These are the stages of the formation of a nation-state:
1. First, the intellectual elites work to create the feeling of nationhood, of a national community, of cultural togetherness and value.
2. Then, once this work is done, the people demonstrate that the message sank and come out – maybe peacefully, maybe not – to proclaim and defend their nationhood.
3. A national government is formed, and it starts imposing uniformity and cohesion.
These are always the steps. The intellectuals, the people, the government. It was like this in Spain where the intellectuals battled all through the 18th century to create the concept of “the Spanish national character” (today we’d say ‘identity’). And then in 1806, people came out to fight for the independence of Spain from the foreign invader when much of that same elite had run away to the country of the invader.
In Ukraine, intellectuals worked all through the Soviet tyranny to keep Ukrainianness alive. And as a result, in 1986 people started raising Ukrainian flags in public. In 1990, still in the USSR, Ukrainians stood, holding hands, across 700 kilometers of the country’s territory to show their support for the Ukrainian independence.
And only after all that the statehood came.
It works the same with the post-nation state. Intellectuals create the ideas, spread them around, people accept them as “common sense” or normal, and the state molds into the new form. Intellectuals, people, state.
Them are the steps.
Clarissa's Blog 
… Academics.
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Are you familiar with Azar Gat’s work on the ‘deep roots’ of nations (not political nationalism per se)?
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No but such ideas have been expressed by many people. I find them not persuasive because while some nations do have roots based in geography and ethnicity, many don’t. Canada, for example. Or even Spain that integrates half of the Basque Country and Catalonia but not Portugal. Or Panama. The list is very long. I’m not even talking about Russia with its million ethnicities.
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Oh yes, he doesn’t argue that nations as a whole have deep roots, but rather that some level of ‘national’ or ‘ethnic’ feeling beyond one’s immediate surroundings predates the modern era
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Isn’t Russia an empire rather than a nation?
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It’s a post-national state.
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The barbaric slaughter of 1400 Israelis and over 250 hostages, this abomination carried out by NOT Hamas alone but by all Palestinian political organizations including the PA. The time has come to remove the Palestinian pricks poking the Israeli nation, by a forced population transfer of PA Arab populations from E. Jerusalem and Samaria to Gaza – the Israeli established Palestinian state from 2005 to present.
Only Israel has deeded land for the establishment of a Palestinian State. Land for Peace applies equally to Arab countries, not just to Israel. Israel has deed land, Gaza, for an Independent Palestinian State. Time that Arab countries stop their Palestine Occupied Territories political rhetoric propaganda and deed land in the Sinai to enlarge the borders of Gaza for the Arabs removed from E. Jerusalem and Samaria to live as free citizens in their own Palestinian country, a member of the community of nations in the Middle East.
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mosckerr, you’re leaving the same comment many many times.
People see in Recent Comments at the right side of the screen when you leave it once.
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About life in mixed Israeli cities:
// Yes, this is the same feeling among Israelis. That we are pushed to the wall. I live in Haifa, which in Israel is considered an example of the peaceful existence of two peoples for hundreds of years. We work together with Arabs, receive treatment from them, study with them, etc. And the feeling today is very tense. This has never happened in any war. There was tension, but nothing like today. Although I don’t hear it openly.
We have a curious phenomenon going on here. I live in a quiet residential area, a kind of two-story America in Israeli style.
And here our sleepy area, where everyone is busy with children and work, became wildly active on 7.10. Naturally, first of all, they organized assistance to the army and to refugees from the borders, but not only. Residents of the region take on the functions of the state.
They organized armed (nowadays the state made it very easy to get weapons) patrols and rapid response units (I don’t know how much use there would be for middle-aged programmers and lawyers, because all the young and trained ones were called up, but God bless them). They published a list of doctors living in the area who will privately help if anything happens.
We collected money and purchased a bunch of all kinds of equipment for a case similar to what happened in the South. And much more.
And this is not just our area of Haifa, as I hear.
If you look at Haifa on the map, it is very far from all the borders. It is extremely stupid for terrorists from Lebanon or Samaria to come here. They will be simply killed along the way. This means, although no one says it out loud (at least in our area, where the majority are leftists), they are preparing for the possibility that our Arab neighbors will try to slaughter.
They are not particularly afraid of missiles; we have private houses with shelters.
They are afraid of a repeat of the Hebron pogrom.
And this is scary, even if (I really hope) the Arabs of NK don’t come out against the Jews, I’m afraid the consequences will remain. It’s scary to open the door to an Arab deliveryman .
Via (a comment in Russian)
https://experiment8or.livejournal.com/468499.html?thread=13580819#t13580819
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