The brouhaha over a nine-year-old girl refusing to stand for the national anthem appears to confirm that tolerance is on the wane and nationalist sentiment on the rise in Australia.
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The storm over a nine-year-old refusing to stand for the national anthem is an indication of how ugly, and misguided, some aspects of national debate have become.
Eugène Delacroix’s ‘Self-Portrait in a Green Vest’ (1837).
Wikimedia Commons
Through his art and his travels, 19th-century French Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix sought to understand the chaos of an era he called ‘the century of unbelievable things.’
A security officer checks a traveler’s passport.
AP Photo/Patrick Semansky
A scholar raised by leftist San Francisco parents in the 1970s ends up teaching in the heartland, where her students represent a very different kind of politics. What she learns from them is profound.
Can football really have an impact on society?
Gnodeuy/Flickr
For the millions celebrating on the Champs-Elysées last month, Frenchness was not just an idea, it was an intense shared experience. But what happens to that identity when the celebrations end?
Big History may provide a basis for drawing different human cultures closer together.
NASA
Doga Ulas Eralp, American University School of International Service
Turkey’s close relationship with the US dates back to the Cold War. But after the June election there put nationalists into a position of power in the government, that alliance could turn rocky.
Barack Obama delivering the 2018 Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture in Johannesburg.
EPA-EFE/Stringer
Barack Obama was asked to give the Mandela Lecture because he represents what the global liberation struggle icon stood for. He struck the right chord.
An artist’s impression of Somaliland.
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The arrest and sentencing of Somalilander Naima Qorane for publishing pro-unity poetry is just the tip of the iceberg in a state that’s eager to maintain its sovereignity as a nation.
Crowds protesting the forced retirement of judges, in front of Poland’s Supreme Court building, Warsaw.
AP/Czarek Sokolowski
With its attempt to purge the country’s courts of 40 percent of its judges, Poland’s right-wing ruling party passed another milestone on the path towards establishment of a one-party state.
Under a canopy of Turkish flags, supporters of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) attend an election rally in Gaziantep, eastern Turkey.
Presidency Press Service via AP, Pool
Turkey’s snap election is on Sunday. One fact is clear: The candidates and electorate are both nationalist and pious. That’s in contrast to the strict secularism of 20th century politics.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev watch the action during the match between Russia and Saudi Arabia that opened the 2018 World Cup.
Alexei Druzhinin, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP
The Russian leader seems to understand the ability of sport to foment feelings of national pride and enhance his popularity at home.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau meets with U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C. in October 2017. Trump’s tariffs on Canadian aluminum and steel simply reflect a broader U.S. philosophy on international trade, and that doesn’t bode well for Canada.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick
The underlying problem with Donald Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum isn’t Trump. It’s the increasing willingness by the U.S. to impose its will on its neighbours amid rising economic nationalism.
Giuseppe Conte, Italy’s new prime minister, will lead a government of populists.
Fabio Frustaci/EPA
The nation is increasingly defined in terms of threats from outside. It’s the thinking behind Donald Trump’s vow to build a wall to increase security along the border with Mexico.
Tony Webster/flickr
The idea that societies equal nation-states, neat containers that can be closed off from outside threats, is powerful. The nationalist paradigm even has a hold over many critics of its politics.
Cut from the same Christian cloth?
Jorge Silva/EPA