Golus nationalism (Yiddish: גלות נאַציאָנאַליזם Golus natsionalizm after golus, Hebrew: לאומיות גולוס, romanized: Leumiyút gālūṯ), or diaspora nationalism, is a national movement of the Jewish people that argues for furthering Jewish national and cultural life in centers of large Jewish communities throughout the world while simultaneously seeking recognition for a Jewish national identity from world powers. The term golus has been understood to mean both "diaspora" and "exile."

Golus nationalism was conceived of by Nathan Birnbaum (1864–1937): the Austrian philosopher who had given Zionism its name. Although Birnbaum was an early theorist of Zionism and participated in the First Zionist Congress (1897), he broke with the movement shortly thereafter. Birnbaum began to develop a theory of pan-Judaism (Alljudentum) that embraced Jewish life in the Diaspora.

Birnbaum studied Yiddish and was interested in the degree to which Eastern European Jewry preserved its internal culture relative to that of the Western European Jewish culture in which he was raised. Birnbaum was a co-founder of the Jewish-nationalist group Kadimah, and founded and wrote for the first Zionist emancipation journal, Selbst-Emancipation. Some of his thinking is represented in two articles entitled "The Jewish Renaissance Movement" and "Jewish Autonomy."

Birnbaum was opposed to the idea that Jewish assimilation was inevitable. Instead, he was inspired by the Jews of Eastern Europe who had retained Yiddish as a language, had a robust folk culture, and banded together in recognizably distinct communities.

Birnbaum made several attempts to have a Jewish national identity recognized by state powers. In 1907, he unsuccessfully advocated for Yiddish to be included as a Jewish national language in the Austro-Hungarian census. The following year, he ran a campaign for a seat in Parliament; despite his successful campaign, he failed to take his seat owing to local government corruption. In 1910, he again attempted to have Yiddish recognized. Birnbaum felt that if he could get state recognition for elements of Jewish nationhood, he could petition for Jews to have shared control of a province in Galicia. He was encouraged by the fact that the Austro-Hungarian Empire was offering the possibility of autonomous regions to ethnic groups and nationalities.

Birnbaum also propagandized on behalf of Yiddish as a language, coining the words "Yiddishism" and "Yiddishist." He organized Yiddish events in Vienna, translate Yiddish authors into German, and in 1905 established a student organization for the furtherance of the language called Yidishe Kultur. In 1908, he organized an international conference on the Yiddish language in Czernowitz, in which different Jewish factions squared off as to whether Yiddish should be declared the official language of Jewish nationalism or instead one of several Jewish languages.

Around the 1880s, Birnbaum reportedly developed a resentment for Theodor Herzl's lack of interest in sustaining and reviving Jewish diasporic culture and favoring political strategy towards sovereignty and territory. This caused Birnbaum to diverge from the territorial Zionist ideologies of Herzl and others, and he joined the ranks of the non-territorial autonomist theorists, who argued that physical boundaries are not necessary to define a people and maintain sovereignty. Birnbaum supported a renaissance of Jewish Ashkenazi culture and language. His theories aligned with Simon Dubnow's concept of Diaspora nationalism, emphasizing a Jewish sense of unity, identity, and sovereignty across countries and international communities.

There was a division between Cultural Zionists, who were represented by Ahad Ha'am, and Political Zionists, who Theodor Herzl represented; Nathan Birnbaum's Golus nationalists were in opposition to both ideologies. Unlike the former two theories, Birnbaum's Golus nationalism did not require a territory to maintain a national identity. Birnbaum's ideas also countered Ahad Ha'am because he did not place as much significance on the Holy Land of Israel and Palestine as carrying the spirit of Judaism.