The Narcissism of National Solipsism: Civic Nationalism and Sub-State Formation Processes in Scotland Part 1

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created by theconstellinguist on 22/11/2024 at 07:53 UTC*

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The Narcissism of National Solipsism: Civic Nationalism and Sub-State Formation Processes in Scotland Part 1

• *Citation:** Law, A. (2017). The narcissism of national solipsism: civic nationalism and sub-state formation processes in Scotland. *Human Figurations: Long-term Perspectives on the Human Condition*, *6*(2), 1-24.

• *Link:** https://quod.lib.umich.edu/h/humfig/11217607.0006.206/--narcissism-of-national-solipsism-civic-nationalism-and-sub?rgn=main%3Bview=fulltext[1][2]

1: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/h/humfig/11217607.0006.206/--narcissism-of-national-solipsism-civic-nationalism-and-sub?rgn=main%3Bview=fulltext

2: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/h/humfig/11217607.0006.206/--narcissism-of-national-solipsism-civic-nationalism-and-sub?rgn=main%3Bview=fulltext

• **Full disclaimer on the unwanted presence of AI codependency cathartics/ AI inferiorists as a particularly aggressive and disturbed subsection of the narcissist population:*** https://narcissismresearch.miraheze.org/wiki/AIReactiveCodependencyRageDisclaimer[3][4]

3: https://narcissismresearch.miraheze.org/wiki/AIReactiveCodependencyRageDisclaimer

4: https://narcissismresearch.miraheze.org/wiki/AIReactiveCodependencyRageDisclaimer

• *Scotland is considered in a state of sub-state nationalism within Britain.**

1. This paper accounts for the lengthy emergence of sub-state nationalism in Scotland by locating it within British state formation processes. A spiral process of compromise and challenge characterizes Scotland’s constantly evolving position within the United Kingdom.

• *Deeply contested moral and political differences exist between Scotland and the full union state.**

1. Despite the legalistic dilemmas that each challenge poses, the fissiparous process of substate remaking is rarely about ‘the constitution’ so much as shifts in the We–I balance expressed by deeply contested political and moral differences between formally equal but distinct partners of the ‘union state’

• *A charismatic Scottish we-ideal is at the heart of Scottish UK presence. It views itself in contrast with the perfidious Machiavellianism at the heart of UK state power while ironically a better practice of a “we-ideal” would not be the collective narcissism of look at my “we” compared to their Machiavellianism. It would just be an actual “we”.**

1. Relieved of direct responsibility for the organised violence of great power politics, and notwithstanding the formative role of Scots in managing the British empire, a charismatic Scottish we-ideal claims for itself the peaceful, humanist and egalitarian virtues of civic nationalism in contrast to the perfidious Machiavellianism at the heart of UK state power.

• *Ironically, the climate of Scotland is claimed to, beyond such performances, be direct or veiled threats of violence, and generalized abuse and intimidation well beyond this “we” description.**

1. In early 2017, a senior Cabinet official, Philip Rycroft, Head of the UK Governance Group formed to bolster the UK constitution, claimed that ‘abuse and intimidation’ and ‘direct or veiled threats of violence, is a feature of the contemporary political climate in Scotland’ (O’Hare 2017).

• *Brexit was a product of Britain not even being fully integrated to itself much less to other autonomous countries. The dynamics of not really fully humanizing its full populace were projected onto other autonomous countries demanding the same unidirectional narcissistic dynamics to what the world could otherwise reasonably expect to be autonomous agents mutually respected.**

1. ‘There’s no difference between those who try to divide us on the basis of whether we’re English or Scottish and those who try to divide us on the basis of our background, race or religion’ (Anon. 2017b). Here the unifying integral nationalism of Britain as an established state-society forms the banal, taken-for-granted point zero for negatively comparing the ‘us’ and ‘them’ of Scottish sub-state nationalism to the ‘us’ and ‘them’ of xenophobia, racism and religious intolerance (Billig 1995).

• *Homosexuality was decriminalized for example far later in Scotland than in England.**

1. . For instance, while homosexuality was partially decriminalised in England in 1967 it remained illegal in Scotland until 1980 on the pretext that it was not so viciously criminalised as in England (Meek 2015). Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988, supported by powerful religious and business interests in Scotland, prohibited schools from openly discussing homosexual relationships until the Act was repealed in 2000 by the first Scottish parliament, slightly earlier than the repeal across the rest of the UK in 2003.

• *The fluctuation between “the party of law and order” and a reputation for aggressive, chaotic appearances matches the energy coming from Scotland perfectly.**

1. In contrast to contemporary British state nationalism, the we-ideal of sub-state nationalism in Scotland appears especially charismatic, ‘benign’ and ‘progressive’, promoting, as one commentator put it, ‘civic values of internationalism and social justice’ and ‘enlightened political leadership’ (Macwhirter 2016: 37). For example, to counter ‘baseless’ media speculations of impending political disorder, the Scottish Police Federation (2014) felt compelled to issue a statement close to the vote that appealed to the democratic charisma of the Scottish nation:Any neutral observer could be led to believe Scotland is on the verge of societal disintegration yet nothing could be further from the truth. Scotland’s citizens are overwhelmingly law abiding and tolerant and it is preposterous to imply that by placing a cross in a box, our citizens will suddenly abandon the personal virtues and values held dear to them all.

• *A hierarchy of sub, territory, and state-society shows how Britain’s logic is inherently structured in a narcissistic dog-eat-dog fashion likely to breed a normalized narcissism due to its own internal ethnic integration issues even when their land is already not very large at all compared to other nations.**

1. That the Acts and Treaty of Union enabled certain pre-union institutions in Scotland to survive as relatively autonomous units represents a problem for state nomenclature. ‘Great Britain’ refers only to England, Scotland and Wales, although Northern Irish Unionists see themselves as British. ‘United Kingdom’ strictly defined refers to Great Britain and Northern Ireland. In what follows I refer to Britain as a state-society, the UK more narrowly as a territorial state, and Scotland as a sub-state nation.

• *Scotland considers itself a ‘stateless nation’ while Britain is a ‘nationless state’. Thus a disturbing normalized “antithetical” is found inside a territory that is supposed to be well-integrated into itself, belying a deep internal dysfunction where they know what a nation or a state is by what it is not in the other, and these are experienced as Scotland vs. Britain. A state of normalized self-betrayal as a national logic is the result. These dynamics can filter down even to as minute as family logics and structures where normalized fear and betrayal infiltrate all areas of the interpersonal rhetoric, especially in terms of gender issues where the otherwise clearly gendered roles are therefore also filled with a deeper fear of each other and the normalization of understanding oneself only through the antithetical of the other, which is a far cry from the non-narcissistic mutual appreciation and interest in difference through mutual exploration of the self of the other and integration of findings into a shared concept of "we". This is in contrast to an endless war parading itself as a relationship in finding oneself only as how they are the antithetical of the other.**

1. It is often claimed that Scotland is best described as a ‘stateless nation’ (McCrone 1992). In contrast Britain is classified as a nation-less ‘state identity’ founded on the formal paraphernalia of citizenship (Bechhofer and McCrone 2015). In this conception, Britain can only ever be a ‘state’ never a ‘nation’. While they mutually impinge on each other, the concepts of state and nation form a binary opposition. ‘State identity’ and citizenship are fixed, objective and formalised while national identity is a fluid, variable and subtle discursive process of subjective meaning and claim-making.

• *Britain sees excessive stresses and strains that other nations have not struggled with even where they have a water-based, land-fragmented structure just as similar to Britain’s. Ethnic integration has been an ongoing struggle for Britain and its incompleteness is behind a lot of Brexit as a country that struggles with kept-quiet narcissistic logic cannot possibly enter a community that demands that real autonomous respect be present among all nation states to each other without much struggle or false performance at all.**

• *One of the features of this is its ongoing insistence on its monarchy which still struggles over and over again to reemerge where it has already been transitioned out. All factors differentiating Britain from the other nation states must be considered and the relationship of failure to integrate, normalized narcissism, knowing who one is by what the other is not (antithetical/narcissistic logic), and the ongoing emergences of the British monarchy trying again to see what it can finagle in Britain and abroad show an ongoing struggle with narcissism Britain does not seem able to beat.**

• *These struggles with ethnic integration and not being able to beat narcissism compared to the other European states are mutually informing factors in Brexit. Behind failures to ethnically integrate are the same factors; failures to beat narcissism and truly view the other ethnic groups as real equals. Scottish and Irish are in tension with England in general through a collective narcissist (Scottish/Irish; we are better than the monarchs, but we will still betray our own so are not really the 'we' we consider ourselves to be) vs. a traditional narcissistic (toxic monarchy) tension with neither actually showing the prerequisite "we" leadership. Instead, they know themselves temporarily as antitheticals by what the other is not, constantly watching in the codependent core dependence at the heart of narcissism to know what not to be. This is ironically how borders are created and enforced, not how nations are integrated unto themselves. You can see how therefore England and Scotland and Ireland are hotbeds for Trumpist's combat parenting because this is the relationship of Britain to itself. Trumpism therefore is likely a product of Putin's funding and electoral efforts coming in through answering narcissistic tensions and vulnerabilities in UK through specifically Scotland and the answering misogyny vulnerabilities in the US where this logic is particularly vulnerable to tensions between Scotland to England in terms of combat parenting.**

• *For instance, Michelle Obama's biography cites how upon meeting the Queen she directed Michelle Obama to "high performers in a charity school". It was a covert message that that was how the UK views America and the Obamas. The revolting narcissism is normalized and how the monarchy relates in general to other parts of the UK. Thus the UK is a hotbed for unresolved narcissism and combat parenting and it is clear why with such hateful and contemptuous covert hidden narcissism this country cannot join Europe at large until it fixes this situation which is absolutely toxic to everything it interacts with, not truly taking anything seriously or truly believing an external other has its own real intelligence that knows and can reject real fraud.**

• *The reactive codependence, privately known fraud as insults, and inability to stop the constant warring is a signature of a British/UK/Scottish/Irish relational dysfunction coming to see what damage it can do to America now as well and is behind much of the disrespect of other European States that caused the international devastation of Brexit as an attempt to hurt and harm others truly and really demanding that they be treated as autonomous agents able to detect fraud and disrespect when they see it. This particular nation seems particularly unable to beat narcissism. The work with Cambridge Analytica is profoundly disrespectful to America’s ability to detect fraud within itself, and continued attempts to psychologically manipulate the American electorate continue to originate from the UK in a disturbingly frequent fashion that shows true inability to adapt to the reality that autonomous nations are independently intelligent. Again and again both America and the international community have detected external fraud in America's elections and again and again narcissistic nations tell on themselves by taking this as inspiration instead of a warning.**

• *The comments on and treatment of Obama showed they didn't really view Obama as a success unto himself, but a product of themselves, and when that wasn't the case, of Soros. Though these factors inevitably helped Obama to come forward against the odds, it has been nearly impossible to recreate a leader that transformational and Obama was a specifically American phenomenon of which he himself is the primary force. The attempts to gold star a "charity school" are equivalent to the narcissistic parent claiming the unwanted child once they actually start doing well when before they were nowhere to be found. It is also a profound inability to accept that he was a product of himself largely very much against the odds and needing it to somehow be about them and their successful "charity school" they saw America to be. At least to me, this is a** **deeply and profoundly vain, horrific, disrespectful and inaccurate way to view America which exists in spite of the UK, not because of it. This is the "combat parenting" at the heart of the UK and narcissism in general, with a more specifically psychopathic narcissism found to greater degrees in Trump/Johnson adjacent populations.**

1. Persistent tensions between identification and dis-identification processes enable emotional boundaries to be experienced as threats to group survival that call for the organisation of mutual defence (Kaspersen and Gabriel 2008). In agrarian societies, mutual defence was organised on the basis of physical proximity by village kinship communities, gradually expanding in scale through dynastic rule, religious orders, and military solidarity (Linklater 2016). Today, states play the role of survival units mediating these tensions at different scales of integration, from large imperial states to micro-states. Propelled by crisis conditions, the broadest scale of state integration can rapidly give way to much smaller units on a more fragmented scale, as when multinational states like Austro-Hungary fell prey to ‘the struggle of the nationalities’ in 1918 or the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1989 (Judson 2016). Such tensions of scale and uneven temporalities currently beset the European Union. In the case of the United Kingdom this process has stretched over an even longer period. Relatively shortrun political events such as referendums, elections and extra-parliamentary movements expose the longer-term stresses and strains of Britain as a state-society.

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