MadMonk wrote:I've been reflecting on nationalism, ethnic identity and their relationship with colonialism, for and against. The most obvious thing that strikes me is context is everything, and the dichotomy between the oppressed and their oppressors is never that simple. Let me give you an example from my own neck of the woods.
Swedish nationalism was born, supposedly, from the joined desire of being free from Danish rule. It's myths and ethos emerging in the late 15th - early 16th centuries, culminating in the crowning of our 'founding father' Gustav Vasa in 1523 of the modern day Kingdom of Sweden. Following this, Sweden spent the next two centuries at war with virtually all our neighbors. Founding an empire, commiting what can only be described in modern terms as war crimes and genocides. During the Second Northern War, the Swedish invasion of modern day Poland was given its own name; the Swedish Deluge (1655-1660). Between a third and half of all Poles were massacred and enormous amounts of wealth was stolen. To this day, its not Germany or Russia that is denounced in the Polish national anthem.
I honestly don't know precisely what I want to say to this. The desire of breaking ethnic or tribal loyalties in favour of creating something else is a task easier said than done. The claim of anti-imperalism from German national socialists or Japanese imperialists was never the dismantling of colonialism, mearly replacing it with their own.
Precisely MadMonk. Great post.
The reality is nationalism is a myth. How much in common does the average citizen who is unknown walking down the street in NYC with some other person who they never lived with or talked to or know? Yet both of them are mythical people. New Yorkers or Americans. And the state says they have to go to war to defend the interests of the state.
During tribal times you had people who ate together, hunted together, roamed the land together, did everything together. None were strangers. If some enemy came in to threaten your group? You had no difficulty identifying who the enemy was and who your tribe was. You fought for the survival and rights to eat and drink water and roam freely and hunt etc for your tribe.
The Nation State that is about millions upon millions has to use myths about having common interests and obligations. Mainly because the state is far more expansive, economically powerful and so on. So the myth is about rights and responsibilities to the state.
That is what nation states are about. Borders, security, immigration laws and regulations, and everything else that is about citizen rights and responsibilities and obligations. Like paying state and federal taxes, voting rights and so on. It still is MYTH though. Who decides what is truly part of your family or tribe? For most humans it is a fairly reduced amount of humans. Blood family, neighbors, friends, known people whom you see every day. Most people recognize about 25 to 150 faces at a time. Beyond that it is difficult.
So going to war to defend some generic unknown strangers is kind of myth based only. You got to convince that there is a sense of commonly shared history, land, and there are interests worth defending.
But if you are truly objective? All human beings are related to you. Otherwise you could not understand them. Not through translators or interpreters, or through their human needs like eating, sleeping, drinking or doing their bodily functions. To say they are somehow not human....is the problem. To say they are so different as to warrant dehumanizing them in order for some socially constructed power play to play out favoring one socioeconomic group over another is where lies and manipulations come into play.
The reality is that humans get to adulthood in good health and able to reproduce not because of wars and hatred, but because most human societies have to cooperate with each other and help educate, feed, clothe, and nurture the people within their immediate families. Cooperation and sharing are actually the foundation of human survival as a species. Not war and destruction, genocide and fear and hatred.
Many people who fear not being in a nation run by some notion of MYTHOLOGICAL superiority keep themselves awake at night because instead of seeing their own humanity in the many? They only can accept it in the most limited way possible. Limited thinking is a serious defect of racism. It is a defect of a class-run society where the top elite hold on to power with violence only as a backup because they do not want to share and commit to cooperation in society. The only security they know is myopic small and ego-driven. People of less expansive consciousness. Also a defect in their way of thinking.
I liked your explanations MadMonk.
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