Ninety-Five Theses on Nationalism
1. It is not justified for humans to fight and kill each other in the name of imaginary divisions.
2. Military spending on self-created threats (fighting other humans) is a massive wastage of resources.
3. Nationalism makes humans selfish and narrow-minded.
4. One cannot live a dignified life without a nationality.
5. People are forced into nationalities without choice.
6. Nations take little environmental action due to their selfishness but shift the blame on each other for not acting.
7. Nations do not give rights to individuals; they take them away.
8. Hidden censorship ensures no one can oppose nationalism.
9. Nationalism is dehumanizing — it breaks humanity into us vs them.
10. The situation of refugees is caused by nations and their divisiveness.
11. National security is an excuse to stifle free speech.
12. National boundaries are a violation of freedom of movement.
13. Indoctrination of nationalism ensures its universal support.
14. Nations are locked in an endless arms race; disarmament is only possible with denationalization.
15. History is manipulated by nations and serves as propaganda for them.
16. The nation-based world order impedes world economic growth.
17. Claims of nations over territory are invalid; the earth and its land to not belong to anyone.
18. Nations split up the world’s resources and hence impede progress and development of humanity.
19. A nation’s history starts when it was created and does not extend to any event on the territory it claims.
20. Different laws in each nation are a violation of human equality.
21. The national world-system does not have explicit consent from the people of the world.
22. Selfishness of nations hinders the eradication of world problems.
23. Nations are imaginary identities and have only as much meaning as they are given.
24. A united world will be more stable than the national world order could possibly be.
25. National identification creates biased sentiments and prejudices in individuals.
26. Nationalistic chauvinism blinds people from many negative aspects of reality.
27. People are led towards cultural and economic isolationism by nations.
28. Nations cannot claim an ancestral homeland as all humans alike originated in Africa.
29. Laws made by nations are illegitimate as they fail the equality condition.
30. Nationalist regimes are less free in general as the name of the nation is a tool for political repression.
31. The nation as an imaginary entity cannot take precedence over individual rights.
32. History-based nationalism is like living in a shack and being proud of it because in its place there once stood a palace.
33. The government is the nation.
34. Nationalism is the cause of almost all modern-day wars.
35. Governments of nations will eventually be taken over by nationalist extremists.
36. Nations do not protect their citizens but their actions create the need for protection in people.
37. Nationalism drives people towards fraternity for a few but hostility towards most.
38. Nations are not ordained from nature or divinity but are entirely created by humans.
39. If people should be united, then the world should be integrated; if people should be divided, then each individual should be separated. Nations cannot be justified on both unity and division.
40. If nationalists support integrating sub-national divisions into nations, then they must accept that nations should integrate to unite the world.
41. Nationalities in themselves do not make people different from each other.
42. Nationalism as the core principle of the world order enjoys irrefutability in the world.
43. The national world-order is self-perpetuating and gives itself its significance.
44. People in the world are represented unequally because of different political power of nations.
45. International conflict causes people to suffer yet they rally behind it and fight for nations.
46. Imposing compulsory national service amounts to forced labour.
47. Citizenship of nations is a means of discrimination and differential treatment.
48. National boundaries are meaningless for nature and the earth.
49. National divisiveness is factionalism at the world level.
50. A nation as a subset of humanity has no right to dominate the world.
51. Nationalism entails the pursuit of one’s nation’s interests disregarding the consequences for the rest of the world.
52. The national sense of fraternity is imaginary because it is too large to be a community.
53. National governments assumed their own power rather than obtaining it from a legitimate source.
54. People are made to believe that nationalism is a moral rather than an ideology.
55. Patriotism is unjustified if it entails causing harm.
56. Individuals are bound to a national identity and cannot change it.
57. Identity often supersedes justice in nationalism.
58. The precarious, conflict-prone national system cannot be said to be a stable and working system.
59. The national world order perpetuates global inequality and dominance.
60. The national system creates unnecessary complications of life.
61. Nationalities create a barrier in human association.
62. Nationalities prevent people from seeing their common humanity.
63. Nationalism has been used to justify tyranny and authoritarianism.
64. Individuals in themselves are not valued in highly nationalistic societies.
65. Nationalism is a part of, and has higher status than, all political ideologies.
66. Nationalism has lost its moral ground because of the atrocities it has caused.
67. Nationalism is a form of extremism, being the extreme form of group identification.
68. Nations are not superior to other groups/associations of humans.
69. The nation does not define a person’s roots or their environment.
70. The ‘common good’ is not the good of a nation but the good of all humanity.
71. Nationalists take pride in the destructive activities they commit.
72. The current world-order represents a Hobbesian state of nature between nations.
73. National boundaries prevent people from pursuing growth and opportunities through migration.
74. National territorial claims assume human dominance over earth.
75. Individuals are under no natural duty or obligation to their nation.
76. Nations are the cause of their own insecurity.
77. A united world holds promise for greater rights than even an ideal national world.
78. The national system already has most features of what a dystopian world government would be.
79. The organization of the world into nations leads to ineffective and inefficient governance for the people.
80. Nationality does not give people any special status or change human equality.
81. Dividing the world into nations does not facilitate decentralization but instead creates anarchy.
82. Nations are not the parts that make up the world but the pieces into which it is broken.
83. People’s belief in the ‘greatness’ of their nation becomes nationalistic supremacism.
84. Nationalistic passion often supplants rationality and logic.
85. Society has double standards in allowing nationalists to do what is otherwise unacceptable.
86. ‘Othering’ in nationalities and limited association between them causes racism and xenophobia.
87. Nationalism combines the selfishness of individualism with the lack of freedom of collectivism.
88. People give up their own rights to nationalists in the name of the nation.
89. There is no sufficient check on nationalist excesses in the world.
90. Nations have too excessive a role in society for identity groups.
91. Cooperation on world issues is limited because nations only pursue their own interests.
92. National propaganda is the dominant and unchallenged discourse of the world.
93. The existence of nations is a dogma and no alternate worldview is accepted.
94. Governments exist not for nations but for the people.
95. The benefits of belonging and identification with nations are far outweighed by the losses from a divided world.
Originally published at https://www.theextraterrestrial.blog on Aug 5, 2021.
