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Jack Trent's avatar

Typo: https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/europes-inner-demons " if some of them have a basis in fact, facts themselves were never the issue for those who pedalled them." should be "peddled"

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hk's avatar

Late comment, so apologies.

I would suggest (not only in Europe, but also in North America) that the new dividing lines did very much involve "communities and territories," just not between/among them. Nationalism, by it's nature, is a communal and tribal phenomenon. Racism and discrimination are, ultimately, a tribal phenomenon, arising from people's common inclination to favor those whom they see as members of their own tribe. The trouble arising from Europe and modern West's choice to focus on the abstract rather than synthesizing a new tribal identity for their denizens meant that many of the existing tribes and communities, especially the more reclusive (and/or more powerful and better organized ones) became their enemies.

I think the founders of EU had a different vision as they appreciated the power of common tribal identity. After all, Adenauer, Schuman, and Gaspari were all (Catholic) Christian Democrats and Germanophones educated in German (defined broadly) institutions--both their education and formative professional practices.

I tend to blame this failure on the rise of identarianism, which, in turn, I think, is a modern form of blatant racism in "woke" wrappings masquerading as "anti-fascism." Nothing keeps someone from a seemingly "different" tribe to partake in rituals of the new tribe and assimilate as its member, except for stubborn fanatics who refuse to be trustworthy members of their new society, I think. The "new" tribe, to better accommodate a broader array of members, can also assimilate aspects of various existing tribes into it's rituals. This is hardly new: every major institution has evolved in this manner. This is how Cathilicism got patron saints, Virgen de Guadalupe, and Japanese Jesuit Zen masters, for example. If course, this would not have been easy: Chinese rites controversy lasted two centuries, after all, for instance. Setting up bureaucratic institutions around legalism and abstractions seemingly forgoes these difficulties, but as they say, easy come easy go.

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