this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2026
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I think Americans often have a very bad understanding of the IRA and The Troubles, but your point stands. Though I still think all forms of nationalism are bad, they exist on very different terms and are orders of magnitude worse for colonisers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkbSYIyzmF0
watch this video, it will help you understand why the position you're taking is a reactionary right wing one. essentially the left is both internationalist and nationalist, it's internationalism supports the nationalism and sovereignty of other nations, while the right is simply nationalist and it doesn't support the nationalism of other people.
Liberatory Nationalism, which is the form of nationalism that emancipated Vietnam, China, Russia, Cuba, and countless other socialist states past and present, is undeniably very different from right-wing nationalism. Nationalism at the periphery is how we get anti-imperialist movements; fighting for your nation's autonomy over its own borders and internal dealings is a highly progressive form of nationalism. Nationalism within the colonizer states gets you modern-day USA, France, UK, Israel, and historical manifestations like Nazi Germany. So, therefore, nationalism in this context is about either the preservation of the status quo, in the case of settler-colonial nationalism, or about dismantling the status quo, in the case of liberator nationalism.
Ho Chi Minh has probably the sharpest thesis on liberatory nationalism within his texts, but I think you don't have to look much farther than the Vietnamese declaration of independence.
Later in life, he would write this: "At first, patriotism, not yet communism, led me to have confidence in Lenin, in the Third International. Step by step, along the struggle, by studying Marxism-Leninism parallel with participation in practical activities, I gradually came upon the fact that only socialism and communism can liberate the oppressed nations and the working people throughout the world from slavery."
His patriotism, his nationalism, is what drew him into the struggle against colonial forces. I find it incredibly reductionist to lump both forms of nationalism together under one umbrella as you've done, and history shows us there is a clear difference.
I'm just not realy that into the concept of nations tbh. I think we'd be much better off without the arbitrary demarcation of borders etc. There's a difference between patriotism and nationalism too of course, pride rather than thinking your better, but it all just feels like ways to have "us" and "them" to me. Whatever you have to do to throw off the shackles of your oppressor though, I guess.
Its very reductive to think "patriots" = pride and "nationalists" = superiority. How does that square against the Vietnamese struggle against colonialism? Because that was a nationalist movement made up of patriots.
The "us" vs "them" kind of matter given the context don't they? Colonialist nationalism had an us vs them but the us is colonialists... And the them are the colonized. Liberatory nationalism obviously is the opposite, where the us is the colonized and the them are colonizers.
Like, you seem to be operating under in these broad strokes that collapse all these contexts into a flat binary. That doesn't really seem like a useful tool for analysis.
We weren't really taught about it when I was in school in the 2000s. I didn't know the details until a few years ago when I got really into an Irish band, Bricknasty. One of their songs included a eulogy for Ross McDonnel, an Irish documentary filmmaker, and I fell down a rabbit hole.
We weren't taught about African politics because "they're always at war" (a racist oversimplification, of course) but I was surprised that they skipped over a predominantly white country's war....until I realized it's a story about an "underclass" uprising. Can't be teaching kids that the oppressed can organize.