Friday, May 16, 2008

Nationalism

“Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.” Karl Marx
At university I discovered that nationalism went to bed as a sleeping beauty and woke up as an ugly demon. The reference is to the positive force of nationalism that ushered in the birth of "La Grande Nation" after the French Revolution of 1789 and accompanied those positive liberal forces for change until the revolutions of 1848. However, a nationalism that was to be exported at the end of French bayonets and that was to increasingly see its legitimacy in race, religion and language was always going to go sour. That it was to culminate in the excesses of National Socialism is, in retrospect, not surprising.
After the war nationalism in Western Europe was tamed somewhat by those supranational structures that were implemented through the Treaties of Paris (1951) and Rome (1956) and by the ascendancy of the United States across the Atlantic. In Eastern Europe an absurd "Realsozialismus" at least kept the lid on the "pandora's box" and when that lid was lifted it was those institutions that had their roots in the 1951 Treaty of Paris that, at least to some extent, tamed the evils that appeared. However, with the United States and its allies continuing to draw up the rules, while failing to to sit down "inter pares" and discuss the form the new global village will take and with their preaching "democracy" while selfishly pursuing their interests abroad, there is resentment. This resentment has its expression in a type of patriotism that doesn't seek its legitimacy so much in an identification with a particular culture alone but rather in also seeing that particular culture as superior; the little man with the inferiority complex is on the defensive, he goes to bed and undergoes that kafkaesque metamorphous that turns him into a demon, ready to blame all and sundry for his inadequacies, vengeful and ready to assert his "rightful" place in the world. With the German"Kleinbuerger" We had the tragedy now let us hope to avert the farce.

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