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Nationalism is just dumb. We're at the 100 year anniversary of some of the greatest losses of life due to wars fought by nationalism and one of the most telling things in all of the letters from the frontlines, the poems, the art... isn't that anyone, at all, died for King & Country... they fought and died not for the nation, but because of their family, their friends.
Nothing in that mentions racial background, language, passport (let's not even get started on the fact that the passport is an essentially modern invention that only really has gained it's current status since World War 2), religious beliefs, gender, shoe size, preference for wearing mustard trousers or any other factor.
People don't die for nations, they die because rich people with power send them off to war, and in the midst of that war they fight to preserve the things they love, which ultimately are friends and family, the person in the trench next to them... not country.
Muhammed Ali had it spot on when he declined to go to Vietnam:
“Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go ten thousand miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?
No, I am not going ten thousand miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would put my prestige in jeopardy and could cause me to lose millions of dollars which should accrue to me as the champion.
But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is right here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality…
If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. But I either have to obey the laws of the land or the laws of Allah. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail. We’ve been in jail for four hundred years.”
The only war is class war. It's always been true, but the ones who suffer the most are blind to the underlying root cause.
Velocio-
Nationalism is just dumb.
That's all that needs to be said.
Although it's worth noting that nationalism not only pulls us into conflict, but prevents us from helping those in need exactly through sentiments like this:
Where do you draw the line? Your neighbours in your street or town, your cousins, your siblings, your children, your wife? Who should you care for over and above you?
This is a hugely difficult question to answer, but the idea that we have a stronger moral obligation to support people in the Lake District after a winter of flooding than refugees living in terrible conditions in Calais certainly seems wrong to me.
Where do you draw the line? Your neighbours in your street or town, your cousins, your siblings, your children, your wife? Who should you care for over and above you?
I'm not taking this your a racist bullshit for wanting the best for British people. There's nothing wrong with a healthy amount of nationalism.