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Comment by 7952 | Hacker News Reader

Its all abstractions that help justify ethno-nationalism at the expense of concern about individual tragedy.

most of the wars in history were fought by empires that were the exact opposite of ethnic-nationalism, and also most genocides. it is completely unrelated

Ethno-nationalism seems to be a strong factor in both Israeli and Palestinian politics. I can't think of a more direct example of ethno-nationalism than the Jewish state.

Also, my point was more about how conflict is perceived and litigated in politics and threads like this. Factoids about history are completely irrelevant to that. Its just another abstraction.

> can't think of a more direct example of ethno-nationalism than the Jewish state.

It's a weird concept, which kind of nationalism isn't ethno-nationalist? I can think of maybe two nations whose brand of nationalism does not relate to an ethnic group and I will probably push it for the USA.

Israel is probably the only ethnoreligious nation, and the ethnic part is debatable if you ever seen Israelis, unlike the Palestinian national movement which is ethnic-nationalist

> It's a weird concept, which kind of nationalism isn't ethno-nationalist?

Most nationalism either is based around an established ancestry-derived ethnic identity (which is what “ethno-nationalism” usually refers to), or seeks to construct a new identity (which itself can be viewed as ethnic) transcending existing ethnic lines within the population of a state (the PRM regime in Mexico is an example of this); you might call this cosmopolitan nationalism.

> I can think of maybe two nations whose brand of nationalism does not relate to an ethnic group and I will probably push it for the USA.

States often contain multiple different kinds of nationalism in their population, and may even contain different kinds in their governments. The USA definitely has nationalist factions of both the ethnonationalist (specifically White nationalist) and cosmopolitan nationalist kind.

> Israel is probably the only ethnoreligious nation,

The Israeli state is possibly the only strongly ethnoreligious state. Ethnoreligious nationalism is a large subset of ethno-nationalism, but states in places with strong ethnoreligious nationalism don’t always build both ethnic and religious character into their state structure.

Yes, it is usually used as a talking point against Israel which seems to indicate Israel is guilty of being the only ethnonationalist nation on earth.

I usually take it as another example of scapegoating Israel for universal concepts like war, which is a cultural tradition dating at least two millennia (scapegoating, not war)

Im not attacking Israeli ethno-nationalism. I am attacking how you see the world so exclusively through that lense. The assumption that the only cause I could care about could be some kind of anti semitic activism. When actually I think this is a problem all over the place and for the most part Israeli's are just another victim of that.

I don't think ethnonationalism is the cause for war, yes it does historically break up when you force two nations speaking different languages and separate communities in one country.

However, there are enough examples to stable nationalism being completely at peace and enough examples for transnational entities trying to aggressively add more nations to their project (USSR, prenational empires)

Perhaps I should have said "exclusive nation state membership abstractions". It makes no difference to the point. That the abstraction subjugates the individual.

And I don't see why American can't be an ethnicity or even religious type all on its own. None of this is static.

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