Popper on Nationalism
“There is one additional and related theme in Popper's work which deserves to be brought out explicitly, and this is his critique of nationalism, and his clear but critical preference for multinational regimes. Popper saw nationalism as related to a wish to return to a community of a kind which was called into question by population growth, and the development of commerce and an open society. In Popper's view, the aim is misconceived. For what people are reacting against is a necessary and unavoidable feature of an open society. Further, their chosen vehicle is hopeless, in the sense that, given the intermingling of actual populations, the ideal of a nation state is unrealizable, and the attempt to realize it a source of disaster.
In the light of the attention paid, today, to the supposedly moral principle of national self-determination, and in the light of the revival of nationalism in Eastern Europe and what were Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, Popper's criticism seems to me, alas, highly topical, and very much to the point. While the idea of nationalism may seem appealing, the fact that virtually any nation state will contain minorities, and that any definition of nationality will rest on arbitrary decisions, its adoption will lead to a multiplication of problems. For the fact that the nation state is supposed to give particular recognition to the nation in question – and thus to its language, religion, culture, and so on – produces genuine grounds for resentment on the part of those who end up living within it but are not members of the nation in question, on the grounds that their language, culture and so on will be treated worse than, say, would be possible within a multi-national state.
Those who are not nationals, under the favoured definition of nationality, are typically treated as second-class citizens, if they are accorded citizenship at all. The emphasis placed, by nationalists, on the idea of national self-determination conjures up a totally spurious picture of emotional satisfactions to be obtained from life in a Volksgemeinschaft. While it is also somehow suggested that if we govern ourselves – by which is actually meant that we are governed by people who share with us some distinguishing characteristic – the result should be satisfactory, which is a complete red herring with regard to all the real problems of good government.
Popper's own approach is worth considering, just because of its contrast with what is, today, customary.”
Jeremy Shearmur, 'The Political thought of Karl Popper'.