Anarchism and nationalism both emerged in
Europe following the French Revolution of
1789, and have a long and durable relationship
going back at least to Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876)
and his involvement with the Pan-Slavic movement
prior to his conversion to anarchism.
There has been a long history of anarchist
involvement with nationalism all over the
world, as well as with internationalism.
Nevertheless, anarchism as a political movement
was very supportive during the early 20th
century of anationalism as well as of the
Esperanto language.
After the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939,
Francoist Spain persecuted anarchists and
Catalan nationalists, among whom the use of
Esperanto was extensive.
== Anarchist opposition to nationalism ==
Anarchism as a political movement was very
supportive during this time of anationalism
as well as of the esperanto language.
After the Spanish Civil War, Francoist Spain
persecuted anarchists and Catalan nationalists,
among whom the use of Esperanto was extensive,
Anationalism (Esperanto: sennaciismo) is a
term originating from the community of Esperanto
speakers which passed to anarchism from there.
It denotes a range of cosmopolitan political
concepts that combine some or all of the following
tendencies and ideas:
radical antinationalism,
universalism,
"one-world-ism",
acceptance of the historic trend toward linguistic
homogenization on a world scale, and in some
cases even a striving to accelerate that trend,
the necessity of political education and organization
of the world proletariat in accordance with
those ideas, and
the utility of Esperanto as an instrument
of such political education.A critique of
nationalism from an anarchist point of view
is Rudolf Rocker's book Nationalism and Culture.
American anarchist Fredy Perlman wrote a number
of pamphlets that were strongly critical of
all forms of nationalism, including Anti-Semitism
and the Beirut Pogrom, a critique of Zionism,
and The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism,
which argues that nationalism is a process
of state formation inspired by imperialism,
which capitalists, fascists and Leninists
use as a mean of controlling their subjects.More
recently post-left anarchist Fredy Perlman
wrote a work on the subject of nationalism
in 1984 called The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism
In it he argues that "Leftist or revolutionary
nationalists insist that their nationalism
has nothing in common with the nationalism
of fascists and national socialists, that
theirs is a nationalism of the oppressed,
that it offers personal as well as cultural
liberation."
And so "To challenge these claims, and to
see them in a context," he asks "what nationalism
is - not only the new revolutionary nationalism
but also the old conservative one."
And so he concludes that nationalism is an
aid to capitalist control of nature and people
regardless of its origin.
Nationalism thus provides a form through which
"Every oppressed population can become a nation,
a photographic negative of the oppressor nation"
and that "There's no earthly reason for the
descendants of the persecuted to remain persecuted
when nationalism offers them the prospect
of becoming persecutors.
Near and distant relatives of victims can
become a racist nation-state; they can themselves
herd other people into concentration camps,
push other people around at will, perpetrate
genocidal war against them, procure preliminary
capital by expropriating them."
== Bakunin and nationalism ==
Prior to his involvement with the anarchist
movement, Mikhail Bakunin had a long history
of involvement in nationalist movements of
various kinds.
In his Appeal to the Slavs (1848), Bakunin
called for cooperation between nationalist
revolutionary movements across Europe (both
Slavic and non-Slavic) to overthrow empires
and dissolve imperialism, in an uprising of
"all oppressed nationalities" which would
lead to a "Universal Federation of European
Republics".
He also agitated for a United States of Europe
(a contemporary nationalist vision originated
by Mazzini).
Later, exiled to eastern Siberia, he became
involved with a circle of Siberian nationalists
who planned to separate from Russia.
They were connected with his cousin and patron,
Nikolay Muravyov-Amursky, the Governor General
of Eastern Siberia, whom Bakunin defended
in Herzen's journal The Bell.
It was not until a full four years after leaving
Siberia, however, that Bakunin proclaimed
himself an anarchist.
Max Nettlau remarked of this period in his
life that: "This may be explained by Bakunin's
increasing nationalist psychosis, induced
and nourished by the expansionist ideas of
the officials and exploiters who surrounded
him in Siberia, causing him to overlook the
plight of their victims."
== 
China ==
Anarchists formed the first labor unions and
the first large-scale Peasant organizations
in China.
During the roughly two decades when anarchism
was the dominant radical ideology in China
(roughly 1900-1924), Anarchists there were
active in mass movements of all kinds, including
the nationalist movement.
A small group of Anarchists - mostly those
associated with the early 'Paris Group', a
grouping of Chinese Expatriates based in France
- were deeply involved in the nationalist
movement and many served as "movement elders"
in the KMT right up until the defeat of the
nationalists by the Maoists.
A minority of Chinese Anarchists associated
with the Paris Group also helped funnel large
sums of money to Sun Yat-sen to help finance
the Nationalist revolution of 1911.
After the 1911 Nationalist revolution, Anarchist
involvement with the Kuomintang was relatively
minor, not only because the majority of Anarchists
opposed nationalism on principle but because
the KMT government was more than willing to
level repression against anarchist organizations
whenever and wherever they challenged state
power.
Still, a few prominent anarchists, notably
Jing Meijiu and Zhang Ji (both affiliated
with the Tokyo Group) were elected to positions
within the KMT government and continued to
call themselves Anarchists while doing so.
The response from the larger anarchist movement
was decidedly mixed.
They were roundly denounced by the Guangzhou
group; but other groupings that favored an
'evolutionary' approach to social change instead
of immediate Revolution, such as the 'Pure
Socialists', were more sympathetic.
The "Diligent Work and Frugal Study" program
in France, a series of businesses and educational
programs organized along anarchist lines that
allowed Chinese students from working-class
backgrounds to come to France and receive
a European education that had previously been
only available to a tiny wealthy elite, was
one product of this collaboration of the anarchists
with nationalists.
The program received funding from both the
Chinese and French governments as well as
raising its own independent funds through
a series of worker-owned anarchist businesses,
including a Tofu factory that catered to the
needs of Chinese migrant workers in France.
The program allowed poor and working-class
Chinese students to receive a high-quality
modern university education in France at a
time when foreign education was almost exclusively
limited to the children of wealthy elites,
and educated thousands of Chinese workers
and students - including many future communist
leaders such as Deng Xiaoping.
Following the success of the Bolsheviks in
the Russian Revolution anarchism went into
decline in the Chinese labour movement.
In 1924 the Chinese Communist Party (CPC)
allied itself with the nationalist Kuomintang
(KMT).
Originally composed of many former anarchists,
it soon attracted a mass base, becoming increasingly
critical of anarchism.
When the Kuomintang purged the CPC from its
ranks in 1927, the small group of anarchists
who had long participated in the KMT urged
their younger comrades to join the movement
and utilize it in the same way that the Stalinists
had been using it - as a vehicle to gain membership
and influence.
Partly because of the growing power of the
right-wing within the KMT and the repression
of workers movements advocated by that right
wing, the Anarchists opted not to join the
KMT en masse or even work within it, instead,
the result of this last collaboration was
the creation of China's first Labor University.
The Labor University was intended to be a
domestic version of the Paris groups Diligent
Work and Frugal Study educational program
and sought to create a new generation of Labor
Intellectuals who would finally overcome the
gap between "those who work with their hands"
and "those who work with their minds."
The goal was to train working-class people
with the skills they needed to self-organize
and set up their own independent organizations
and worker-owned businesses, which would form
the seed of a new anarchist society within
the shell of the old in a Dual Power-based
evolutionary strategy reminiscent of Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon.
The university would only function for a very
few years before the Nationalist government
decided that the project was too subversive
to allow it too continue and pulled funding.
When the KMT initiated a second wave of repression
against the few remaining mass movements,
anarchists left the organization en masse
and were forced underground as hostilities
between the KMT and CPC – both of whom were
hostile towards anti-authoritarians – escalated.
== Ireland ==
The anarcho-Platformist Workers Solidarity
Movement (WSM) has produced a number of articles
and essays on the relationship between Anarchism
and Irish Republicanism over the years.
Their position, roughly, is that Anarchism
and Republicanism are incompatible and opposed
to each other but that Anarchists can and
should learn things from Ireland's long history
of struggle.
In their analysis Republicanism has always
been split between rich people who want to
rule directly and working class movements
that demand social equality and community
self governance instead of simply trading
foreign bosses for local ones.
In Ireland in the 1790s we had a mass republican
movement influenced by the American and then
the French revolutions.
That movement included those who favored a
radical leveling agenda as well as the democratic
agenda of mainstream republicans.
Edward Fitzgerald, the military planner of
the rising was one such proponent.
But it also contained those like Wolfe Tone
who saw an independent Ireland as opening
up its own colonies in the Caribbean.
In the north Henry Joy McDonald had to remove
the existing United Irish leadership paralyzed
by fear of the mob seizing property before
the rising there could get underway, weeks
after it had begun in the south.
After its defeat and before his execution
he warned future republicans to beware that
"the rich always betray the poor."
...
This process was mirrored in republican movements
elsewhere.
Left republicans would build real popular
struggle but then be confronted with the need
to preserve national unity in the face of
the wealthy republicans whose funds were often
needed for arms backing off because they feared
for their privilege.
And this is where we find the roots of the
early anarchist movement...
So in terms of historical development anarchism
and republicanism have a lot in common, in
fact anarchism is arguably an offshoot of
republicanism, an offshoot that emerged for
the first time in the 1860s but has emerged
on other occasions since then including in
1970s Ireland where some of those leaving
the official republican movement became anarchists
while other anarchists were joining both provisional
and official republican movements.
According to this analysis, Anarchism is the
successor to left-nationalism, a working class
movement working to achieve the liberation
that the Republican movements that toppled
the worlds monarchies in the last two centuries
promised but never delivered.
So even though the ideas of Anarchism are
fundamentally different from those of Nationalism
it is still possible to learn from nationalist
movements by studying the working class elements
of those movements that demanded more than
the bourgeoisie leadership was willing or
able to deliver.
== Har Dayal ==
In the 1910s Lala Har Dayal became an anarchist
agitator in San Francisco, joining the IWW
before becoming a pivotal figure in the Ghadar
Party.
A long-time advocate of Indian nationalism,
he developed a vision of anarchism based upon
a return to the principles of ancient Aryan
society.
He was particularly influenced by Guy Aldred,
who was jailed for printing The Indian Sociologist
in 1907.
Aldred, an anarcho-communist, was careful
to point out that this solidarity arose because
he was an advocate of free speech and not
because he felt that nationalism would help
the working class in India or elsewhere.
== Basque Country ==
During the Spanish Civil War, anarchists and
Basque nationalists fought together against
the Francoist Nationalist side.
The anarchist Felix Likiniano fought Fascism
even from the French Resistance.
He and Federico Krutwig tried to synthesize
Basque nationalism and anarchism.
In France, Likiniano befriended disgruntled
members of EGI and created for them the symbol
of the axe and the snake and the Bietan jarrai
motto that they adopted for their new revolutionary
armed organization ETA.
== Black anarchism or Panther anarchism ==
Black anarchism opposes the existence of a
state and subjugation and domination of people
of color, and favors a non-hierarchical organization
of society.
Black anarchists seek to abolish white supremacy,
capitalism, and the state.
Theorists include Ashanti Alston, Lorenzo
Kom'boa Ervin, Kuwasi Balagoon, many former
members of the Black Panther Party, and Martin
Sostre.
Black anarchism rejects the traditional anarchist
movement.
Black Anarchists oppose the anti-racist conception,
based on the universalism of the Enlightenment,
which is proposed by the anarchist workers'
tradition, arguing that it is not adequate
enough to struggle against racism and that
it disguises real inequalities by proclaiming
a de jure equality.
For example, Pedro Ribeiro has criticized
the whole of the anarchist movement by declaring
that: "It is a white, petty-bourgeois Anarchism
that cannot relate to the people.
As a Black person, I am not interested in
your Anarchism.
I am not interested in individualistic, self-serving,
selfish liberation for you and your white
friends.
What I care about is the liberation of my
people."Black anarchists are thus influenced
by the civil rights movement and the Black
Panther Party, and seek to forge their own
movement that represents their own identity
and tailored to their own unique situation.
However, in contrast to black activism that
was, in the past, based in leadership from
hierarchical organizations, black anarchism
rejects such methodology in favor of developing
organically through communication and cooperation
to bring about an economic and cultural revolution
that does away with racist domination, capitalism,
and the state.
From Alston's @narchist Panther Zine:
Panther anarchism is ready, willing and able
to challenge old nationalist and revolutionary
notions that have been accepted as 'common-sense.'
It also challenges the bullshit in our lives
and in the so-called movement that holds us
back from building a genuine movement based
on the enjoyment of life, diversity, practical
self-determination and multi-faceted resistance
to the Babylonian Pigocracy.
This Pigocracy is in our 'heads,' our relationships
as well as in the institutions that have a
vested interest in our eternal domination.
== Post-colonial anarchism ==
Post-colonial anarchism is a relatively new
tendency within the larger anarchist movement.
The name is taken from an essay by Roger White,
one of the founders of Jailbreak Press and
an activist in North American APOC circles.
Post-colonial anarchism is an attempt to bring
together disparate aspects and tendencies
within the existing anarchist movement and
re-envision them in an explicitly anti-imperialist
framework.
Where traditional anarchism is a movement
arising from the struggles of proletarians
in industrialized western European nations
- and thus sees history from their perspective
- post-colonial anarchism approaches the same
principles of mutual aid, class struggle,
opposition to social hierarchy, and community-level
self-management, self-government, self-management,
and self-determination from the perspective
of colonized peoples throughout the world.
In doing so it does not seek to invalidate
the contributions of the more established
anarchist movement, but rather seeks to add
a unique and important perspective.
The tendency is strongly influenced by indigenism,
anti-state forms of nationalism, and APOC
(Anarchist People of Color), among other sources.
== National-anarchism ==
Among the first advocates of national-anarchism
were Hans Cany, Peter Töpfer, and former
National Front activist, Troy Southgate, founder
of the National Revolutionary Faction, a since
disbanded UK-based organization which cultivated
links to certain far-right circles in the
United Kingdom and post-Soviet states.
They cite their influences primarily from
William Godwin, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Mikhail
Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin, Leo Tolstoy, and
Max Stirner.
National-anarchism is a position developed
in Europe during the 1990s.
National-Anarchist groups have also arisen
worldwide, most prominently in Germany, the
United States, and Australia.
In the United Kingdom, National-Anarchists
worked with Albion Awake, Alternative Green
(published by former Green Anarchist editor,
Richard Hunt) and Jonathan Boulter to develop
the "Anarchist Heretics Fair".
== Notes ==
== References ==
== External links ==
Anarchist Integralism
Anarchist Notions of Nationalism and Patriotism
by Rob Knowles
The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism by Fredy
Perlman
Anarchists against nationalism and Anarchists
and nationalism at flag.blackened.net
"Are anarchists against nationalism?".
Spunk Library.
Beyond Nationalism, But Not Without It.
Nationalism and anarchism from a Black anarchist
perspective, from Anarchist Panther by Ashanti
Alston.
Post Colonial Anarchism, by Roger White.
Anarchism, nationalism, and national liberation
from an APOC perspective.
