Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Civic nationalism

One of the things that angered me most was the media's attempt whenever possible to gloss over the difference between civic nationalism and that horrible right wing version down south that we see in Farage's party, and that we saw from the extreme unionists in George square on the night after the referendum.

I,  a Scottish woman with a Danish Yes campaigner for a husband; someone who has lived in France, Italy and Germany, who has studied foreign languages and culture, someone who has been married to a French person in the past and who currently has family in Denmark, France, Germany and Italy could be taken as a nationalist? I was asked on the day after the European elections this year if I had voted for those 'racist Scottish Nationalists?' by someone who should have been well enough educated to check facts of this basic type. If Farage has his way in a couple of years my husband isn't even eligible to live here with his Scottish-born children under his current European right to work arrangement. I also have Scottish friends living on UK passports in Germany, Spain and other places who are suddenly left at the mercy of EU governments letting them stay if England pulls us pro-EU Scottish inhabitants out of the EU. These are amongst my most prominent reasons for supporting Yes from the outset. Right wing nationalism and civic nationalism are at opposite ends of the tolerance spectrum. It is such a shame the two types haven't more diverse names. I am a civic nationalist and as we said all along in the Yes movement and will continue to say, for us 'A Scot is someone born here, and anyone who has paid us the compliment of settling here.' 

So when I came across this today and it made me smile because it showed me my Scotland.

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