That's an important question. To put it into context a little bit, I grew up Jewish in Germany and certainly a defensive nationalism or even patriotism did not come naturally to me, as you can imagine in that situation.
As I was growing up, I had the hope that we could overcome certain forms of nationalism completely and leave them behind in the 20th century, which they so cruelly shaped. When you look around the world today, you see that nationalism remains an incredibly powerful force in all parts of the world. That's something that connects the democratic world even with non-democratic parts of the world.
Especially in places where we've tried to suppress nationalism a bit, it is now rearing its head again in its ugliest form because people are saying, “I'm not being allowed to express this kind of identity, so I'm going to show you.”
You made a distinction, which a lot of people in academic literature make as well, between patriotism and nationalism. I'm a little skeptical of that distinction because I think it's a little too easy for us. It says that there's a great form of this that is positive and all about solidarity and wonderful things, and that's patriotism. Then there's a dangerous form that's terrible and so on, and that's nationalism.
I think we're actually talking about the same phenomenon, which can find expression in positive and negative ways. For me, I think of nationalism as a half-domesticated animal. Our task is not to vanquish it. It's to keep domesticating it. It will always remain dangerous but the best thing we can do is to try to interpret it in a way that's inclusive and that ensures that we have a notion of what it is to be German or Italian. I think Canada already is leading on this, in that people of different ethnicities, religions or national origins can be seen as and feel fully Canadian. I think that patriotism or nationalism that is based on that inclusive notion is the best response to the exclusionary nationalism, rather than trying to say it's vanquishable all together.