Nationalism, Is Power Hunger Tempered by Self Deception

The famous book writer George Orwell once said “Nationalism, is power hunger tempered by self deception”. The source states that, “the spirit of nationalism has never ceased to bend human institutions to serve the dissension and distress,” to paraphrase the source, the spirit of nationalism always bends a human institutions to bring pain and sorrow to other nations around the world and we see this in history as well, for example when america wanted to promote democracy in the middle east over Communism resulting in the Iraq War which had its casualties in the millions and the purpose was to promote democracy and the oil in Iraq. But on the other side of things Nationalism has also lead people to achieve great things in this world, for example if we look at the Nationalism in the French Revolution, it lead to democracy in France which eventually spread throughout Europe and because of that we pride upon all around the world today. Despite all the good that Nationalism has brought, freedom of speech, rights to vote for any leader you want but it's all at the cost of civilian lives and that is why I strongly agree with the source and also believe that Nationalism brings more sorrow than joy, Nationalism also makes us only think of only our National Interest which is very unethical considering the international community that we live in, and also sometimes we get involved for economical reasons like in the Iraq War but it is also has negative effects because most of your resources are going into war which affects the economy on top of the civilian and soldier casualties.

World War II was a devastating war and it was even more horrific for the Jews in Germany which brings me to my first argument on how Nationalism can result into Ultranationalism, (when a nation thinks they are more superior than other), which leads to a lot of pain and sorrow to whom the nation thinks are not worth of its Nation or Nation-State, In this case Germany. Before World War II Germany was very oppressed which was a result from World War I. The citizens of Germany were desperate to have sovereignty and self - determination and Hitler promised its German citizens to give them exactly that and more. Germany started to capturing back it’s colonies which were taken away from them post World War I but taking back its colonies weren’t enough, Germany needed a scapegoat for its economic problems and it blamed the Jews in Germany for it. Hitler was ethnic cleansing Jews from the face of the earth, million of jews were killed in genocide in World War to via, forced labour, starvation, making them dig mass graves and then shooting them when they weren’t able to work and them burying them, and even putting them in gas chambers and if they somehow escaped all these terrible things when they tried to return to their homes they were already occupied by someone else so they were displaced as well. We can only Imagine what it was like being a Jew in Germany at that time but I also had the chance to listen share the experience of a holocaust survivor at the RMU, whose daughter shared his experience in the Holocaust and it was truly awful and devastating and with this evidence, it supports my argument on why Nationalism can make us do terrible things.

Nationalism always breaks out into violence and sometimes even into wars like the Iraq war which went on for about 8 years. The Iraq War was a part war against terror (the war on terror happened because how devastating 9/11 was), and the Iraq war happened because Iraq’s dictator had claimed that it had WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) which there was no doubt as it was already using gases that could be used as a WMD so since the US was already in war against terror