RE: Is Nationalism to blame? (It sounds like you mean Imperialism)
I think you are wrong here.
Nationalism has for example the loyality principle: Loyality towards your state is the topmost priority.
That necessarily means that something that does not maximise the profit for your state (a compromise) is not acceptable.
Nationalism also implies that there are... uh, is there an english word? people, folks, populace that have a national character. The Brits. The German. The Swedes.
And while it can be a source for many jokes, this is of course wrong. There are people eating bread and drinking beer outside Germany, too! And by far not every German wears Lederhose.
But that thought is always bordering to racism (and often crossing) and a source for unhealthy rivaltry.
(That is also why "Make X great" is not much in favor for many people. It is always connected to a fight against others.)
If Nationalism and Imperialism are different things, you should have no problem of pointing me to a few examples in the last 100 years where you have imperialism but no nation doing it.
False comparison there.
Is imperialism done by a nation? Yes. That doesn't make it the same thing as nationalism. So far has socialism been instituted in nations? Yes. Yet that doesn't make socialism the same thing as nationalism.
Has communism been instituted in nations? Yes. Yet that doesn't make communism the same thing as nationalism.
Nice try. Critical Thinking fail.
Okay, my wording was a bit off. I did not mean they are the same. I meant that without nationalism, imperialism does not happen.
(That is of course talking about a time where nationalism as an idea existed. The Roman Empire was an Empire, but not a national(istic) state.)
btw. there never was communism in a nation. Not even a realized socialism. Comparisn fail ;)
So people like to claim.
Yet the NATIONS themselves claimed to be communist. ;)
Comparison success.
No. The leaders may have sometimes claimed to be in a communist party and adhere to communist principles (which they weren't of course), but not a single state ever claimed to be communist.
Until the end, it was the Union of SOCIALIST Sowjet Republics.
East Germany was "Real Existing Socialism" (always mistrust people who claim something is real, because why do they have to emphazise it??)
Or look at China's SOCIALISM with Chinese characteristics.
Socialism is the prerequisite to communism. If a state considered itself communist, they would have surely put it in REALLY BIG LETTERS!!! in their name etc.
It is similar when people (mostly in the US) talk about "communist China" meaning Mao's time.
That was not communist China. It was not even socialist. As Mao himself said: His Great Leap will bring China 20 years faster towards socialism.
They were far away from socialism, how could they be in communism? That is impossible!
btw. most of the deaths under Mao were not because of the ideology but because of a misunderstanding of nature. They killed sparrows to protect crops, but those sparrows could no longer eat locusts, which then eat everything. This was the reason for the big hunger catastrophe, not "communistic mismanagement".
Something like that - even if you know how bad it is - happens everywhere today too. Our extensive farming causes so much erosion that in another 50 years there will be no fertile soil left, just to point to one devastating thing.
As I wrote above, the first national movement, even in germany, was not one that wanted classification like the Bayern, Preussen, Habsburger or whatever, they wanted one german Nation. So Nationalism as an idea, when it first came up here, had not a single thing to do with Segregation.
It was segregation towards the other "nationalities" liek the swiss, french and so on. You cannot define a group without defining who is not in that group.
Anyway, I did not talk about segregation.
But it is an important point here, because this is one of the main things nationalism is blamed for. When you come from small states , kingdoms and principalities a nation based on language to me seems not as an idea of segregation. Of course all the others that don't belong to that nation are somehow segregated (not saying that this must be any kind of bad in terms of peace and freedom). If Europe was a nation you would make a statement still pointing out that the rest of the world was segregated. Even human identity works by defining who you are and who you are not, cultural and subcultural membership the same. Nothing bad about it, as long as your own interests and views don't affect others rights and personal freedom. So for you possibly there is only socialism one world utopia left to call out for. To me it makes no difference if you call out for a world of nations living in peace,of course this utopian also.
In 1848 it was the most integrating way that was possible at this time for the germans. And the idea never meant "segregation". It was students proclaiming their new ideas just like the 68' movement. Of course we have seen excessive form of nationalism, this does not make it bad in general.
You can say the same of any other state form. It's the people themselves that must become free and independent, self-conscious, so they can't be misleaded by any abuse of a system whether it is nationalistic or socialistic or whatever.
You should have replied to the person I replied to.