Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[ergo sum]

"do a search on world conflicts over the past 50 years"
I am looking for this. Can't find it.

First, ethnonationalism reflects a clearly regressive phenomenon. Assuming that the ethnie is the archaic version of the nation, we have to admit that ethnonationalism represents a revival of trends supposedly eradicated by modernity. Indeed, in a number of cases, those who ignite ethnic conflicts seem to have been driven by an overwhelming nostalgia towards a mythical era where the national community was (or just supposed to be) a kinship group. Accordingly, they endeavoured to deconstruct the existing Nation-State to which they belong with no whatsoever regard to modernity assets such as citizenship, economic benefits, external national prestige, etc. In short, contrary to nationalism, ethnonationalism is not the product of modernity but a late resilience to modernity, a counter-reaction to its most advanced forms.
Second, ethnonationalism often presents so high a degree of emotionality and non-rationality that it would not be excessive to analyze it with the vocabulary of psychiatry. A number of post-Cold War ethnic conflicts seem to have follow a comparable pathological general pattern. Their starting point has been the self-overestimation of the collective identity of a given ethnic group which asserts that its specificity is so unique that it makes coexistence in the same Nation-State with others not possible anylonger, all the more that its collective identity is lethally threatened by a coalition of internal and external foes. In line with that creed, which has to do with narcissism and paranoia and which allows it to pose itself as a victim or martyr, the igniting group demonizes one or several other ethnic groups living with him on the same politico-territorial unit. Resenting henceforth physical cohabitation as intolerable promiscuity, it arrives at the imperative necessity of restoring a mythical stage of initial ethnic purity - thus adding phobia and delirium on the list of symptoms 11. Two cases are particularly illustrative in this connection : the suicide of Yugoslavia and the deconstruction of Georgia's national unity and territorial integrity.
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/securityforum/Online_Publications/WS4/Ghebali.htm