Has Nationalism become a bad word?

Late to the party, sorry...

SteveG wrote: My personal dilemma is that a lack of nationalism in the US has led to the Willy Chinese becoming the next global super power. A government that still can make citizens disappear over night without a trace.

Don't you think the problem here is Chinese nationalism, not a lack of the American variety? Why can an attempt to stop the Chinese governing the world not have humanism on its flag rather than American nationalism?

Other thing: The concept of pride for something I have no merit in completely passes me by. Why should I feel prouder as a German about Bach and Beethoven than about Stravinsky, Ligeti and Charles Ives, or Pink Floyd for that matter? (I've got to admit that pride is not big on the list of things I care for anyway, nationalist or other.)

Third thing: To me culture is an organic thing and as it's something alive, it always has to do with variety and change. I think that supporting some "traditional" or "leading" culture against change or variety is completely misguided. It also ignores all those who deviate from any kind of "leading" or supported "main culture" despite belonging to the (national) group supposed to be associated with that main culture.

(4) Obviously there are cultural borders that by and large follow national borders, although there are also all kinds of other group cultures (scientist culture, hippy culture, farmer culture, feminist culture, you name it), none of which is or should be hermetic. Also, as long as political life is organised by nation, there will be national interests and competition between nations. I don't reject all this. It's a reality. Nations in my view are neither particularly good nor bad as units to organise interests. If we didn't have nations we'd have something else instead, maybe better, maybe worse, probably just different but maybe not so much. Nations are a reality, and national interests are a reality because the world is organised like this. Common history is a reality as well as all its traces that deviate from any major national line of history telling. The nations are what they are - nationalism tries to value them higher and make them stronger, which I think is pointless or even dangerous, however it'd be naive to think we could easily do without nations, belonging to one (normally), and having one to defend their citizen's interests. I'm not saying it isn't possible in principle, I'm saying that there is no obvious way to get there. They are not "natural", but they are strong cultural constructs, so mess with them at your peril. I've got to give to them that they make some sense.

(5) But I'm not going to give them more than that. No magic makes me connected stronger to my compatriots than exactly the connections that I have, and I have no time for any cultural initiative that tries to get me closer to them (and further away from others) than I'd like to be anyway. Obviously one can talk history, culture, genetics bla bla to argue how I am stronger connected to a German truck driver I don't know than to my Italian colleagues or students from China or Egypt I meet in the classroom, but I'm not taking any of this, and the fact that my neighbours are Italian doesn't make them any closer or further from me than if they were German, Scottish (as they were in the UK) or whatever. And not caring about whether Africans trying to reach Europe drown in the Mediterranean but caring about keeping the nation pure and these poor people out is a crime against humanity whatever your nation is.

I'm broadly in agreement with you here but this raises a potential moral dilemma.

If you were forced to live (albeit temporarily) under a repressive regime who used censorship, imprisonment, deportation, torture and execution of those who oppose their views: would you be effectively endorsing those same views by not actively challenging them? (i.e. your passivity becomes tacit approval notwithstanding its potentially lethal repercussions)

Even on a rather more mundane local level the conundrum still holds sway:

if you saw a dog being beaten in the street would you try to intervene to stop this or, as you are not personally taking part in this act of cruelty, just walk on by?

I've been struggling to cast nationalism in a positive light so far, but one example might be armed resistance (or even the 'passive resistance' of Gandhi) against a totalitarian dictator or colonist despot etc. Such civil disobedience would represent a shared set of values around which kindred spirits can gather to effect collective action in ridding themselves of an imposed ideology inimical to their core beliefs.

I wouldn't call that nationalism, I would call that antitotalitarianism. I see no reason why love of country would come into play as a reason to not to want live in a fascist state. 

As an somewhat unrelated thought...I also wouldn't conflate being a nationalist with the desire for national autonomy. 

Even if your country was founded on values antithetical to fascism e.g. democracy, freedom of religion, sexual orientation, freedom of speech, free assembly etc?

'Country' is just a concrete noun for practical purposes. It can't arrive at or choose values to be agreed to or resisted by its inhabitants. People who live there communally do this through shared indigenous beliefs and practices over millennia (which is effectively a description of culture and yes that includes hierarchical structures derived through stratification) There are no values other than human values and they are engineered socially and interactively by challenge and response e.g. the Law. Passivity is inimical to culture and so inimical to change or growth.

But how does that have anything to do with Gandhi again?  It's not even that he committed well-intentioned mistakes that led to the bloodshed.  That bloodshed was instigated by others, mainly the British Empire, Jinnah and the Hindu right.  I didn't say any of these forces weren't evil.  But that doesn't mean there was anything inherently evil about Gandhi's nationalism.  You haven't established that and you can't so you are trying to come up with some death-by-association argument which is dishonest. 

And by the way, it's Gandhi, not Ghandi.  

Edit: Totally misunderstood your post on first reading it.