I just laid down the fact, that this shitty idea of the nation state, that came into fashion in the 19th century laid the ideological groundwork to many of the astrocities in the following two centuries. This is common knowledge.

Proof by assertion is a logical fallacy, not evidence.

A nation is not a thing that exists. There are different forms of cultures that can develop together or go in different directions

Yes, they do. They’re not eternal as they do get created, killed, and changed all the time. However, nations, as a concept, do represent a real phenomenon.

depending on who is in power and who draws the borders.

States and nations aren’t interchangeable terms. Japan is a nation state, my home country of Iraq is very much not.

But to be honest, I have no interest to doscuss any further with you since you constantly talked down to me and behaved like an asshole. It is just not worth the effort. So fuck that, believe what you want.

I went out of my way to make sure that my comment didn’t have any personal insults. My comment had so much substance that directly responded to your points, and it’s interesting that you responded to none of it. My comment contained a grand total of 3 criticisms, all of which were directed towards your statements.

If this is all it takes for you to get this sort of reaction then there are two possibilities. Either you’re really this sensitive and somebody saying one of your arguments is from 2014 tumblr is enough to send you over the edge or, and I think is much more likely, is that you actually have nothing of value to say and this was just a convenient cop out. Either way, I don’t care, I’ve made my points and they stand on their own. Whether you reply or not makes no difference.

How a society can function without a government?

Reading what you wrote as an answer to this question, it sounds like you’re just an advocate for true direct democracy. I mean that’s fine, but the point is that what you’re advocating for isn’t true anarchy. You’re still in favor of a central authority, just one that’s structured differently. Now direct democracy does have it’s strengths and drawbacks, and we can discuss the merits of that later, but for now I want to focus on a particular concept, and that’s the idea of entirely voluntary governance.

The idea of an entirely voluntary government sounds very appealing, however, I think it’s one of those ideas that sounds better than it actually is. Let’s think about it from a fundamental level, in order for something to be voluntary, there needs to be a person with free will making consensual decisions. However, consent is an inherently subjective concept and thus the standard for who can consent will always be arbitrary… and if that’s the case who gets to decide the standard? This is something that has to be established at the very start.

Well who can consent? Can children consent? Where is the cutoff, and who decides it? If a community is split on whether or not 16 year olds can consent, do the 16 year olds get a vote in this discussion or are they sidelined? What if they don’t like the decision, can children disassociate and join other groups that say they can consent or not? How about disabled people, can they consent or do they not get a vote? Do they perhaps have someone else be their representative and make decisions on their behalf? But if that’s the case, and decision making can be outsourced for kids and the disabled, can consenting adults also outsource this power? Let’s suppose people want to have a representative, is that allowed or is individual participation mandatory? If it’s mandatory then who is enforcing this rule?

I hope you catch what I’m trying to demonstrate here. This is a concept that’s vague, and its implementation is rather complicated.

How would the economy function?

Economics is definitely not your forte lol

You’re trying to combine standard market capitalism with the Marixst resource distribution… but these two ideas contradict each other. Marxist socialism requires a strong, central, and authoritarian government in order to seize and collectivize all the means of production, property, wealth, and resources and then to centrally plan every single aspect of the economy to properly distribute the resources from ability to need. However, market capitalism is literally the opposite. It requires government to allow the markets to have some autonomy so they can function independently. Capitalist economies are decentralized and unplanned, and resource distribution is done through the markets on the basis of supply and demand. You can’t combine the two.

It seem your idea of economics is not based in reality. This isn’t the 1500s, our modern economies aren’t based on a bunch of framers and craftsmen who open up little shops to sell their labor and crafts. A carpenter building a house? Lol. Do you understand just how much labor goes into building a modern house? Not to mention that there are things that require way more labor, way more resources, and insane global supply chains to produce like cars, planes, and smartphones. These are not things that you can build without strong multinational corporate structures, and you can’t get them trade them through bartering.

Also, you think things like administration, banks, and mines aren’t necessary? Lmao, you can’t be serious. I’ll just say this, capitalism is a system that favors efficiency above all else for better or for worse, and it’s really good at it. Everything that industry that exists and every product you see on sale exists because there are people out there who buy them. The demand exists, and so the companies provide. Things like banks provide value to the economy as they fill a niche, and that’s the reason why they exist.

How would justice be enforced?

Bring society to a point where everybody ideally agrees to prevent injustice? What does that even mean? The point you’re talking about is an ideal, it’s literally a fantasy by definition. How can you possibly govern a society when your concept of justice hinges on the realization of something imaginary? Is an anarchist society just going to remain lawless until this ideal point?

The enforcement part is equally ridiculous. You can only enforce laws once everybody has agreed to the punishments? Why would any criminal or wannabe criminal ever agree to implementing any punishments against themselves? Good faith? Lmao, if criminals were operating in good faith then they wouldn’t be criminals. I think you understand the absurdity of this notion, which is why you acknowledged that prisons and authority might make a come back in an anarchist society… but if that’s the case then doesn’t that defeat the whole point of the anarchy experiment?

How would you deal with people who reject this idea and want to reestablish a central authority?

Ah ha! Finally stumbled you good, didn’t I? I think this is the core issue with anarchy and I think it’s an inherently flawed ideology. Everything you said here relies on good faith whether it’s governance, economics, law, justice, or self defense. However, we don’t live in an ideal world, we live in a flawed world, and in our flawed world good faith is a rather scarce resource. There are a lot of people in our society who are greedy, egotistical, selfish, jealous, hateful, evil, violent, and contrarian. We’ll always have murders, pedos, rapists, bigots, thieves, morons, frauds, and zealots. These are people who exploit the good faith of others for their personal benefit at the expense of others.

In a normal society, these bad faith actors are either deterred by the entity that has monopoly on violence or they’re squashed by it. However, in an anarchist society, there is no monopoly on violence and so bad faith actors have no filters and are set loose. These people have no issue with violence or forcing others to do what they want, and so they will use violence to enforce their standards on to normal people and onto each other. Because each group or individual will have their own values, morals, and ideals there will be a competition of violence on who gets to enforce their standard. This type of chaos, disorder, instability, and violence is the reason why anarchy mostly exists as a fun thought exercise rather than a practical, viable ideology.

Thanks again for this final question which, i’m happy to admit, resets the debate and will, i hope, show that every flaw i listed were only relative to our previous discussion.

It’s all good.

I’m going to split my response into two separate comments as I feel like we’re having two conversations at the same time, and I don’t want to mix them up. I’ll reply to your criticisms in this reply, and then reply to your answers in another. I originally didn’t want to respond to your criticisms at all as our previous conversation is no longer relevant, however, there’s a lot that you said that doesn’t sit right with me and I just want to set the record straight before I move on. You don’t have to reply to this comment if you don’t want to, it’s just here to voice my disagreements with your criticisms. You can just read and move on to my other comment.

Anyway, my response:

1. You’re conflating two separate statements. I said that if you look at the evolution of human history, you’ll quickly find out that states have won out over their alternatives. I think we can both agree (hopefully) that this is an objective statement. My point here is that there have to be reasons why things turned out the way they did, perhaps it’s best to understand those reasons instead of dismissing them. My second statement is that states are necessary because they are the most efficient answer we have to govern on a large scale. States provide an institutional framework that allow for stability, order, justice, and large scale organization. Our disagreement on the second statement is the root of our debate. However, as you can see, these two statements aren’t used to justify each other, and thus combining the two and calling it circular reasoning is just a misunderstanding on your part.

2. I take big issue with this criticism specifically because you’re being dishonest. My original statement was that “pride is a universal human emotion”. That’s an objectively true statement. People express pride differently, people are proud of different things, and different cultures have different ideas about it. However, all humans have it. You have it, I have it, we all do. It’s like happiness, sadness, or anger. The entire reason why I said this in the first place is to make the point that patriotism is a reflection of a universal human emotion. Keep in mind, I am not saying that patriotism is a universal trait, just that it’s a form in which an actual universal trait, pride, manifests itself.

If you disagreed with the notion that patriotism is a reflection of pride, then that’s fine, we could have had a discussion about it. However, you chose to sideline my point in favor of taking up the position that pride is not a universal emotion, and specifically focusing on the literal meaning “universal”. However, this focus was just the red herring fallacy. You were focusing on a minor detail to distract from the point being made. If you actually want to double down on the notion that pride is not a universal human emotion then we’re moving past political opinions and entering the realm of science, and that means that you have to actually show me an academic study that counters the established science (example). It’s why I pointed out that your anecdotes don’t mean much in this case.

Now, I don’t think it’s that deep and I don’t think you’re going to double down on this position, but I do think our exchange about this specific point up until now has been particularly frustrating because it’s unnecessary. I’m sure you understood what I meant from the beginning because it was a very simple point.

3. Theory and practice are intertwined. Anarchy is a failure in practice because it’s a flawed ideology in theory. It’s like talking to a islamists. They’ll tell you that islamic rule produces utopias… so you point out examples of it being a complete failure… then they start talking about that’s not “real” islam and how the quran is perfect… so you start pointing out the flaws in the quran to explain the connection. I’m not saying you’re doing this, but I’m just pointing out that trying to pretend that theory and practice and are two entirely separate categories is silly.

Also, I find it weird how you’re accusing me of engaging in bad faith by saying I’m turning your arguments into strawmans, when the first example you gave is just you not following the chain of responses. You said that I didn’t answer why the legitimacy of violence isn’t an arbitrary choice. Well, let’s find out why:

Original topic: whether or not someone supporting their country is radical.

Your response: someone supporting their country means supporting the monopoly of violence and that’s radical

Me: monopoly of violence isn’t inherently radical as it exists to regulate force which prevents chaos

You: all types of violence is radical and adding the distinction between regulated and unregulated force is arbitrary

Me: the distinction is the point, and the difference between regulated and unregulated violence is the difference between chaos and stability

You: distinctions in general are arbitrary in nature

Me: the distinction is critical as not all violence is equal, regulated violence by a society helps establish order which prevents unnecessary violence while unregulated violence by individuals does the opposite

And that was the last direct reply. Notice how the my responses directly respond to your responses? Notice how the conversation got specific but didn’t go off topic? Notice how you never asked me why the legitimacy of violence is not an arbitrary choice nor was that ever brought up? That means I didn’t misinterpret what you said, therefore I didn’t strawman you. If you felt like you need to add clarification or nuance or ask that either of me then just do that, but don’t call my direct responses to your points as strawman arguments when they’re not.

4. There’s three parts to this. First, you’re trying to pass off your opinions as facts. What you define as stable and orderly and what I define as stable and orderly are clearly different, and that’s fine, but we still have to acknowledge that they’re opinions. Take the Spanish anarchists as an example, the whole experiment lasted a granted total of 3 years. During this time, there was A LOT of internal fighting between the different types of anarchists as well as communists and republicans. A lot of people tried to enforce their own justice and take governance into their own hands and thousands of people died because of this. A lot of anarchist leaders ended up joining the republican government which undermined the very movement they led. The lack of centralization led to piss poor coordination which led to the anarchists to get absolutely crushed by Franco’s fascist troops. If this is what you define as stable and orderly then I don’t want to know what you consider to be unstable and disorderly.

Second, Makhnovshchina was not truly anarchist. They had an actual government that was backed by a military. So they had a full monopolization of violence and everything. The Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine stayed as the de facto government for 5 years until the bolsheviks took over. That’s the reason why they were more functional than their anarchist counterparts elsewhere, like in Spain for example.

Third, similar to the point I made earlier, the failures of anarchy are intertwined. Anarchy collapses on itself because it lacks the means to do what a functional government can, and that is to maintain order, organize the people to do large scale projects, and defend itself and it’s people. Because of this, anarchy will always result in another, more centralized form of government from crushing it and taking its place. The only way anarchy can work in the real world is if everybody in the world magically agreed to leave the anarchists alone, if some major power decided to protect them for some reason, or if there’s extreme levels of chaos and dysfunction in a society. Since none of these options are realistic or sustainable, anarchy is simply not capable of being a viable alternative to a state. I don’t think that’s a contradictory position.

Upvotes/downvotes on that sub don’t mean a lot because it’s always heavily brigaded, however, what’s of interest is the actual content that’s posted on there. r/conservative is one of the most heavily censored and propaganda driven subs on Reddit, and so anything posted on there has to be approved by the cult.

They usually kiss Trump’s ass on EVERYTHING he does:

• Egg prices gone up?

• Failed to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours?

• Started a war with Iran despite saying he wouldn’t start a new war?

• Arrested and deported US citizens?

• Opened up national parks for logging and development?

• Cut healthcare coverage for millions of Americans?

• Wasted millions of taxpayer dollars on a pointless military parade to celebrate his birthday?

• Threatened to annex Canada, Greenland, and Panama?

• Increased the deficit by trillions of dollars?

• Brainlessly placing tariffs and ruining the country’s alliances?

• Building literal concentration camps?

All fine and dandy. Their cope answer to all of these was and still is “It’s a joke, and if it’s not then who cares, it’s probably a good thing.”

But this? This actually ruffled some feathers. They’re actually mad at him for once, and the anger seems real. I’ve never seen that sub so riled up against their cult king before. It’s not just this sub, if you go to:

patriots.win (the_donald’s successor), you’ll see the same thing.

Fox News Youtube comment section, same thing.

Newsmax Instagram comment section, same thing.

Breitbart’s comment sections on articles, same thing.

I think this is different than the other times because this has been the apex of right wing conspiracies for over a decade. A lot of the modern right hinges on conspiracies about the powerful trafficking and raping kids. From pizzagate to Qanon to now this, and now that they actually have something of substance… the most vocal, central, and important figure to the right has contradicted himself, his campaign, his movement, and his ideology. The cracks are finally showing in cult.

Every nation is a social construct

2014 tumblr called, they want their arguments back. Calling something a social construct does NOT mean it’s bad, fake, or invalid. Math is a social construct, time is a social construct, language is a social construct… yet these are all good things that describe things that are very real, and their existence is very much valid. The idea of a nation state falls under this category.

States tend to equalize the people living on it’s territory by introducing things like law, language, traditions or education. And they are actively trying to tell this story of “the people” to legitimate themselves.

And this is a bad thing, because? I don’t see an issue with a state trying to unite people through their commonalities. If you want a large group of people to be involved and coordinated then you have to make them feel included, and this is the way to do it.

But the people are not the same. Look at your own country, wherever you live. There are always vast differences between places in different cardinal directions or at the borders vs. inland, between richer and poorer regions or between urban and rural areas.

So? There is always going to be a degree of diversity among people, geography, and economies. That doesn’t mean that nations don’t exist. A Chinese person is Chinese regardless of whether or not they’re rich or poor, live near the border or not, or live in the city or a farm. They’re Chinese by ancestry, by language, and by culture. You could make an argument that some states occupy other nations, and that’s a bad thing, and I would agree with you. China is a good example of that as they occupy Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia… however, the Chinese nation still exists and it deserves it’s own state even if the borders need to redrawn.

In Russia, that becomes very obvious, but it is the same everywhere.

The reason why I called Russia an empire is because it is one by definition. It checks every single check mark required to consider it an empire and then some. They can call themselves whatever they want, it doesn’t mean anything in reality. It’s like North Korea calling itself a democracy when it’s clearly not. Unlike Russia, Ukraine is a true nation state, or at least a lot closer to one than Russia is.

Nationalism is the root of everything, I described. Nothing of that would have existed without a strong nationalist movement.

That’s such a myopic view of history that it’s actually ignorant. If you unironically think that you can boil down most of history down to an ideology a concept you barely understand and then consider this singular ideology to be the root cause of everything bad in history then you simply don’t understand history.

Sure, there can be more or less extreme forms of nationalism, but this ideoligy is always dividing territory and people into the inside and outside.

But have you ever thought about why nations and states exist in the first place? From the start of civilization 10,000 years ago to today, countries and border have always existed regardless of culture, geography, or era. What makes so persistent throughout history? Could it be that because it’s an essential part of civilization and it’s an inherently useful concept even if it’s not perfect? The answer is yes.

Every Ukrainian fighting against Russian imperialism is fine. But at the end, I hope there are more people left to rebuilt the country, who fought for their freedom and not for some fucking glorious Father/Motherland.

These two things are intertwined. They’re fighting for their father/motherland, aka their nation, against imperialist conquest because it’s where their roots are. The nation is where their families are, where their culture is, where the history of their people took place, and where their freedoms and rights are.

Also, people like you annoy me because you complain without providing any alternatives. You hate nationalism as a concept? Fine, what do you propose as an alternative? If you have a realistic, practical option then let’s hear it. Otherwise, if you have nothing other than vague ideological complaints then you critiques don’t hold as much weight.

You cannot say in good faith that disorder is the concept of political anarchy, it is (in your opinion) a consequence of it.

So your argument here isn’t about the actual application of anarchy, it’s just that on meaninglessly theoretical version of political anarchy, it is technically not defined as disorder, right? If so, then yeah, sure I guess, but like I said that’s quite meaningless since it doesn’t reflect reality.

Anarchist societies of modern times are short lived indeed, but if you take a close look at them it’s always because of states intervention (Paris commune, Ukrainian revolution, Spain libertarian communists, and nowadays Chiapas and Rojava).

They’re short lived because anarchy is flawed as an ideology and it always collapses in on itself. The world doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The rest of the world is not going coddle some anarchist ideologues so they can play with their political anarchist fantasies in practice. We live in a world where people want stability and order, where states exist out of necessity for self defense, where resources are scarce and competition for them can get violent, where evil actors who pry on the weak do exist. This is our reality, any ideology that ignores it is not one to be taken seriously.

You choose on which axis to operate the distinction. You can differentiate violences based on their organization, on their legitimacy, on their targets, on their respect of any arbitrary moral values, etc.

The critical difference is the source where all of these things are derived from. A normal state derives these things from society as collective while in anarchy they’re derived from individuals. In a normal society, violence is monopolized, streamlined, and it’s application is utilized to make sure society is stable and orderly enough to be functional. In an anarchist society, there is no such monopoly or centralization as there is no government. Thus, without a central authority things like crime, fairness, and safety are up to individuals to come up with and enforce. This will inevitably end up in bloodshed, disorder, and injustice as different people with different opinions are going to be acting on their own and competing with each other to enforce different standards. That’s an incredibly stupid idea that will result in a lot of unnecessary violence and dysfunction. You can’t leave things like justice in the hands of individuals, it never works.

You can precisely not govern without enforcing it through monopoly of violence. It’s like saying “X is not radical, because it’s necessary for X”.

Yes, that’s the point. It’s not radical because it’s necessary for something essential and always has been. For something to be radical it has to be extreme and a drastic shift from the ordinary. Governance through monopolized violence is the norm. Simply labeling as radical anyway doesn’t make it bad or any less necessary.

organized violence is easier to hold back but far worse when unleashed, disorganized is the opposite. I’m not denying their difference, i’m saying in the end the amount of violence is the same, so the difference does not matter here.

This is just false. The amount of violence is not the same because you never get stability or order at any point in an anarchist society. Self righteous individuals and bad actors will always be fighting each other and amongst themselves because they want to take advantage of the chaos and take matter into their own hands. There’s a reason why through 10,000 years of human civilization, anarchy has never come out on top even once. Keep in mind, you’re not arguing against tyranny here, you’re arguing against the monopolization of violence as a means to govern in general. Well, as history shows us, anarchy is just as bad tyranny.

My goal is not to romanticize either past stateless societies or current states, it’s to get the best of both. I don’t like the “All we’ve known was bad one way or another so why bother making something better ?” argument.

Anarchy isn’t a better solution. It’s one of the bad ways that we collectively moved past as a species. As it turns out, there IS something better than complete anarchy or complete tyranny, it’s called liberal democracy. Checks and balances in the government, direct citizen participation in governance, establishing liberal values such as freedom of speech as rights, a society gets to enjoy both structure AND liberty.

Just to be clear, “universal” is used to mean “literally all”

Oh come on, don’t be pedantic and argue semantics. You knew exactly what I meant. My statement was painfully obvious, true, and straightforward. If you’re actually willing to sit here and tell me that humans as a collective lack pride as an emotion, then you’re just engaging in bad faith.

most anarchists i know do not feel patriotism, especially as in “pride to belong to a nation”, and more generally as in “pride to belong to something greater”. I certainly do not.

This is anecdotal though. Humans feel pride in being a part of a greater collective, we’re tribal creatures. Just because you have a negative view of patriotism as a label, that doesn’t mean that you don’t feel this emotion under a different one.

I can not say much more since your claim is both vague (assimilating patriotism to simple pride makes it even less definable) and not verifiable (you cannot point out every people feeling patriotism, and i can only say i know people that do not feel patriotism but you can always say that’s exceptions).

Well, how would you define patriotism if not taking pride in your nation? You’re right that patriotism is vague and hard to verify because it’s an inherently subjective concept. The only thing that’s objective about is the underlying emotions. Things like a desire to see your group do better, pride in belonging to something greater, and a sense of responsibility to your people.

it seems that your more important value is stability of a civilization, from which you conclude that current states are good, and therefore patriotism, monopoly of violence are too.

Not quite.

1. I’m not saying I personally value stability, I’m saying that this is what humanity favors given our history and the trajectory it has led us to. 2 I don’t think current states are good, I’m saying that having a state in general is necessary.
2. I’m saying that patriotism is a reflection of human nature, it’s not an entirely artificial concept.

You also seem to deduce from lack of stable alternatives that current states are the only good option, and therefore anarchism and anti-state theories necessary leads to disorder.

Can this even be considered an opinion? I see it as an observation of something objective in human history.

My take is to start from solidarity rather than stability, making monopoly of violence and by extension patriotism bad, and therefore current states too. I deduce from lack of stable alternatives that current states are a dangerous form of organization for anything else, and therefore state theories, from fascism to authoritarian socialism along with bourgeois oligarchies, necessary leads to violence.

Let me ask you a simple question. If you’re not up to replying to everything else, you can skip it all and just reply to this. I’ll bold so you’ll find it easier.

Let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, that the US government has collapsed in favor anarchy. In this scenario, you have the country in it’s current state but just without the US government (federal, state, and local) or any of the American state apparatus. So that means no military, no federal reserve, no public schools, no police, no FDA, no CDC, no NOAA, nothing. The state has completely collapsed.** How would an anarchist society take place and how would it function in practice in this situation? **

Walk me through your logic step by step. For example, what “solidarity means”? How a society can function without a government? How would justice be enforced? How would you deal with people who reject this idea and want to reestablish a central authority? How would the economy function (as in, how would people get their new smartphones)?

If i’m not mistaken on your position, since we start from different values, we will always disagree on what comes after.

Of course we have different values, why else would be arguing? I’m not here to change your mind nor do I expect you to change mine. I’m having this discussion with you because I see value in talking to people who see things differently than I do. Challenging the views of others and having yours challenged is what makes to debates fun imo.

Anarchy just says that order must not emerge from authority but from solidarity. You can disagree, but saying that anarchy is disorder by definition is a mislabeling.

This is just a semantic deflection. You’re appealing to a niche theoretical definition of anarchy while ignoring how the term functions in political discourse. The phrase “order over anarchy” reflects a real world tension between structured authority and the absence of it. You can argue that anarchist theory envisions a different kind of order, but that’s an ideal, not a demonstrated reality. In practice, large scale societies without centralized authority have consistently struggled to maintain stability. So no, it’s not a mislabeling, it’s a recognition of the risks that come with power vacuums.

It is common to see any form of violence as radical, and i’ve seen this logic used by tenants of authority themselves under the saying “Violence is never a solution”. Adding distinction of organized/disorganized violence is an arbitrary choice, and there is no logical imperative of doing so : holding all types of violence accountable, no matter their positive potential, is not a mislabel, it is a take on violence.

You’re collapsing moral judgment with structural analysis. Calling all violence “radical” might feel principled, but it flattens critical distinctions. The difference between a lynch mob and a court ordered arrest isn’t arbitrary, it’s the difference between chaos and legitimacy. The state’s monopoly on violence isn’t radical, it’s foundational to modern governance. You can critique how that power is used, but denying the distinction between regulated and unregulated force is intellectually lazy. And yes, pre-state societies existed, but they weren’t peaceful utopias. Sedentarization brought war, but it also brought law, infrastructure, and medicine. Romanticizing statelessness doesn’t make it viable

Labeling something as “universal” without involuntary hyperbole is blatantly false. Humanity is made from diversity, and there are very few affirmations outside of physics that can correctly be applied to all of humanity.

You’re nitpicking language. “Universal” in this context clearly refers to the widespread nature of pride and belonging, not a literal claim about every human being. Patriotism taps into those emotions, which is why it’s so politically potent. The fact that some people reject patriotism doesn’t disprove its cultural force, it proves that it’s significant enough to be worth rejecting. If you want to critique patriotism, start by acknowledging its emotional appeal, not pretending it’s some fringe anomaly.

So let me get this straight. You made a stupid claim, got criticized for it, tried to beat around the bush, and when you got called out, you threw a temper tantrum? I’m not surprised, but it goes to show that people like you lack the ability to defend your views on their own merits. But hey, why stand by your beliefs when you could just cope by appealing to the masses (nobody is reading this thread btw)…

You can dance in circles all you want, it’s not going to change anything. You’re taking concepts that have nothing to do with fascism and attributing them to it regardless. Saying patriotism a gateway drug to fascism is like saying “community is a gateway drug to cults.” Just because both involve belonging and loyalty doesn’t mean one inevitably leads to the other. It’s the distortion, not the foundation, that creates danger.

Trying to twist something that’s normal, healthy, and even necessary like patriotism or community into something toxic, shows that you’re disingenuous, which is ironic considering your spiel here. Just because you say something is poisonous that doesn’t that it is.

It’s not bait, it’s criticism

A Kurd wanting their people to have self determination and independence is a Kurdish nationalist. Calling someone like that a loser is demonstration of your ignorance.

This is just a piss poor understanding of history, nationalism, and geopolitics.

Let’s take the Ukraine war as an example. Russia is not a nation state, it’s an empire. Empires are usually multiethnic, hierarchical, and expansionist, ruling over diverse peoples through centralized authority and often unequal legal or political status. Ukraine, on the other hand, is a nation state because it’s organized around a shared national identity that is defined by common language, culture, or ethnicity, and it treats all of its citizens as equals under the law. This war is basically between Russian imperialists who want to expand the empire and Ukrainian nationalists who want to defend their nation.

Using your flawed logic, Ukrainians are bad people because they believe in and are actively defending an ideology that you falsely attribute to everything bad to has ever happened in the world and in history. That’s just nonsense.

What you just described, this “mild nationalism?” There’s a word for that: patriotism. Nationalism is extreme patriotism

This is just false. Nationalism is just the idea that a nation should be sovereign. The Meriam Webster definition you cited is just a contemporary definition, the original definition is the second one listed here:

: support for and promotion of the political independence or self-determination of a nation or people

Source: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nationalism

Nationalism isn’t a more extreme version of patriotism. Nationalism describes an ideology while patriotism describes a particular set of emotions. The two could overlap, but they’re not the same thing at different points of a spectrum.

I was thinking about another comment I wanted to reply to while typing that one and my brain just mixed the two.

Hierarchies aren’t an outcome, they’re a requirement for social organization. If you think that you can socially organize without some hierarchy in place then you’re delusional. Trying to equate a concept this basic with oppression just demonstrates your ignorance tbh

Well from an anti-state perspective, supporting a country that commits radical acts such as monopoly of violence is by extension radical

This view is flawed because it mislabels the state’s monopoly on violence as inherently radical. In reality, this monopoly exists to prevent chaos by centralizing and regulating force. Calling it radical ignores the distinction between structured authority and unregulated violence. Supporting a state doesn’t mean endorsing oppression, it can mean recognizing the need for order over anarchy. The reason why humans have evolved to favor order over anarchy is because order provides stability, and this allows people to built up complex societies in relative safety.

I’d say tankies are also patriotic, just not for USA. Fatherland is a quite important concept in post-leninism forms of authoritarian communism. From my experience, it’s much more common to find anti-patriotism in libertarian communism / anarchism than in despotic communism.

Patriotism at it’s core is just a sense of pride, and that’s a universal emotion that everybody has. Everybody wants to feel like they belong to something greater. It gives us a feeling of nobility. All people share a feeling similar to patriotism, even if it’s labeled as something else… even anarchists.

The question is flawed because it treats hierarchy, domination, and oppression as similar concepts, when they’re fundamentally different. Hierarchy isn’t inherently oppressive or bad. It is a feature that we evolved as a social species to coordinate action and reduce conflict. Hierarchies is precisely how we organize. The issue isn’t hierarchy itself, but whether it’s accountable and responsive. Domination and oppression arise when hierarchies become rigid and unchallengeable. So no, those outcomes aren’t inevitable, they’re the result of how power is structured and maintained, not of organization itself.

That was a typo, I meant to say nationalism. There’s definitely a lot inherently wrong with fascism

Tankies do not reject the totalitarian nation state, much less hierarchy

Yes they do, at least in theory, they just see tyranny and a state as a means to an end.

I’m a Bookchinite communalist.

I find it fascinating how every time I go online I always come across political hipsters who find some extremely niche and hyper specific ideology that has never been tried and nobody has heard of to sound cool.

What was it about my comment that led you think I’m a tankie?

Actually quite a few things. For starters, you don’t seem to understand that a nation state is just a community on a larger scale. Like what do you think a nation state is? If your community found itself without the protection a state, guess what? It’ll will develop a hierarchy to govern itself, it will enforce borders for protection, it will centralize for efficiency, and it will develop methods to punish those who don’t abide by the community rules. Actually that’s already the case for a lot of communities.

Also you seem to have this unfounded superiority complex over the “libs” despite not knowing what liberalism even is, let alone what liberal values are. Idk where your unfounded sense of confidence is coming from. If you think people create or support countries because of nostalgia then you’re living in some alternate universe.

Oh, and calling for the death of a country that’s home to 340 million people? Real classy, that totally doesn’t make you a scumbag.

Good for you I guess, my criticism of the quote still stands though