Nationalism is an obsolete concept fraught with existential danger in this modern age.
The deleterious effects of climate change, of declining air quality, the shrinking of the rain forests, the widening gap between the haves and have nots and so on, know no country borders. They will affect all humankind through declining health, the rise of xenophobia, anti-semitism, racism, etc..
Spirituality, at its essence, believes that we are all one within and that the differences are external. Diversity on this level should be celebrated while connected to the inner spirit that unites us.
A book titled “At the Existentialist Cafe” by Sarah Bakewell is a great read on the rise of the existentialist philosophy movement through its prominent European pioneers in the early 20th century. It focuses much on post WW 1 thru the rise of Nazism and Fascism.
Part of this loose group of existentialists included the seminal feminist Simone De Beauvoir, a close friend of the brilliant writer/activist Jean-Paul Sartre (who won a Nobel Prize for literature and refused to accept it), Albert Camus, Ed Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and many others. Creativity abounded through new ways of teaching at universities, poetry, playwriting, art, music, dancing, and all forms of expression. Existential philosophy was, in many ways, both experiential and transcendent philosophy. Existentialism was indeed a renaissance after the devastation of WW 1 (the war to end all wars).
In the background, as the book proceeds, was the creeping rise of authoritarian nationalism. It would soon take a forbidding toll on this movement as well as the rest of the world. Economic struggles led to the resurgence of nationalism, leading to xenophobia, anti-semitism, the marginalization of all minorities. Unfathomable atrocities occurred. Many of the existentialists were Jewish. Many people, in an act of resistance, smuggled major philosophical works out of Germany before the Nazi’s could destroy them. Sartre, for example, joined the French resistance. Heidegger, being the exception, became a heretic to existentialism by becoming a Nazi sympathizer.
A week or two ago Trump, carefully choosing his words, proclaimed himself a nationalist, prefacing it by saying we are not supposed to use that word. He could have said another word, but he chose nationalist. It was clearly a deliberate use of the word. David Duke, one of the leaders of the white nationalist movement, a racist and anti-semite, immediately celebrated Trump’s speech. Within a week or so came the unexploded bombs to so called enemies of Trump, the murder of two black men outside a church where the murderer was attempting to breach and kill more black people, and the horrific massacre of Jews worshipping at a synagogue.
Some may say these are unrelated coincidences. I say they are prescient, for in the end there are no coincidences. They are the inexorable unraveling of the flow of actions and consequences, anticipated and unanticipated, of them.
