Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Genealogy of an era One should add a list of add-ons which helped gain the consent of the majority: Credit cards Low budget airlines Gadgets and consumerism Threat of an internal-external enemy vs. "our values" "There is no alternative" (after the collpase of the Soviet Union) A massive pile of TV series and movies Promoting individual advancement (underming solidarity and trade unions) Etc. The Third Way International

To the Varoufakises and the Masons who are hell-bent on maintaining/saving international liberalism Capitalism's noisiest enemies are now on the right

The violence of the universal

I propose the following definition of the nation: it is an imagined political community-and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign. It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.... Communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined.... Finally, [the nation] is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. Ultimately, it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willing to die for such limited imaginings. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities , pp. 25-6, Verso 2006 ed. No one can be a true nationalist who is incapable of feeling ‘ashamed’ if her s...

Imaginary friends An underground amusement park in Syria

Benedict Anderson on 'mapping the terrain' of nationalism