The two years of the History degree that Eric Storm (Netherlands, 59 years old) attended the University of Salamanca, where he specialized in Spain’s recent past, awakened in him a “strong fascination with nationalist movements” that ended up becoming the axis of his academic production. Professor of Contemporary History at Leiden University and visiting professor at several European campuses (Oxford, Berlin, Complutense…), has published the essay ‘Nationalism. A world history’ (Criticism), in which it offers keys and historical context about a phenomenon that has recently experienced good times.
In his book he looks at the history of nationalism in Europe and the world, but it is inevitable to start talking about the present. With the historian’s glasses and the filter of nationalism, what do you see today?
A clear resurgence of nationalist impulses around the world, which I connect with the disappearance of the generation that lived through the horrors of the Second World War, and in the case of Spain, the Civil War. Extreme nationalist sentiments marked the lives of people and countries a century ago and led us to disaster, but it seems that we have forgotten it. Xenophobia, racism and supremacism, which were recently considered taboo, have now become normalized.
In fact, Donald Trump returned to power promising to make America “great again.”
But he is not satisfied with returning to America’s supposed glorious past, but wants to make it bigger. That is why they ask for Venezuela, Greenland, the Panama Canal, Colombia and everything that responds to their interests. He’s not the only one. Putin thinks like him, and so does China. The resurgence of nationalism has brought with it the return of imperialism, which is the new world order we face. They wrap it in nationalist rhetoric to guarantee internal support, as happened at the beginning of the 20th century, but it is pure and simple imperialism.
How did we get here?
There is a date that I consider crucial: 1979. Many things happened that year that laid the pillars of what we live today. Islamic identity politics erupted in the Muslim world, with the Iranian revolution and Saudi Arabia embracing Wahhabism after the attack on the Grand Mosque, and the USSR invading Afghanistan to end up turning it into a jihadist sanctuary. The secular figures who had guided that world in previous decades, such as Nasser, Sadat, the Shah of Persia or the Baath party, have disappeared or are in decline. In the West, John Paul II arrives demanding a return to traditional values after the progress of the Second Vatican Council; and in the United States, televangelist Jerry Falwell founded Moral Majority, an ultraconservative organization that is beginning to influence the Republican Party. Thatcher won the elections in the United Kingdom that year, and a few months later Ronald Reagan did so in the United States. Both proclaim neoliberalism as a recipe to confront the inflation and unemployment left by the oil crisis.
Trump is not content with returning to America’s supposed glorious past, but wants to make it greater. That’s why he asks for Venezuela, Greenland, the Panama Canal, Colombia…
They seem like very different milestones. What do they have in common?
They agree in placing identity as a supreme value. Until then, identity was an individual issue, but from those years on, the identity of the collective takes on a lot of weight. There is also a change of gaze. After the Second World War, the impetus that moved the world was the improvement of people’s lives. Economies advance, the welfare state is created, colonies become independent… After the crisis of the 70s, that hope for progress was replaced by a look towards the past, at the essences, at the origin, at the navel of each culture. A lot of effort was put into recovering ancient traditions and people became enclosed in their collective identity.
Is recovering traditions bad?
It has positive things, of course, such as appreciation for cultural heritage. In fact, at first identity politics were part of a process of emancipation and empowerment of people. But its tendency towards essentialism ends up leaving out those who are not part of that identity. Political Islam, conservative Catholicism and ultra-Protestantism in the United States have in common that they aspire to impose their ideas and make the entire nation think and feel the same.
What does neoliberalism have to do with this phenomenon?
The fall of the Soviet bloc led many to affirm that there was no other possible model than the free market. Thatcher herself said it insistently: there was no alternative. This conviction ended up displacing economic debates, which were left in the hands of what the market said, and politics was occupied by identity debates, as if these had more influence on people’s destiny than their economic circumstances.
How do you go from there to proclaiming “America first” or “Spain only for Spaniards”, as many proclaim today?
If 1979 marked a turning point, the 2008 crisis has been the other moment of breakdown of confidence in the institutions and in the political system itself. People who no longer trust progress because they have felt abandoned by the system have found an illusion in speeches loaded with nationalist nostalgia. Social networks have done the rest. They facilitate emotion, not reflection, and nationalism is above all a feeling.
People who no longer trust progress because they have felt abandoned by the system have found an illusion in speeches loaded with nationalist nostalgia.
He is an expert in contemporary history of Spain, where we are not clear about the idea of nation, state and nationality. How do you see us?
France also has many minorities, but Paris concentrates the richest and most powerful part and has ended up imposing itself on the rest of the country. On the other hand, in Spain, two of the most developed communities, Catalonia and the Basque Country, are on the periphery and embrace nationalist discourses. The truth is that Spain is a very decentralized country, more than most European states. Perhaps it could move toward a federal model, but that does not guarantee that this tension will disappear. Belgium, without going any further, is a federal state, but the two communities that make it up live behind each other. The danger of federalism is that federations often become closed in on themselves.
During the ‘procés’, Catalan nationalist sentiment reached unprecedented heights. How did you see that phenomenon?
History teaches that nations often become independent in unstable geopolitical times. In 2017, Spain had just gone through a severe economic crisis, but it was part of the European Union and at that time there was no window of opportunity for Catalonia to become independent, as could be seen. I was surprised by the naivety of many pro-independence politicians, and those who followed them, in stating that they could separate from Spain and remain in the European Union. The international rejection was decisive.
Is Catalonia’s fit into Spain possible or is this problem unsolvable, as Ortega y Gasset said?
From emotion there is no solution, because if you feel only Catalan, you will want to have a state, like other smaller or less populated communities have, but this would force those who also feel Spanish to be foreigners in their country. Perhaps the solution is for Catalans to know how to value the benefits of their situation. They are bilingual, something that is a great advantage, and Spain is one of the best states in the world to live in, advanced, cheerful, modern, with an enviable quality of life. They have reasons to be happy.
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