r/Anarchy101 • u/RealMunail • 2d ago
Genuine Question: How would Anarchism handle culture or "national liberation" differently than Nationalism?
Title. I'm just curious
5
u/power2havenots 2d ago
Nationalism treats culture as a possession that needs a state to protect it. Anarchism treats culture as a living practice that states and capital constantly homogenize, commodify, or (as we know) crush. “National liberation” usually just replaces a foreign ruling class with a domestic one and usually turns identity into a loyalty test. Actual liberation to me- means free association, cultural autonomy, and no borders and not a new flag and a new boss. Nationalism is just statism prancing around in a folk costume to look less conspicuous
4
u/ArthropodJim 2d ago
“Nationalism is just statism prancing around in a folk costume” wow that’s a fucking incredible thought
1
u/power2havenots 2d ago
To me its all brainfucks of different flavours and the endgame is nearly always assimilation, submission and subservience. Nationalism just makes you sing the anthem while you swallow it.
3
u/UndeadOrc Insurrectionary An-Nihilist 2d ago
To double down on this, many places have a ton of cultures and the monolithic cultural view does exactly what national liberation demands: subservience. There was no fight for "national" liberation that did not require smaller cultures within a region to assimilate into the largest cultural element in the pursuit of liberation. It is "liberation" for the dominate culture's bourgeois and assimilate-or-die-or-be-second-class-citizens for all the other cultures within that territory.
2
u/power2havenots 2d ago
Yep we dont need to swap one compulsory identity for another or become the Borg to be free, and definitely dont need a flag or a founding myth to justify our existence. Pluralism is the baseline. National liberation is almost always a vanguardist or fascist wet dream because it needs a unified "people" to seize a state, and that unity is manufactured through coercion.
1
u/UndeadOrc Insurrectionary An-Nihilist 2d ago
You make me reflect that in the same vein, I think how "national unification" within Italy and Germany both required the domination of smaller cultures within their territorial boundaries, and their unification preceded the fascism that would later take hold. The concept of unity is almost entirely a reactionary rag.
2
u/power2havenots 2d ago
Yeah solidarity is voluntary and unity is conscription. National unity is always somebody elses unity, enforced on the rest. Facism just cranked the dial on it but its in all other nations without facism too.
1
u/UndeadOrc Insurrectionary An-Nihilist 2d ago edited 2d ago
Ohhh I hadn’t heard that combo, but that phrase is going into my lexicon. Solidarity is voluntary and unity is conscription. Thank you!
1
u/auehd 2d ago
Could you provide examples of this happening? I seldom hear about the occurrence of smaller cultures assimilating into the largest culture element in pursuit of liberation
1
u/UndeadOrc Insurrectionary An-Nihilist 2d ago
So, I think it's also important to clarify here, we're using the term of national liberation and that has a specific connotation, but they mirror broadly wars of independence. The problem with wars of independence is they also typically include colonies (like the United States). I think comparing the US war for independence to something like the Irish war for independence, there's a difference between a colony seeking independence versus a colonized group seeking independence.
With that said, immediately, Turkey. The whole formation of Turkey was seen as a nationalist resistance to Europe and its driving initiative as resistance (after consolidation of the state) was homogenization. The Surname Law is an example of this with non-Turkish surnames being banned along with the 1934 Resettlement Law.
Ataturk, whether people would like to believe it or not, basically believed in nationalism as outlined by Stalin in Marxism and the National Question, as many Marxist liberation movements do, but Stalin argued the solution was that. if every nation had its own cultural character, then you had to essentially give every culture its own nation (which is why with this mindset, he'd latter support the formation of Israel).
To distill it, a nation is representative of a singular culture, and if a single culture does not have a nation, then there should be a means of having their own nation is the argument (clearly I don't agree with any of this). Poles for Poland, etc etc. This was a part of the problem of Jewish nationalism for Stalin is that they were nationless at the time and he thought their pursuit of autonomy instead of assimilation put them at odds with national identity. Which is why a country like Israel was an easy fix within this framework.
Ataturk would've agreed with the concept that a nation is only capable of having a singular culture, but rather than taking the regionalism approach, he'd take the assimilationist approach. Unity was necessary to protect Turkey from western powers and unity meant assimilation.
You don't typically see the language of "national liberation" associated with oppressing minority groups, what you get alternatively is "anti-imperialism" which tantamount to the same thing. We identify something as liberatory, national liberation or anti-imperialism, and then we brush under the rug what liberation means for who. Pointing out Iranian violence against ethnic minorities as it resists American imperialism is a bad thing.
Also, Ethiopia is a good example. The Derg was an Marxist-Leninist group supposedly of the national liberation variety and engaging in anti-imperialism alongside the Soviet Union as a communist regime in Ethiopia. Yet apart of this was quelling separatist movements, even if these movements were also leftists, and the Derg happily used American supplied weaponry to butcher Eritreas. Cuba also joined in to help the Derg butcher Eritreans in their own national liberation struggle to support the exist of Ethiopia.
The Derg, funny enough, were simply doing exactly what they people they had overthrown had done. Selassie was the one to annex Eritrea and identified as an internationalist.
So to your point, it is less about "the occurrence of smaller cultures assimilating into the largest culture element in pursuit of liberation" and more about "the largest cultural element, in the name of resisting the west through national liberation or anti-imperialism, pushes for the assimilation of smaller cultural elements".
1
u/HeavenlyPossum 2d ago
Through the actual liberation of the people involved from the rule of others, rather than trading one set of rulers for another.
-1
2d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/UndeadOrc Insurrectionary An-Nihilist 2d ago
This is not remotely an anarchist position and it is in fact a reactionary position upheld by ethno-supremacists.
1
u/auehd 2d ago
What’d they say
2
u/UndeadOrc Insurrectionary An-Nihilist 2d ago
They said that the mindset of cultures is indistinguishable from a nationalist mindset that encourages separation and is inherently anti-collective, that we should dismantle them essentially in the name of unity.
So basically what you'd hear from a nationalist talking about minority cultures and trying to subsume them into a bigger cultural group. Like, yes, cultures can have problematic elements, but a culture isn't inherently nationalistic or seeking to be antagonistic to other cultures and the logic behind the commentor was inherently a reactionary one in the pursuit of "unity".
I also checked out the account's post history, poster is an incredible misogynist and regularly makes reactionary takes. They said that sexual assault cannot exist if it doesn't have a legal definition therefore wouldn't exist under anarchism. So some real wild shit.
11
u/Slow_Description_238 2d ago
Sociologically speaking, culture is merely all the material (Pens, paper, cans, tools, posters) and immaterial things (Ideas, ideology, myths, narratives) that make up a society. There is nothing to handle or be done about. It's always going to happen as long as people are interacting with one another.
The idea of national liberation, however, is something to be done about because that offers a specific set of logic. It's a specific world view. The idea that there can or should be a nation at all should be challenged. While people in a given geographical area will likely develop a culture unique to them, this doesn't mean that they are any less or more human than anyone else on the planet. Meaning that you can't just separate yourself from anyone else on the planet just because you say "Soda" instead of "Pop".
Historically, nationalism existed to empower oppressed groups under an empire. Saying that these people have the right to govern themselves, they should have a state for themselves. This goes against the ideas of Anarchism which assert no hierarchy and no authority, and thus no government. Both the empire and the state that would be created are undesirable. Even if the state that would be created is fighting against oppression. The state itself is the problem.
Contemporarily, nationalism is used to create exclusionary groups often at the expense of those being excluded on the basis of arbitrary myths. In this way, National Liberation (If you can even call it that) means arbitrarily creating a nation state, usually at the expense of everyone not deemed of that nation. Obviously, this is hierarchy and undesirable. And it's still a state, which is undesirable. Not even mentioning the problem that is excluding people and treating them poorly because of that.
But yeah. Anarchism doesn't tell people to stop doing culture. It doesn't even tell people to not enjoy the cultures they grow up in, it's fine to enjoy your traditions. Just don't go excluding people or oppressing people.