Nationalism is an infantile disease

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

“Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind." ~ Albert Einstein

Nationalism and even the nation state are obsolete, in fact they have been thus for ever and a day, and both have been the cause for many of the wars throughout history while others, that is true, were for prestige, resources and such.

While it is good and fine to be “proud” of one's heritage and origin to stand there and claim that one's nation or one's ethnicity is better than all the others and similar is what is the cause of so much strife in the world.

As Einstein has said, nationalism is the measles of mankind there is, alas, no vaccine against it and it can only be overcome by us all growing up, finally. But this growing up does not seem to be happening. In some instances it would appear that people are going back to infancy in their attitude. This is a dangerous development and this nationalism generally ends in fascism.

Ever since around November 2014 we are seeing more and more of this regression to infancy in many countries around the world, from Ukraine over Germany to many other countries in the European Union and outside of it.

In many countries, including Britain, right-wing fascist parties, have made serious inroads in recent elections and at times popular uprisings against previous regimes have been hijacked by right-wing neo-fascist groups and parties, such as in the case of the Ukraine. Though in the latter case it would appear as if the fingers of others are very much implicated in this.

When one should have hoped that the world had grown up by now, and especially countries that have had a brush with fascism in the past, it would appear that rather than advancing and becoming adult many have decided to get back to the toddler age and behave like kindergarten kids again with the “my daddy is better than your daddy”.

Time that everyone really grew up and threw off those infantile and childish ways and things.

© 2015