The Oppression of the Flag - How states use nationalism as a means to control and silence

Opinion analysis by Nour AlMortada, Featured Writer

September 12th, 2021

The idea of immigration, albeit it legal or not, has become a headline topic for most media channels today, mainly those found in western European and North American countries, due to the high influx of immigrants from the global south. Since the late 19th century, the world had no concept of illegal versus legal immigration (Little, 2017), primarily due to one fact: all immigration was legal immigration. Think of it this way: at this point in history, the world occupies most continents on earth, but ask yourself this, how did we get there? Humans did not just pop up in different continents over the span of millennia; we achieved this, or rather reached this, through immigration. Human civilizations have thrived, and survived on the concept of immigration; two thousand years ago, if the situation in your current location was less than satisfactory, you would simply leave, but now, we view things differently, because a man-made government decided that men no longer had the ability to leave inhumane conditions, regardless of whether they would survive or not, because they were born there, thus innately linked to their place of birth.

The idea that men and their homeland are connected, meaning that they cannot be separated regardless of how long the disconnection has been made, is a strange one. The concept of ethnicity and race are essentially ambiguous topics, but the concept of nationality is by far the most ambiguous of all. When it comes to ethnicity and race, culture, language, and other factors are in favor of the connection between men and ethnicity, or in other words, men and race: we are the physical embodiment of ethnicity, but when it comes to nationality, the complexity makes everything ambiguous. Jews across the world have proven that ethnicity and culture are not tied to geography and that holding on to an ethno-identity is possible, despite the diaspora. The United States of America has a culture of obsessing over ethnicity and race, which is ironic in its own way, since the United States exist due to immigration: they have been labelled the “melting pot” (Booth, 1998) and as such, possess a large mix of different cultures, religions, ethnicities, and races. But somehow, despite all of these facts, the United States are still the embodiment of nationalism.

Nationalism is the idea that a man born on certain land is tied to it and owes it his loyalty, regardless of the facts of the matter; loyalty is obligatory, but how do we demand such a thing from people when it actually doesn’t make any sense? As explained previously, immigration is natural, it is part of our evolution; so, how is it that we demand loyalty and “resilience” against all odds to “the state”? We need to take a deeper look into this in order to understand it better: it is not “the state” that demands this, since the state is but a collection of human beings who came together and created a functioning system. So, the truth of the matter is that citizens are made loyal to a group of people who were capable of running the system, people who were entrusted by their fellow citizens to run the system, and so, why are we “loyal”? This is genuinely not an anarchist, cutthroat, revolutionary idea, but maybe we don’t owe our governments “loyalty”: maybe we need to stop focusing on what we, the citizens “owe” the government, and rather on what they owe us.

Nationalism is blind loyalty, regardless of how you put it, while being connected to a land is understandable, it’s the connection to the state and to the government that is the issue; two man-made entities that probably did not exist if we were to look back in time, and if one change had occurred in the historical timeline, might not have existed. States demand loyalty: we are proud to be of X nationality, but why? Because if we’re not, we’re ostracized, considered outcasts, ungrateful, and in some cases, we could be killed, because we connected the land to the man, and then to the state and made them inseparable, when the truth is, as citizens of the state, our voices come first, not that of the state’s. The state could seize to exist, which has happened before, not too long ago, but the people and the land would remain. Take a look at Yugoslavia: people had to choose which state they would belong to, as they suddenly stopped being Yugoslavs and became Croats of Slovaks or any of the other four suddenly emerged states (Lampe, 2021), so does their nationalism just shift?

Nationalism is not bad, nor is being proud of where you are from: what is bad is being incapable of separating a system from your land – it is merging a culture with a fairly modern state system that, in most cases, it predates. It is becoming incapable of criticizing the state due to the pride of being from there. How many Americans out there are capable of saying their system is not as democratic as it advertises? As of recently, a decent amount, but they’re called disloyal and criticized by the nationalists in this case. How many French men are capable of saying their government is responsible for genocides? Not that many would publicly say it, and it is because criticism of the government is seen as criticism of the entire entity and that is exactly what nationalism sought to do. By tying the state to the man, and then to the land and to the culture, you create a pandora’s box, and no one wants to open pandora’s box, because once you do, it will never end.

Nationalism has been used by governments all across the world, to control, to oppress, to silence and ultimately, we fell for it and no longer see it as bad in essence. Pride in one’s culture, ethnicity, land and history is all understandable, even pride in one’s government when it is doing its job properly, but we should never forget that the government exists to serve its citizens. There is no reason to be loyal to these governments because their entire presence exists because of the people, and it would not exist without them. So, by criticizing your government, you are ensuring that the system fits the people’s needs, which is why even colonial governments weaponized it to ensure submission from their colonized territories and the people who live there.

Sources:

-          Little, B. (2017, September 7). The Birth of “Illegal” Immigration. Retrieved August 28, 2021, from HISTORY website: https://www.history.com/news/the-birth-of-illegal-immigration

-          Lampe, J. R. (2021). Yugoslavia | History, Map, Flag, Breakup, & Facts | Britannica. In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/place/Yugoslavia-former-federated-nation-1929-2003

-          Booth, W. (1998, February 22). washingtonpost.com: Myth of the Melting Pot: America’s Racial and Ethnic Divides. Retrieved August 28, 2021, from Washingtonpost.com website: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/meltingpot/melt0222.htm