A common critique of ultra leftists & anarchists is that they support revolutions until they win or only if they lose. Usually this leads to rounds of recrimination, but I think we should take a different approach (1/?)

As @Itmechr3 likes to say, nationalist & nat lib projects are often or only the good guys when they are fighting against another oppressive, project, but whenever they win, they become the bad guys. (2/?)

But, while this statement seems to express the logic criticized in the first tweet, it stands roughly true to history, but here's the point: Becoming the 'bad guy' is *more or less the point* of nationalism* or NatLib in explicit terms (3/?)

For ethnonationalism, and nationalism of the elites, or the 'middle class' masses--irredentist, state centric, cultural renewal nationalism--this point is more or less obvious. Although said groups probably do not think of themselves as the bad guys (4/?)

But, even for the nationalism & NatLib of the oppressed, the central aim of state centric nationalism is *to become a force in history*--which, as Hegel says, is a graveyard. The oppressed aim to become agents & actors (5/?)

They often argue Since the world involves states, and therefore states are needed to defend collectivities, and since the world is capitalist, this means short of global revolution, survival of a collective project requires a state & capital (6/?)

Since, ipso facto, the state & capital figure as the 'bad guys' and oppressor here--even if they are often more explicitly coupled with a specific occupier, dominator, settler, invader, or subverter--the project to become a self sustaining force entails mimicking these (7/?)

But wait, people say, what about rights, ethics, ideals, etc? The nationalist here responds that they are being attacked/destroyed *as a nation*, and will be destroyed *as a nation* and as individuals if they do not defend themselves (8/?)

Since defending themselves requires a self sustaining collectivity with historical agency, in the current world, they argue. this entails a state & potentially capital. But is this not oppressive? One asks (9/?)

The short answer many may give is: yes, it very well may be oppressive, but they argue that their choices are either collective suicide via idealism or collective survival via creating a structure that may be oppressive (10/?)

If the choices are ethical suicide or unethical survival, they argue, it’s clear what most people will choose for better or worse, and they can’t be faulted for that. Why should they sacrifice their lives & collectivity for the ideals of the left? (11/?)

I think what follows from this is that the left nationalist, the left apologist for nationalism, the left critic of nationalism & the nationalist critic of leftism are all effectively speaking different idioms entirely (12/?)

This thread is liable to please no one—critics of nationalism will see it as a defense, while supporters will see it as a critique. In reality it’s meant as neither (13/?)

Instead it is meant as a way to explicate languages & logics talking past each other entirely. An aspect of My recent project has been exploring the intellectual & material history of leftism, social science, nationalism etc (14/?)

And repeatedly what i find is that despite mutual influence in history, these discourses & ideologies often talk past each other entirely. (15/?)

While, suffice it to say, I lean against nationalism, i think the standard left critique of nationalism misses the point, but so does left apologia for nationalism (usually with caveats for ‘of the oppressed’) (16/?)

The usual debate has the left critic say we shouldn’t support them because nationalism is bad & nationalists are the bad guys. The left apologist says no, we should support nationalism of the oppressed because they are the good guys. (17/?)

But both of these miss the point because the nationalist’s argument is often totally different. Support us, they argue, so That we may *become* the bad guys to survive against even bigger bad guys (18/?)

Once we have our collective survival figured out, as an agent in history, and therefore as one of the bad guys, then you can oppose us too, but until then, we would rather survive & self determined then commit suicide for the sake of ideas (19/?)

For many nationalists of a left bent their argument boils down to the idea that once the global universalistic revolution comes that will destroy all states & erase nationalist political differences come, they will either join it or fall (20/?)

But until that point, their choices are either join the potential bad guys & survive, or not. They do not wish to fall on the pyre of history for the sake of nobility. (21/?)

If the world were already truly universalistic then their argument is moot anyway they argue, but in the actually existing world, nations, war machines, states & capital exist and they are locked in fierce geopolitical & economic competition (22/?)

Of course, the obvious critique is that an actually elite or powerful group is using the mantle of the underdog to justify their own oppression of others, and to defend their nation state in bad faith (23/?)

And while certainly this is often the case, even if it is *usually* the case, this does not, ipso facto, mean it is *always* the case. We can point to plenty of genuinely oppressed people who support nationalist projects (24/?)

One problem is that nationalism & the state are deeply tied up with inventing tradition & history--and always have been for the entire human existence--thus, they often erase or rewrite or contract their history/identity post hoc (25/?)

For those with the benefit of centuries or millennia, with this constructed origin lost to history, they look 'authentic' and a genuine nation. To those underdog projects not yet successful, they look genuinely oppressed. (26/?)

But to those who have *just* won recently enough that their constructed past is obvious, but not recently enough that the memory of oppression lingers, they're caught in a bind. (27/?).

Many of the latecomers to nationalism--either the subaltern states of Europe, the postcolonial nation states, or the socialist nat lib projects that became state capitalist authoritarians--fit this mold. (28/?)

On the other hand, there are those projects--like the nationalism of Germany, Japan, US, etc--that have claimed to be the underdog or oppressed from the beginning, even though this never accurately described them (29/?).

Ironically, these states often use this critique against other weaker nationalist projects opposed to them. The ethnonationalist invader loves to sing songs of universalism & the need for history to move beyond nation states (30/?).

This, they do, knowing comfortably that their project has already won, or, indeed, has always been a project of the powerful. This bad faith maneuver is oddly effective (especially bc it may contain grains of truth)(31/?)

But, all of this further shows how fundamentally disunited a phenomena 'nationalism' is--and not just along the usual lines of oppressor/oppressed, ethno/cultural, state/rebellion, left/right, etc (32/?)

The topic is further fraught by the issue of 'campism', which, while fundamental to this discussion, nonetheless would require threads of its own, and would take us too far beyond this one (33/?)

Similarly, I haven't even addressed issues like contradictory social formations (both oppressor & oppressed), the issues of political economy, judging societies by their internal structure or external relations or..(34/?)

..the issues that a just critique or praise differentially applied can still result in an injustice or inequity (hence why 'whataboutism' is usually but not always a fallacious rebuttal), or (35/?)

the tensions between the anti-moralist pragmatism of these ideologies ('in the choice of survival vs. idealism, we choose survival') and their idealism, or the tension of their positive (affirmation) & negative (secession) aspects (36/?)

But, while serious issues that are deeply relevant to this discussion, they are not ones I can address in a timely fashion, especially given the length of this thread as it is. (37/?)

But, the TLDR is this: the usual left critiques of nationalism, left apologia for nationalism, nationalist critiques of leftism, and left nationalism discourses talk past each other entirely (38/?)

Focussed overly on who is the 'good' or 'bad' guy, and which ideals or alliances are correct, they ignore that many ideologies try to sidestep this entirely, and instead frame their issue as one of survival & necessity rather than ideals (39/?)

In these modes, the failure to live up to noble ideals is not a bug of the ideologies, but, according to some, a feature. The world is not an ideal place, they argue, so we must accommodate it to survive & survival trumps idealism (40/40)

@threader_app compile