IS nationalism the cure to Covid-19? Obviously not. A vaccine is.

But nationalism does play a big part in how we deal with the coronavirus until a vaccine arrives. It is the collective identity invoked in the face of a collective action problem, because unless everyone complies with restriction orders, these orders won’t work.

It is how we make sense of the problem, even if it concerns a virus that cares little about national boundaries. This is seen in how cases and deaths are divided by nations in the news and charts. Globally, the “nation” is the bedrock of calls for people to endure, to stay at home, to look out for each other and to maintain civility in these trying times.

Through nationalism, the body politic becomes the “everybody”. In other words, we are not “people” by virtue of biology. The “of” that comes after “the people” is always more important than the idea of us being people. We are the people because we belong to something larger. That is how we are often humanised, as fellow Malaysians or fellow Muslims.

Unfortunately, that is also how people are dehumanised, such as those who are stateless or whose membership of a nation is deemed conditional and second-class.

To be sure, I am not complaining about nationalism. In a global climate where nations have turned inwards with little sign of a global leadership, there is immense comfort in the idea that we are looked after by our nation and look after each other as a nation.

Nationalism has indeed worked wonders. It has given us much-needed respite from the political turmoil since the “Sheraton Move”, where political tensions, as usual, morphed into racial tensions. As partisan insults quickly turned into a cover for racial ones, the virus wondrously drew everyone together again with a renewed sense of solidarity and purpose. Nationalism reminds us of the idea that “everyone” means every Malaysian, regardless of racial, religious or political differences.

For a while, it worked. The racist slurs of “balik India” and “balik Cina” were swapped with calls for all Malaysians to come home as the outside world looked a lot more dangerous than it used to be. But the contradiction between nationalism’s inward strength and the virus’ outward contagion remains.

It’s not that the virus infected us because we are not nationalistic enough. It is because as much as we are, our lives extend beyond the nation. Even if we are not exactly globetrotters, the things we use, the entertainment we consume, the revenue we earn – all these have global footprints. The roadmap of our trade, travel and transport is the itinerary for the virus.

But the language of nationalism has never really caught up to that aspect of our lives. For example, US President Donald Trump – who, to me, is the nationalist par excellence – not only insists on reminding everyone that the virus came from China (a fact, granted), but that it originated from a lab in Wuhan (a myth, thus far).

In this nationalist framing, the “us-them” divide of nationalism is paired with the “win-lose” logic. The virus is given both nationality (which quickly turned racial, of course) and intentionality, in that one nation created it explicitly for the suffering of another. In this world view, tragedy cannot be read as tragedy itself. Somebody’s misfortune must be someone else’s profit, even though experts, most notably Bill Gates, have long warned about the prospects of a pandemic like this.

The irony is, while the ultranationalists think that someone else is profiting or wants to profit from their misfortune, it is their nationalist zeal that exposes them to the profiting. It’s the reason why businesses that specialise in cyber-psychological warfare such as Cambridge Analytica proliferate these days.

While we are not yet seeing nationalism in such jingoistic forms in Malaysia, it’s obvious that there is a dark side to all the cosy vibes of #kitajagakita. The ease with which an anti-refugee “hate wave” is manufactured and spread indicates how vulnerable our nationalist gusto is to obfuscation, deception and manipulation by agent provocateurs.

If nationalism works best only when we unite against an “other” – someone or something that presumably has a face – I fear we are not as well-prepared as we should be for the crisis-prone decades to come. This is because none of our greatest problems, from climate change to income inequality and the Fourth Industrial Revolution, has a face, no matter what the conspiracy theorists would like us to believe.

In addition, even if nationalism has strengthened our resolve to flatten the curve, it’s not entirely certain that it can help us survive an economic crisis that is unprecedented in scale. But, recent signs have shown that some political actors are prepared to govern just by riding on the feel-good factor of nationalism. The relatively muted response to the fact that Parliament will sit for only one day in these extraordinary times suggests that some Malaysians think we can run on this surge, too.

The truth is, it’s very risky for us to run a country based on nationalist fervour, for two reasons. First, it is not in endless supply. Plus, nationalism exists in many forms, some more pernicious than others. The “good” side of it will run out as people start accounting for the economic damage of the pandemic. Some will start holding others accountable for their misery. It may begin with migrant workers and refugees, but that anger will eventually work its way into the circle of “nationals”.

If the immediate future is one of scarcity and austerity, nationalism alone cannot guarantee everyone’s well-being and sentiment is taken care of. Representative politics can, which leads to the second reason.

Nationalism cannot substitute for or be used to suspend politics. The assumption that as nationalism peaks, politics becomes merely a distraction is highly dangerous. It assumes that just because everyone is a nationalist (that’s a big if), their interests primarily lie with the nation and everyone’s interests are the same. For the former, the concept of the “nation” is too vague, and wishing away self-interest is futile. For the latter, it is simply not true, and it never will be.

Also, nationalism is itself a form of politics. Without institutional checks and balances, nationalist politics are at risk of turning into either mob or autocratic rule, or when the two are combined, totalitarianism. None is a favourable outcome and none can cure Covid-19 or the social effects it has unleashed because, if anything, they are the effects of the virus.

We must not suspend politics for the new normal. Instead, politics must adjust to the new normal. If we are a parliamentary democracy, we must continue acting like one. – May 4, 2020.

* A Forensic Science-Asian Studies hybrid, Nicholas Chan is interested in how authority is shaped, exercised, and more importantly, resisted in Southeast Asia.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.