9 of the world’s greatest thinkers on the stupidity of nationalism
Over-eager nationalism is hardly known for its great outcomes. It is hardly surprising that some of the world’s sharpest minds have had less than flattering things to say about provincialism, flag waving and fanatic patriotism.
Every thinker on this page warned what nationalism does once it has the state. In 1933 a group of German conservatives decided they could manage it.
YouTube
Very Finnish Problems
Watch the men who thought they could control Hitler. This drawn history shows how Germany’s conservatives handed him power in 1933 and how long their leash lasted.
These are their words.
Thinkers on nationalism
Voltaire
“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”
Voltaire wrote this in his Dictionnaire philosophique, and the trick of it is the arithmetic. One killing is murder; enough of them, done in step and with a band playing, becomes a virtue. He is not attacking soldiers. He is attacking the accounting.
George Bernard Shaw
“Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it….”
Shaw was an Irishman who spent his working life in London and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925, which gave him an unusually clear view of both countries’ opinions of themselves. The sting is in “because you were born in it” — the one qualification nobody earned.
Arthur Schopenhauer
“Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.”
Schopenhauer’s point is about who reaches for national pride, and when. It is, he suggests, the consolation available to a man with nothing else to his name — free to claim, requiring no achievement, and shared with millions who have not met him.
Friedrich Nietzsche
“Madness is something rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages, it is the rule.”
From Beyond Good and Evil. Nietzsche is not saying crowds are stupid. He is saying that behaviour we would treat as illness in one person passes without comment in a nation, because there is nobody left outside it to notice.
Oscar Wilde
“Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious”
Wilde, another Irishman in London, could compress an argument into nine words better than anyone before or since. Note that he does not say patriotism is a vice. He says it is what passes for virtue among the vicious.
Albert Einstein
“Nationalism is an infantile thing. It is the measles of mankind.”
Einstein had reason to know. He renounced his German citizenship as a teenager to avoid military service, and renounced it a second time in 1933 when Germany made staying impossible. Measles is a well-chosen word: a childhood illness, highly contagious, and occasionally fatal in adults.
Banksy
“People who enjoy waving flags don’t deserve to have one”
The most modern line here, and the bluntest. It works because flag-waving is a performance that costs nothing, which is precisely why it appeals to people who have contributed nothing.
Carl Sagan
“National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space. Fanatical ethnic or religious or national chauvinisms are a little difficult to maintain when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of the stars.”
Sagan spent his career trying to make people feel the scale of things. When Voyager 1 turned to photograph Earth from six billion kilometres in 1990, the planet occupied less than a single pixel — the image he called the Pale Blue Dot. Every border ever fought over is inside that dot.
For more on this subject, see these powerful quotes about fascism and George Orwell’s warnings from 1984.
Samuel Johnson
“Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”
Johnson said it over dinner on 7 April 1775, and Boswell wrote it down. It is quoted today as an attack on patriotism itself, which is not what he meant: Johnson was patriotic, and was aiming at the men who wrap themselves in a country to cover for having no argument. The distinction has not survived the journey, which is arguably the most Johnsonian thing about it.
My favourite is from Schopenhauer, I see it everyday in people of low abilities and intellect
Friedrich Nietzsche actually laugh at you, Shopenhauer, his dog and your low abilities and intellect.
“I see it everyday in people of low abilities and intellect”
I take it you wake up and look in the mirror every morning.
The nation state is a fake man made concept, which makes the idea of nationalism all the more ludicrous.
Nationalists. Alt Right. Nazis. Kippers. EDL. Biffers. Fascists. Bigots.
Many names, but all the same people
This demonstrates a gross misunderstanding of the words you listed. People belonging to those groups may share similar traits, but these are not all the same people. You seem like the sort of person who also thinks you can’t be racist to white people, or that the world is flat.
That’s a great strawman argument that you posited, Silly. Of course people can be racist to so-called white people and of course the earth is not flat. However, all of the members of the groups listed by someretchris have one thing in common–they are evil.
Nationalism – taking pride in things you didn’t do and hating people you’ve never met.
Nationalism is not hating people from other countries, it’s having pride in your country and/or thinking that your country is superior. There’s a line, and it’s not even a fine one.
There is no problem with having a national identity and pride provided it’s attached to a knowledge of that nations history (both good and bad) and not taken to jingoism. Nationalistic pride can give a sense of belonging and security and is to be encouraged in the young, but it should be instilled along with a sense of social responsibility and concience. Saying there is no need for nationality is refusing society and cohesion, humans do need a sense of belonging.
Does that mean that Farage and his Faragian empire is ‘stupid’. Wow, Many of Her May’s Neo Nasty RW Tories want to give him a medal for being the leader of Brexit. And now he has media contracts and is lauded across the globe. So being a Neo Nasty has it’s rewards…..
We should be more concerned about the welfare of the Earth and mankind as a whole rather than our little bit of it. Some celebrate globalisation others fear it. One day there will be a world government.
How has patriotism been hijacked by right wing nationalism to the extent that we now associate flying the English flag and to a lesser extent flying the British flag with the far right nasties ? Both isms should be positive forces for good in any country surely as in many EU countries who happily display their national flags for their countries. I am a patriotic British European who was in service to my community my country and the EU and waving the flags too.
It’s all about tribalism and territoriality. Which are essential for survival in hunter/gatherer societies. But we’ve moved on from hunter/gatherer, so it’s completely unnecessary. Some people should focus their efforts on looking for one of those ‘job’ thingies.
We should be more concerned about the welfare of the Earth and mankind as a whole rather than our little bit of it. Some celebrate globalisation others fear it. One day there will be a world government.
It is basic but you can’t be an internationalist in a nationalistic world – otherwise you get stripped off your industry and resources whilst the nationalistic places retain and grow theirs… basically what happened to the West since the 1970’s.
It’s like being the only guy who turns the other cheek in a world of slappers…
Nationalism, whether it’s British, English, Irish or any other flavour is simply low-rent politics.
I would add Rabindranath Tagore to the list. One of his essays, ‘Nationalism in India’ has the following words for India under British rule: ‘Nationalism is a great menace. It is the particular thing which for years has been at the bottom of India’s troubles.’
Patriotism is the last refuge to which the scoundrel clings/Steal a little and they throw you in jail, steal a lot and they make you king. Bob Dylan.
It depends on the type of nationalism. If it is the type that suggests one group of people are superior and that foreigners are inferior then I have no time for it.
However, I consider myself to be a Welsh nationalist in the sense that I want the people of Wales to have the right to self-determination. But my nationalism is inclusive – everyone that lives in Wales is valued and welcomed by me, regardless of race, creed, colour, religion etc – they are all part of my Wales which I want to see as an independent nation but part of the global community
I’m with you on this one but can you add a little bit for me please? “everyone that lives in Wales……and those who are Welsh but live elsewhere”….I want to be in the “valued” gang too please :-) Zx
Your still a bigot, every person on earth is equal, there are no nations on this earth, all man made divisions made for profit.
Patriotism is the last refuge to which the scoundrel clings/Steal a little and they throw you in jail, steal a lot and they make you king. Bob Dylan.
Nation state is a false concept and nationalism is a stupid concept. We’re all humans
No we are not as a matter of fact [west Africans, uniquely, carry the alleles of Gorillas and Chimpanzees], and even if we were all the same people have a right to live their own lives among their own kind and not be troubled by outsiders. I’m guessing you advocate open borders because you’re from a part of the world that has contributed precisely nothing to the civilisation you think should keep you in welfare cheques. The authority fallacy on a large scale is to think someone is right in opposing ‘nationalism’ because he’s [a] famous [i.e. promoted for his usefulness] and [b] says things you agree with. Do get a grip.
What rubbish you been reading? Ain’t real science.
Who are you calling an outsider, bigot? are you a human? If you are join the other 8 billion of us!! You are absolutely no better, even though you THINK you are.
You should also listen to ‘Imagine’ by John Lennon
:look what happened to him!
Liberals… ha in practice you’re all wrong we believe in what is truly right security and stability for all
You want stability and security? Great – the most intermingled cultures are the ones that don’t have the my-culture-versus-your-culture violence. Look at the Balkans about 25 years ago, Israel and Palestine now, Northern Ireland during the troubles. Keep people divided and they develop mistrust and often hatred of “the other”. If, on the other hand, “the other” is also your brother in law he is less of a mystery or a threat. In reality, us “liberals” have been getting it right all along :-)
On a smaller scale, anybody can enter your abode as it has no meaning that you either own it or pay rent to occupy it, but have no right to enjoy it and determine who may enter it?
If you have paid for a slice of cake, why can’t you eat it?
C’m’ on, Brexiteers, sing ya songs …
#1 Hit: https://uncyclopedia.ca/wiki/UnTunes:Brexitannia!
#2 Hit: https://en.uncyclopedia.co/wiki/UnTunes:Land_of_Doped_Tories
;-)
You cannot be racist to white people. Black people’s response to white people is always in the context of hundreds of years of slavery, oppression and racism.
Let me see.. Four centuries of ignorant,blinkered white nationalism has produced the failed American state .
Yeah, European and American scientists who got all what they wanted in their countries mock nationalism, despite nationalism was the only way they became what they did, and the reason they became known in the first place….