Comment by 7952
3 months ago
Ethno-nationalism seems to be a strong factor in both Israeli and Palestinian politics. I can't think of a more direct example of ethno-nationalism than the Jewish state.
Also, my point was more about how conflict is perceived and litigated in politics and threads like this. Factoids about history are completely irrelevant to that. Its just another abstraction.
> can't think of a more direct example of ethno-nationalism than the Jewish state.
It's a weird concept, which kind of nationalism isn't ethno-nationalist? I can think of maybe two nations whose brand of nationalism does not relate to an ethnic group and I will probably push it for the USA.
Israel is probably the only ethnoreligious nation, and the ethnic part is debatable if you ever seen Israelis, unlike the Palestinian national movement which is ethnic-nationalist
> It's a weird concept, which kind of nationalism isn't ethno-nationalist?
Most nationalism either is based around an established ancestry-derived ethnic identity (which is what “ethno-nationalism” usually refers to), or seeks to construct a new identity (which itself can be viewed as ethnic) transcending existing ethnic lines within the population of a state (the PRM regime in Mexico is an example of this); you might call this cosmopolitan nationalism.
> I can think of maybe two nations whose brand of nationalism does not relate to an ethnic group and I will probably push it for the USA.
States often contain multiple different kinds of nationalism in their population, and may even contain different kinds in their governments. The USA definitely has nationalist factions of both the ethnonationalist (specifically White nationalist) and cosmopolitan nationalist kind.
> Israel is probably the only ethnoreligious nation,
The Israeli state is possibly the only strongly ethnoreligious state. Ethnoreligious nationalism is a large subset of ethno-nationalism, but states in places with strong ethnoreligious nationalism don’t always build both ethnic and religious character into their state structure.
Yes, it is usually used as a talking point against Israel which seems to indicate Israel is guilty of being the only ethnonationalist nation on earth.
I usually take it as another example of scapegoating Israel for universal concepts like war, which is a cultural tradition dating at least two millennia (scapegoating, not war)
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Perhaps I should have said "exclusive nation state membership abstractions". It makes no difference to the point. That the abstraction subjugates the individual.
And I don't see why American can't be an ethnicity or even religious type all on its own. None of this is static.