NM's blog

“Antisemitism and Islamophobia do not compete for a fixed ration of public sympathy.  They are the one prejudice in two coats. Each rests on the same premise that a minority may be judged and feared and shut out for its religion. “Israel’s "Ministry of Subversion" now sits closer to an illiberal, nationalist Europe than to the liberal order that once made Jewish life in the diaspora secure.” Would Andreas Krieg argue that the very same 'liberal order' has made Muslims, Jews and others insecure with its double standards, wars, invasions, hypocrisy, institutional racism, marginalisation, obscene inequality, and because of the very same order that the far right is on the rise …? I doubt it. I emailed him for an answer. 

In the age of dominance

“The origins of nationalism lay not in the folk, nor in the individual's repressed passion for some sort of wholeness or identity, but in the machinery of world political economy.” Where do we find an elaboration on that? You can find an exact, word-for-word elaboration of that quote in  Tom Nairn’s classic 1975 essay,  “ The Modern Janus” , published in the  New Left Review .  [1, 2, 3, 4]  Nairn later integrated and expanded this thesis into his foundational 1977 book,  The Break-up of Britain: Crisis and Neo-Nationalism .  [5, 6, 7]  Nairn's text provides a specific structural framework that elaborates on how the global economy—rather than romantic ideas of "the folk"—manufactured modern nationalism: 1. The Core Argument: The Uneven Development of Capitalism Nairn rejects the romantic view that nationalism naturally bubbles up from ethnic roots or a psychological need for belonging. Instead, he argues that nationalism was a structural byproduct...