part of an attempted civically nationalist uh nation still can't leave behind their own ethnic background.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's probably a segue into the differences between ethnic nationalism and civic nationalism, because we're having a real blow-up on this in in Britain at the moment, and I think it's probably the time to define these terms.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: So let me begin with the history before we we move on to the so-called nationalism, national versus uh civic uh nationalism.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so um uh ethnic versus uh civil nationalism.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: So regarding history, we have uh two occasions in which uh an English identity was formed.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: So as you said, one was by the late uh first millennium AD when the when the Anglo Saxon identity uh the say by the ninth or tenth century crystallized into uh an an a an English identity, uh as you said, partly because of pressure from uh from the Northmen, from the Danes mainly.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and then again, and this is interesting, then again by say the 13th or 14th century, when conquer and conquered uh kind of uh began to fuse together.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and uh a common Middle English language was created in the process.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so the more the more the uh gap between Norman conquerors and uh Anglo-Saxon conquered was began to erode because of intermarriage, because of the uh many of the uh Norman uh newcomers married uh uh English uh women and then the children were bilingual and and and so forth.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: And and the very presence uh in the in the country meant that the Norman identity uh eroded over time.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: There was this process of fusion, as I said, represented by Middle English.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the war with with uh France, uh the Hundred Years' War also contributed to this uh creation of a distinct uh English identity versus the uh French.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so we have uh we have the uh crystallization of um of an English national identity it was.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: And which shows us, and we never doubted it, that the process of uh national uh identity creation is is is fluid.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh nobody denies this.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's not that we have you know some kind of uh constant identity which doesn't change uh through history.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: It changes all the time, it may fuse, it may break down, it may many things can happen.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and still in all these cases, uh ultimately the this national uh this identity plays a major role in people's psyche, including uh including in uh the sense of uh common solidarity and uh whatever uh comes out of it.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: Now we should also add that there's in any in in in you know universally the the the communities of identity such as nations before their tribes uh experience uh the influx of uh foreigners.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: And in many cases, uh they have uh absorbed this uh foreigners in a either in a kind of assimilation by the foreigners, which in the process may have uh may have changed the original culture itself, you know, by by uh in in many ways.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: We resort to the cliche, so people begin uh in the northern Europe or in North America to eat pizza.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so so there is a common process of uh of cultural uh assimilation, mostly by the immigrants.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: One should uh that for example, above all, the adoption of the local language.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: This is above all the the quintessential civic uh the country, allegedly, not and not allegedly, is uh the United States.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: Now, what people miss, and we'll get to this in a minute, what people miss when they discuss the American experience is that the people that come uh to the United States within uh two generations, uh maximum three generations, give up uh the most distinctive element of their culture, which is language.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and they uh they adopt English as their main subject.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so by the third generation to the third generation, practically nobody still speaks the original uh the original language.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: And this is this is almost this is almost this is true for almost all immigrants uh to the United States.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: Now we we can now turn to this uh to this uh distinction between uh ethnic uh nationalism and civic nationalism and civic nationalism what really defines it is that it doesn't it sees no distinction between between uh citizenship and national identity.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and supposedly it's uh you know it's more it's more just or more more uh more uh reveals uh a more egalitarian view towards the various people and identities within the realm.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_01: So first of all, let's say that this is not always the case.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh far from it.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: So civil civic nationally civic nations uh more often than not uh the require assimilation into the dominant culture.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: So this is for example the case in in France.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: France uh insists that to become French is to adopt French culture.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: And the and and the uh and the uh huge charisma of French culture was responsible for a process in which over centuries uh first of all within France itself and then outsiders uh happily assimilated, proudly assimilated French culture.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_01: And we can see, however, that once this model of French uh Civic nationalism uh uh uh no longer works with the with the many of the immigrants uh that uh have come into France over the past decades, what we see is a is a is a backlash in France.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and and and the same applies to other places.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: So for example, uh Britain never or the United States never demanded that people should uh become acculturated into the common not as any kind of formal law in the but but the informal expectation was such and again for for uh for br the British people over the century it was uh regarded as almost obvious that the that the blessings the uh uh of of uh British culture were such that that you know everybody that came to British would be it would be a privilege uh for for him or her to be uh to adopt British culture.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: It would obviously take uh much longer to be accepted uh that the intermarriage and other processes of of acculturation to for people to really uh if ever uh become to become regarded as true British by uh by uh by by the Brits.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: But but the expectation was there, and once this expectation uh is challenged, has been challenged over recent we see again, we see a backlash.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh in the United States it again it was not a formal English is not even defined formally as the language of the country.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: But but uh now I think it has.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there's some few c a few years ago I think it was uh now defined as such.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure, but I think this is what happened.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_01: But but again, it was uh regarded as a privilege for everybody that coming to the United States to adopt the culture.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: And there is this misconception regarding uh American uh national identity as if it exists, uh it it consists only of uh adherence to the constitution and loyalty to the country.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: This is nonsense.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: What national what American national identity ultimately rests on is a common culture uh with uh of with uh with uh all its folk expression from uh from you know from the uh from television to sport to to everything, including obviously uh the elements of uh of uh of civic rituals and uh holidays and and everything.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: And above all, the adoption of the English language.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: And any American going abroad would would immediately sense uh that he is American as compared to any other as compared with uh the uh the with the people of uh any other place and and that they would feel the same about him.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh they would identify him as American, obviously by by the very clear, clear marks that characterize American popular and elite culture, it doesn't matter.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: So the idea that American civ is American nationalism rests only on the civic elements of adherence to the constitution and to loyalty to the country is uh is one of these strange misconceptions that it's very difficult to understand how they uh survive.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, the same the same misconception prevails uh with respect to American foreign policy.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: So for example, contrary to American parlance, uh the people in Iraq, the people of Iraq, and the Iraqi people are not the same.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: Iraq is divided into three uh ethnic communities.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_01: It might be it might be better for them to cohibit the same country, and over time there may or may not uh exist uh processes of uh common identity created.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: What we see uh there's uh the same, by the way, not only in uh Iraq but also in Lebanon and in Syria and other so may or may not succeed in this uh nation creation process.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: But the reality is that the peoples of Iran, the people uh of Iraq, the people uh of uh in Iraq and the Iraqi people are not the same thing.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_00: Civic nationalists then they they typically think that this is the safer option because it it doesn't rely on ethnicity, but uh as you're saying, it in many respects it it does, insofar as the institutions, the language, the cultural values are derived from a kin culture group.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so you you need to maintain that at some level, otherwise those institutions aren't going to continue.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah I'll you use an example from our our own my own country is um and perhaps I'll I'll I'll just do a switch over to ethnic nationalism.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_00: So ethnic nationalists, those who are true purists who think there's just there's an English bloodline, they f they forget that there are blurry edges to ethnic groups that people can and do join them through intermarriage and procreation and all the rest of it.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um but um what we currently see here in Britain is um mass immigration, which uh has led to this these huge diasporas, which probably preclude there being any joining onto the route anytime soon.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: So to give some numbers.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um three of our major cities and several of our smaller cities are minority white British now.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um in the last five years we've seen 4.8 million people arrive, predominantly non-European, so culturally more distant.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that's larger than the size of the population of Wales.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: And um I think the salience of political ethnicity is only going to get greater, even if our our political class right now is trying to push what they think is an aggressively civic nationalist position.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: But in reality, they they are straying from civic nationalism because they're not recognising the kin culture element to it that you kind of need a root of.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, we just had the fireworks in London to celebrate the beginning of the new year.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's led by Mayor Sadiq Khan, who himself will find himself talking about his Pakistani ethnicity in one respect and uh uh his his British citizenship in another.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: But he's the director of these these um fireworks, and within the London Eye, the big ferris wheel that spins around on the banks of the Thames, there were there was an there was a uh a voiceover uh to an image of all of the flags of all of the nations that resided in London, and there were over a hundred.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_00: And effectively it was referring to a phenomenon that had happened here over the last year or so, where suddenly St.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: George's flags and Union Jack's flags were starting to be attached all over the country.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: And um this voiceover said, talk about flags, mate.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I'll tell you about flags.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: When the World Cup's on, all the flags that come out in London, and then basically all of these national flags then turned into the Union Jack.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I think people think that's the civic nationalist position, is ultimately anyone can become British, but it seems to me like that doesn't even adhere to the civic nationalist position of the recognition that there is a kin culture element to the nation.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_00: So it feels like you can't avoid ethnicity in either of them.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: There are clearly tripwires in both views, and there is no pure view.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_00: But even those people who think they're being civic nationalists, I think are missing something quite great.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: Which is they they they basically refuse to recognize ethnicity at all as being a salient factor.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_01: So so yes, I think uh I think you're right, and I think that uh one should avoid the two extremes here, uh in terms of uh in terms of uh first of all understanding of the world, and uh second uh ultimately perhaps uh politically.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: So so no ethnic uh keen ethnic identity is uh is pure in any in any sense of uh this world and and then people come and go and the then the culture changes and uh transforms over time, partly.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_01: But on the other hand, when when the challenge becomes and and Britain France is famous for, you know, but but Britain also, you know, I some of the some of the most prominent names say in in in uh British uh theatre.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_01: They come from outside Britain and they are the quintessential Britain by now, the first or second year generation immigrants into Britain and they represent Britishness in the all in its best in the throughout the world.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: But but when the challenge uh becomes overwhelming, uh both in terms of numbers and in terms of uh cultural distinctiveness and assertiveness of this culture, what uh it's it's not only that you know the institutions are not going to work, that too, obviously, but what you are going to to see and what you are seeing is a kind of uh backlash uh by by the people and you see it throughout now think about uh the some of the most uh civic so-called civic nations in the world so think about think think about Canada think about Spain think about belgium think also about um about Britain not only with respect to the um to the immigrants but to this back with respect to the question of uh scotland ida Scottish identity so in all these cases uh once uh once the states one once once then the state is challenged by problems or by questions of ethnic identity so the uh the the Quebecwa in uh Canada uh the question of Catalan and the Basque identity within Spain the uh division a practical division of Belgium between the Flemish and Vallon parts uh in Britain as I said quite apart from the Scottish identity uh perhaps also Welsh identity all these questions in in the most uh quintessential civic nations become uh the salient political issues sometimes the dominant political issues uh which tells you that uh which tells you that the uh distinction between uh civic and national and ethnic nationalism is overdrawn uh and and uh when when challenged uh the most civic nations are going to uh experience some uh very strong pressures on on uh and and the and the and the vision of European unity which again uh uh was predicated on the view that uh that identities are infinitely malleable and that uh national identity could be bent in whatever direction identity in general uh so obviously there were very good reasons for the process uh for the process of uh European unification when however when it was pushed too fast and people felt that it uh threatened the their identity uh their national identity so first of all it was um rejected in uh national uh um uh uh plebiscite throughout Europe uh two decades ago and when the European Union continued as if uh this uh that never happened so you had the backlashes including obviously Brexit and uh and and we see the ebb of uh then flow of this uh of this uh venture that rested on the view that national identities can be well absolutely and uh you mentioned the question of Scottish national identity Welsh national identity uh well when civic nationalism was really put into strong expression here under Tony Blair uh in 1997 a few years later there was a a devolution act which saw national parliament set up in Scotland and Wales Northern Ireland uh this was supposed to show that Westminster was listening that it wasn't just a fully centralised operation um and to keep the Celtic fringe on board with the union project but what happened was nationalist movements started to spring up everywhere.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now the Scottish National Party has been in power since 2011.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_00: There was of course a a vote a referendum on whether Scotland should leave the union in 2014 which it it it was a narrow victory for the to remain side uh within um but but what's interesting is the the politically the political ethnicity is has been salient since the beginning so that Scotland I don't even think wanted to go into the union so I think something like one in ten Scots wanted to join with England in union and there's a place you can visit in Edinburgh it's down this back street it's close to one of the university buildings I think it's called the Summer House building or something I can't remember.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it's this totally unassuming lean two construction on the side of another building and it's where the King of England and Scotland basically signed the union um and there was there were people outside protesting against it that there was some serious ethnic rivalry going on and um the the union itself has been around for the last few hundred years but the moment that you give groups distinct groups the opportunity to organize and to uh self-rule they will probably tend to more and more of that self-rule.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_00: So that was the creation of of the United Kingdom um and now there's a talking point that we are witnessing the birth of a new country it's a bit of a an online internet meme called the UK Youk A Y and this is a description of the consequences of the mass immigration that's led to a patchwork of distinct non-British national and cultural identities and communities that are widespread across the countries um across the country specifically England though it has spread to Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland as well and as we've already talked about leaders are promoting a hard multicultural hyperinclusive political agenda in the face of what is super diversity but you've written um Azar that common acculturation has not always been a significant condition for overcoming earlier distinct ethnic and national identities and for forging a common identity so even in the wake of a push for British values and a common language what do you think history might tell us about the future of the United Kingdom if so history yes go on yeah so history is both a record of continuation and a record of change so we need to understand also what has been changing.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_01: So um so historically the most uh the most obvious uh uh force uh responsible for uh the common acculturation and all that was force itself I mean uh the Roman Empire forced its rule over the uh conquered territories uh the French state was created by a force by the uh uh the by the uh French crown and the north of uh France gradually uh taking over the country uh imposing the French language with in a process that took uh that took many centuries began in the uh in medieval times and only ended in the early 20th century uh this there is this uh famous book uh called uh peasants into Frenchmen uh which uh by the late nineteenth uh century uh the you know people in uh the the many parts of France did not speak French uh the and uh the the South uh certainly not in the Lizas and Breton of course and and other places so there was this process of acculturation um imposed largely by by state uh force as we said with with the French it the the with with French culture also uh what contributed was the great uh prestige prestige and uh charm of and charm of uh French culture so all of them went uh worked in uh in in the concept but we are living in different societies now so the reality is that in a liberal democratic societies if a minority which inhabits a ter which is significant enough and inhabits a territory which can be easily separated it's almost impossible for um for a liberal democratic country to oppose uh that process if indeed this is what the population in question was.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_01: So what we see for example in Canada is that uh had the Quebecwa voted uh to leave and again as in Britain as in the case of Scotland it was a very uh narrow um uh result if they decide to secede they would uh they have the right to secede I mean the High Court in uh Canada uh recognized their right to secede uh the same I believe in Britain if if if Scotland uh decides to secede with or without its uh obviously the political institution of of a Scottish Parliament may may facilitate the process but if in any case if uh the the Scottish people decide to secede there's very little that Britain uh can that Britain can do to prevent them from doing so and as we know over the centuries uh Scottish attitude towards the Union changed I mean they were reluctant to join when the union was created in the early 18th century and we have this uh also the the rebellion of uh the Highland in the mid-19 uh 1740s and when you go when you go to the battlefield of uh what's what's his name in 19 uh in 1746 when body uh Prince Charles the the young pretender uh was was beaten was defeated you are amazed by the kind of uh emotional uh the emotional tone which which the uh you know the recording in the place for for tourists for visitors uh how how emotional it is so so but then uh the the Scots became more than the more than the junior partner in the Union so they led the way in many ways in the empire in terms of uh in terms of uh uh the British culture the the some of the most prominent thinkers in the during the Enlightenment were uh Scotsmen and so they were they were happy partners within the Empire uh from say the late 18th century during the nineteenth century the earlier twentieth century but then then then the things change again.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_01: So the Empire is gone and they have the the broader um the broader and and and the British Empire also provided security.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_00: So now so now you have the uh broader framework of the European Union which they can uh join while returning the so I don't think that uh if the Scots want to would want to secede I mean it's uh it would be nearly impossible to prevent them from doing so and the same in Belgium the only the only reason why the uh two ethnic communities of Belgium uh do not divide the country between them uh by agreement is that they don't know what to do with the capital city of Brussels uh so so the reality within uh liberal democratic countries that is that it's almost impossible to prevent secession if the demand is done by a significant uh ethnic uh ethnonational community which inhabits uh the this uh uh a territory almost impossible well I know we've just talked about the Celtic fringe and its relationship with England within the Union uh I I sit here as a as an Englishman knowing that there are projections from our uh well not from but of the statistics we get from our Office of National Statistics that say the white British will be a minority on the island by 2060 or the early 2060s and with political ethnicity being so salient because of the size of diasporas because you can quite literally see on maps different groups living in totally different areas uh it almost feels a little bit like the return to the Dane law when uh when England was having to to form ultimately to overcome uh the Danish and except this time it's a patchwork of people from all over and um it makes me wonder whether actually unless uh something happens a an aggressive civic nationalist position like the French did uh which is this is Britishness, this is the language this is the culture and these are the things you have to slow off.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_00: You almost have to become illiberal a little bit like the Chinese firewall around the technological developments because the thing that marks you out today to the past is that people can just always be at home always dipping into their culture and dipping into their politics which they often do.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_00: We've actually had um Labour councillors running and running to be MPs in Bangladesh.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_00: So um it makes me wonder whether the future of Britain besides the question of Scotland and Wales potentially wanting to secede from the English is whether we have a patchwork of mini statelets popping up because we have a state legitimacy crisis insofar as you have people who are British, they've joined onto the route or they're long-term indigenous that are really unhappy with the situation and feel like they are being extracted from to uh fuel their own demographic displacement so to speak.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't really know how a nation can remain that way if we're printing advertisements and um legal documentation in the language of other peoples and celebrating all cultures as equally the same, that's that's not going to be a successful civic nationalist project.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_00: So um it will obviously all be written but you've referenced the backlash and I think some people hope it's all going to die down but the reality is is political ethnicity has been celebrated for every other group within the Anglophone world other than those who are of those native countries and it's only natural that that's going to come to the fore.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I think we're heading into some choppy times and um history suggests that there's going to be resistance and I think we're at the beginning of that.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've got some thoughts on that before I ask you the question I ask all of my guests.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_01: Alright so so I'll just say that side by side with this and and you you know you you you emphasize the the gravity of the situation uh correctly but we should also mention that there is a process of acculturation uh side by side with this uh by immigrants so so there is a process of acculturation side by side with the process of uh uh the local ethnic uh assertiveness by by local I mean by the immigrants uh both processes exist and they exist throughout not only in Britain and also in France in Germany uh but still you're right that you are up to you know all indications suggest that you are going to uh experience uh great upheavals and what the uh what the ultimate result of all this may be is uh anybody's guess.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well it will be written.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_00: The question I ask all of my guests is what have you changed your mind on during the course of your life?
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_00: What was it that made you think differently?
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_01: So you know whatever that I am uh approaching the end of a long life so it's uh difficult uh to say but I would for example if if we need an example so I uh I uh spent a lifetime studying war for example uh so um so and and I've written several books and about them.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_01: The main uh one probably is called war in human civilization and there was this uh dispute there is this dispute there has been this dispute between uh those who believe like Rousseau that that the state of nature was peaceful that is that that people did not fight each other because there was very little to fight over and those who believed like Hobbes that the state of nature was very violent.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I when I approached the the writing of this book and this is now thirty years ago tempted to believe before uh delving into the evidence that um you know that Rousseau was probably right what was there to fight over when people lived so close to nature.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_01: And very quickly once once I delved into the evidence and again I might say that most uh modern anthropologists uh they were uh well believers in uh in the in in uh Russoism in the Usait uh Usaite uh view so very early it became clear to me that the opposite was uh was the case that the state of nature the state of human nature was uh very very warlike and that people's uh people in pre-state uh society suffered very very high uh violent mortality rates far higher than under under statehood uh so here is here is a subject where I changed my mind my mind uh while working on that's a bit of a red pill moment for perhaps those who uh still firmly believe in the Jean-Jacques Rousseau uh model of existence from the man who's studied war throughout his career.
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_00: And as I before I'd let you go, is there anything that you're working on that we can expect coming out in the future or any work that you'd like to point viewers and listeners to?
• 1:05:18
  SPEAKER_01: So so let me just say that you know things that can be of perhaps more interest to the kind of audience that you have is that now three years ago I published a book called ideological fixation which deals with many of the questions that we have just discussed uh which try to uh understand why people uh stick to their ideological conviction often in the face of country uh evidence and uh so forth whatever this view might be and so it's uh it's it begins with the questions such as what is true, what is truth, what is morality, that is what is just, and then moves to to discuss some of the more the some of the more the salient phenomena in the in the field of ideology, starting with religious ideologies and then with the great uh secular ideologies of the 19th and 20th century and arriving at the at the cultural wars of today.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_01: The subtitle of the book is uh it's called the ideological fixation with the subtitle From the Stone Age to Today Culture Culture Wars.
• 1:06:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I think for your people it might the audience it might be uh perhaps uh most relevant.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well that sounds like a great book.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_00: I've got to say having having become uh very well acquainted with uh at least your work on on nations um I'm certainly going to be following up with reading a couple more of the the books that you've mentioned and I hope Professor Gatt that I'd be able to invite you back on to discuss those things as well because I I do think my audience would would appreciate conversations on those subjects.
• 1:07:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'll happily accept thank you for having me.
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well thank you very much keep fighting the good fight and we'll speak again.
• 1:07:25
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 1:07:26
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.