Don’t let the nationalists steal patriotism

But Macron also laid out another way of thinking about his country, a “vision of France as a generous nation, of France as a project, of France promoting universal values . . . the exact opposite of the egotism of a people who look after only their interests.” This more idealistic patriotism — “the exact opposite of nationalism,” said Macron — is a more difficult cause to support, and yet over the years, many in France have supported it. This is the France that overturned the verdict in the Dreyfus trial, the France that believed all citizens, and not just ethnic Frenchmen, should be treated equally under the law; this is the France that joined the Resistance instead of Vichy, the France that agreed to share power and sovereignty with Germany in the wake of World War II, the France that helped build prosperity across the continent.

That kind of patriotism, linked to bigger ideals about democracy and the common good, is important to think about right now. It might be an antidote to the polarization that social media accentuates; to anger, the emotion that travels most rapidly online; to the cynicism that dominates the Internet more broadly. Some are already trying to make it work. A few weeks ago I spoke with Flavia Kleiner, the 28-year-old co-founder of Operation Libero, a Swiss online movement. Provoked by the electoral success of the nationalist, anti-immigration Swiss People’s Party, Operation Libero campaigns on a different vision of the country. “We are offering a more positive view of Switzerland; we don’t want it to be an open-air museum with an idealized past,” Kleiner says.