,
14 tweets,
3 min read
Read on Twitter
1/ Brexit English nationalism is angry, snarling, small-minded, embittered, deluded, xenophobic, devoid of almost all positive content and defined almost entirely by antagonism to what it sees as alien and foreign.
2/ How has English nationalism got into this mess? The first thing to note is that English nationalism has only recently re-emerged after being submerged in Britain and Empire. I'm a baby-boomer, until around 1990 I had no idea England even had a flag apart from the Union Jack.
3/ If you look at the crowd in the 1966 World Cup final, almost all the flags were Union flags. The English at that time couldn't really distinguish between England and the UK. The UK was a kind of greater England with curious Celtic appendages.
4/ Only 20 years before 1966, England was the ruler of the world's greatest ever empire. It had an identity as the home of the real master race (not the hysterical ranting Nazis trying so hard to be the master race) who had conquered a quarter of the globe.
5/ During the time that it took for many baby-boomers to grow into adulthood the empire collapsed, and with it the pride and status the baby-boomers' parents and grandparents and ancestors as far as could be remembered had enjoyed.
6/ And then even the Celts who the English felt belonged to a kind of greater England called "Britain" or the "UK" decided they weren't going to be subjugated to English domination.
7/ And so the pride and status of empire was replaced by defeat, rejection and humiliation, which was compounded by the UK's forlorn entry as the sick man of Europe into an EEC dominated by countries the English felt they had defeated or rescued only 25 years earlier.
8/ So England as a nation was forced back into existence after over 250 years of being submerged in Britain and empire. Its rebirth was reluctant and painful, born out of rejection, defeat and humiliation. It existed, but was so much inferior to what had been lost.
9/ So England was reborn, stained with humiliation, loss and defeat. It existed, but no-one really knew what it was about and what it was for. The last positive things it had done on its own accord were in the reign of the Tudors.
10/ So the reborn England had pain, loss and humiliation, but it had no positive identity as a nation. And so its national identity has been built negatively out of antagonism to whatever was identified as not being English or as threatening England or the English.
11/ So England has come back into being as an bitter and angry nation, deeply uncomfortable with its place in the world, knowing it cannot return to what it was, but unable to come to terms with what it is. Normal nation status for England is a slap in the face.
12/ And yet those English who care about nationhood have been shown a way out, a way of washing away the stain of humiliation through a victorious war of national rebirth by freeing England from the EU. It's a deluded fantasy war, but it's a fantasy that offers pride reborn.
13/ Finally these English who care about nationhood see the prize of renewed pride in their nation dangled before them, only to have Remainers try to snatch it away from them and push England back into the dark pit of post-imperial humiliation
14/ There's a lot more to this. There is for example the story of frightened people clinging to the tribe/nation, and nostalgia for a simpler past. But the yearning to regain lost national pride through a fantasy war of independence is, I believe, a large part of the picture.
