THE AGE OF NATIONALISM


Today nations are organised into political states which maintain standing armies ready for war. In
an earlier period of European history religion was dominant and religious armies fought with each
other. Now some parts of the world have moved beyond the age of religion, but only into the age of
nationalism and national armies are easily the world's greatest military forces today. The two
greatest wars of the last hundred years, world wars one and two were fought between national
armies.

Yet Nationalism is a comparatively new phenomena in human history. The idea that  nation is so
important that your fellow nationals are more important than others and that "security" could only
be found by putting the nation first, and even going to war with people of different nations is a
recent one, not a time honored part of the human character at all.

Nationalism in fact arose in Europe as another form of identity politics was declining; religious
politics. The wars of religion gave way to the wars of nations and Europe then exported the system
of dividing into competing nations around the world. ("Imagined Communities" by Benedict
Anderson provides a scholarly description of how people have spent the last few centuries creating
national traditions).  

With the rise of political nationalism in Europe people began to feel that their national identity was
the most important identity in their life, rather than religion. Warfare illustrates this. In the 1500’s
people across Europe would kill each other based on whether they were catholic or protestant. But
as they imagined and created common national identities people would say, for instance, Germans
should not kill Germans just because of religious differences, we are all fellow Germans. Thus
religious violence declined across Europe. But, as a replacement, people killed each other for
national differences, so Frenchmen killing Germans and vice versa replaced Catholics and
Protestants killing each other all over the same geographic region.

By the 20th century nationalism had become so strong that the two world wars of that century
surpassed even the ferocity of the wars of religion as people now tortured and slaughtered each
other out of loyalty to national fantasies rather than religious fantasies.  Treason replaced heresy as
the crime most threatening to the established order. The national security agency replaced the
inquisition as the extra legal agency engaged in ferreting out deviant thinkers and torturing them
into conformity. Nation replaced religion as the inspiration to wage war.

Nonetheless this would only be a history of Europe's decline into nationalist fantasies during the last
five hundred years were it not for another factor, imperialism. With all this practice at warfare
Europeans (and their American offshoots) became so skilled at it that they were capable of
conquering the world, and did so. But the empires built during the age of imperialism all had the
same flaw. They carried the ideology of nationalism within them. Soon subject peoples everywhere
were organizing themselves into nations and demanding their freedom, which meant a sovereign
state. By the end of the 20th century most empires had dissipated and we had today’s world of
sovereign nation states.

Today we are still living through the age of nationalism and the ideology of nationalism blinds us to
our common humanity. The age of nationalism has been a backdrop to the civil war of humanity. The
Human Union Movement is committed to helping us move beyond the age of nationalism into the age
of human political justice.
The Human Union Movement

Putting human identity before national or religious identity
And bringing an end to the civil war of humanity

Bringing an end to the civil war of humanity ...
Putting human identity before national or religious identity