61–70 of 91 posts
Boy oh boy if only I could make more people read this. So many people in India just conflate patriotism with nationalism and it has become a fashion to brand any patriotic talk as "nationalistic". And they assume they are right because they think great people of past agree.
I googled "nationalism", and it's defined as "patriotic feeling". What do you think the difference is, according to your definition?
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Very well said. Along the same line of thinking, I'd like to point out a few things from the article that were a bit of a revelation for me: "As the nearest existing equivalent I have chosen the word ‘nationalism’, but it will be seen in a moment that I am not using it in quite the ordinary sense, if only because the emotion I am speaking about does not always attach itself to what is called a nation — that is, a sin…
That's all academic. Current nationalists base their 'nation' on skin color and religion: white and Christian (though the religious aspect is sometimes less emphasized), like ISIS'/Daesh's nationalism based on Islam. You can read people advocating it in HN, just like you can read many attempts to whitewash it. The endlessly repeated lesson of history is that if human rights are not universal, if you accept the nation…
That's somewhat true only in a very narrow world of USA and ISIS. In most of the world, nationalism is based on very different terms.
> One step this way, I love them; one step the other way, I oppose them? It's absurd.
Nah. Nationalism doesn't mean opposing anybody. It's belonging to community and working for it's greater good.
> Finally, nationalism is an obsession of a small group imposed on others.
Most people don't care about any political, societal or any other philosophical discourses. They just follow few people who are interested in that kind of stuff. As far as I looked all revolutions were imposed by a small group of concerned citizens on the rest of the community. I'm yet to find an exception where majority people truly believed in the original idea from day 1. They just followed people who seemed worthy.
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Why, how? In what sense?
These are exactly the questions one begins one's path to enlightenment with.
You want me start my journey towards "enlightenment" or would you elaborate why you mean by what you quoted?
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Why, how? In what sense?
The meaning is that scoundrels, when confronted with evidence of their unanswerable crimes, will instead answer a different question: "Do you support some unquestionably virtuous cause?" This is the reason that that runners of big cons typically give very generously to charities. See Anthony Trollope's "The Way We Live Now".
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Orwell is being obtuse when he says "nationalism." What he meant is some flavour of what we'd call "ideologist" today, whether or not the ideology has much to do with nations or nation states. Communism was a major political movement all over europe (and the world) at the time. Most labour movements considered themselves communists. Anglo-American liberalism was the biggest ideological faction, but Orwell doesn't see…
But it's not just Communism, it's Russia itself. I see it even today among some members of our national Communist Party (which was historically Stalinist). They not only irrationally¹ defended the USSR, as they transferred that to current Russia and Putin. It truly boggles the mind. And they are not Russians, or particularly care about the land or the people, it's a support of the Russian nation specifically. ¹ By ir…
As eastern european, it was very sad to meet fellow europeans who didn't like that my country got away from monstrosity that was USSR and couldn't care about suffering of people as long as it helped to move forward their idolised ideology. Meanwhile they pretended to be "progressive" and caring about "common man" whatever that is...
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> Sure, but this doesn't address the phenomenon of why actual (dictionary) nationalism has become synonymous with racism/Nazism. Because it was an extreme example, and those tend to dominate further discussion. Plus nationalism (even in the legit patriotism version) has fallen out of favor in the age of globalism, so everyone who wants to follow the cultural party line feels free to compare it to Nazism. > If anythin…
> Because it was an extreme example, and those tend to dominate further discussion. I'm sorry, I'm not understanding your line of thinking. What is an extreme example? And this explains what (I'm referring to "because....")? > Plus nationalism (even in the legit patriotism version) has fallen out of favor in the age of globalism, so everyone who wants to follow the cultural party line feels free to compare it to Nazi…
Sorry, can you state your original question more clearly? It seems obvious to me which is the extreme example I was referring to, and how it answers your question -- besides, I even quoted the part I was replying to.
You asked about how "the phenomenon of why actual (dictionary) nationalism has become synonymous with racism/Nazism" could be addressed.
My answer is that the reason actual (dictionary) nationalism has become synonymous with racism/Nazism is because Nazism was an extreme example of nationalism, and people tend to use extreme examples when discussing a phenomenon.
Plus, racism/Nazism have very ugly connotations, so it makes sense to associate nationalism with those phenomena, in an era when nationalism is in disfavor in favor of globalization.
>No disagreement here, but if this is the case, are people simply unable to see this in themselves? Do they intuitively (as seems to be the case) know not to reply to any questions that might broach that particular possibility?
Yes.
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The distinction doesn't work very well as phrased here. It's too easy to convince oneself that I am a patriot, and they are nationalists. So it ultimately just becomes another tribal marker.
The two things are separate even if nationalists try to use patriotism to justify their beliefs.
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> Because it was an extreme example, and those tend to dominate further discussion. I'm sorry, I'm not understanding your line of thinking. What is an extreme example? And this explains what (I'm referring to "because....")? > Plus nationalism (even in the legit patriotism version) has fallen out of favor in the age of globalism, so everyone who wants to follow the cultural party line feels free to compare it to Nazi…
> I'm sorry, I'm not understanding your line of thinking. What is an extreme example? And this explains what (I'm referring to "because....")? Sorry, can you state your original question more clearly? It seems obvious to me which is the extreme example I was referring to, and how it answers your question -- besides, I even quoted the part I was replying to. You asked about how "the phenomenon of why actual (dictionar…
I mean, this is certainly plausible, but I don't think it's that simple. There are all sorts of examples of degrees of one thing or another, yet is there any other example where a major portion of the public suddenly lost all perspective to the degree that they believe things that are literally incorrect (and mock those who are not)? It's not just that people are exaggerating things, the fundamental beliefs are such that it is considered not possible for a nationalist to not be a racist, if not worse. Rarely are such outrageous and objectively false claims challenged, and frequently any challenge is downvoted to net negative.
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> Both nationalism nor patriotism barely make sense any more. Time are changing. People said the same thing in the late and early 20th century before ww1 and ww2. They were wrong. > If you read it, you will realize that all of civilization is fundamentally based on global markets and the global shipping of crude oil and other resources. Modern nations are dependent on oil for sure. That's what ww1 and ww2 was fought…
>Modern nations are dependent on oil for sure. That's what ww1 and ww2 was fought over. This is simply, objectively, not true. >Certain nations, like the US, don't have to work with anyone. We are one of the few nations who have enough resources ( including oil ) to keep our civilization running. Doesn't the US import almost double what it exports ( https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=727&t=6 )? Also, why has t…
Yes, though that's due to legal restrictions on domestic drilling, not some sort of physical necessity.
> Also, why has the US worked so hard in the past 70 years to maintain influence across the world, warring and pillaging and murdering, and trading and bribing as well? Doesn't their standard of living rest on the global state of affairs they strive to maintain (or further exploit)?
There are multiple schools of thought and multiple eras of the US. What should be US involvement in UN, Syria, Iraq, Vietnam, Cuba, etc.
I don't think that really disproves the point.
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> I'm sorry, I'm not understanding your line of thinking. What is an extreme example? And this explains what (I'm referring to "because....")? Sorry, can you state your original question more clearly? It seems obvious to me which is the extreme example I was referring to, and how it answers your question -- besides, I even quoted the part I was replying to. You asked about how "the phenomenon of why actual (dictionar…
> My answer is that the reason actual (dictionary) nationalism has become synonymous with racism/Nazism is because Nazism was an extreme example of nationalism, and people tend to use extreme examples when discussing a phenomenon. I mean, this is certainly plausible, but I don't think it's that simple. There are all sorts of examples of degrees of one thing or another, yet is there any other example where a major por…
It's not like the general public (or even more media / public figures for that matter) are well rooted in the history of ideas, or care to examine most the conventional understanding of ideas of their time.
Once a thing falls out of favor (like nationalism has) it gets reduced to some caricature very quickly and can be associated (falsely) with all kinds of prejudices.
Consider the case of the hippy and the underground movements, how they were all the rage in the 60s and 70s and utterly mocked (and misunderstood) from the 80s onwards.