The Invisible Filter: How Nationalism Shapes Everything You Think Is 'Normal'

From your weather app's borders to the "ancient traditions" invented last century, nationalism shapes our world in ways so subtle we rarely notice them. Join us for an eye-opening exploration of how modern nations make their power invisible (yup, not looking at people waving flags at sports events...)  — and learn practical ways to spot these patterns in your daily life.

In this episode, we unpack:

• The shocking youth of nationalism (hint: it's younger than photography)
• How your routines reinforce national boundaries
• Why museums turn ancient artefacts into "national treasures"
• The dark connection between everyday nationalism and fascism
• Practical tools to spot nationalist framing in daily life
• How to appreciate culture without nationalist baggage

Perfect for critical thinkers, activists, and anyone interested in understanding how invisible structures shape our world—and what to do about it.

Key Resources:

• "Imagined Communities" by Benedict Anderson
• "Banal Nationalism" by Michael Billig

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Chapters

• 1:19 The Construction of National Identity
• 4:46 Banal Nationalism Explained
• 7:46 Nationalism vs. Patriotism: Breaking Down the False Binary
• 9:31 What About Preserving Culture?
• 12:09 The Dark Side: Nationalism's Connection to Fascism
• 14:22 Practical Resistance: Training Your Eye
• 16:17 Reimagining Culture Beyond Borders

Transcript

Jennifer Walter: 0:00

Imagine dying for France, not for your king, not for your faith, not for your city or food on the table, but for an abstract idea called France. Sounds natural and normal today. Right, but here's the thing this idea is shockingly new. While humans have fought over religion and resources for millennia, dying for a nation only started with the French Revolution in 1789. Dying for a nation only started with the French Revolution in 1789. So we've only been killing each other over national identity for roughly 230-ish years. Cool, cool, cool cool.

Jennifer Walter: 0:36

There's a different way to think about mental health, and it starts with slowing down. Sometimes, the longest way around is the shortest way home, and that's exactly where we're taking the scenic route. Hi, I'm Jennifer Walter, host of the Scenic Route podcast. Think of me as your sociologist sister in arms and rebel with many causes. Together, we're blending critical thinking with compassion, mental health with a dash of rebellion, and personal healing with collective change. We're trading perfectionism for possibility and toxic positivity for messy growth. Each week, we're exploring the path to better mental health and social transformation. And yes, by the way, pretty crystals are totally optional. You ready to take the scenic route? Let's walk this path together.

Jennifer Walter: 1:19

So before that, no one died for Germany, it didn't exist until 1871. No one died for Italy. It has only been unified in 1861. Right before that they died for kings and gods, and cities and tribes, whatever, but nations. The concept of nations, that's actually younger than photography, and this really matters because it shows us something crucial Nations aren't natural units waiting to be discovered. They're invented, constructed and maintained through everyday practices, so subtle we barely notice them.

Jennifer Walter: 1:58

Benedict Anderson captured this perfectly in his book that came out in 18, no 18, in 1983, called Imagine Communities. He asked how do you feel connected to millions of people you've never met? Right so? And his answer to that is nations are communities that exist primarily in our imagination. I mean, if you think about it, you'll never met most of your fellow citizens. Like heck, I haven't even met my neighbor across the street. Yet you feel connected to them, or at least you're supposed to feel connected to them. You share news with them, you celebrate victories with them, you have your national holidays with them, you mourn losses with them, you cheer for the same national hockey team, all without ever seeing their face in their faces or knowing them.

Jennifer Walter: 2:47

So anderson showed how this imagination was made possible by specific historical developments, like the development of mass media, standardized languages, print capitalism, like morning newspapers, for instance, where millions of people reading the same news divided, and like the national and international sections. But this actually goes way, way deeper, right, if you next time you watch the news and the weather comes on, maybe not if like your local state news and state weather, but even there you have state lines and you have country lines. And whenever I watch the weather here in switzerland I see national borders like we've made political divisions seem I don't know as natural as rain. But the weather doesn't know borders. We've just made them feel inviolable. And here one of the very strange things about nationalism it's like wearing glasses. You see it very clearly in others, but you forget you're wearing it yourself. We notice their flags, their anthems, their excessive pride, but our own nationalism, that's just normal, that's just how things are, that's just how we are.

Jennifer Walter: 3:58

Um and I mean it gets even weirder like nation states themselves. Bizarre, right, I make it make sense. Luxembourg is teeny tiny. China is massive. Switzerland speaks four languages on a teeny tiny territory. Japan pretends to be monolingual.

Jennifer Walter: 4:14

Some were born out of ancient kingdoms, other nations, they drawn with rulers on colonial maps. And why is belgium a nation but Catalonia isn't? Or why Switzerland but not Kurdistan? And the really clever part you can't step outside nationalism. There's no neutral ground. Even being international like assumes nations, like being a citizen of the world, that's taking a position within a world of nations too.

Jennifer Walter: 4:46

And this is where michael billick's concept of banal nationalism becomes fascinating. He looks at, okay, but why? Why does it? Why does nationalism and nations seem so natural? So normal and he's talking not about the flag waving patriots, but about the quiet ways nations maintain themselves through routine practices. So ordinary we stop noticing them. So, mind, banal doesn't mean harmless. Hannah Arendt stressed this when she was talking about the banality of evil. The ordinary, the banal does not mean harmless. It can be lethal. So how does banal nationalism work?

Jennifer Walter: 5:35

Nations don't primarily maintain themselves through grand displays. Of course we have our national celebration days 1st of July, 1st of August and so on but nations are reproduced through subtle daily reminders. You already had the weather maps with borders, news divided into national and international sections, sports teams representing countries at the Olympics, id cards, currency. Anytime you need to fill out a form that asks for your nationality. Or if you visit, like a national museum, you have a 3,000 year old statue that becomes like a Greek national treasure, though Greece didn't exist when it was made. You have Egyptian mummies in the British Museum.

Jennifer Walter: 6:25

History itself gets reorganized to make today's nation seem eternal. The same goes for nation's history as it's taught in school books. Or, for example, switzerland has a fictional character from a story written by a German dude as their national hero and founding father. Make it make sense, right, and this is not about whether this guy was real ever or not, but how he is used. Or food Food is a great example too. Right, every nation claims it's national cuisine, um, but like potatoes aren't native to Ireland, uh, switzerland, sure as hell did not invent chocolate, so, but still, almost every nation claims a food as their own, and it's deeply rooted in that. They're part of storytelling. And let's not forget, right, some of the most powerful examples are the most boring. All the paperwork, right, your ID card, passport, census forms, passport controls. Each document quietly reinforces the idea that dividing humans by nationality is natural and invitable.

Jennifer Walter: 7:46

And I feel it's also really important to talk about the difference between nationalism and patriotism. I don't know, maybe the common claim is nationalism is aggressive, and I hate talking in binaries. But, like good. Nationalism is bad. Patriotism is good. It's defensive. Nationalism is exclusionary. Patriotism is about values and what we stand for, about the love of home. But here's where Billings inside again become crucial.

Jennifer Walter: 8:23

This distinction itself serves nationalist thinking. When we call our own national feelings patriotism, we're naturalizing it, we're making it seem reasonable, normal, healthy, whatever. But it's always others who are nationalists. Right, if someone I don't know um, someone where at the olympic opening ceremony and one athlete is overly proud, they show nationalist fervor. But if our sports people do this, it's patriotic pride. Same action, different labels. So the real question isn't really whether you call it nationalism or patriotism. The question is how do you, how do these feelings of national belonging get created and maintained? How do they shape how we see the world? And, most importantly as always, who benefits from this distinction? And it's whether you call it nationalism or patriotism. You're still operating within the framework of nation state. You're accepting borders, passports, national of nation-state. You're accepting borders, passports, national categories as natural parts of human organization. And here is I don't know another sidebar where it even gets more complex.

Jennifer Walter: 9:31

Well, what about protecting vulnerable cultures? And this is another like paradox of cultural protection and the world of nation states. It's almost as indigenous people face a double bind. Right, their cultures and languages often need protection from dominant forces that tried and try to eradicate them. But the tools available for this protection? They're mostly national tools like constitutional protections, language laws, official status, state recognition and so on. And yes, it's important for estonia to protect estonian or for ireland to promote irish gallic and to keep the language alive. And at the same time it's battle nationalism at work. It's both right, it's you. When indigenous communities fight for official language status, they're using nationalist framework to protect pre-national cultures. They're operating in the same system and it's not saying good or bad, it's needed. But you're operating within the same system. Right them right.

Jennifer Walter: 10:38

But the crucial distinction, as I see it, is indigenous people generally aren't claiming exclusive national ownership over a culture. They're fighting for survival within a system of nation states they didn't create. Their claims aren't about borders, but true culture and their land. They're about maintaining living traditions despite borders. Um, so one could say this reveals something important.

Jennifer Walter: 11:03

The problem isn't cultural preservation itself. The problem is how the nation state system forces cultural preservation into a nationalist framework when the only tools available are national, are nationalist tools. Even resistance to nationalism must speak in nationalist terms. So we need to ask ourselves how can we protect vulnerable cultures without falling into nationalist traps? How can we support cultural preservation without turning it into national ownership? And these aren't easy questions and I have no finite answer to this. And I have no finite answer to this. And it is crucial to bring I'm not to bring really indigenous cultures, distinctive cultures, to the table. And again, the goal isn't to deny the need for cultural protection, it's to find ways to preserve heritage that don't require drawing new borders through human connection and closing that sidebarbar, opening another sidebar, bear with me, but it kind of gets even darker.

Jennifer Walter: 12:09

Right, um, we have to talk about the relationship between nationalism and fascism and how they're different from each other. So we have nationalism and then we have fascism, but we would not have Fascism without nationalism. Does all nationalism Turn into fascism? Hell, no, but there is no fascism without nationalism. First, fascism needs the foundation Nationalism has made, has created, it needs the groundwork. It needs the groundwork nationalism has done.

Jennifer Walter: 12:44

Right, um, without nationalism making borders seem natural, how could fascists claim they need defending, without national categories and paperwork? How could they sort us from them? It's not that nationalism always leads to fascism, right. But fascism always needs nationalism's foundation. So we've seen that banal nationalism creates a natural national community, unquestioned categories of belonging, administrative divisions of humanity, stories of national uniqueness, us versus them, and also bureaucratic tools for sorting people. And fascism comes in and weaponizes these right. Natural community becomes a pure community that needs defending. Categories of belonging are categories of exclusion. The administrative division is barriers against contamination. National uniqueness becomes national superiority like a chosenness. Bureaucratic tools becomes weapons of segregation. This is crucial. Fascism doesn't create these categories from scratch. Right, it needs nationalism's groundwork. The everyday acceptance of national division is natural before it can turn those divisions lethal. So that's why understanding banal nationalism really matters. It's not just about flags and anthems, it's about seeing how ordinary practices create conditions fascism needs to emerge.

Jennifer Walter: 14:22

So how do we resist this? Well, first train your eye, awareness. Notice when ancient traditions are actually recent inventions. Spot how museums or school books make modern borders seem eternal. Watch how news naturalizes national divisions. Question when our culture claims arise. So, as a daily practice when checking the weather, notice borders and ask like why does the right need a fucking passport? In museum you can check dates and look at like how old these supposedly national treasures are. Or research traditional national dishes and their origins, notice how forms and documents, all the paperwork, make nationality seem natural. And then, of course, like ask critical questions.

Jennifer Walter: 15:24

I would say the top four are who benefits from this national story? Two, what connections are being erased? Three, which histories or whose histories get ignored get ignored. And four, whose version of culture dominates? Right in, again, the crucial part.

Jennifer Walter: 15:48

This is not about rejecting culture or tradition, absolutely not. It's about seeing how modern nations package them for power and how fascism weaponizes it. You can love your culture without claiming national ownership. You can preserve heritage without drawing borders through it. You can celebrate tradition without excluding others and you can maintain identity without nationalist frames.

Jennifer Walter: 16:17

So again, it's not about rejecting culture or tradition. It's about seeing how modern nations package them for power, because real culture flows across borders. Right, we had the Silk Road long before there were nations. Ideas traveled from village to village, from continent to continent. They didn't need visas or passport. We had foods shared by people before there were frontiers and borders. So it's not about erasing difference. We're. It's about celebrating how human culture works, through connection and not division, through flow, not borders, through exchange and not ownership.

Jennifer Walter: 17:00

So next time someone claims something is natural national heritage, or that's just how we are, how things work. Again, ask yourself what connections are being erased, what possibilities can't we see because nationalism has become invisible? Ultimately, this isn't just theory, right? It's about how we imagine human possibility and maybe, just maybe, seeing these invisible bars is the first step towards imagining a world beyond them. So there was a lot of food for thought and, as always, let me know how this episode sits with you. Question cares, comments, concerns, um, and, if you like, reach out on social media. Happy to talk about it. Until next time, see you on the CineGround. And just like that, we've reached the end of another journey together on the CineGround podcast. Thank you for spending time with us. Curious for more stories or in search of the resources mentioned in today's episode, visit us at cinegrouppodcastcom for everything you need.

Jennifer Walter: 18:15

And if you're ready to embrace your scenic route, I've got something special for you. Step off the beaten path with my scenic route affirmation card deck. It's crafted for those moments when you're seeking courage, yearning to trust your inner voice and eager to carve out a path authentically unmistakably yours. Pick your scenic route affirmation today and let it support you. Excited about where your journey might lead? I certainly am. Remember the scenic route is not just about the destination, but the experiences, learnings and joy we discover along the way. Thank you for being here and I look forward to seeing you on the scenic route again.