Stephen Rosen: “[W]hat is nationalism? And what nationalism is actually Western invention. Imperial China had no nationalism. Where do they get their ideas of nationalism? Well, they got their ideas of nationalism from the Japanese, which emerged as a national state in the 19 [century]. Well, where did the Japanese get their ideas about nationalism, which were then translated into Chinese? They got it from the Germans. So what they imported was a 19th-century version of social Darwinism in which race is of the fundamental basis of nationality and there are very – when you hear Xi Jinping [a communist/Marxist?] and other Chinese leaders talking about cultural pollution, when you talk about the natural affinity of all Chinese people wherever they are, you begin to worry that there is this submerged, and sometimes not even so, some racialist component.”
—The historian Lord Acton put the case against "nationalism as insanity" in 1862.
Bertrand Russell criticizes nationalism for diminishing the individual's capacity to judge his or her fatherland's foreign policy.
Albert Einstein stated that "Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.”
George Orwell: “Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception... God, the King, the Empire, the Union Jack — all the overthrown idols can reappear under different names, and because they are not recognised for what they are they can be worshipped with a good conscience. Transferred nationalism, like the use of scapegoats, is a way of attaining salvation without altering one's conduct.”
Isam Al-khafaji: “Nationalism...is a very amorphous and slippery concept that an infinitely wide—and sometimes conflicting—variety of schools of thought can fit under it.”
Fred Perlman: Nationalism was [and is] perfectly suited to its double task, the domestication of workers and the despoliation of aliens, that it appealed to everyone - everyone, that is, who wielded or aspired to wield a portion of capital.
—The historian Lord Acton put the case against "nationalism as insanity" in 1862.
Bertrand Russell criticizes nationalism for diminishing the individual's capacity to judge his or her fatherland's foreign policy.
Albert Einstein stated that "Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.”
George Orwell: “Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception... God, the King, the Empire, the Union Jack — all the overthrown idols can reappear under different names, and because they are not recognised for what they are they can be worshipped with a good conscience. Transferred nationalism, like the use of scapegoats, is a way of attaining salvation without altering one's conduct.”
Isam Al-khafaji: “Nationalism...is a very amorphous and slippery concept that an infinitely wide—and sometimes conflicting—variety of schools of thought can fit under it.”
Fred Perlman: Nationalism was [and is] perfectly suited to its double task, the domestication of workers and the despoliation of aliens, that it appealed to everyone - everyone, that is, who wielded or aspired to wield a portion of capital.
“The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.”
—George Orwell
—George Orwell
Comments