From Bicentennial to Semiquincentennial: A Tale of Two Celebrations and the “New” American Nationalism

This commentary traces the increasing polarisation of American nationalism over the past fifty years by surveying the memory politics surrounding two major recent historical commemorations: the 1976 Bicentennial and the upcoming 2026 Semiquincentennial. The 1976 Bicentennial, taking place in the wake of Watergate and Vietnam, attempted to restore faith in a wounded republic and its institutions by wrapping civic renewal in spectacle. The commemoration imagined unity as both possible and desirable, enfolding heterogeneous stories of America into an impression – however misleading – of unity in diversity. Half a century later, however, the Semiquincentennial appears both more hesitant and more partisan, exacerbating rather than attempting to paper over the fractures of a fiercely divided political landscape. It stands symptomatic, I argue, of what Schertzer and Woods have recently termed the ‘new’ nationalism; a politics increasingly preoccupied with boundary-making, warding off perceived cultural threats, and protecting contested identities amid a world of flux. Ultimately, both commemorations offer a unique lens on the transformation of patriotism itself, revealing how the Trump Presidency has both exposed and intensified longer-standing fractures in conceptions of American citizenship, identity, and nationhood.