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[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

A++++

AWESOME POST.

[–]casparvoneverecBig tiddy respecter[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Thanks

[–]NeoRail 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

Your title made it seem like you were planning to refute that statement, but it does not seem like you have actually attempted to do so. You seem to agree that nationalism is the result of technology and social changes caused by modernity in the first parts of your post. From that, I assume that your contention relates specifically to the "liberal capital" part, in which case I should ask - who are these "educated people" that you say could not be persuaded to "die or fight for the petty dynastic whims of kings"? It seems to me like you are referring to the Jacobins and merchants behind the French Revolution, who in fact - quite contrary to this claim of "organic growth" - used an incredible amount of violence to assert their new centralist system over the population in places like the Vendee, Brittany, Normandy and other regions. As to why these Jacobins and financiers thought it would be a good idea to get rid of the monarchy, I think that it would be a fair guess to wager that they did so because the aristocrats and kings were getting in the way of their money-making and utopian liberal dreams.

The thing about nationalism is that everything depends on how you articulate it. There are essentially two types of nationalism that I have seen - integral nationalism, which conceives of the nation as a single organic whole much like the human body, as well as French Revolution style nationalism which conceives of the nation as a collective mass of individuals. The former can be thought of as the modernised equivalent of pre-modern traditional loyalties within a people. The latter is the exact opposite, which was used to wipe out traditional civilisation in the Western world and is indeed, left-wing. Think about it. What are these "Western values" - "our values", the "values of Western civilisation" - that politicians and intellectuals talk about all the time? Do you live up to them? Would any European living before the 19th century live up to these values? If not, then how come being a European today has come to equal EU citizenship and belief in "Western values"? This type of atomised nationalism has been used to build support with the population for all sorts of progressive, left-wing concepts through the use of artificial association with instictual tribal identity for over two centuries. This is why not only liberals, but even communists call on "nationalism" to legitimise themselves and their policies.

The idea that countries should exist as home for extended families or tribes aka nations. It should not exist as some patchwork of territories that happened to belong to a ruling dynasty.

This is paradoxical, because in your first sentence you are literally describing feudalism, where the patriarch of an extended family (a dynasty) governs his people in union with other patriarchs related to him. By contrast, the voting system that followed feudalism moves power away from the extended family and into the hands of individuals. This can be done either universally, or through other qualifications, such as property requirements which shift power to merchants or weighted aristocratic votes which priviledge the power of the aristocracy, although in an egalitarian and uncontrolled way, completely unlike the family-oriented government from before which came packaged with its own standards of conduct and discipline.

It also meant doing away with dysfunctional multiethnic empires like Russia, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire.

I am not sure what you consider dysfunctional about Imperial Russia, but Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire were dysfunctional because of nationalism, rather than nationalism being a result of their dysfunction. Both empires endured for centuries prior to the advent of nationalism and certainly would have endured even longer if nationalism did not tear them apart. Not to mention that in the later stages of these empires, there were attempts to transform them into "nation states" of the same model you are thinking of. If these attempts had been successful, the cultural cost for all the peoples involved would have been immense and terrible.

They all suffered military defeats in WW1 due to a dysfunctional government and military.

This is an enormous claim to make.

Nationalism OTH, produced strong capable states like Germany, Britain and France.

All three states you listed had world-spanning empires of their own and the reason why World War One occurred at all is because the Germans wanted to have an even larger and more populous global empire. For the record, I am not talking about who "started" the world war, which is a more complicated topic, but it is fact that if the Germans had all the colonies they wanted, there would have been no war.

Even today most of the world's nations are ethnically homogenous.

Really? I can't think of any especially homogeneous regions, other than Europe and Japan. Japan is a special case and Europe had centuries of secure development and consolidation in order to create these circumstances. I am not saying that homogeneity is bad at all, but it is hardly the standard.

All great empires start as tightly knit nations, bursting onto the scene against decaying polyglot empires. The pure arabs conquered the multiculti byzantines and Persians. The Germans conquered multikulti Rome. The Mongols conquered the Khawarezmids and many others like them.

Here it depends on how you define "nations". If you are using the definition of the French Revolution, then you are painting a very inaccurate picture of history. Similarly, speaking of "multiculturalism" in pre-modern times is also anachronistic. The Romans, for example, were extremely monocultural. To grant the priviledges of citizenship to a specific city or colony renowned for its loyalty in an otherwise unreliable region was considered a mark of great honour and the inhabitants would aggressively try to Romanise themselves in order to justify their position, which would then act as their political identity. This is how the Romans created Roman bulwarks on their frontier. Hardly an ethnonationalist approach, but not even remotely multicultural. Even though this seems to go entirely against your analysis, many people could even choose to argue that this was a form of nationalism, if they wanted to. I wouldn't argue that, personally, but others could.

Nation states are the default and natural form of organization.

You have just butchered the meaning of the term "nation state". You are including all sorts of city-states, tribal forms of organisation and other types of government in your definition that have absolutely nothing to do with modern nation states and are in many ways completely antithetical to them, as would be expected when looking at two different forms of government.

I can't agree with anything at all that you have said in this post.

[–]Jesus 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Nation states are the default and natural form of organization.

They are corporations.

[–]NeoRail 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Can you clarify your point?

[–]Jesus 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

No, I've done it in past psots. The United States is a corporation chartered by Association Inc. All nations are corporations and anyone who has a thinking brain can look up the charter documents and grab Blacks Law to read how Lawyers read.

[–]EthnocratArcheofuturist 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Nation states are the default and natural form of organization.

No, empires are. Nation-states are a modern, and a particularly European, phenomenon.

[–]Jesus 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Every modern state today is a corporation. The Uk became a corporation in the 13th century. Every US state is a corporation (LLC) weird that Americans don't know this.

[–]Jesus 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Nation-alism. Nationhood = corporation and legal persons encompassed in a limited liability fashion under nationstate corporation.

All nations are corporations. Therefore, nationalism in the US would be pro-corporatism for US inc. which is a Quasi public-private corporation used to regulate private multi-national corporations working in US inc. jurisdiction, when it does work, though it can easily be captured.

Communitarian landism is a better option. I live here, so I will protect my land from invaders and help local unincorporated community.

[–]EthnocratArcheofuturist 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The nation-state is a bourgeois invention. The real right is imperial.