The Nationalist Brain Worm - A Response to Previous Motley Piece

By Amir Folorunso

What do we owe the nation? What do we owe each other? What do we owe the world? Would you be ready to die for your country? I'm not talking about dying for your home, for your family, for children, but for your country. To die for a flag, for a national anthem? This is the question possessed by Tiernan O'Ruairc’s piece, “Freedom of Choice,” in the previous motley issue. My response does not wish to act as some apologia for desertion, though I contend that conscription is immoral and should not be considered an acceptable solution regardless of the circumstance of the conflict. Instead, I wish to address the nationalist brain worm that pervades the article and false dichotomy between the individual rights and collective responsibilities. A single quote that drove me to madness was this, "Artem had chosen his individual rights and prioritised himself over every other Ukrainian man, woman, and child." Ignoring this morbid way of describing a war refugee that fled his home due to a pacifist wish to not kill conscripted teenagers with a drone, this brings forward the problem of nationalism. Why does the line stop here?

The ‘nation' is an incredibly new idea in the context of human history. Most things are, to be fair. Regardless, despite being limited to recorded history, the nation-state is an incredibly new and rather strange idea. The nation state is not a republic ruled by an elected government, monarchical or tribal rule. The Nation State is a strange beast which seeks to be a state for a people, where their culture can reign supreme. The nation state was in a sense a response to the notion of empire. When the empire wishes to homogenise their territories and ensure that all are well behaving elements within its borders, then the greatest act of rebellion that subjects of an empire could commit is to assert themselves as a people. A people, with a history that are not cogs in the imperial wheel. This is how we see the rise of anti-imperial nations, the likes of Ireland, Nigeria and aspiring nations like Palestine. There is also the nation that crushes, that homogenises. We see these more in Western Europe within nations like France, Spain and Netherlands. Where instead of a language being shared by all the peoples, the language and dialect is derived from the isolation that the people are subject to from these nations. Nation building in these regions became more about consolidating the region for the sake of a more efficient empire. So surely the next section here is to define whether Ukraine is an example of the revolutionary Nation or an Imperial Nation and therefore define if our deserter owes something to the Nation. 

This is again an example of nationalist brain worms I speak of. The takeaway should surely be that opposition to oppressions is a noble goal, and as Russia is invading Ukraine surely this is an example of such a cause. Why though, is the line drawn there? The greatest limitation of this vision is that ‘the nation’ is an arbitrary boundary. These borders are arbitrary and in the age of climate change and global pandemic, limiting the scope of what is owed to the nation is strange and surreal.. A question then is what do we owe? Our emissions choke the third world, our government is actively complicit in it. We write messages every day with tools made by slave labour. Is the decision to not actively revolt any worse than the decision made of the deserter? This is a question that arbitrary borders provide a pithy answer to. It is, however, down to the individual to provide the answer. It is the people who must derive a greater say than the lines of a map on a nation called earth. Should we be ruled by borders, only then will our worst sins be as grave as choosing to avoid a gross invasion of bodily autonomy.