Nationalism
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        53 Words; 316 Characters

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* 1


Hear the peasants on different sides of the Alps, and the Pyrenees, the Rhine, or the British channel, give vent to their prejudices, and national passions; it is among them that we find the materials of war and dissention laid without the direction of government, and sparks ready to kindle into a flame...


* 2


"My father," said a Spanish peasant, "would rise from his grave, if he could foresee a war with France." What interest had he, or the bones of his father, in the quarrels of princes?


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The dynamic of war is such that unless it is annihilated, the defeated society will seek revenge after its wounds heal and it has replaced its losses, and this assures that any return to stability will be temporary rather than permanent.


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I believe that militarism will cease when the liberty-loving spirits of the world say to their masters: "Go and do your own killing. We have sacrificed ourselves and our loved ones long enough fighting your battles. In return you have made parasites and criminals of us in times of peace and brutalized us in times of war. You have separated us from our brothers and have made of the world a human slaughterhouse. No, we will not do your killing or fight for the country that you have stolen from us."

Oh, I believe with all my heart that human brotherhood and solidarity will clear the horizon from the terrible red streak of war and destruction.


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We have given up the duel in private life; why should we have recourse to it as a nation?


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We hope that American workers will live up to the standard of Socialism and join in putting down accursed militarism!


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...the British ruling class obviously could not admit to themselves that their usefulness was at an end. Had they done that they would have had to abdicate. For it was not possible for them to turn themselves into mere bandits, like the American millionaires, consciously clinging to unjust privileges and beating down opposition by bribery and tear-gas bombs. After all, they belonged to a class with a certain tradition, they had been to public schools where the duty of dying for your country, if necessary, is laid down as the first and greatest of the Commandments. They had to feel themselves true patriots, even while they plundered their countrymen. Clearly there was only one escape for them -- into stupidity.


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...as soon as fear, hatred, jealousy and power worship are involved, the sense of reality becomes unhinged. And, as I have pointed out already, the sense of right and wrong becomes unhinged also. There is no crime, absolutely none, that cannot be condoned when 'our' side commits it. Even if one does not deny that the crime has happened, even if one knows that it is exactly the same crime as one has condemned in some other case, even if one admits in an intellectual sense that it is unjustified — still one cannot feel that it is wrong. Loyalty is involved, and so pity ceases to function.


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...observe the nation that is defended by devoted patriots. The patriots fall in bloody battle or in the fight with hunger and want; what does the nation care for that? By the manure of their corpses the nation comes to "its bloom"! The individuals have died "for the great cause of the nation," and the nation sends some words of thanks after them and -- has the profit of it. I call that a paying kind of egoism.


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...the maintenance and defense of any nationality -- Russian, German, French, or Anglo-Saxon, provoking the corresponding maintenance and defense not only of Hungarian, Polish, and Irish nationalities, but also of Basque, Provencal, Mordva, Tchouvash, and many other nationalities --serves not to harmonize and unite men, but to estrange and divide them more and more from one another.

[Part 1.]


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     Nationalism -- Added : April 09, 2020

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