For national rights, against nationalism

For the internationalist, class-struggle left, supporting national liberation struggles is a source of tension. Nations are necessarily cross-class blocs, and victorious national liberation struggles invariably institute capitalist states based on class exploitation. Class-struggle politics require moving beyond, and against, the idea of “national unity” and “national interest”, and the notion that we should fundamentally identify with others who happen to share our national background, rather than workers, of any national or ethnic background, who share our class position.

Some currents on the left, including left-communists and some anarchist groups, resolve the tension by dismissing struggles for national self-determination as reactionary sidetracks from the class struggle. Other currents ignore the tension entirely, preferring to lean into the “nationalism of the oppressed”, often implying that the more vigorous, revanchist, and maximalist the dominant nationalism of an oppressed people, the more progressive it is.

A better attitude to ideas of nationalism and national belonging was expressed by the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish in a 1996 interview. Darwish quoted an exchange between the French writer Jean Genet and the Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo: “Genet said that a homeland is a stupid idea, except for those who still don’t have one. Goytisolo, the Spanish poet, answered him: ‘And when they have a homeland?’ Genet said: ‘Let them throw it out the window.’”

A similar idea was expressed recently by the Palestinian musician Tamer Nafar, in an interview on the Unapologetic: The Third Narrative podcast. Nafar said: “Ever since I started my career, I’ve always thought, don’t put me in that box of ‘Palestinian’. I didn’t choose to be a Palestinian, it’s just there. My priority is being an artist. And every time the media was interested in me because of Palestine, I used to get mad. Be interested in me because of my songs! But since 7 October, my art is not in danger. The side that faces genocide is the Palestinian side. That’s why I hold onto it.

“I don’t give a fuck about flags. If you tell me to order the colours in my flag, I might confuse it. Honestly, I don’t know. But for the last two years, I feel that my Palestinian body is in danger. That’s why I hold onto it, and take care of it, not the patriotic part of it. I want to reach a point where nobody is destroying or killing my people. I want to free Palestine so I can free myself from Palestine.”

The left can support struggles for national self-determination without draping ourselves in any flag, and whilst understanding that the reason we fight for a world free of national oppression is to better enable us to fight for a world beyond nations.