No. of Recommendations: 2
This. Is. A. Myth. I would suggest you look at this classic statement on the mythological origins of the modern nation state.
I will read that when I have the chance....but it's literally hundreds of pages long. I'm not going to have the opportunity to read it in the context of this discussion. Perhaps you might try to summarize the these and explain it in terms of, say, Slovakia or the Partition of India, so that we can continue this conversation? I think I can intuit the form of the argument as it would apply to nations like Germany or Britain or the U.S., which are clearly the synthesis of multiple groups and where the common identity came after the political entity. So I think it would help if you could summarize the argument for how the "nation forming around identity" principle is a myth for states like Slovakia or Pakistan or Armenia.
I am saying that all ethno-nationalist "projects", with Zionism being the ethno-nationist project of some Jewish nationalists, is premised on the political construction of a state based on an imagined community of "people". This project, in which civil rights and citizenship is limited to "the nation", is a racist project.
Which is fine - but there is a difference between being "anti-ethno-nationist state" and "anti-Zionist." Because if you're holding the latter view, you're singling out only the Jewish state. Not the Slovak state, not the Thai state, not the Japanese state - just the Jewish one.
To give an example, if someone comes to me and tells me they don't think Jews should be allowed to own real property, I will (rightly) consider them anti-Semitic. And not a particularly original anti-Semitic person at that, since denying Jews the right to own real property was a classic debility that governments imposed. If he comes back to me later and says, "ah, but you see, I object to the idea of real property in principle - I think it's a tool of the modern capitalist system to impose artificial equality, perpetuate privilege, etc."....that's not going to change the fact that claiming that Jews specifically shouldn't be allowed to own real property is anti-Semitic. Because it's the singling out, the identifying that particular group as the one who shouldn't be allowed to own property (or who should be prohibited from owning real property first) that's the issue.
It's the difference between being against anyone owning real property and being against the specific instantiation of Jews owning property. One is anti-Semitic, and the other is not.
I can easily understand why you might prefer people to eschew building nations around conceptions of identity (whether real or mythical), but many nations today aren't like Canada. Many nations are not a synthesis of many diverse ethnic or other identity groups bound together solely or primarily as a political construct, and instead reflect a political body that evolved around a common tribe or culture or sect or whatever group. Or one that was specifically constructed to match a pre-existing group of people (again, Pakistan or Slovakia or Armenia). If you are opposed to all of those states by virtue of the fact that they are nations built around that sense of identity (real or mythical), then have at it - but "anti-Zionist" isn't the term to describe that general opposition to nation-states. Anti-Zionist is the term that describes being against one nation-state. The Jewish one.
