defines Nationalism as “loyalty and devotion to a nation; especially : a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations or supranational groups”. Both of these definitions sound like a dressed up form of racism to me. "
Be really careful of those trying to conflate nationalism and racism, because then if you are white and love America then you are a white nationalist and then you have just branded every liberty loving white man as a racist, practically a Nazi and that is not fair. That is divisive.
nationalists love liberty?
from my perspective a nationalist is someone who loves and celebrates their slave masters
American patriots love liberty and celebrate the constitution and bill of rights. You called them all racists, a charge that no one can defend themselves from, someone cannot prove they are not a racist can they?
My main point here is that if you put your particular collective group above another, that is basically the same thing as racism
Racism is white people thinking that they are better than black people or vice versa
Even though I dont agree with the idea of collectivism and countries, I don't think there is anything wrong with someone loving their country so long as they dont see people who live elsewhere as lesser
When it comes to war, this is a huge qualifier to show that many people who describe themselves as nationaist, think that their lives are more valuble than people who live in faraway places
It wouldnt be right of me to say that EVERYONE who describes themselves as nationalist to be that way....but I feel that nationalism encourages those kinds of thoughts
perhaps you are conflating nationalism with jingoism.
good point...I could have used some more nuanced semantics to help clarify my point without collectivizing everyone who believes in a country as a being a racist
at its core it is tribalism that leads to the sort of violence and warlike attitude you are talking about and it is very basic to human nature, before there were any empires for there to be imperialism, people living in stone age cultures are constantly having intertribal wars and conflicts even today. As an organism a tribe of humans has no natural predators, apex predators are territorial.