Perm do both—otherwise fascists crack down on the alt.

The opposition of nationalism and cosmopolitanism seems logically evident. Nationalism, no matter how the nation is defined and even if like Lepore one takes it to be a historically contingent construction,22 is particularist, emphasizing something shared that is meaningful to people who take themselves as members of the nation and explains to them and others some of the normative expectations that they have of each other as members of the same nation and between them and what they take to be their nation (Miller 1997). Cosmopolitanism in contrast is not bounded. It is morally universalist (Appiah 2006) and politically international or transnational (Held 2010). Its moral version centers people as such and the normative expectations all people can have from each other. In its political version, its emphasis is on the need for and importance of international or transnational political institutions. The contrast between nationalism and cosmopolitanism builds on this logic and goes beyond it. The contrast is presented in the context of a choice that conceals the ubiquity of nationalism. Nationalism is weightier in people’s ordinary lives than cosmopolitanism because of the many ways nationalism is reproduced in everyday life (Billig 1995). It is not just national flags and the singing of national anthems before sport events that remind people of the existence of the nation and their relationship to it and to those who are the members of the nation. So does, for example, foreign intervention in elections (Lemond and Dessel 2019). The indignity expressed by U.S. Democrats over documented Russian efforts to sway the U.S. 2016 elections, Donald Trump’s inaction in the face of it and his invitation to China to investigate his Democratic opponents in an attempt to sway the 2020 elections, and Mitch McConnell’s refusal to bring election security bills to a vote, is an example of a political nationalist response. Political nationalism is inward-looking and emphasizes political independence and self-determination and expects them to be protected by the state against unwanted interventions and influences by foreign nations and nationals. U.S. Democrats, even if they are not sovereignists as many right-wing nationalists are, still share some political nationalist beliefs with them. Though political nationalism is different from economic nationalism, it tends to go hand in hand with economic nationalism with its emphasis on the national economy and its protection from unwanted interventions and influences by foreign nations and nationals by the state. It too surrounds people. Examples of its invocation abound during elections and even progressive candidates have economic nationalist promises. Thus, the Canadian New Democratic Party (N.d.) platform envisions a better economy for hard-working Canadians and Bernie Sanders (N.d.) envisions the creation of twenty million jobs for Americans. As Brexit demonstrates (Armstrong 2017), political nationalism, economic nationalism and cultural nationalism (a form of nationalism that looks to the state’s protection of a nation’s culture against unwanted interventions and influences by foreign nations and nationals) easily mix. It also demonstrates how simplified the notion of nationalism is when put in contrast with cosmopolitanism as if there were a stark choice to be made. In addition, it shows how the starkness hides the fact that the choice between nationalism and cosmopolitanism is a false choice. Yes, the umbrella terms “nationalism” and “cosmopolitanism” are analytically distinct from each other. But hybridity happens—that is, after all, what liberal or civic nationalism is, a hybrid of some form of nationalism and its implied particularism and normative requirements, along with both moral and political cosmopolitanism and their implied universal kind of requirements.23 However, for one kind of nationalism, the choice between nationalism and cosmopolitanism is stark and real—fascist nationalism. The simplified contrast and false choice between nationalism and cosmopolitanism also obscures the distinction between the nation and the state. The two are not the same. A nation is a group of people that claim or are claimed by a relation to each other through, for example, a shared culture. A state, at least under international law, has a more or less well-defined territory and population, a government, and a capacity to enter relations with other states. Many states contain more than one group of people that identify as a nation. Some nations exist in more than one state. On some occasions, nations, or groups claiming to represent nations, occupy states and form nation-states. The formation and long-term maintenance of a nation-state necessarily creates problems, such as majoritarianism, and majoritarian nation-states can be quite pernicious, which is what happens when the state is used for fascist nationalist purposes or the purposes of any nationalism with fascist tendencies. Fascist nationalism and a nationalism with fascist tendencies releases the members of the nation, and the nation itself, from normative requirements to people as such and from political requirements to support and participate in international institutions and conform to international standards. The outcome is extremism. Far-right and far-right-influenced violent incidents are suggestive of this kind of extremism.24 But they are less indicative of fascist nationalism’s extremism than the violence of governments exercised with impunity under domestic law. Nazi violence provides the clearest example. There was plenty of it prior to the electoral capture of the state by the Nazi Party, which claimed to represent the German people, and its quick consolidation of this capture. Once they controlled the state, the Nazis increased their use of violence manyfold. In 1933, they opened the first concentration camp in Dachau targeting their political enemies and people they deemed asocial. In 1939, they began a euthanasia program. In 1941, they began the massive killing of Jews, which they systematized starting in 1942. Starting in 1938 they projected military force in foreign affairs. WWII officially started in September 1939.25 At present a particularly interesting example of governments exercising violence with impunity under the protection of domestic law is the use of violence against migrants and refugees. Not only have migrant and refugee rights26 been eroding in industrialized countries; in addition, there has been a concurrent criminalization of and use of the state’s coercive apparatus against humanitarian NGOs that are trying to save and offer services to migrants and refugees (Reggio and Mittlestadt 2018). In most cases, the justification of migrant and refugee detention is a mix of political, economic, and cultural nationalisms, all summed up as contributing to the understanding of what is in the national interest. This is, for example, what the White House (N.d.) appeals to as a justification for holding more than 50,000 migrants and refugees in detention camps (Kassie 2019). According to the Trump White House, detention camps for migrants and raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are an element of an immigration system “that serves the national interest.” The idea of a “national interest” is vague. Arendt’s critique of it ([1945] 2007; [1948] 2007; 1958; 1963) exposes this quite nicely. Arendt believes that people have needs and that interests are their stake in fulfilling these needs. Groups of people, some of these being nations, also have interests, according to Arendt, but in the best case a group’s interest is more like a contingent negotiated common concern, or a shared understanding of a collective action problem.27 Arendt believes that in both the case of individuals and groups, interests can frame and limit but cannot guide decisions or actions. Arendt’s analysis of interests points out that it is problematic to invoke the “national interest” as a justification without elaboration and specification. For Arendt, it is also problematic to rely on “the national interest” as a justification of state actions because through the justification the state is subordinated to the nation. This is especially problematic when a state is not at the outset already a nation-state. The United States is an example of a state that is not a nation-state, at least in terms of the kind of nation the Trump White House pictures, which is more like an ethnos with a shared religion or/and culture and language. By justifying state actions in the name of “the national interest,” the Trump White House subordinates the state to a faction. In the name of the faction it calls a nation it uses the coercive force of the state against refugees, migrants, and people whose cosmopolitan commitments motivate them to help refugees and migrants such as Scott Daniel Warren, who was arrested on 18 January 2018 for giving migrants food, water, and shelter.