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[Random_Dragon]

In what way?

Bit belatedly, I mainly mean that the various concepts that inform our modern sense of nationalism go back later than most nationalist consider the "dawn of the nation-state" era. I agree that it's a very artificial concept overall, and there's always been (and still are) many other methods by which people conceive of their identity other than the abstract.

The main example I'd give is the Roman concepts of citizenship, as well as their understanding of the concept of S.P.Q.R. (The Senate and People of Rome). These both follow what feel to me a familiar pattern of embodying what it means to be "Roman" in a more abstract way than the common Italian, Gallic, etc person would see themselves as.

[Svarte Troner]

I'm paraphrasing Rudolf Rocker; the nation is not the cause, but the result of the state.

Nonsense

State borders do influence the genesis of nations but true roots for nations ("small" things like languages, religions, traditions) existed long before states even become a concept. Nations predate countries by millennia.

States can't even create nations, they merely combine different nations in one, either in a form of a merger or via forceful assimilation.

Nationalism relies on the premise of constructing who belongs to the "nation" and how they belong based on artificial social characteristics. You can't have a nation without in-groups and out-groups, natives and migrants, borders and a military to defend them; properties of the state. You could say there are various groups of "peoples," constituents of the human species, that differ between each other in various ways (though I'd say in a broad continuum), but without the state to literally enforce what it means to be part of the "nation," it does not really exist. Not in a positive way at least, dividing people up into different arbitrarily defined "nations" is good if you like war and conflict thought I guess.

Let's just take language for an example: with the creation of modern nation-states with state directed mass educational systems, languages had to be standardized; orthographies had to be codified; dictionaries had to be written... so that children could be educated into speaking in one way. Before the modern nation-state, languages were constantly in flux, you might have trouble understanding the dialect of someone from the next village over (even though it's the same "language"), let alone in a different "country."

This whole process is why even today many languages are dying out and giving way to the biggest/most spoken languages (sponsored by states).

It doesn't stop at languages either, the state does this with all facets of "culture" and "tradition."

Idk, maybe living in the most fake and artificial nation-state in the world, the US, has clouded my judgement about the realness of other nations.

edit for a specific example of what I'm talking about:

The French nation-state, which appeared after the 1789 French Revolution and Napoleon I's empire, unified the French people in particular through the consolidation of the use of the French language. Hence, according to the historian Eric Hobsbawm, "the French language has been essential to the concept of 'France', although in 1789 50% of the French people did not speak it at all, and only 12 to 13% spoke it 'fairly' – in fact, even in oïl language zones, out of a central region, it was not usually spoken except in cities, and, even there, not always in the faubourgs [approximatively translatable to "suburbs"]. In the North as in the South of France, almost nobody spoke French."[30] Hobsbawm highlighted the role of conscription, invented by Napoleon, and of the 1880s public instruction laws, which allowed to mix the various groups of France into a nationalist mold, which created the French citizen and his consciousness of membership to a common nation, and the various "patois" were progressively eradicated.

[McTraveller]

Idk, maybe living in the most fake and artificial nation-state in the world, the US, ...

That's some serious unfounded certainty right there - unless I'm completely misunderstanding what you mean by those words.  These are the kinds of words that sound like from a recent speech... "... is not a nation anyway...".

Maybe put another way, if the US isn't a nation (maybe there's an argument for not being a nation-state), what is it?  Or what is a nation?

[Svarte Troner]

Idk, maybe living in the most fake and artificial nation-state in the world, the US, ...

That's some serious unfounded certainty right there - unless I'm completely misunderstanding what you mean by those words.  These are the kinds of words that sound like from a recent speech... "... is not a nation anyway...".

Maybe put another way, if the US isn't a nation (maybe there's an argument for not being a nation-state), what is it?  Or what is a nation?

Sorry, I'm like half joking, the US is just as "real" a nation as any other nation.

[McTraveller]

Ah ok - I completely missed the joke then! 

[Strongpoint]

Nationalism relies on the premise of constructing who belongs to the "nation" and how they belong based on artificial social characteristics. You can't have a nation without in-groups and out-groups, natives and migrants, borders and a military to defend them; properties of the state. You could say there are various groups of "peoples," constituents of the human species, that differ between each other in various ways (though I'd say in a broad continuum), but without the state to literally enforce what it means to be part of the "nation," it does not really exist. Not in a positive way at least, dividing people up into different arbitrarily defined "nations" is good if you like war and conflict thought I guess.

Let's just take language for an example: with the creation of modern nation-states with state directed mass educational systems, languages had to be standardized; orthographies had to be codified; dictionaries had to be written... so that children could be educated into speaking in one way. Before the modern nation-state, languages were constantly in flux, you might have trouble understanding the dialect of someone from the next village over (even though it's the same "language"), let alone in a different "country."

This whole process is why even today many languages are dying out and giving way to the biggest/most spoken languages (sponsored by states).

It doesn't stop at languages either, the state does this with all facets of "culture" and "tradition."

Languages aren't artificial. Languages are very much real.

Standardization of languages and merging of dialects\languages in one require... languages to exist in the first place. If you define nation=people speaking language X (BTW it is exactly what modern Russian ideology says) then you must admit that nations existed since... forever.

Do I claim that before, let's say, united Germany there were many German nations? Yes and no. The universe doesn't fit human obsession with creation of well-defined categories of anything. There are no defined boundaries between nations, it is always a gradient and you can always zoom in or zoom out. Germany had (and, to lesser extent, has) "subnations" and together with Austria they form a "supernation", and they are also a part of a European "supersupernation". It is complicated

At its core, nationalism is "we are similar people we want to live in one country and govern ourselves", you claim that it is "We live in one country and govern ourselves and it makes us similar people" but if it worked this way, there would be no separatist movements whatsoever.

As for the USA... Do I think that the USA qualifies as one nation? Yes. And no. Depending on how far you wish to zoom in, on how you define a nation.

Do Dogs and Cats belong to the same group? We can say yes, both are Carnivora. We can say no, Canines and Felines are clearly different.

Unlike biology, where there is no DNA exchange between cats and dogs, groups of similar humans (nations) exchange DNA (bits of culture) with other groups of similar humans, creating a spectacular mess.

[JoshuaFH]

Idk, maybe living in the most fake and artificial nation-state in the world, the US, ...

That's some serious unfounded certainty right there - unless I'm completely misunderstanding what you mean by those words.  These are the kinds of words that sound like from a recent speech... "... is not a nation anyway...".

Maybe put another way, if the US isn't a nation (maybe there's an argument for not being a nation-state), what is it?  Or what is a nation?

Sorry, I'm like half joking, the US is just as "real" a nation as any other nation.

I took it to mean not that we're a 'fake' nation, but a nation with a shallow and superficial culture, or atleast a culture that inordinately values the shallow and superficial.

[scriver]

Well, I'm not really sure what you think a nation-state is, really, because America sure isn't one.

And yeah, while nationalism the ism is a very modern thing, the basis for it -- the nation -- is not. And yeah, in an era before nationalism the coignessance of nationality would be weaker and less recognised, that doesn't mean it wasn't recognised. You see it repeated all over the world even in tribal settings that people recognise that even though they're not of your tribe, some tribes are more like you and you're customs than others and that you have more in common with those. Examples of that is the Greeks and their Barbarians, the Germanians and how they separated people not just by tribe but by whether that tribe was Germanian or not (the concept of non-Germanians being called "Wal"), or how tribal confederacies are generally formed along national borders.

And as for whether states create nations... In that case nations such as the Basque, the Catalan, Occitan, Sami or even Finnish wouldn't exist. But they do, despite hundreds of years of the state they exist under trying to wipe them out.

[martinuzz]

IEAE wants to send a UN mission to Chernobyl to see if any radioactive material went missing.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60945666

The Russians have left the site. According to the Ukrainian state nuclear company, Energoatom, they dug trenches in radioactive forest, and they panicked and retreated when symptoms of radiation poisoning set in (hint: by that time, it's too late. Have a nice death. I recommend humane euthanasia, or if that's unavailable in Russia, just suicide. You really don't want to suffer the agonizing death of radiation poisoning).

[Imic]

Please maybe chill with debating the definitons of nationality, nationhood, and nationalism in the Ukraine war thread, this is getting a little off topic and could get heated.

[hector13]

Please maybe chill with debating the definitons of nationality, nationhood, and nationalism in the Ukraine war thread, this is getting a little off topic and could get heated.

You’re just jealous my country is better than your country.

[Imic]

Please maybe chill with debating the definitons of nationality, nationhood, and nationalism in the Ukraine war thread, this is getting a little off topic and could get heated.

You’re just jealous my country is better than your country.

ONLY WE THE PEOPLE OF MY FINE COUNTRY ARE ALLOWED TO SHIT ALL OVER IT HOW DARE YOU SUGGEST THAT YOUR PROBLEMS AREN'T AS BAD AS OUR PROBLEMS

[martinuzz]

Best Korea is only true nation

[LordBaal]

What you mean best Korea? There is only one Korea, and some unruly rebels.

[martinuzz]

The new chairman of the European parliament, Roberta Metsola, is en route to Kyiv, to 'bring a message of hope and support'.
The visit comes unannounced, for security reasons.