: Let me play devils advocate here for a moment RD, how is nationalism and racism one and the same? Well, for one thing they both rely on non-existant objects, race, ethnicity, etc. there is no such thing as being English, or being Irish, nor being Black nor white, just different human beiongs, and yet great effort goes into delineating and segregating into such groups. Essentially, racism and nationalism divides the world into groups based on what people are, not what they do.
:I remember the Levellers having a song called "England my home" which was paatriotic and pluralist.
Yes, Blair's nationalism is Pluralist, but that is just a means of re-inventing national identity. Nationalism was the clarion cry of teh revolutionary capitalist class, it was a means of providing legitimacy for their revolutions, and later, dividing the world up into property- national boundries are just expressions of property- carved out of Blood, just as England was carved out of the Blood of Cornish and Irish, and Yugoslavia is carved out of many different types of blood, and America itself...
: The difference is that NJ's patriotism, like my own, is a geographical definiton of home, everything down to the weather and climate probably counts in it's construction, the racism you are talking about is really a varient of right-wing internationalism. Rail against that if you want but dont confuse it with pluralist love of your homeland.
What is your homeland? Your town? Your county? What connexion have you with any part of Northern Ireland that you don't have with the south of france. Why should you love an adminstrative unit?
: RD you obvioiusly have invested A LOT in constructing the right sort of sentiments to fit with your quasi-religious philosphy and you wont be able to understand it but could I just add I'm a socialist should I owe allegiance and loyalty to the SPGB?
No, not unless you actually join it, and it forms a part of your own activity- my loyalty to the SPGB comes through what I do, because it is my self-activity, I don't bask in some illusory glory of others' actions.
However, you are not actually presenting me with any logic here, you are just descirbing some random emotionalism that seems to have no connection with practical political activity.
: OK RD if they would have surrendered because of their resourceless predicament why didnt the Viet Cong? The philosophy of Japanese facism was more of a death cult than anything else, did you see anyone else employing kamikazee pilots or submarines?
The Vietcong were a peasant guerrilla army defending themselves from Agression, Japan was an imperial Government.
: That's true of Britain aswell as the US RD and I suspect that the socialist/liberal patriotism of NJ is a world apart form the US's supremist government.
I agree, I think all nation states would behave the same way given the chance, and would equally use vague and liberal patriotic sentiment to bolster their strnegth while they are at it. At the end of the day, nationalism is teh ideology supporting the rule of the same political elite, regardless of whether NJ is a nice bloke or not.
: Well as you first had the right to:
: A)take your national identity for granted EG no one trying to foust a different one upon you.
: B)renounce it as was consistant with your party line
Some bugger is trying to foust a national identity on me- what on earth has my life to do with teh dominant definitions of Englishness, fuck all. I have opposed nationalism long before I joined the party.
: I dont expect you to understand the predicament of people in a nationless setting, a bit of empathy wouldnt go a miss RD.
I don't think the way forward for such people is to try and build new states, I think self-determination is the way forward for them, and that means a world socialist revolution, not further attempts to divide the working class.
: If your quite finished with the religious eulogues we will continue because the facts arent with you there who fights these wars? Who welcomed the wars? Who joined the nationalist and facist parties?
The workers, every time, following the intyerests of their masters- there is no such thing as a 'national interest'- imagine this way- you're being held hostage, in a house, and the only way you can get food is if the demands of the hostage taker are kept, i.e. on their terms, their interest. Do you share an interest with the hostage taker? Thats national interest in action, one small group of masters blackmailing millions of others with their interests- or, as Chomsky puts it, its a way in which gains are privatised, and risk socialised. When the 'anational economy' fails, they can pass the blame onto us.
: RD your cycnicism is amazing this is the kind of thing that "regular" people think off when I mention socialism, so I just dont anymore.
Are the US gonna pick fights that aren't in their interest, that could eventually lead to them taking losses they don't need?
: People are being killed anyway you know...
Troops made it worse, the problems were dying off..
: Fine but where has NJ's patriotism had loyalty to the government written into it? You arent debating with right-wing nationalists here and if you think all nationalism is right-wing your making a grave error, a very grave one.
I was discussing Iraq for one paragraph.
: Might I just say that I consider myself a patriot and a socialist I dont owe loyalty to any institution or Macavellian government, I owe loyalty to the mystic of the land of my birth. A concoction of ecologism and myth it's never hurt no one.
'mystic', are we going to hear some James Connolly -esque rubbish about ireland being redeemed by blood sacrifices next- at least he had the decency to sacrifice his own blood....
: Macavallian government will always be one of the first among the ranks of the enamy RD what does it have to do with denying legitimate self-identity?
I didn't deny self-identity, I denied nationalism, the two are not conincident, 'self identity' is a buzz term deployed by liberal ideologists as they divide people up into different groups which the state can recognise. People have self identity when they are self-active and free, and as far as I can see that only results from one course of action.
: Fair enough, unless there's been an invasion or illegitimate act of aggression.
Yes, I'm not a pacifist, I would join the resistance should Britain be invaded, but I doubt I would work with the state military...
: OK I maybe an exception to the rule but I dont think I am and I dont see your capitalist class either.
Think of the british empire- did the working class gain from that? No, the capitalist class did. Europe, the single currency, anything to do with working class interests? No, its all the interest of the ruling class- 'the nation' is their way of passing on the pinch, of universalising their rule.
