Video: Why The Idea Of Nation Is Absurd. And Unbeatable

Nationalism is the most powerful ideology ever created, the only one that's really taken over the whole world. Forget capitalism, liberalism, socialism, communism or any other. The single experience of real globalisation still is nationalism.

But nation states are so widespread and we all have embraced the myth so deeply that the ideology is hardly seen as something artificial.

That's what makes this New York Times video so interesting. It's vital to remember that the assumption claiming that language, race and religion equal a country is just absurd and unreal. It's only an illusion, and quite a new and recent one.

250 years ago kings and emperors used God or lineage to legitimise their power. But the merchant class, when they revolted against the aristocracy, needed a powerful idea to get the support of the poor population: the idea of a nation.

The video gives the example of France: very little people in what today is France spoke or knew French by the time of the Revolution. The same goes for the USA. Imagine what a tiny portion of the whole population on the north side of the American continent spoke English by 1766. And the exact same phenomenon took place down south. In the 19th century, when the new republics in today's Latin America split from the Spanish crown, not even 20% of their inhabitants spoke Spanish.

Current political dynamics force us to think and rethink about the absurdity of nationalism. Far right extremists are taking advantage of it, but they aren't the only ones feeding this fabricated lie. The political mainstream elites of Western liberal democracies are the ones responsible for the myth, as the great book Banal Nationalism showed back in 1995. 

It's time to reflect on how we can kill the national identity monster before it devours us.