Page 29 - Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization

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Ernest Gellner and others who claim that nationalism nec-
non-nationals under it.”
essarily attempts to create a congruent political and cultural boundary fail to observe
what others have seen from history, that is, that oppressed nationalism is usually or
often concerned with democratic and cultural rights,self-determination,and equal ac-
cess to cultural and economic resources; it is not necessarily aimed at establishing an
ethnonational state. Ignoring how despotism, colonialism, racial/ethnonational strati-
fication, and imperialism facilitated the emergence of national movements by denying
the subject populations their cultural and democratic rights, Elie Kedourie blames op-
pressed nationalism and the principles of national self-determination for political in-
133
Since he confuses fascism, racism, and
stability and wars in the modern world.
oppressor nationalism with oppressed nationalism of the colonized populations, Ke-
dourie sees all forms of nationalism as an avoidable aberration. He seems to argue that
oppressed nations go to wars and cause instability just to create their own respective
states rather than living in harmony in multinational states. In reality, it is the lack of
democracy, suppression of individual and group rights, cultural repression, and con-
tinued subjugation that force subjugated peoples to struggle for their rights, rather
than what Gellner and Kedourie suggest.
Some scholars also have argued that ethnonationalism is facilitated by international
factors. 134 Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization
This position locates the causes of the national struggle in external factors
alone and, unfortunately, ignores how a racialized or an ethnicized state contributes to
the development of oppressed nationalism by denying democratic and economic rights
and by blocking all avenues for expression, thus forcing subjugated nations to engage in
national movements. Since colonial and racial/ethnonational domination has reduced
subjugated peoples to historical objects by disdaining their respective cultures and rever-
ing every aspect of the colonizing cultures,the anticolonial national movement attempts
to achieve the cultural liberty and human dignity that are denied by the oppressive so-
cial system.According to Cabral,“The value of culture as an element of resistance to for-
eign domination lies in the fact that culture is the vigorous manifestation on the
ideological or idealist plane of the physical and historical reality of the society that is
dominated. . . . Culture is simultaneously the fruit of people’s history and a determinant
of history.” 135 Racists and colonialists degraded the history and culture of the colonized
to psychologically demoralize and socialize them into submissive free or cheap laborers
unable to fight for their rights. National liberation movements emerged to restore “the
inalienable right of every people to have their own history,” culture, and human dignity
that were wounded by racial/ethnonational domination and colonialism. 136
Cabral notes that “the people are only able to create and develop the liberation
movement because they keep their culture alive despite continual and organized re-
pression of their cultural life and because they continue to resist culturally even when
their politico-military resistance is destroyed. And it is cultural resistance which, at a
given moment, can take on new forms, i.e., political, economic, armed to fight foreign
domination.” 137 Culture includes the material and nonmaterial aspects of a human
group.The colonization of a human group denies dignity that is associated with free-
dom of development, democracy, free expression, self-respect, worldviews, and
choices, and facilitates economic exploitation and underdevelopment. Colonialism
impedes the development of productive forces in the colonized society.Cabral sees the
national struggle of the colonized people “as the organized political expression of the
culture of the people who are undertaking the struggle,” and also as “necessarily a
proof not only of identity but also of dignity.” 138