Un nacionalista en apuros (El inconsistente separatismo de Ulises Moulines)

Abstract

In this article I critically examine Ulises Moulines's «Nationalist Manifesto» (Isegoría 24, June 2001). I argue that his defence of ethnic nationalism, amongst its many flaws, shows an unability to understand the significance of many intra-national conflicts. Instead of providing evidence of a nation's (i.e., the basque) oppression, those conflicts might well be a symptom of the opposite phenomenon within the population: namely, that in the absence of a national consciousness strong enough to require political sovereignty, the only engine behind the conflicts is the nationalist movement's self-interest. While Moulines's mini-theory of nations and ethnic groups merely asserts the radical ambiguity of those concepts, his Principle of the Intrinsic Value of the Plurality of Being (which is as unconvincing in ethics as in esthetics) does not provide any argument for a nation's right to independence. The difficult issue of how to make ethnic nationalism compatible with democracy is completely ignored by him; rather, it is presupposed that “more often than not” a multinational state simply will not work. At last, the Manifesto boils down to just another re-enactment of the old Principle of Nationalities.