minority identities.^6 Still, in so far as they acquire a political expres-
sion, social identities almost always do so in the language of left and
right. They rely, in other words, on the universal currency of political
exchange.
Consider, first, large-scale national identities. In the 1930s and
1940s, just as Italian fascists and German Nazis articulated a right-
wing and irredentist brand of nationalism to suit their purpose, the
anti-fascist left built its resistance around an equally powerful “national
and patriotic sentiment.”^7 Nationalist discourses were thus con-
structed in the prevailing language of left and right politics. Likewise,
in the 1950s and 1960s, decolonization was pursued by progressive
nationalist movements, which proclaimed the intrinsic equality of all
human beings. “National liberation,” noted Eric Hobsbawm, then
became “a slogan of the left.”^8 In the post-Cold War years, nation-
alism proved just as malleable. In some countries, it was associated
with authoritarianism, ethnic exactions, and violence, but in others, it
inspired democratic movements. At first, these democratic movements
used national identity to affirm the country’s autonomy against a
decaying Soviet empire; later, they evoked nationalism to consolidate
popular sovereignty against autocrats presumably supported by for-
eign powers.^9 The popular revolutions of the early 2000s – rose revo-
lution in Georgia (2003), orange in Ukraine (2004), tulip in Kyrgyzstan
(2005), cedar in Lebanon (2005) – all involved protesters carrying
the national flag to rally the population behind democracy, and pre-
vent potential external interventions on behalf of contested rulers. In
a similar fashion, the sub-state identities that sought recognition
and autonomy in multinational countries were always tied either to
the left or to the right, depending on the class and political alliances
that defined them. In Belgium, for instance, “Walloon nationalism is
on the left, Flemish nationalism is on the right.”^10 Before the Second
(^6) Walker Connor,Ethnonationalism: The Quest for Understanding, Princeton
7 University Press, 1994, pp. 42–57.
Eric J. Hobsbawm,Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth,
8 Reality, second edition, Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. 143–45.
9 Ibid., p. 150.
Charles H. Fairbanks, Jr., “Revolution Reconsidered,”Journal of Democracy,
vol. 18, no. 1, January 2007, 42–57, p. 47.
(^10) Jan Erk, “Sub-State Nationalism and the Left–Right Divide: Critical Junctures
in the Formation of Nationalist Labour Movements in Belgium,”Nations and
Nationalism, vol. 11, no. 4, October 2005, 551–70, p. 566.
The core currency of political exchange 201