#antinationalism — Public Fediverse posts

Germany: this peculiar Frankenstein’s monster of a nation, stitched together from kingdoms, duchies, free cities, dialects, cultures, grudges and several centuries of mutually assured irritation.

Sometimes I wonder whether history might have been kinder if someone had simply left the pieces alone.

A handful of smaller countries. More local identities. Fewer grand national fantasies. Entities the size of the Netherlands, Belgium, or perhaps at times Luxembourg.

Perhaps Europe, and quite possibly the world, might have been better for it.

But no.

Somebody decided that all these differences needed to be hammered into one people, one nation, one destiny.

And once you teach people to worship the container, sooner or later they start asking which humans belong inside it.

Germany did not invent nationalism.

But it demonstrated, with horrifying thoroughness, what happens when a collection of places is turned into a political myth, and that myth is given an army.

#Nationalism #Antinationalism #Germany #Fascism #Antifascism #NeverAgain

Germany: this peculiar Frankenstein’s monster of a nation, stitched together from kingdoms, duchies, free cities, dialects, cultures, grudges and several centuries of mutually assured irritation.

Sometimes I wonder whether history might have been kinder if someone had simply left the pieces alone.

A handful of smaller countries. More local identities. Fewer grand national fantasies. Entities the size of the Netherlands, Belgium, or perhaps at times Luxembourg.

Perhaps Europe, and quite possibly the world, might have been better for it.

But no.

Somebody decided that all these differences needed to be hammered into one people, one nation, one destiny.

And once you teach people to worship the container, sooner or later they start asking which humans belong inside it.

Germany did not invent nationalism.

But it demonstrated, with horrifying thoroughness, what happens when a collection of places is turned into a political myth, and that myth is given an army.

#Nationalism #Antinationalism #Germany #Fascism #Antifascism #NeverAgain

Germany: this peculiar Frankenstein’s monster of a nation, stitched together from kingdoms, duchies, free cities, dialects, cultures, grudges and several centuries of mutually assured irritation.

Sometimes I wonder whether history might have been kinder if someone had simply left the pieces alone.

A handful of smaller countries. More local identities. Fewer grand national fantasies. Entities the size of the Netherlands, Belgium, or perhaps at times Luxembourg.

Perhaps Europe, and quite possibly the world, might have been better for it.

But no.

Somebody decided that all these differences needed to be hammered into one people, one nation, one destiny.

And once you teach people to worship the container, sooner or later they start asking which humans belong inside it.

Germany did not invent nationalism.

But it demonstrated, with horrifying thoroughness, what happens when a collection of places is turned into a political myth, and that myth is given an army.

#Nationalism #Antinationalism #Germany #Fascism #Antifascism #NeverAgain

Germany: this peculiar Frankenstein’s monster of a nation, stitched together from kingdoms, duchies, free cities, dialects, cultures, grudges and several centuries of mutually assured irritation.

Sometimes I wonder whether history might have been kinder if someone had simply left the pieces alone.

A handful of smaller countries. More local identities. Fewer grand national fantasies. Entities the size of the Netherlands, Belgium, or perhaps at times Luxembourg.

Perhaps Europe, and quite possibly the world, might have been better for it.

But no.

Somebody decided that all these differences needed to be hammered into one people, one nation, one destiny.

And once you teach people to worship the container, sooner or later they start asking which humans belong inside it.

Germany did not invent nationalism.

But it demonstrated, with horrifying thoroughness, what happens when a collection of places is turned into a political myth, and that myth is given an army.

#Nationalism #Antinationalism #Germany #Fascism #Antifascism #NeverAgain