nations (countries) are pretty much just artificially created by states to strengthen and widen the scope of the centralized control of resources and wealth by a ruling minority (they can come in all kinds of different shapes and sizes ie absolutist monarchies, representational democracies, fascist dictatorships, etc). they suppress culture (the expression of a peoples collective identity) by forcing disparate ‘peoples’ to conform to a single narrative of identity, law, religion, morality, history, knowledge system, etc rather than allowing genuine communal and individual self-determination in those fields of communal and self-expression.
this is why you see constant struggles within nations, both between the different classes and the different peoples- they have been artificially made to conform to an identical set of standards imposed on them by a small group of people who exercise control via the state.
i’m canadian so i’ll use canada as my example:
despite superficial appearances of ‘canadianess’- like maple syrup, snow, specious claims of multiculturalism, hockey, nature loving, polite, not american, etc the differences run deep and are irreconcilable as long as the nation-state model is what’s being used to address those differences.
there are huge cultural differences between the different classes:
think about how a minimum wage worker at some corporation spends their time versus the ceo of that corporation, they have nothing in common except they live within the same borders and various shit that they also have in common with americans and ppl from the uk, etc and think about how the people in control of business treat their fellow countrypeeps, not very fuckin well hah with any genuine sense of community, mutual identity thru shared cultural and moral values- ie the supposed foundations of nations-, there comes a feeling of responsibility to each other and a neighborly love for one another that encourages mutual aid and a familiarity with one another;
there are huge differences between the peoples:
canada is a great example. look at the quebecois, there’s literally a movement that calls for quebec’s separation from canada, and as long as the quebecois refuse to give up their cultural identity that kind of tension will always be present within the nation-state model of social organization ie it’s an inherently unstable method of organizing society and requires violence, either economic, political, cultural, militaristic, etc. the same goes for the various indigenous peoples, the conflicts between private industry/the state/racist settlers and the indigenous communities they harrass, economically sabotage, ignore, and villify can only be resolved within the framework of the nation by indigenous peoples surrendering their identities and ‘assimilating’, relinquishing their environmental values, abandoning their spiritual and ethical systems, economic and political beliefs- which is why we had stuff like the residential schools and why indigenous children are to this day being abducted from their homes and removed from their cultures to state care (the millennium scoop). it’s why the state refuses to put adequate funding into the establishment of schools that teach using indigenous languages (as of now i think there are only pre-schools that teach using indigenous languages), and why there’s been such a dismal response to the crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women (over 580 indigenous and lgbtq+ women have gone missing or been murdered since 2012). the destruction of their identity and culture is necessary to resolve the tensions that cause so much difficulty for and place so many hurdles in front of the state’s and capital’s interests. indigenous peoples want to be given the land they were promised in treaties and be given adequate compensation for the attempted genocide committed by the crown, and the right to self-government, those are inherently contradictory to the interests of the crown and private industry, which need access to indigenous land and resources to keep the profits rollin in;
and the tension between town and city:
another personal example is how my province has been given a big hunk money, yet the lion’s share of it is goin to the capital while where i live- almost exclusively small towns, a few mines, some indigenous reservations, and farmland- is riddled with drug addiction, mental illness, terrible quality of medical care, poverty, crumbling infrastructure, almost no public transportation, etc. the interests of town and city are inherently separate and state support will always go wherever there is most to be gained, so someone will always be gettin shortchanged (the resolution of the contradictions between town and city is a whole nother conversation hah)
nations are artificial constructs imposed on people and they have historically always been resisted and the resistance has been squashed or subdued with vicious force, devious sleight-of-hand-economics, etc.
nations destroy culture by enforcing a uniform identity and set of standards on diverse groups of people, they have always been resisted and the only way to destroy resistance is to destroy the sources of tension. this is why people don’t like nations and why some of us think ‘loving your country’ is total nonsense, at least when you really look into what ‘your country’ means.
i’m not saying different peoples can’t live together and cooperate and engage in mutual aid or anything like that. what i’m saying is the nation model forces different peoples to accept a uniform identity imposed from the top down. it robs people and communities of their right to self-determination.
nations also encourage vicious chauvinism and ‘othering’, as much as a national identity is defined by specific mythological characteristics, it also defines itself against ‘others’ and usually portrays these ‘others’ as enemies, and if not as enemies it treats them like lesser-beings not worthy of the same quality of respect and acceptance as your countrypeople. it’s why you have such hateful fear of refugees and immigrants, the national identity encourages the caricaturization of people from outside the nation and it results in stuff like the vulnerability and subsequent increased exploitation of migrants. the arbitrary drawing of borders on maps has also separated communities from their families. just about everything about the nation model of social organization is violent.
