Every flag is a symbol of power, a symbol of membership. Flags say, "I am American. I am French. I am a Communist. I am a Hutu. I am a Nazi." Flags say, "I am of an entity larger than myself, and I am here as an extension of its power." A flag can be used to bring people together, and it can be used to set them apart.
For every Fourth Of July celebration, with joyful chattering and barbecue fireworks, there has been a massacre sanctioned by a flag. At the beginning of Hotel Rwanda, you see a joyous parade of hutu nationalists, singing, dancing, dressed in vibrant colors. In many ways it seemed equivalent to me of a Fourth of July Parade. Obviously, Independence Day has no genocidal connotations, but the two are disturbingly similar in many other ways.
We are at a unique point in history. "The State" has stopped being the playground of the individual king or warlord. The nations have taken on a life of their own, and to save the lives of these unliving entities, humans destroy other humans. Every genocide we have looked at this year has been "to save the nation," "for our great country" "to make us strong". The forces of nationalism (coupled of course with ancient ethnic hatred) are the root cause of the evil that has befallen the world in the past century, and I have no doubt will be so again in the next.
Part of the reason of why patriotism can produce is that it creates a blind following. In the US, we immediately assume that a patriot is a good person, but when we just ask ourselves the question "Why?" we realize it is just an assumption we have been told to make. A patriot can be entirely immoral. Although, most devout patriots in the US are good people, the cause of that is not their patriotism but their goodness. To me, it seems that the a large portion of the definition of an American patriot is someone who supports the troops. Imagine if the "troops" are genocidaires.
ReplyDeleteSure, one can look at examples of a group abusing an idea for their own purposes, just look at Al Qaeda abusing the Koran for political reasons. Does that make religion the root of all evil? Nationalism and Nationhood bring people together. It allows a group united under common ground to achieve what it couldn't alone. Nationalism has only been thrown around in the past few centuries and is a fairly new term, but the idea behind it is as old as civilization itself. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Without unity we could not utilize our collective intelligence to advance.
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