ABSTRACT
Nationalism was considered a characteristically ‘closed ideology’ — akin to totalitarianism — and the precise opposite of liberalism. In 2002, Popper’s views are doubly interesting, since the last decade has not only seen a practical renaissance of nationalism in the politics of Europe and elsewhere, but also growing, and, at times, immensely enthusiastic academic literature, trying to provide a distinctively benign benediction to nationalism. Popper suggests that the singular importance of tribe or nation inevitably becomes suspect as soon as more sophisticated rational intelligence develops. For Popper, nationalism — as a clear example of a closed tribal mentality — contradicts a basic fact about modern societies, namely, that individuals are primary, both morally and methodologically. Popper’s Open Society expressed in many ways ‘their hopes of integration into a community that discounted religion, ethnicity, and nationality’.
