Jingoism is nationalism in the form of aggressive and proactive foreign policy, such as a country's advocacy for the use of threats or actual force, as opposed to peaceful relations, in efforts to safeguard what it perceives as its national interests. [1] Colloquially, jingoism is excessive bias in judging one's own country as superior to others – an extreme type of nationalism (cf. chauvinism and ultranationalism).
The chorus of a song by the songwriter G. W. Hunt, popularized by the singer G. H. MacDermott – which was commonly sung in British pubs and music halls around the time of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78 – gave birth to the term. [2] [3] [4] The lyrics included this chorus:
We don't want to fight but by Jingo if we do
We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too
We've fought the Bear before, and while we're Britons true
The Russians shall not have Constantinople!
The capture of Constantinople was a long-standing Russian strategic aim, since it would have given the Russian Navy, based in the Black Sea, unfettered access to the Mediterranean Sea through the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles (known as the "Turkish Straits"); conversely, the British were determined to block the Russians, in order to protect their own access to India. At the time when the above song was composed and sung, the Russians were nearing their goal, through the Treaty of San Stefano; eventually, the British were able to push the Russians back by means of diplomatic pressure and the threat of war.
The phrase "by Jingo" was a minced oath, scarcely documented in writing, used in place of "by Jesus".
Use of the specific term "jingoism" stems from its coinage by prominent British radical George Holyoake, as a political label, in a letter to the Daily News on 13 March 1878. [5] [6] [7]
In the 1880s, Henry Hyndman, leader of the Social Democratic Federation, turned against internationalism, and promoted a version of Socialism mixed with nationalism and antisemitism, [8] even to the point of attacking fellow Socialist Eleanor Marx in antisemitic terms, noting that she had "inherited in her nose and mouth the Jewish type from Karl Marx himself". When taking part in the breakaway group which founded the Socialist League, Eleanor Marx wrote polemics in which she characterized Hyndman and his followers as "The Jingo Party". [9]
British artillery major-general Thomas Bland Strange, one of the founders of the Canadian Army and one of the divisional commanders during the 1885 North-West Rebellion, was an eccentric and temperamental soldier who gained the nickname "Jingo Strange" and titled his 1893 autobiography Gunner Jingo's Jubilee. [10] [11]
Probably the first uses of the term in the U.S. press occurred in connection with the proposed annexation of Hawaii in 1893, after a coup led by foreign residents, mostly Americans, and assisted by the U.S. minister in Hawaii, overthrew the constitutional monarchy and declared a republic. Republican president Benjamin Harrison and Republicans in the U.S. Senate were frequently accused of jingoism in the Democratic press for supporting annexation. [12]
Theodore Roosevelt was frequently accused of jingoism. In an article on 23 October 1895 in The New York Times , Roosevelt stated, "There is much talk about 'jingoism'. If by 'jingoism' they mean a policy in pursuance of which Americans will with resolution and common sense insist upon our rights being respected by foreign powers, then we are 'jingoes'." [13]
In Homage to Catalonia , George Orwell decries the tactics of political journalists and wishes for introduction of aeroplanes into war in order to finally see "a jingo with a bullet hole in him." [14]
The policy of appeasement toward Hitler led to satirical references to the disappearance of such jingoistic attitudes when facing German aggression. A cartoon by E. H. Shepard titled "The Old-Fashioned Customer" appeared on 28 March 1938 issue of Punch . Set in a record shop, John Bull asks the record seller (Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain): "I wonder if you've got a song I remember about not wanting to fight, but if we do... something, something, something ... we've got the money too?". On the wall is a portrait of Lord Salisbury. [15]
The rhetoric of North Korea has been described as jingoist. [16] [17] [18]
Eduard Bernstein was a German social democratic Marxist theorist and politician. A member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), Bernstein had held close association to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, but he began to identify what he believed to be errors in Marxist thinking and began to criticize views held by Marxism when he investigated and challenged the Marxist materialist theory of history. He rejected significant parts of Marxist theory that were based upon Hegelian metaphysics and rejected the Hegelian perspective of an immanent economic necessity to socialism.
Jenny Julia Eleanor Marx, sometimes called Eleanor Aveling and known to her family as Tussy, was the English-born youngest daughter of Karl Marx. She was herself a socialist activist who sometimes worked as a literary translator. In March 1898, after discovering that her partner Edward Aveling had secretly married the previous year, she poisoned herself at the age of 43.
George Jacob Holyoake was an English secularist, co-operator and newspaper editor. He coined the terms secularism in 1851 and "jingoism" in 1878. He edited a secularist paper, the Reasoner, from 1846 to June 1861, and a co-operative one, The English Leader, in 1864–1867.
Thomas Bland Strange, known as 'Gunner Jingo', was a British officer noted for his service with the Canadian Militia during the North-West Rebellion of 1885. As a Royal Artillery officer posted to Canada, Strange was instrumental in establishing the country’s fledgeling artillery regiments following Canadian Confederation and has been referred to as the ‘Father of Canadian Artillery’.
Edward Bibbins Aveling was an English comparative anatomist and popular spokesman for Darwinian evolution, atheism and socialism. He was also a playwright and actor.
Gilbert Hastings MacDermott was an English comic singer or lion comique, who was one of the biggest stars of the Victorian English music hall. He performed under the name of The Great MacDermott, and was well known for his rousing rendition of the song known from its chorus as "By Jingo!".
Henry Hyde Champion was a socialist journalist and activist, regarded as one of the leading spirits behind the formation of the Independent Labour Party. Up to 1893, he lived and worked in Great Britain, moving after that date to Australia.
National communism is a term describing various forms in which Marxism–Leninism and socialism has been adopted and/or implemented by leaders in different countries using aspects of nationalism or national identity to form a policy independent from communist internationalism. National communism has been used to describe movements and governments that have sought to form a distinctly unique variant of communism based upon distinct national characteristics and circumstances, rather than following policies set by other socialist states, such as the Soviet Union.
The expression by Jingo is a minced oath that appeared rarely in print, but which may be traced as far back as to at least the 17th century in a transparent euphemism for "by Jesus". The OED attests the first appearance in 1694, in an English edition of the works of François Rabelais as a translation for the French par Dieu!.
Left-wing nationalism or leftist nationalism is a form of nationalism which is based upon national self-determination, popular sovereignty, and left-wing political positions such as social equality. Left-wing nationalism can also include anti-imperialism and national liberation movements. Left-wing nationalism often stands in contrast to right-wing politics and right-wing nationalism.
The Socialist League was an early revolutionary socialist organisation in the United Kingdom. The organisation began as a dissident offshoot of the Social Democratic Federation of Henry Hyndman at the end of 1884. Never an ideologically harmonious group, by the 1890s the group had turned from socialism to anarchism, and disbanded in 1901.
Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian novel and cautionary tale by English writer George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final book completed in his lifetime. Thematically, it centres on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance and repressive regimentation of people and behaviours within society. Orwell, a democratic socialist, modelled the authoritarian state in the novel on the Soviet Union in the era of Stalinism, and Nazi Germany. More broadly, the novel examines the role of truth and facts within societies and the ways in which they can be manipulated.
Socialist patriotism is a form of patriotism promoted by Marxist–Leninist movements. Socialist patriotism promotes people living within Marxist–Leninist countries to adopt a "boundless love for the socialist homeland, a commitment to the revolutionary transformation of society [and] the cause of communism". Marxist–Leninists claim that socialist patriotism is not connected with nationalism, as Marxists and Marxist–Leninists denounce nationalism as a bourgeois ideology developed under capitalism that sets workers against each other. Socialist patriotism is commonly advocated directly alongside proletarian internationalism, with communist parties regarding the two concepts as compatible with each other. The concept has been attributed by Soviet writers to Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin.
Internationalism is a political principle that advocates greater political or economic cooperation among states and nations. It is associated with other political movements and ideologies, but can also reflect a doctrine, belief system, or movement in itself.
The British Socialist Party (BSP) was a Marxist political organisation established in Great Britain in 1911. Following a protracted period of factional struggle, in 1916 the party's anti-war forces gained decisive control of the party and saw the defection of its pro-war right wing. After the victory of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia at the end of 1917 and the termination of the First World War the following year, the BSP emerged as an explicitly revolutionary socialist organisation. It negotiated with other radical groups in an effort to establish a unified communist organisation, an effort which culminated in August 1920 with the establishment of the Communist Party of Great Britain. The youth organisation the Young Socialist League was affiliated with the party.
Henry Mayers Hyndman was an English writer, politician and socialist.
The Social Democratic Federation (SDF) was established as Britain's first organised socialist political party by H. M. Hyndman, and had its first meeting on 7 June 1881. Those joining the SDF included William Morris, George Lansbury, James Connolly and Eleanor Marx. However, Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx's long-term collaborator, refused to support Hyndman's venture. Many of its early leading members had previously been active in the Manhood Suffrage League.
Proletarian internationalism, sometimes referred to as international socialism, is the perception of all proletarian revolutions as being part of a single global class struggle rather than separate localized events. It is based on the theory that capitalism is a world-system and therefore the working classes of all nations must act in concert if they are to replace it with communism.
George William Hunt, known in later life as 'Jingo' Hunt, was an English writer of music hall songs, best known for "MacDermott's War Song" also known as the "Jingo Song".
Adolphe Smith Headingley (1846–1924) was a British left-wing political writer. Half-French, Smith Headingley was a member of the First International and took part in the Paris Commune. In 1877–78, he wrote and published the magazine series Street Life in London with photographer John Thomson, to raise awareness of the plight of the city's poor. Smith Headingley played a key role in organising the 1882 International Trades Union Congress and served as an interpreter at successive conferences from 1886 to 1905. It was Smith Headingley that, in the 1890s, popularised the singing of the socialist anthem "The Red Flag" to the tune of "O Tannenbaum".
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Quotations related to Jingoism at Wikiquote
The dictionary definition of jingoism at Wiktionary