“Qui autem civium rationem dicunt habendam, externorum negant, ii dirimunt communem humani generis societatem; qua sublata beneficientia, liberalitas, bonitas, iustitia funditus tollitur.”
—
Cicero
Those who claim that we must take care of our own citizens, and ignore foreigners, they break apart the universal harmony of humankind. And once that is gone, kindness, generosity, goodness, and justice are altogether destroyed.
Nations and National Identities in the Medieval World: An Apologia Rees Davis Journal of Belgium History, XXXIV, 2004 (4) Medieval historians tend to find themselves in a tricky position when there is any discussion of nations and national identities. They are painfully aware that they may be regarded as unwelcome and even improper guests at such a discussion. If the topic can be extended to…
The result of this interdisciplinary groups’ work is this thorough and unique report on the Sweden Democrats voters, who they are, where they come from, and where they are headed. It was first presented in Swedish in the summer of 2018 just before the Swedish Parliamentary Elections. I’m very happy that it is now available for an international audience since the results are of general interest when one tries to understand the global trend of the rise of radical right wing political parties. The rich data set makes it possible to analyse and understand the values and motivations of voters supporting such parties in an unusually detailed way and it is my hope that this report will inspire similar studies in other countries…
The Sweden Democrats have attracted voters from both the right and the left, primarily from the Conservative Party (Moderaterna) and the Social Democrats, as well as from groups who were previously non-voters (SCB, 2016; Valforskningsprogrammet, 2018). Thus, the backgrounds of Sweden Democrat voters vary, and it is not entirely clear what they have in common. This report poses a number of different questions: How – and to what extent – do Sweden Democrat voters differ from those who vote for other parties? Why have they moved away from the parties they previously voted for, and is it likely that they will return to them? What political opinions do they hold, besides being critical of immigration? Is their view of immigration driven by a concern over societal change or is it a manifestation of a more deep-rooted antipathy towards immigrants? And finally, to what extent are there differences within the group of Sweden Democrat voters, i.e. how homogenous a group are they?
English version of one report I ran across, and just started wading into. Which looked interesting enough to share, particularly as this might extend to the continuing growth of the far right elsewhere.
(Maybe extra interesting to me in the particulars, since I understand from elsewhere that we’ve just moved into SD’s regional stronghold of support. Skåne in general, apparently, more than the city of Malmö itself.)
If you only give a shit about the poor, unemployed, and homeless as an excuse to bash immigrants and refugees, then you don’t actually give a single shit about the poor, unemployed, and homeless
“Our insight into the essence of the nation, however, not only makes it impossible to deny in individualistic fashion the reality of national character; it also makes impossible the far more dangerous misuse of this concept. National character is indeed nothing more than the orientation of the will determined in the individual member by the community of destiny he shares with all other members. Once it has arisen, national character appears as an autonomous historical power. If theory teaches us to understand it as the precipitate of relations between individuals, immediate experience rather sees it as governing and controlling these relations. This is the fetishism of national character. Our theory demolishes this ghost with one blow. It is no longer something esoteric that national character appears to determine the desire and action of the individual member, once we recognize that each member is the product of his nation and that national character is nothing more than the specific orientation of the will that community of destiny generates in each member as his individual property. And national character ceases to appear as an independent power as soon as we grasp it as the precipitate of national history. We understand now that the seemingly autonomous historical efficacy of national character conceals nothing more than the fact that the history of past generations, the conditions of their struggle for existence, the productive forces they mastered, the relations of production they entered into, continue to determine the behaviour of their natural and cultural progeny. In this way, however, national character also loses its substantial character, that is, the appearance it has of something enduring and persisting in the flux of phenomena. Nothing but a precipitate of history, it changes with every hour, with every new event that the nation experiences, is as changeable as the events it reflects. Placed back in the midst of world events, it is no longer a persistent being, but rather a constant becoming and perishing.”
“But it is not only through exploitation itself, but also through the need to defend this exploitation, that capitalism inhibits the development of the entire people into a community of national culture. It has indeed built elementary schools as far as it needed them, but it refrains from creating a genuine national education that could give the masses full possession of intellectual culture. This is not only because, in order not to reduce its ability to exploit children, it sets too narrow a limit on school time, skimps on the costs of education and would sooner spend its wealth on the instruments of its power, but above all because the masses brought up to full participation in the culture of the nation would not tolerate its rule for a day longer; it fears the elementary school, as this educates its opponent, and it seeks therefore to reduce this to its own means of power. Capitalism necessarily brought in general military service, but it did not create a people’s army. It locks its soldiers in barracks, seeks to keep them as far removed as possible from the influence of the population, and seeks to create in them by external insignia, “by removal in space, and by the suggestion of its ideology, the sense of a special status that keeps them at a distance from the life of the masses. Capitalism created democracy. But while democracy was once the bourgeoisie’s youthful dream, it is now the fear of its old age, as it has become an instrument of power for the working class. Freedoms of press, assembly and association are feared by an obsolete capitalism as so many weapons of its enemies. It therefore does what it can to restrict the development of the nation. Capitalism cannot let the nation fully emerge as a cultural community, since every fragment of mental culture becomes a power in the hands of the working class, a weapon to be one day wielded against it.”
had an interesting debate on twitter with this guy who thinks “anti americanism” is silly/besides the point because, “america is just one node - albeit the central node - in a dense world-systemic web of imperial power that emanates from the immanent laws of capital, not out of some uniquely american predisposition towards violence or domination ie american empire is epiphenomenal to the system”
i disagree. without getting too essentialist, there are unique circumstances in every country that abet racial capitalism. the settler colonial founding of the US, the continuance of slavery until one of the bloodiest wars of all time, the crackdown on radical reconstruction…the list goes on.
if you argue that every western nation is alike in their ability to uphold neo colonialism, then you’re ignoring specific cultural or social phenomena that allow those countries to uphold neo colonialism in the first place. just because nationalisms are alike does not mean they’re all the same.
a similar question one could ask: was there something unique about germany and other european powers that lead to fascism?
The Tibetan Army was established in 1913 by the 13th Dalai Lama, who had fled Tibet during the 1904 British invasion of Tibet and returned only after the fall of the Qing power in Tibet in 1911. During the revolutionary turmoil, the Dalai Lama had attempted to raise a volunteer army to expel all the ethnic Chinese from Lhasa, but failed, in large part because of the opposition of pro-Chinese monks, especially from the Drepung Monastery. The Dalai Lama proceeded to raise a professional army, led by his trusted advisor Tsarong
Tibet’s military control was located in Qamdo from 1918. During this time, the Sichuan warlords were busy fighting the Yunnan warlords, allowing the Tibetan army to defeat the Sichuan forces and conquer the region. The Tibetan Army was involved in numerous border battles against the Guomindang (KMT) and Ma Clique forces of the Republic of China. In 1932, the KMT defeated the Tibetan army, driving them out of Kham.
Their first encounter with the People’s Liberation Army was in 1950, when they took over Dengo, and after failed negotiations initiated the Battle of Qamdo, marking the Chinese occupation of Tibet that continues to this day.
“Teaching kids about racism and trans people is indoctrination.”
My brother in Christ, you supported the real indoctrination that has been happening in public schools for decades when you had nothing to say against having kids pledge to a piece of cloth or teaching them that cops are their friends.
“We’ve always looked beyond the walls for the invaders,” he said. “We always thought change came from outside, usually on the point of a sword. And then we look around and find that it comes the inside of the head of someone you wouldn’t notice in the street.”
It was a time of national unity. It was a time of uncertainty. It was a time of national effort. The second World War was the last great moment in patriotic oneness in this country. Civilians took jobs to boost war supplies, turned in materials that suppliers needed, and did without so our soldiers wouldn’t have to. Companies turned towards the effort as well, altering their manufacturing processes to supply ammunition, vehicles, food, uniforms, and other supplies to our troops in the European & Pacific Theaters.
Their advertisement was focused on letting the country know what they were doing. With plans to return to consumer goods once the war was out, it was important to let the public know what they were doing to help the war effort. By announcing their efforts to the public, they knew that consumers would purchase from them once the war was finished based on the national pride alone. All we had to do was win.
Today we present some of the finest advertisements from the WWII era. Companies like Goodyear Shell Oil, and Western Electric made it very clear to the public that they were aiding the war effort and helping the allies win.
As scholar Lewis Parry Curtis notes in his Apes and Angels: the Irishman in Victorian Caricature (1971):
It was comforting for some Englishmen to believe — on the basis of the best scientific authority in the Anthropological Society of London — that their own facial angles and orthognathous features were as far removed from those of apes, Irishmen, and Negroes as was humanly possible … The simianizing of Paddy in the 1860s thus emanated from the convergence of deep, powerful emotions about the nature of man, the security of property, and the preservation of privilege … Englishmen who celebrated the genius of the Anglo-Saxon race tended to see themselves as modern Athenians, endowed with Grecian noses and facial angles… these men thought that the common Catholic Irishman was the antithesis of all these desirable qualities: Paddy was a wild, melancholic, indolent, unstable and prognathous Caliban … After the outbreak of Fenian violence in the mid-1860s, Paddy descended further to find himself a niche somewhere between the “white Negro” and the anthropoid apes. [pp. 103, 105, 107, cited in Vincent J. Cheng, Joyce, Race, and Empire]
‘The British Lion and the Irish Monkey’ — caption: ‘Monkey (Mr. [John] Mitchell): “One of us MUST be ‘Put Down.’”’ (Punch, March 8, 1848)
‘A Great Time For Ireland!’ — caption : ‘Mr. G-O’rilla, the Young Ireland Party, exulting over the insult to the British flag. Shouldn’t he be extinguished at once?’ (Punch, Dec. 14, 1861) [More about The Nation Irish newspaper]
‘The Irish Frankenstein’ — caption: ‘“The baneful and blood-stained Monster *** yet was it not my Master to the very extent that it was my Creature? *** Had I not breathed into it my own spirit?” *** (Extract from the Works of C[harles] S[tewart] P[A]RN[E]LL, M.P.)’ (Punch, May 20, 1882) [see more on advocate of Irish Home Rule, Charles Parnell; and the Phoenix Park Murders of the new Irish Secretary and Undersecretary in Dublin, 1882]
‘Two Forces’ — image: Britannia, wielding the sword of ‘THE LAW’, protecting the figure of Hiberno (Ireland) from the ape-like man of ‘Anarchy’ (by John Tenniel, Punch, Oct. 29, 1881) — text, previous page: ‘Oh Erin, much maddened, take heart, face the light! ‘There is safety, not scathe, in the straight-levelled steel. ’If our voice is of Force, ‘tis Force of the Right, ‘Not to crush, not to wound, but to guard and to heal.’ [pp193]
Scientific racism: the types of the ‘Irish Iberian’, ‘Anglo-Teutonic’, and ‘Negro’ — text excerpt: ‘They [the supposed African Iberian tribe] came to Ireland and mixed with the natives of the South and West, who themselves are supposed to have been of low type and descendants of savages of the Stone Age, who, in consequence of isolation from the rest of the world, had never been out-competed in the healthy struggle of life, and thus made way, according to the laws of nature, for superior races.’ (Thomas Nast cartoon, Harper’s Weekly US, after 1857/possibly 1899)
'The King of A-Shantee’ — (by Frederick B. Opper, Puck, Feb. 15, 1882) — ‘The “Ashantee” were a well known African tribe; “shanty” was the Irish word for a shack or poor man’s house. The cartoon mocks Irish poverty, caricatures irish people as ape like and primitive, and suggests they are little different from Africans, who the cartoonists seems to see the same way. This cartoon irishman has, again, the outhrust mouth, sloping forehead, and flat wide nose of the standard Irish caricature.’ -Michael O’Malley, George Mason University
'Killing The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg’ — image of the Catholic Church and the Irish-American thug carving up the Democratic Party goose, followed by the fable from Aesop. — (Harper’s Weekly, Nov. 18, 1871)
