Tribal nationalism differs from Western chauvinism by treating nationality as an inner soul quality

Evidence

This new type of tribal nationalism, more or less characteristic of all Central and Eastern European nations and nationalities, was quite different in content and significance—though not in violence—from Western nationalist excesses. Chauvinism—now usually thought of in connection with the “nationalisme intégral” of Maurras and Barrés around the turn of the century, with its romantic glorification of the past and its morbid cult of the dead—even in its most wildly fantastic manifestations, did not hold that men of French origin, born and raised in another country, without any knowledge of French language or culture, would be “born Frenchmen” thanks to some mysterious qualities of body or soul. Only with the “enlarged tribal consciousness” did that peculiar identification of nationality with one’s own soul emerge, that turned-inward pride that is no longer concerned only with public affairs but pervades every phase of private life until, for example, “the private life of each true Pole …is a public life of Polishness.” — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 576

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core distinction between Western chauvinism and Central/Eastern European tribal nationalism — a foundational concept for later work on racialized/ethnic nationalism.
• XREF: Echoes the nationalism-construction theme in Imagined Communities (Anderson) and prefigures the ‘Othering’ machinery the Islamophobia field analyzes. — connects to: Native tribal membership is politically constructed through shifting and gendered standards.
• QUESTION: Arendt later frames Volksgemeinschaft and the pan-movements as the ancestor of Nazi race-thinking — worth tracing this ‘enlarged tribal consciousness’ forward into biopolitics readings.