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We should start by clarifying that nationalism (and patriotism) is not a natural state.
It is a human construct, a man-made idea that was developed to create solidarity within a nation in an age when religion and the royalty started to lose their power of aggregation and identification.
In the past, the natural site of identity and loyalty used to be the village or the town where one was born, where people knew each other and where the sense of belonging to the same community, the same culture, was real and concrete.
Nationalism is therefore an abstraction, which can have positive practical aspects, such as helping mobility and to preserve a language and its related culture (however, often wiping out the smaller languages, often known as “dialects,” that were not chosen to be standardized and officialized as national languages), but which has also a dark side that has caused and is still causing some of the major problems we are facing in our world, particularly when nationalism is associated with business and greed.
The ongoing wars between Ukraine and Russia, or Israel and Palestine, for example, are mostly caused by this association of nationalism with greed, to which an instrumental use of religion is added in the case of Israel and Palestine. In all these places, most people are prepared (but some are just forced) to kill and be killed for their “motherland.” Well, at least normal ordinary people, because those in power never put their lives at risk.
People are made to believe that their nation is special, somehow better than any other, and reasons are always provided by those in power for the necessity of a war, often brainwashing people so that they may believe that their war against the enemy is justifiable and good. People don’t think that those they fight against, those they kill, are people exactly like them, with their problems, their needs, their families waiting for them at home.
There is this idea that if the “enemy” wins, they will loot and devastate our country, because we are good and they are bad…but, of course, if we win, we are not going to do anything like that; we will actually improve the enemy’s country! So before they try to take over our country, we should take over theirs first, because they are bad and they deserve it!
The media are particularly bad in all this because they normally show only our reasons (meaning the government’s), our goodness (or that of our allies, who are almost as good as we are), and the worst possible things about the enemy. The chances are that the enemy is behaving exactly like us, not better or worse than us, but only their bad sides, their bad actions are shown by the media. And in the meantime, the army industry and those related to it make billions!
Somebody may ask: “How about Hitler then? Wasn’t he bad?” Yes, he was bad, but the winners of the First World War didn’t do much to prevent his ascent…actually some even supported him! Something similar is happening now with Israel. I cannot believe that more than 40,000 people murdered are necessary for Israel’s safety. Actually, I think their military action will backfire for all the suffering and hate it has engendered. Obviously, this is just my own assessment, but I know there are many thinking like me, among whom experts, intellectuals, and writers (including many Jewish!).
I find this sad and disturbing, but I’m aware that it has always happened. It is perhaps a little more surprising that it is happening in the same way today, in spite of the internet and the possibility to hear the stories and viewpoints from the other side.
All religions preach love and peace, at least that is their main message, but nations and some religious leaders have manipulated the sacred scriptures to justify the need for violence, the need for a war. Only some specific passages and sentences are extrapolated and reinterpreted to justify the killing. Such manipulation involves Russia, with its Patriarch of Moscow all Rus’ and Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, Ukraine, where the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has been banned, and Israel, where the idea of the “chosen people” and the necessity even to kill in order to protect the “Promised Land” have erased all humanity and the love that people should feel toward each other, whatever ethnic group they belong to, whatever religion they follow, whatever country they live in. Because our first ethnicity is human, the most important feature of all religions is love, and our real land is the whole world to which we all belong!
If somebody asked me: “If another neighbouring country, say Austria, attacked Italy (my own original country), wouldn’t you be ready to defend it even with you own blood?” my reply would be, “No.”
I may be prepared to do that to protect people I love or helpless innocent people, whatever their nationality, but not my “country.” Not that I wish anybody to attack any country, of course; this is the whole point! But if they did, I would try to fight back in other ways, using for example nonviolent disobedience if at all possible, like Gandhi did successfully against the British colonizers. And if we were invaded and I realized that the newly installed “foreign” government were not actually worse or more corrupt than our own previous Italian one, that would be fine with me. Italy as a geographical entity does not mean so much to me; what is important to me is my language, my culture, my family, my friends, the people, and the natural environment, not so much the land I live on. I’ve lived in so many countries and I never thought that Italy was any better than any of them! Different, of course, but not better or superior.
To conclude, all nations are to an extent artificial (as world maps of the past clearly show), and they are not more important than the lives of the people living on them. I believe we have to save lives, not necessarily borders, and we have to love our neighbours!
I wish world leaders tried to help each other, to love the world, rather than trying to destroy it along with the people they think are their enemies.
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