So I’m probably taking this discussion about ‘nationalism’ on Twitter with @nealjclark1 @AnarContrarian & @RizomaSchool way more seriously than I should, but it prompts me to say a little more about nationalism & localism – and why I don’t want to mix them up 🧵

We all know people, things, practices, locations & memories in places special to us that we feel emotionally connected to, give meaning to our lives & that we wish to cherish & protect...

...yet most of us are part of a modernist culture inherently scornful of such attachments, albeit happy to giftwrap them & sell them back to us as nostalgia if it can.

So I agree with @AnarContrarian that rural people’s children & grandchildren were functionally confiscated from them – in fact, I’d go so far as to say that in many ways modernist culture has functionally confiscated us from ourselves

Nationalism is part of this modernist culture. Its force comes from taking those powerful emotions we have about people & places we know, & sprinkling people & places we don’t know with the same emotional fairy dust...