NATIONALISM
First thing: don’t forget that languages and cultures don’t give exactly the same meaning to this term, as they do to “nation.”
The “nation” of an English speaker, a French speaker, and a Breton speaker is not exactly the same.
None, however, is without ambiguity.
“Nèyeshonn,” pronounced “English,” includes a cultural element, like the Breton “Broad,” but also the unofficial French vision.
The French have an official discourse, but also a very different personal and collective feeling, which emerges in conversations and debates.
The official adheres to a civic and universalist vision, where a nation is cemented by a state and only by a state. What is ethnocultural, the French language in particular, is what emerges from private or public conversations, unbeknownst to the protagonists: I have heard a thousand times, on TV shows, multi-educated and respected commentators revert to the baguette and “our” national language, without the slightest attention allowing them to realize that they are falling back into the ethnocultural and the physical domination of one human cultural group over other cultural communities. This has become so natural that pointing it out is doomed to be rejected in hell!
There is great hypocrisy for the French to cloak themselves behind the expression “universalist” to better eradicate the culture and philosophy of those who were conquered because they were fewer in number and less rich in cannons and swords. When these conquests have been accepted and recognized by the international community of states, let us admit that we cannot permanently challenge all borders, under penalty of a totally uninhabitable world, a world of fire and blood. The world, precisely, is supposed to ensure that, given the status quo, the country that administers these peoples has an acceptable respect for these same peoples. The “administrating country” then administers them in the name of humanity. All these cultures belong to it; they are not the property of France or any other state. This acceptable respect would allow these minorities to survive within these borders, without being driven to revolt to obtain their due. But international institutions are obviously in the hands of states. Everything is in place for violence. How many wise men are there among the fools? The term “nationalist” will always remain completely ambiguous.
Whether we think it or not, whether we like it or not, attaching ISM to NATIONAL, deep down (in the unconscious?) means that the NATION is THE central value. It’s a horribly reductive vision of life on Earth.
Under the roots of this word, we perceive something quite appalling if it is used by a powerful nation. Because this underlies the desire for even more power, that is, the weakening or eradication of everything that moves around it, or even inside it…
This is the 100% degree of nationalism, just as power-mad people have a 100% ego.
What semantic poverty, forcing small peoples in extinction to use the same word to speak of their fight for survival!
The same word for a purely defensive “nationalism” and an offensive nationalism. You have to have a sense of degrees and nuances to understand that a minority people, like us Bretons, cannot do without a “nationalism,” the bare minimum, just as the individual must have the minimum ego to keep him from disappearing. The 1% ego versus the 100% ego, 1% nationalism versus 100% nationalism. The change in degree changes the nature.
It is true that the French language in particular does not help in all these areas.
Replace it with the word “patriotism”? The problem would remain its macho side…
Fortunately, there is Breton MATRIOTISM. The homeland for us is the MAMMVRO (the mother-country).
As French society and others once admitted that people of color were not monkeys, and, much later (a crime of lesser degree) that the Breton language is not a patois, why not hope for further progress (thanks to Anglo-American influence?) and for it to admit an indubitable truth (in 80 years, I am still waiting for the contrary argument): the Breton-Breton women are a people, Brittany is not a nation-state, but a nation without a state and therefore a national minority (recognized outside French borders although with little help).
It is a selfish and misguided interest that has so far permitted such blatant denial.
The Breton instinct for self-preservation will, I believe, allow us to move beyond this and regain by 2032 the autonomy stolen since 1532, the five departments united, for a strengthened Brittany, both in its economy and in its culture. Should France suffer from the positive breath of a Brittany flourishing in the West?
In any case, may fate protect us from the madness of excessive egos and supremacist nationalisms, may we live in a certain internationalist harmony of peoples that would allow humanity to transcend itself without limits.
But the egos are there, all that remains is to hope for the lesser evil.