Beneath Another Sky: a historian’s global take on migration and identity | Hacker News Reader

Beneath Another Sky: a historian’s global take on migration and identity

newstatesman.com

33 pointsThevet11 comments

" Such regressive developments can only be pauses in an ongoing forward movement."

Trashy globalist arrogance.

The 'Germanics' have been around for a few thousand years, it's not an issue of 'nation state' - if they believe that all that they are is more than some Federalist, unelected Bureaucracy, then so be it.

Sweden is in many ways more successful than many US states - so then why do they need a Federation?

Why do certain people think that the tendency towards global governance and the abolition of states, ethnicity (i.e. actual diversity) is a good thing?

And how do they somehow make it a moral issue?

For about 1000 years the borders of Europe have bounced around but somehow they almost always end up roughly along ethnic lines.

How many wars were fought over Spanish succession? By French, Habsbourgs etc? And yet, 'Spain' is pretty much 'Spain' even to this day (yes, an amalgamation surely, but most of them roughly 'Spanish' at least considerably more so than they are 'German' or 'French').

It's also a crazy paradox that those usually virtue signalling 'diversity' in specific locales, are the same one's pushing for policies which tend to break up and delegitimize ethnic groups, thereby decreasing ethnicity in the world.

> Why do certain people think that the tendency towards global governance and the abolition of states, ethnicity (i.e. actual diversity) is a good thing?

Because the rise of ethnic-based nationalism lead to two world wars that killed millions of people and included several genocides?

I get WWII, but WWI was ethno-nationalism driven?

You mean the war triggered by the Yugoslav nationalist who assassinated the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, with the goal of having Austria-Hungary cede the South Slav provinces to Yugoslavia?

Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austria-Hungary :

> Austria-Hungary was a great power but it contained a large number of ethnic groups that sought their own nation. It was ruled by a coalition of two powerful minorities, the Germans and the Hungarians. Stresses regarding nationalism were building up, and the severe shock of a poorly handled war caused the system to collapse.

There is no clear single cause of WWI. Quoting now from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_I :

> [Historians] look at such factors as political, territorial and economic conflicts, militarism, a complex web of alliances and alignments, imperialism, the growth of nationalism, and the power vacuum created by the decline of the Ottoman Empire.

The Ottoman Empire, as a reminder, carried out genocide against several ethnic groups during WWI.

That Wikipedia page also points out:

> Senior German generals such as Helmuth von Moltke talked in apocalyptic terms about the need for Germans to fight for their existence as a people and culture. MacMillan states: "Reflecting the Social Darwinist theories of the era, many Germans saw Slavs, as especially Russia as the natural opponent of the Teutonic races".

and further says:

> Bénézet's book The World War and What was Behind It (1918) blamed on German aggression combined with perceived threats to the traditional social order from radicals and ethnic nationalists.

I see that view as a form of revisionism. Was it ethnic based nationalism, or was it ethnic based nationalism and political ideology and perverse financial incentives and class warfare and... seemingly countless other things.

Perhaps we need to look at it from a meta-perspective then? I'd argue that it was caused by the existence, and ultimate subservience of people to, a state. Large states too, where power was allowed to accumulate, develop and weaponize itself in the form of an army.

I'm an historian of Europe in the 1500-1800 period and I have to say, respectfully, that your assumptions about the continuity of ethnic identity are just factually incorrect. As an example, 'Spain' was not just a single ethno-state in earlier periods - it was a patchwork of different kingdoms with distinct languages and customs. In fact Spanish identity is not even a single formation today, as any Galician or Catalan or Basque would be likely to tell you. And indeed there are many parts of Spain that have more in common with neighboring regions in France (or Portugal) than with other parts of Spain. This was the norm up until the 19th century when ethnicity became fetishized. I can point you to many books and journal articles on this if you're genuinely interested.

I'd be interested in an overview (book form) for non-historians. I get the impression that cities were more important than countries in some ways.

I share your beliefs, the English empires in France, or Norman, Gascon and Aquitanian empires in Britain, are another example where the borders of today do not reflect the borders of history. I am less well read than you and would like to ask you to post some links if you have some.

You started with the quote "Such regressive developments can only be pauses in an ongoing forward movement." and described it as "Trashy globalist arrogance".

I don't think you noticed that the author was constructing that position as something to knock down, or at least reevaluate. That paragraph starts:

"Closer to home, those who believe that history flows forwards are adamant that the institutions of the European Union will long outlast the nation states that exist on the continent today (many of which are themselves not very old). ..." and ends " But what if these supposed reversions to the past are actually glimpses of the future?."

The subsequent paragraph gives on alternative interpretation, "a Maori-style concept of time of the kind Norman Davies describes may prove a better guide to events."

> Trashy globalist arrogance

Posting ideological flamebait is pretty well the most destructive thing people can do on HN, so we ban accounts that do it repeatedly. Since your account has largely been using HN for ideological battle, I've banned it.

If you don't want to be banned on HN, all is not lost. Simply read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html and take the spirit of this site to heart, then email us at hn@ycombinator.com and commit to using the site as intended in the future.

What we're looking for here is thoughtful conversation in which intellectual curiosity can thrive and people can learn. Bashing the other side, or throwing stock ideological flammables, is what is not indicated.

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