Pan-nationalism (from Ancient Greek πᾶν (pân) 'all' and French nationalisme 'nationalism') is a specific term, used mainly in social sciences as a designation for those forms of nationalism that aim to transcend (overcome, expand) traditional boundaries of basic or historical national identities in order to create a "higher" pan-national (all-inclusive) identity, based on various common denominators.
In relation to classical state nationalism, pan-nationalism manifests itself through various political movements that advocate the formation of "higher" (pan-national) forms of political identity, based on a regional or continental grouping of national states, such as Pan-Americanism, Pan-Africanism, Pan-Arabism, Pan-Iranism, Pan-Turkism, Pan-Semitism, and Pan-Slavism.
[1] At the heart of this development was Ján Kollár, who maintained that the Slavs were a fundamentally single people, sharing the same cultural heritage.
Pan-Slavism is another notable example of an influential ideal that never resulted in the corresponding mega-state – if Russian territory was included, it would extend from the Baltic to the Pacific (west to east) and right down to central Asia and the Caucasus/Black Sea/Mediterranean in the south.
An important exponent of this philosophy is Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, from Peru, while Bolivarianism represents a current variation on the theme.
Pan-Islamism favors the unification of all Muslims, unlike most traditional pan-nationalist movements this is not based on race or ethnicity because it has been revitalised with religion at its core.
[3] Thomas Hegghammer of the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment has outlined the emergence of "macro-nationalism" in the late Cold War era, which kept a low profile until the September 11 attacks.
Hegghammer traces the origins of modern macro-nationalism to both the Western counter-jihad movement and Islamist terrorist organisations such as al-Qaeda.
In the aftermath of the 2011 Norway attacks, he described the ideologies of perpetrator Anders Behring Breivik as "not fitting the established categories of right-wing ideology, like white supremacism, ultranationalism or Christian fundamentalism", but more akin to a "doctrine of civilisational war that represents the closest thing yet to a Christian version of Al-Qaeda".