Once Upon a Time in a Nation: The Power of Narrative in Nationalism

Nationalism's power comes from storytelling. Using the power of narrative to frame your sense of self. When they can rewrite your history, they can dictate your future.

"There's always a story. It's all stories, really. The sun coming up every day is a story. Everything's got a story in it. Change the story, change the world."

Terry Pratchett - A Hat Full of Sky

Nationalist power isn't really about history or politics. It's about storytelling. It's about who gets to write the story that we tell ourselves who we are, where we came from, and where we are going. When they can rewrite your history, they can dictate your future.

Every Nationalism has a story. Some are grounded in fact, others are pure fantasy. Most are somewhere in between. All of them, in the hands of nationalist movements, become powerful tools of persuasion, rewriting the past, reframing the present, and predicting a glorious future that always seems just out of reach.

Before the crow got his tools, we told ourselves that humans were the only animals that used tools. We would be better off defining ourselves as the only creatures that tell stories.¹ We told stories before we had writing. We told stories before we had agriculture. We told stories before we had civilisation.

They give immortality to knowledge. They give structure, meaning, and purpose. They can provide order in a chaotic world, hope in the dark before dawn, and prevent children from wandering off into the black woods. Stories were the first form of cultural transmission. Without stories, we just aren't humans.

Pattern Recognition

Stories work because they follow patterns. Whether it's Shakespeare or Star Wars, every tale relies on similar structures we instinctively understand.

Over the centuries, narrative analysts have built toolkits of structural forms. I Understanding three of these models: The Five-Act Structure, The Hero's Journey, and The Seven Basic Plots, is enough to appreciate the shape and power of stories deeply.

These are subjective. Others have suggested anywhere from three to thirty-six 'basic plots'. But they work perfectly well as a model for understanding how storytelling works. Just because something is subjective doesn't stop it from being a universal truth.

The Five-Act Structure

Stories have a beginning, middle and end. The German playwright Gustav Freytag in Die Technik des Dramas² formalised a five-act structure:

• Exposition – The world is established, and the Hero is introduced.

• Rising action (Dream Stage) – The Hero dares to hope and achieves some success.

• Climax (Conflict Stage) – Disaster strikes and the Hero is tested.

• Falling action (Nightmare Stage) – All seems lost.

• Resolution – The hero triumphs (or falls in a tragedy).

The Hero's Journey

The American scholar Joseph Campbell later expanded this into the Hero's Journey, a description of ‘meta-myth’ - proposing a formula which underpins most great myths and many modern blockbusters. His is not the only model, and various versions are out there with nine, or twelve, or seventeen stages identified, but they follow the same meta-pattern.³

The Hero -

• Receives a call to adventure

• Tries to resist it

• Finds a teacher

• Faces trials, tests and enemies

• Is very nearly defeated - the downbeat second act

• Ultimately overcomes the challenge, comes back from the brink

• Returns - changed by the price he's paid, but victorious.

It's The Odyssey. It’s Theseus and the Minotaur. It's Star Wars and Harry Potter. It's The Hunger Games, The Hobbit and Shrek. It's Cinderella, Frozen, Frozen II and Wicked. It’s the New Testament.

The Seven Basic Plots

Christopher Booker developed narrative theory with The Seven Basic Plots.⁴ These may be combined, or adapted in different ways.

• The Quest (Frodo must destroy the ring.)

• Overcoming the Monster (Beowulf slays Grendel. Harry beats Voldemort)

• Rags to Riches and sometimes back to Rags -(Brewster's Millions, The Beverly Hillbillies)

• Tragedy - The protagonist causes his own downfall (Macbeth's ambition destroys him.)

• Comedy - (Twins separated at birth, fish out of water, hilarity ensues, a happy conclusion in itself or, in dark comedies, with schadenfreude)

• Rebirth - (Scrooge sees the error of his ways; Hallmark woman ditches her millionaire fiancé at Christmas for the homespun Yak-milker)

• Voyage and Return - The journey changes the protagonist, and returning to the initial setting highlights the character's growth. Going away and coming back is not the same as never leaving" Terry Pratchett.

  Rules are made to be broken, but when the novice writer faces an editor's red pen, the editor is probably nudging you closer to one of these patterns, because they work.

Whether it is The Lord of the Rings, The Lord of the Flies or The Lord of the Dance, once you know the plots, you will see them everywhere.

The plots can be combined, and twists are only twists because they subvert what we expect - like a punchline.

Combine the seven basic plots and the Hero's journey and you have a powerful model for understanding how we speak to ourselves and each other about the world. And I do mean about the real world. These patterns aren't just in fiction. They shape how we interpret actual events - sometimes, but not always, with ourselves as the protagonists.

When you can frame the narrative structure people use to process events, you control how people feel about history, identity, destiny, and others.

Folk Tales - The Volksgeist as Propaganda

Volksgeist - literally "The Spirit of the People" is a term for the story of a nation.

Nationalists are master storytellers. They use the same narrative techniques as great authors, except their goal isn't to entertain or educate but to manipulate. Nationalist movements have the same plot: the Volksgheist.

Here is the recipe for creating a Volksgeist and a nationalism movement.

• Nostalgia: Call back to an idealised, often rural, sometimes mythical past.

• National Identity: Create or adapt synthetic symbols such as traditional national dress, songs and symbology.

• Folk Heroes: Invent or adapt Mythological folk heroes that embody the national characteristics you want to embody

• Historical Wrong: Identify some great "Historical Wrong" imposed upon the nation, often by an identified scapegoat, that is why things are no longer 'great' now.

• Offer Belonging: Create a nationalist identity movement that rallies around correcting this historical wrong, offering a group identity recognised to each other through the synthetic symbology - the true people of the nation and everyone else.

The Volksgheist is the prologue, it sets the scene. It defines the framing. Then - the curtain lifts, and we are presented with the leader in the role of "Hero Protagonist".

Here is the chosen one. They wish they didn't need to, but they have seen the historical wrong done to their people and must reluctantly answer the call to fix it. They must face the trials, tests and setbacks of those enemies of the people who seek to stop them. Sometimes real defeats - in a referendum, prison, exile or electoral defeat. But that's just part of the story; that downbeat second act is needed for the payoff of ultimate victory that is always just out of sight, around the next corner, one more push, one more donation, as long as you keep the faith in the Hero…

And it feels familiar.

It feels right.

It feels - to quote both Thanos and Nicola Sturgeon - "inevitable."

Case Studies: Volksgeists in Action

We can see this pattern repeating across nationalist movements. Let's get it out of the way and start with Hitler and Germany first. I want to say, though, I am not writing about 'Fascism' per se. But Nationalism. All Fascists are nationalists, but not all nationalist movements are Fascist. That's a different discussion.

Case Study Germany

Nostalgia:

The Brothers Grimm had collected fairy tales to deliberately create a shared German Volksgeist culture before Germany was ever a unified country.⁵ This was a deliberate attempt to forge a national identity. The Nazis called back to a mythical 'Volk' - The pure-blooded, hardworking German peasant, connecting spiritually 'blood and soil' to the "Fields, Farms & Forests".⁶ The very idea of the "Third Reich" was about calling back to an imagined Glory of the First Reich - the Holy Roman Empire, when 'Germany' dominated Europe for 1000 years (962-1806), and reversing the historical wrong of the fall of the Second Reich, of German unification and Imperial might - 1871-1918.

Synthetic National Identity:

Nazi Propaganda glorified small farmers, rural peasant cottages, traditional folk tales, and Thingstätte - open-air performances of myths and folktales. Many of the folktales were rewritten to remove 'Jewish' and 'Foreign' elements.⁷

Folk Heroes

German Nationalists reached back into the pre-Christian past, promoting heroes such as "Arminius" ( Herman the German), who had slaughtered the Romans at Teutoburg. Also to the 'Teutonic Knights' who converted the pagans of Prussia, the Nazi' iron cross' was the Teutonic knight cross.

Historical Wrong

The Great Historical wrong to be undone was the Treaty of Versailles from the end of the First World War, which was framed as being too harsh and very unfair to Germany and blamed for the fall of the Second Reich, the creation of the weak Weimar Republic, and its Hyperinflation.

Offer Belonging

There was a sophisticated design to create Emotional, Social, and Ritual unity, a 'Total Community' called Volksgemeinschaft.⁸ People were first given a sense of shared identity around a shared enemy. The Nuremberg laws, stripping Jews of citizenship, would define who was true 'Volk'. Roma, the disabled, LGBTQ, communists and other Political Opponents were dehumanised. Participation in many Volk activities was mandatory, and exclusion of others created tighter bonds in the 'in-crowd' - Hitler Youth and German Girls groups were conditioned with uniforms, songs and indoctrination to be loyal to the Führer and group over individual ambition.

Case Study: Scottish Nationalism

The Scottish nationalist Volksgeist is particularly illustrative, and one I'm well familiar with, living in Scotland and witnessing the rise and fall of Scottish Nationalist populism around the 2014 independence referendum.

Nostalgia: An Idealised Past

Scotland is reimagined as a nation of fierce, Celtic independent warriors, never conquered by Rome⁹, who were so terrified of the Scots that they built Hadrian's wall to keep them out. In actual fact, the Roman Empire extended up to the Antonine Wall across Central Scotland, putting most of the modern population within its boundary. There are many other forts, roads and structures. I know, as there's a Vespasian-era fortlet in the field next door, and the road past our house was originally Roman.

This historical past also reframes Scotland as a victim of English colonisation rather than a coloniser. However, Scotland had attempted to create a South American colony before the Act of Union with the 'Darien Scheme'.¹⁰Scots disproportionately ran and administered the British Empire, with Scottish colonial thinkers driving the idea of a 'civilising mission' as a moral defence of colonisation.

Synthetic National Identity

A synthetic identity of kilt, tartan, clan badges, bagpipes, haggis, and shortbread was created for tourists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.¹¹ In the 1930s, Scottish Nationalist writer Hugh MacDiarmid, founder of The Scotland Party, which became the Scottish National Party (SNP), created a language literally called "Synthetic Scots" - not an authentic dialect, but a Scottish-sounding dialect to write in.¹²

Folk Heroes

Nationalists call back to William Wallace as a hero of Scottish Independence. However, when cosplaying him, they tend to follow the 'Braveheart' lead of Woad (from several hundred years before him) and Tartan Kilts (from several hundred years after him).¹³ Also lionised are "Robert the Bruce" ( actually born in Essex, the First lord of Tottenham, lands in Carlisle, first invaded Scotland with an English Army before switching sides opportunistically, and once the king of Scotland married his son into the English royal family to secure an alliance).

A Great Historical Wrong:

The 1707 Act of Union, which made Scotland and England into a single country, was allegedly forced upon Scotland by English bribery of corrupt nobles. Scotland has been exploited for its resources by its English colonists ever since.

That's a gross oversimplification. The Crowns of England and Scotland had already been united for a century. Scottish thinkers had been promoting the idea of union for nearly 200 years in treaties such as David Hume's "De Unione Insulae Britannicae", and Scotland - wanting trading access to the growing British Empire, applied for Union three times before it happened.

Modern 'Great Wrongs' are also invented - Churchill, who was voted MP for Dundee twice and fought in the trenches in a Scottish Regiment in WWI - is accused of sending in tanks to George Square¹⁴ ( the main square in Central Glasgow) to put down a workers' revolt. While this has even been repeated in Scottish History books, it simply never happened. Photographs supposedly of the event actually show a tank on a fundraising tour for war bonds, with an interested or at least unconcerned crowd of bystanders.

In most recent times, the 2014 Independence referendum, which rejected Independence, has also been framed as a 'historical wrong'. Russian disinformation framed a 'stolen vote' narrative that has been seen as a precursor to other attacks on faith in democracy, such as the 2020 US election.¹⁵

Offer Belonging:

The nationalist movement, while in the minority, has also been the most visible - in badges, marches and branding. Following the 2014 vote, Nationalist politicians described the campaign as 'civic and joyous' while the reality spoke of families divided, friendships lost, and a government distracted from the day job.

Case Study: Make America Great Again

Nostalgia:

Trump and the Republicans call back to a mythic American Golden Age when America was "Great" - the leader of the free world, the good guys with the entrepreneurial wild-west spirit. - but they seem reluctant to put an actual year on 'when America was great".¹⁶

When pressed, some said back to the post-war period, which was prosperous, and on average, people were well off. Some even suggest the Founding Fathers' time.

As always, the shine tarnishes under inspection. When they want to go back to the 1950s, they have the cis-white middle-class Christian family in mind. It's not good for anyone else, and even then - the movement's leaders don't want to pay the wage levels or have the high tax rates that actually made it possible.

It also means reversing civil rights, gay rights, and women's rights.

For some, it's not enough to merely go back to a time when women couldn't have a bank account, and races were segregated. They think America was last great at the time of the founding fathers when people were enslaved, and women couldn't vote.

National Identity:

America was already awash with Nationalist symbology - MAGA has adopted The Stars and Stripes, with Trump memorably hugging the flag on stage. While the Second presidency of Trump is acting unconstitutionally and seeking to change the Constitution by royal decree, they simultaneously used the calligraphy of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence in their propaganda.

Folk Heroes:

The archetype of the lone cowboy - self-reliant, armed, standing up to bad guys, has been adopted by many MAGA, sometimes along with 'self-made' billionaires, who must be smarter than everyone else because they are rich.

In the cowboy mould, Kyle Rittenhouse is seen by many in the MAGA movement as a defender of property and law during unrest and a proponent of the need for Second Amendment rights.¹⁷ But the key' folk hero' hogging the spotlight is Trump himself, positioning himself as a fighter against the "deep state," media, and paedophile elites. In his interregnum, the Q-branch of MAGA built up myths that he was still actually president, pulling the strings, and biding his time in the shadows so he could finally bring down the satanic pizza mills.

Historical Wrong:

The great historical wrong of Trumpism is the 'stolen' 2020 election¹⁸; the slightly quieter, less often spoken 'historical wrong' was the voting in of a black president with Barak Obama. That fuelled 'great replacement' conspiracies and demographic panics, and there is a theory (hope) that what we are seeing now is an "Extinction burst" of white supremacy.

Offer Belonging:

The MAGA movement has offered a sense of belonging to people who have genuinely been left behind.¹⁹

One key factor in understanding the psychology of MAGA is the concept of identity politics. For many supporters, identifying as a “MAGA” follower has become central to their sense of self and belonging. By aligning themselves with the beliefs and values of the movement, individuals can feel a sense of camaraderie with like-minded individuals and a shared purpose in working towards a common goal. This sense of identity can be reinforced by the rhetoric and messaging of President Trump, who often speaks directly to his base and validates their beliefs and concerns.

Frontier.com 2024

With a bit of empathy, you can see that Blue-collar and rust belt workers have been left behind by much modern progress and do feel talked down to by coastal liberal' elites'. I'm not saying at all that Trump's nationalist fascism is the answer - he is and will make things WORSE for this core vote, but the underlying emotions he is taking advantage of do have a grounding in truth. As we saw in Scotland, branding and belonging are important - the Red Hats, Trump Bumper Stickers, the Rallies and marches.

Each of these case studies shows a deliberate act of mythmaking, designed to manufacture unity in shared grievance. But, like a tragedy, in the use of this nationalist narrative, there are the seeds of a fatal, hubristic flaw that sows the seeds of their own downfall. I call it the ‘second act trap.’

The Second Act Trap: Why Nationalists Can Never Really Win

When considering a narrative analysis of nationalism, I was struck by one key insight: they are permanently trapped in the downbeat Act Two.

In traditional storytelling, the Hero suffers a major setback before rallying for a final triumph. But Nationalism thrives on the setback stage because the struggling myth of being oppressed keeps the movement alive. The show must go on.

This has two profound implications.

1. Emerging Nationalist movements are resilient against defeats and setbacks.

Like a self-sealing conspiracy theory, where the lack of evidence is evidence of a coverup, a setback or defeat is merely proof of the Monster to be overcome, and a rallying cry for just one more vote, one more push, one more fight, one more donation, one more vote.

2. The narrative structure means they can never admit they have finally, actually, won.

To maintain the illusion of their grievance narrative, they must always seize defeat from the jaws of victory. Even in victory, they must remain parties of opposition to oppressors, real or imagined. Their power rests in their being the underdog, being persecuted. The populist voice of the people against the elite, and they must maintain this deception even when they are the billionaire elite.

Because if they have won, then they should have defeated the enemy and solved their voters problems - But when Nationalism wins, on the whole, it fails to deliver.

Brexiteers won in 2016. The UK left the EU, and Brexiteers took over the ruling Tory party. Yet they have delivered zero Brexit' benefits'. Prices have gone up. Trade deals not appeared. Immigration risen. They are still banging the same anti-immigration drum, saying Brexit was betrayed or never really delivered, and that's why the sunlit uplands have never arrived.

True, Scottish Nationalists did lose the 2014 referendum - but they have been in power in Scotland since 2007, with total control over Health, Education, Justice & Transport - all of which lurch from crisis to crisis.

But then they never have to deliver on them because their base is constitutionally defined by the claim that Independence is needed to improve things. Indeed, it is against their interest for things to improve without Independence. Paradoxically, while they are in power, their only hope of growing support for Independence from the UK is to increase the number of Scots who feel their lives are not getting better.

When things do improve in Scotland, it is due to the wise and steady hands of the Scottish Government. When things get worse, even when it is things that are entirely under nationalist control, the fault lies with Westminster.

Donald Trump has won his second term. He has failed to reduce egg prices. He has failed to stop the Ukraine war in 24 hours. He is working to deliver project 2025 - which he said he knew nothing about; he has delivered, haphazardly, on his tariffs - however, none of this translates into delivering for his base beyond the feeling of 'owning the libs'.

If he does admit failures, they are either passed off as victories - he meant all along to crash the stock market and reverse the tariffs because he is playing five-dimensional chess, or they will be blamed on a new level of deep state - the judiciary branch, which he is already going after with the FBI arresting judges.

If they were to truly win, the story would end. When the story ends, there is no movement or struggle. With no struggle, there is no basis for their power.

They wrap it all up in flags and anthems and tell you it's destiny.

All the world's a stage -realise you are not in the audience.

Nationalism thrives because it tells a compelling story. But stories aren't reality. Real life doesn't have hero protagonists and evil antagonists. The Hero of a documentary about brown bears is the villain in a documentary about Salmon.

The rules of Storytelling, like Chekov’s Gun don’t actually apply. You can see a gun hanging on the wall, and it doesn’t have to be shot.

“If you show a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it must be fired by the second or third act.”

Checkov’s Gun” - Gorky, Reminiscences of Anton Chekhov, 1914;

It doesn't have three-act structures or inevitable endings. It's complex, messy, and full of contradictions. But if they can suck you into following the plot, then you are like a passive audience.

So the real question isn't: how does this story play out?

It is: How can we break the fourth wall and go off script?

Once people stop believing in the nationalist narrative, the spell is broken. And maybe then, we can start telling a better story—one based not on myths, but on reality.

Don't just sit in the audience.

Nationalism survives because it tells a story and it traps people inside a narrative arc. They sell us fake Golden ages. Plastic traditions. Airbrushed heroes. Easy enemies. They wrap it all up in flags and anthems and tell you it's destiny.

But every part of the Volksgeist can be cracked open — if you ask the right questions.

• When exactly was this nostalgic golden age - what was the reality?

• How authentic are these 'traditions' and this national identity? What has been manufactured?

• Was the Hero so heroic? What is the myth and the messiness?

• Is the "great wrong" so simple? Did it even happen? There are two sides to every story.

• Who gets left out of the "we the people"? Who has been framed as the enemy and why, and what different stories can we share to break these barriers?

Nationalists want you to feel you are in their show, under their direction:

One plot. One Hero. One Ending.

It’s time for audience participation.

It’s time to heckle.

It's time to rush the stage and go off script.

1. Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012) https://archive.org/details/storytellinganim00jona

2. Gustav Freytag, Die Technik des Dramas (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1863).

3. Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949),https://archive.org/download/Birdsfrogsandmirrors/JosephCampbell%20-%20The%20Hero%20With%20a%20Thousand%20Faces%20Commemorative%20Edition.pdf

4. Christopher Booker, The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories (London: Continuum, 2004) https://www.amazon.com/Seven-Basic-Plots-Tell-Stories/dp/0826480373?tag=morewretchtha-21

5. Jack Zipes, The Brothers Grimm: From Enchanted Forests to the Modern World (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781003209478/brothers-grimm-jack-zipes

6. George L. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (New York: Howard Fertig, 1964).

7. Levi E. Levi, Music in the Third Reich (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-349-24582-6

8. Lisa Pine, Education in Nazi Germany (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2007),

9. https://www.livebreathescotland.com/why-didnt-the-romans-invade-scotland/

10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darien_scheme

11. https://www.napoleon-series.org/research/society/c_scottishidentity.html

12. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6596163-macdiarmid

13. https://www.ranker.com/list/historical-mistakes-errors-and-inaccuracies-in-braveheart/machk

14. https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/glasgow-tanks-george-square/

15. https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/incident/research-suggests-russian-government-connected-bots-and-trolls-sought-to-sway-scotland-referendum/

16. https://eu.palmbeachpost.com/story/opinion/columns/2025/04/04/trump-maga-republican-racism-jim-crow-obama/82756934007/

17. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/kyle-rittenhouse-right-wing-violence-1257856/

18. https://theconversation.com/why-do-millions-of-americans-believe-the-2020-presidential-election-was-stolen-from-donald-trump-224016

19. https://frothier.com/the-psychology-of-maga-why-some-americans-stand-firmly-behind-trumps-vision/