Saturday Commentary and Review #177

How America Is Grooming Italian PM Meloni, Portland Realizes That It Fucked Up, India vs. Wikipedia, Civic vs. Ethnic Nationalism in Europe, Scotland's Most Remote Pub

Oct 12, 2024

Every weekend (almost) I share five articles/essays/reports with you. I select these over the course of the week because they are either insightful, informative, interesting, important, or a combination of the above.

Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni was feted recently at a swanky event in New York City held by the Atlantic Council.

I couldn’t get the lingering smell of rotting fish out of my nostrils for a few days after that. The Atlantic Council is the “NGO” par excellence when it comes to US foreign policy. According to the US Library of Congress, the Atlantic Council is:

“…..a think tank in the field of international affairs. Founded in 1961, it provides a forum for international political, business, and intellectual leaders. It manages ten regional centers and functional programs related to international security and global economic prosperity. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C. It is a member of the Atlantic Treaty Association."

It’s a very serious operation, and its funders read like a who’s who of very powerful global interests. Here is a small sample of their donors:

British Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Embassy of the United Arab Emirates
Facebook
Goldman Sachs & Co.
The Rockefeller Foundation
Abu Dhabi National Oil Company
Airbus
Chevron Corporation
Google
HSBC Holdings P.L.C.
JPMorgan Chase Foundation
Palantir
Raytheon Company (now, Raytheon Technologies)
US State Department
Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs
Army Future Studies Group
Blackstone
Burisma
Embassy of Bahrain to the United States
Embassy of Japan to the United States
Eni SpA
Lockheed Martin Corporation
NATO Public Diplomacy Division
NATO StratCom Center of Excellence
Open Society Foundations
etc.

Big Oil, Big Finance, Big Tech, weapons manufacturers, various governments and various government entities….they are all represented in this so-called “non-governmental organization” that is devoted to Atlanticism (read: continued US global hegemony).

Some of you may be thinking “so what? Italy is firmly within the Atlanticist orbit, and Meloni, as Premier of Italy, needs to represent her country at these events”.

Fair enough. On the other hand, many of you will recall that the Atlantic Council played a central role in the censorship regime forced onto/aided by Big Tech in the run up to the 2020 US Presidential Election, effectively tipping the scale in favour of Joe Biden’s candidacy. In 2018, the Atlantic Council partnered up with Facebook’s parent company Meta to create what is known as the Digital Forensic Research Lab. All of you here are aware that the US Government during Joe Biden’s administration funded efforts that resulted in government-backed calls for social media bans for certain American citizens, with many of the requests succeeding. You also already know the role that the USGov played in shaping the narratives around COVID-19, efforts that were assisted by the Digital Forensic Research Lab.

All of you should be aware that this outfit worked on behalf of government to monitor and censor online speech:

The SIO’s role in monitoring and censoring online speech has garnered widespread political and legal scrutiny for stifling protected speech in conjunction with the federal government. The SIO-led so-called Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), composed of the University of Washington, Graphika Inc., and the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), silenced anti-mainstream narratives at the height of the 2020 presidential race in blatant disregard of the First Amendment.
Emails from the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) reveal that the federal agency secretly collaborated with the EIP to censor vast amounts of speech deemed “threatening” and “dangerous” to its agenda. Journalist Matt Taibbi’s reporting detailed Stanford’s abandonment of free expression, open discourse, and intellectual diversity as it aided CISA in an unprecedented crackdown against political topics damaging to Democrats and the pro-lockdown left.

By now, some of you may be wondering why X owner Elon Musk would attend an event hosted by an organization that runs counter to his stated principles at X. I don’t have an answer to this, as Musk’s motivations are his own, and super billionaires reside in a different universe than us mere mortals. In my opinion, it’s not a good look….but my opinion does not appear on Elon’s radar.

My concerns here are focused on Giorgia Meloni, a populist who heads a party founded by neo-fascists, but who is now being celebrated by the powers-that-be, including those who seek to censor information on subjects such as mass migration, an issue where Meloni is supposed to be at complete odds with Atlanticism. What exactly is she trying to achieve here? Her flirtations with Brussels (the EU is firmly aligned with the Atlantic Council) resulted in her being spurned and publicly humiliated. So what gives?

Thomas Fazi

approaches the subject from the view of economics and Italy’s dissipating national sovereignty:

Taken together, then, you get the sense that Meloni gambled her political survival on shedding her populist image and rushing in the opposite direction, becoming more pro-European and more pro-American than your average European centrist. Now, however, the liberal media is aflame once more. Chatter about Meloni’s political journey started in September, when she was presented with a “Global Citizen Award” at the Atlantic Council in New York. Beyond the think tank’s Atlanticist flavour, what really got politicos talking was who gave Meloni her prize: one Elon Musk. This has fuelled speculation about a potential political (re)alignment with Trump on Meloni’s part. Given the mercurial South African’s financial and political support for Trump’s presidential run — and the (denied) allegations of a burgeoning romance between the businessman and the Prime Minister — these claims don’t feel completely fanciful.

Okay, no big deal so far. Not playing favourites in a foreign election is common sense.

Here’s where Fazi gets to his core argument:

So could Meloni’s recent moves be signalling a return to her radical roots? I think not. At its core, rather, this story is less about policy — and more about cold hard cash, both in Italy itself and further afield. That’s clear enough if you put aside the trees, Meloni and Musk, and instead focus on the woods: the Atlantic Council that offered Meloni her prize. The think tank euphemistically describes itself as a nonpartisan organisation that “galvanises” US global leadership and encourages engagement with its friends and allies. In plain English, that means that the Atlantic Council exists to promote the interests of US corporations — and American imperial interests more generally. Founded in the Sixties, to boost political support for Nato, today it remains active on transatlantic security issues.

The meat:

Nor is Musk the only US investor ingratiating himself with Meloni. After returning from her bash in New York, she also met with Larry Fink, chairman and CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest investment company. With assets worth $10 trillion, the firm boasts the equivalent of Germany and Japan’s combined GDP. In Italy itself, BlackRock is comfortably the largest foreign institutional investor on the Milan Stock Exchange, owning substantial stakes in some of the country’s largest listed companies. The firm is bolstering its Italian presence elsewhere too. Earlier this year, for instance, Meloni oversaw the sale of Tim’s entire fixed-line network to KKR, a US fund that boasts BlackRock among its main institutional investors.
Beyond the fact that the network represents a strategic national asset, with its sensitive user data now effectively under foreign control, these varied moves represent the culmination of a long sequence of privatisations and selling-off of Italian public and private assets beginning back in the Nineties. Once you dovetail that with BlackRock’s future plans — among other things, it hopes to snatch up Italy’s highway and railway networks, currently under public or semi-public control — the country looks set to become little more than an outpost of American capital, losing what little is left of its economic sovereignty.

Fazi makes the point that by Meloni selling off Italy’s economic crown jewels to US corporate, security, and financial interests, she is reducing her own country to the state of an economic dependency of the USA. Smart Europeans are worried about the continent’s economic decline, and there are strong calls for a strategy to create “European giants” in all economic sectors. By selling off such assets to the Americans, these efforts are instantly handicapped.

Italy as the USA’s “economic Trojan Horse”:

That this should be happening under a nominally “sovereigntist” prime minister is remarkable enough — but what really matters is the way US investors, notably BlackRock, are using Italy as a Trojan horse to expand their influence right across Europe. Consider the example of Germany. Unlike other countries, companies in Munich or Hamburg largely remain in the hands of the families that founded them. Local investors have substantial influence too, as does KFW, the public bank dedicated to supporting the Federal Republic’s industrial development.
In practice, that means the penetration of BlackRock and other US mega-funds in the German economy remains relatively marginal. That’s an anomaly that US capital now seems intent on fixing, using Italy as its battering ram. Last month, for instance, Milan’s UniCredit bank announced a surprise hostile takeover of Commerzbank, effectively becoming the Frankfurt outfit’s largest shareholder. Though this caused some patriotic fervour among Italian commentators — an Italian bank taking over a German rival! — the reality is that the move was likely spearheaded by BlackRock itself, which executed the move with the help of other Anglo-American funds, all to consolidate its control of Germany’s financial system. No wonder Larry Fink welcomed the move. “Europe,” he said, “needs a stronger capital markets system and a more unified banking system.”

For obvious reasons, I don’t find the following quote by Todd to be entirely correct, but the gist of it certainly holds true:

What we are witnessing, in short, is the economic cannibalisation of Europe by US capital. Not that we should be surprised. As Emmanuel Todd, a French historian, writes in his latest book: “As its power diminishes worldwide, the American system ultimately ends up burdening its protectorates more and more, as they remain the last bases of its power.” With European industry crucial to US interests, Todd continues, we should expect more “systemic exploitation” of Rome and Berlin from the imperial centre in Washington. The fact that this is happening under the auspices of a self-described “patriot” like Meloni only highlights the grotesque weakness of European politics.

No matter who moves into the White House in January of next year, Europe is going to be negatively affected by policies emanating from the ravenous US of A.

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Is Portland the most politically progressive and left-wing large city in the USA? I am no expert on the matter, but to me it seems like it is. Portland is the city that spawned John Reed, after all. The city has a relatively old left-wing tradition.

The image of Portland today as depicted by media is a city of very progressive politics, both in governance and on the street (where rioting even exceeds French numbers), and where Antifa has established a notable foothold. It’s a city for political experimentation and zealotry…but the problem is that people also have to live and work there too.

Many of those who live and work there have come to the conclusion that the political experimentation of the past four years has failed, as the city is now less safe and more dangerous than it was prior to the “Summer of George”, and that it is also much poorer too. Portlanders want these issues to be addressed by local government, but Portland being Portland, its viable options (in terms of who can actually win elections) is severely restricted to the centre-left and far left. Add to all of these problems the introduction of a new way to vote for city councillors and a newly-weakened mayoralty, Portland now seems to be trapped inside of a hell of its own making:

PORTLAND, Oregon — Few American cities faced as much chaos as Portland over the last four years. This proudly liberal city has endured more than 100 days of often-violent protests, a fentanyl and homelessness crisis, a pandemic — and, in arguably the nation’s boldest progressive policy experiment in recent history — decriminalization of all drugs.
This November, Portland is undertaking one more chaotic act.
In a sign of either hope or desperation, Rose City voters decided to throw out their entire government structure and replace it with a weaker mayor, expanded City Council and ranked choice voting.
A major driving factor was the passage of “Measure 110” decriminalizing all drugs in 2020, which was backed by 74 percent of Multnomah County’s residents. Voters couldn’t — or at least didn’t — anticipate how this policy change would reshape a city already strapped for money, dealing with a public health crisis and confronting rising rates of homelessness and fentanyl abuse.
Drug use shot up, homelessness worsened and taxpayers fled.

No one would take bets on this outcome because it was so bloody predictable. Utopians will stubbornly cling to their utopian ideals, and continue to try and defeat human nature anyway.

Seemingly everyone wants to be part of fixing the city’s woes. There are 19 people running for mayor and 98 people seeking seats on the City Council. They’re nearly all campaigning on left-of-center platforms — this is Portland, after all. But progressives often put blame for the policy failures on unexpected circumstances like the fentanyl crisis and on problems with implementation, while moderate candidates are bemoaning the city’s far-left shift and pushing for bigger policy corrections.
Pandemic closures, protests, elevated crime rates and rising homelessness buffeted many liberal cities in recent years, including San Francisco and Minneapolis. But policy choices made by the city and state aggravated their impact in Portland.
The ramifications are measurable: Nearly 12,000 people moved out of Multnomah County between 2020 and 2023, per data from Portland State University. The exodus between 2020 and 2021 alone took nearly $1.1 billion in taxable income out of the city, according to data analyzed by the Economic Innovation Group. Portland’s once bustling downtown is nearly empty, and a negative national reputation clouds its economic future.

A city can’t be run on homeless shelters and a laissez-faire attitude towards hard drugs. The latter was tried by Amsterdam and Lisbon, and both have turned their backs on it after experiencing similar outcomes to what Portland is now facing.

This following excerpt is thoroughly demoralizing:

Rep. Earl Blumenauer, a retiring Democrat congressman who has represented parts of Portland since 1996 and before that served on both the Multnomah County Commission and the City Council, said parts of downtown look “like Dresden in World War II.”
“I’ve spent 54 years trying to make Portland the most livable city in the country or in the world,” said Blumenauer, his voice cracking, in a mid-September interview as he prepared to pack up his Capitol Hill office. “No one’s going to describe it like that now.”

Blumenauer sounds defeated, as if his entire life’s work has gone up in a puff of fentanyl-laced smoke.

Portland as a nest of left-wing radicals:

The sprawling field does not sort into neat camps. Most lean to the left, but they’re offering a wide variety of solutions for residents’ biggest concerns of crime, drug use, homelessness and economic revitalization.
Passionate political demonstrations have long been part of Portland’s identity. In 1990, protesters famously swallowed food coloring and medication in order to barf up red, white and blue in front of the hotel where Vice President Dan Quayle was staying. A staffer in the George H.W. Bush administration bestowed the city with the moniker “Little Beirut,” a nickname adopted by locals and eventually even a local band.
But the summer of 2020 was different. At first, Portlanders turned out in droves for Black Lives Matter protests — laying down for nine minutes in remembrance of George Floyd on Portland’s iconic Burnside Bridge. But as summer stretched on, the tone shifted: Peaceful and destructive protesters commingled, the latter attracting folks from beyond the city who just wanted to fight or damage property.
For more than 100 nights, downtown Portland became bedlam. President Donald Trump sent in federal law enforcement officers. There were reports of protesters being snatched and hauled into vans by federal agents. The Portland Police Department was criticized for not doing enough — and then for doing too much. In August, a member of the far-right group Patriot Prayer was shot.

The cost of good intentions:

The City Council instituted some changes that BLM advocates were asking for, like cutting $15 million from the police department budget and shuttering the Gun Violence Reduction Team, following findings that it disproportionately targeted Black and Brown men. But in the aftermath, gun violence shot up, reaching an all-time high of 101 homicides in 2022.
Terrence Hayes served as chair of the community oversight group for Portland Police Department’s new Focused Intervention Team (which was created to address gun violence) through last July. He is running for City Council in the new first district, which covers east Portland, sometimes referred to as “the other Portland.” Only 53 percent of the district was white as of 2020 — compared to 70 percent or more in the city’s other three districts. More than 60 percent of residents in that district make below the city’s average annual income of $75,000.
Hayes, whose cousin was killed by a police officer in 2017 and who served time in prison himself, says that some of the policy changes spurred by 2020’s Black Lives Matter protests had a negative impact on Black communities like his. Shutting down the Gun Violence Reduction Team, for example, hurt his community more than it helped.
“Nobody considered that there would be an uptick in gun violence … especially in Black communities,” Hayes said. “Because we didn’t really listen to those communities. We spoke for them, and we made decisions for them.”

Drug use and homelessness skyrocketed:

Drug decriminalization and the city’s open camping rules compounded the feeling of insecurity. Homeless encampments spread through empty public spaces and filled sidewalks during the lockdown, and some became epicenters for the fentanyl trade. Even Portlanders who voted for decriminalization and believe in a compassionate approach to homelessness didn’t feel as safe in their own neighborhoods.
“Political rhetoric in 2020-2021 in the City of Portland was incredibly ideologically driven,” Gonzalez said, explaining that there was a “default conversation” on topics like homelessness or police reform that shut down an exchange of ideas.
When asked if there was a performativity to Portland’s progressive values, Adams also said yes — but the dam was broken by the riots, the homeless encampments, and the rise in crime and drug use.
“Portland sort of found a … compassion red line,” said Adams, who is running for Multnomah County commissioner this November.

Progressive politics still holds sway in the city, so the debate on how to “fix” the problems currently plaguing the city will be between pragmatists and idealists.

Compounding matters is the fact that the city’s business core is being hollowed out:

“If you look down the street at nine o’clock on a Friday — I have video — it is empty,” she said. “You’d think they were filming a movie.”
A report by real estate firm Colliers ranked Portland No. 1 in the nation for office vacancy in 2023: More than 30 percent of the city’s central business district is vacant. U.S. Bank, a major downtown employer, announced its decision in September to not renew its lease in the city’s iconic Bancorp Tower, colloquially called “Big Pink” for the tint to its glass exterior. While other city neighborhoods have thrived since the pandemic lockdown ended, downtown Portland continues to take more hits.

Doing what is necessary isn’t politically feasible in this specific political environment, which means that Portland will continue to decline.

Social media is now a front in global and domestic conflicts. This isn’t an exaggeration; countries around the world view social media as a disruptive technology that can adversely affect governance, politics, economics, and society. Think back to Iran’s failed “Green Revolution” or the Arab Spring and how Twitter was used by anti-government elements, both at home and abroad, to destabilize targeted regimes. Social media is both a weapon to be wielded, and a battlefield where conflict now takes place in full view of the world.

Social media has also taken an axe to the full-spectrum narrative control of legacy media, making it a target of the powers-that-be. By bringing social media to heel, narrative control can be re-established (in theory). This is why we saw the censorship efforts targeting social media in the USA during the Trump and Biden administrations, and which is why China severely restricts social media as well. Just last week, Elon Musk surrendered to Brazil’s demands regarding his platform X and its operations in that country. The question of social media and free speech will be a main theme for the next decade or so.

This is a global issue with many local peculiarities, such as the fight between Indian courts and Wikipedia:

That may change soon, though, as two recent court cases concerning Wikipedia raised alarms after a high-court judge threatened to ban the encyclopedia if identified users weren’t unmasked and a spokesperson for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) labeled the site as part of the “Western deep state.”

A very, very interesting take, to say the least!

India has been somewhat aggressive when it comes to western social media platforms:

The Indian government issued Information Technology (IT) Rules, 2021 in February of the same year. Observers immediately noted that these rules provide greater authority to regulate foreign social media companies and control domestic political and social expression on digital platforms.
The rules included Intermediary Guidelines requiring social platforms and other online service providers to take action against content when ordered to do so by a court or government entity, along with so-called “hostage-taking laws” compelling these companies to appoint a chief compliance officer in the country who can be legally held accountable for any violations.
The shift’s impact was felt across numerous platforms but was especially pronounced on Twitter, which had previously fought against censorship requests in Indian courts. By 2023, the Washington Post reported that Twitter (by then rebranded as X) was routinely removing posts critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his administration and suspending accounts belonging to journalists and BJP opponents.

India vs. Wikipedia - Case One:

In 2022, author and BJP spokesperson Tuhin A. Sinha initiated legal proceedings against the Wikimedia Foundation after his Wikipedia entry, which had existed since 2006, was suddenly deleted that March. In his petition, Sinha claimed that the deletion damaged his business and “political equity.” The complaint further stated that the deletion violated the newly adopted Information Technology Rules and relevant Wikipedia guidelines.
In a September hearing, Saket District Court judge Twinkle Wadhwa issued a summons to the Wikimedia Foundation to respond in person. Sinha penned a celebratory op-ed in response.
“[T]his is a fight against the Western deep state,” Sinha wrote. “Wikimedia’s recent malafide acts of omission and commission, whether it was my profile or any other, was agenda-driven. The objective of this fight is very clear – Wikipedia, like other intermediaries, has to respect Indian laws and conduct itself impartially as it influences perceptions, both personal and political.”
Sinha’s Wikipedia issue seemed to find resolution a month later when an editor recreated his article. The court case remains ongoing, though, as the matter of compensation is still outstanding.

Case Two:

This past July, the Indian news agency Asian News International (ANI) filed a defamation suit at the Delhi High Court against the Wikimedia Foundation over an allegedly slanderous description of ANI on the online encyclopedia.
At the time of the suit, the Wikipedia entry for ANI stated that the agency “has been criticized for having served as a propaganda tool for the incumbent central government, distributing materials from a vast network of fake news websites, and misreporting events.” (The passage has been slightly reworded since then, but the critical framing remains intact.)
The Wikimedia Foundation responded with a familiar disclaimer noting that the Foundation itself “does not add, edit or determine content” and that editorial decisions are instead determined “by its global community of volunteer editors.”
ANI, in turn, argued that their attempts to revise the passage “showcasing [the] true and correct position, supported by trusted sources,” were removed by Wikipedia. “This malicious conduct of the Defendants [Wikipedia] ex-facie establishes their ulterior motives of defaming Plaintiff [ANI] by publishing false and misleading content against Plaintiff,” ANI’s plea stated.
In August, the court ordered the Foundation to disclose personal information about three volunteer editors who had restored the alleged defamatory passages to the ANI article after the news agency attempted to remove them.
The Foundation did not comply by the deadline, which ANI argued “clearly demonstrates willful disobedience of the order.” Counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation pushed back, arguing that the delay in providing details about the three editors was strictly logistical due to the Foundation’s lack of physical presence in India.

The last bolded portion shows how complex these issues can be.

Nevertheless:

On September 5 Justice Navin Chawla agreed with ANI and sent a contempt of court notice to the Foundation.
“It is not a question of the defendant not being an entity in India,” Chawla explained. “We will close your business transactions here. We will ask the government to block Wikipedia.”
The next hearing is scheduled for October 25 and the Delhi High Court has ordered an “authorized representative” of the non-profit to be personally present.

Wikipedia has in the past lost defamation cases in places like France and Germany, meaning that India (or Indian companies and citizens) are not acting out of the ordinary.

As the public battle between Elon Musk and the Brazilian judiciary carried out over the summer, there was an expectation that many of the insults (from Musk) and hardlines (from the Brazilian government) were simply posturing. Brazil was, after all, one of the largest markets for X, with tens of millions of users. Surely the two sides would reach an agreement? Alas, the issues of contention were too politically charged, especially given Musk’s outspokenness against Lula da Silva’s administration and affinities with far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro.
That same political and regulatory alignment is evident in India, and Wikipedians are already speculating on the long-term consequences.
“I would personally hate to see Wikipedia get banned in India,” an editor at an India-related noticeboard said. “India has the largest English-speaking population in the world, especially as a second or third language. A ban could affect access to a valuable source of information for millions, and it would certainly impact Wikipedia’s presence in one of the largest user bases in the world.”

Not only is speech an issue, but digital privacy is a big one here as well. The fights over social media remind me of Joseph Stalin reportedly asking “how many divisions does the Pope have?” in response to the Church’s criticisms of communism.

This next essay is for the political philosophy/European history nerds out there. It’s quite long, so I will refrain from adding too much of my own commentary and just let the author speak for himself in a piece where he argues that western civic and non-western ethnic nationalism in Europe is a false dichotomy:

For Kohn, the real culprit for the downfall of his multinational homeland was not the war itself, but the force of nationalism that in its waning years exerted such a powerful sway over its people. He was hardly alone in this assessment. For at least three-quarters of a century, central and eastern Europe has served as the prime example of the pitfalls of nationalism. In particular, of the kind of ethnic nationalism that, we are often told, is characteristic of this non-Western world.
It was this particularly central and eastern European ethnic nationalism, this perspective goes, that was responsible for the collapse of the diverse and cosmopolitan Habsburg Monarchy. For the failure of the new democracies that took over from empires in 1918 – Germany, Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia and others. And for the rise of authoritarian and fascist regimes in their place, the largest of which would go on to perpetrate the most horrific genocide in human history in the Holocaust.
According to this orthodox view, the essentially ethnic nature of central and eastern European nationalism contrasts starkly with that of the Western democracies of France, the United Kingdom and the United States. They are characterised as thoroughly civic nations, based not on supposedly primordial tribal identity, but on common citizenship and a democratic understanding of politics. In all three, the US, UK and France, their civic nationalism is a centuries-old tradition, dating back to their foundation as modern nations.

The current orthodoxy:

Kohn argued that Western nationalisms were ‘based upon liberal middle-class concepts … pointing to a consummation in a democratic world society’, while central and eastern European nationalisms derived from ‘irrational and pre-enlightened concepts … tending towards exclusiveness’. The enlightened Western ones, he claimed, developed in France, the UK and the US, the primordial superstitious ones in Germany, before spreading across the rest of central and eastern Europe and, eventually, the world. The backwardness of all non-Western countries apparently made it all but predetermined that the latter would win out over the former.
While the distinction between these two kinds of nationhood was known to 19th-century thinkers, the notion that ethnic and civic aspects of nationhood were necessarily in conflict, or that one or the other was purely characteristic of a certain part of Europe, was not. Western ‘civic’ nation-states have always been built on the dominance of certain ethnic groups with their own language, traditions and myths of origin and distinctiveness. Indeed, the assimilation of minorities into the dominant ethnicity in Western nation-states was celebrated as progress.
Central and eastern European nationalists did not ‘reject’ the civic values of their Western counterparts but tried to follow them closely. They acknowledged civic rights for all that lived in a given nation-state but sought – like their Western counterparts – to eventually see all ethnic, linguistic or religious minorities assimilated into the general civic nation that was ultimately shaped by the dominant ‘state-forming’ ethnic group.
They were in awe of the assimilatory power of the English language and its culture in Britain or North America, and of the French equivalents ultimately defined in and around Paris. That German or Hungarian nationalists wanted to see Slavs or Jews shed their culture and become true Germans and Hungarians did not reflect some ‘irrational and pre-enlightened’ exclusivism. It simply reflected the reality of the Western nation-state.
Nevertheless, in nationalism studies, this geographic distinction between Western civic and non-Western (or ‘Eastern’) ethnic nationalism remains one of the most deeply engrained orthodoxies. The problem is it simply isn’t true. To understand how this misleading but influential view took shape, it is necessary to understand how the descent into ethnic extremism in early 20th-century central Europe shaped the enduring works of early theorists of nationalism. Many of whom – like Kohn himself – were ultimately shaped by its consequences, their work marked by a deep desire to discover where the histories of their homelands had ‘gone wrong’.

As mentioned, this is a long essay. For those interested in reading it in its entirety, click here.

Fisted by Foucault

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