TOTW: National Identity and Anarchy

Firstly, the compartmentalization of people through both physical and abstract social markers is a very human thing, as human beings are social creatures. As shitty as it can get, I don’t think it serves it’s eventual dismantling to view it either as a moral blunder on the part of radicals-who-should-know-better or as something that can or should be ignored until everyone agrees to stop doing it (not at all what you suggested but it’s often an unspoken reflex when certain faux pas go unexamined). Understanding people within the context of nationalities as they currently exist, I think, further assists in understanding where people might be coming from in their ideas, critiques and actions, but that also requires actually asking questions and getting to know someone to see where they diverge from that social context and where their individual sense of self begins. We aren’t to extol national myth or champion the flattening of one’s identity within those types of boundaries but it’s true that such constructions shape a social mass, be they language, customs, et al., which anarchists are clearly not immune to.

As for myself, that social construction absolutely shapes the way my anarchism has developed, as I’ve experienced American society and its historical myths as the descendant of chattel slaves. My theoretical and practical inspirations have come from all over the world but, prioritizing an anarchism of place, *this* abysmal place, has helped me develop perspectives that supersede certain of the core assumptions, mostly around the ideas of desire, Humanity, and freedom. I don’t think it’s particularly unique since I’m merely building on older post-left ideas I was introduced to in my youth, but I also specifically mean to complicate the stale ideas, assumptions and practices still present in the more activist-oriented realms of anarchism that I somehow haven’t been able to fully leave behind. Mostly due to the irrepressible desire to see everything around me upended without any return to normalcy. The question of broad desirability is a tough one because, on one hand, I think we can and should be able to arrive at mutual conclusions from vastly different starting points without having to agree on most things along the way, but on the other hand I doubt I’d find many who agree with some of my ideas (specifically on the more expansive critiques of desire, Humanity and freedom) considering their entrenchment in blackness that, while devoid of essentialism, doesn’t sink into a nationalist pose.

Anarchism from elsewhere tends to be very fantastical. It’s a symptom of things looking much shinier from far away, and having been to a few “elsewheres” I can attest to that. I think it takes actually immersing yourself in other contexts to really understand what’s truth and what’s myth, and it’s also beneficial for others to talk to a variety of visiting anarchists so their own truths and myths can get sorted out. But I will say that my travels have soured me on “home”. If it were ten years ago I’d find the american anarchist space more… heartening? It could be because we’re currently under an avalanche of repression, or my feeling completely disconnected from where and how people these days find anarchism and what they tend to describe or depict what they imagine anarchism to be, but I’m looking to Elsewhere(tm) for spaces and conversations that interest me. I don’t know what it would take to bring the american space back to a place that doesn’t give me bubble guts but I’ll be Elsewhere(tm) until it happens.

*Let’s also acknowledge both the "human being" and “the social” as types of abstractions themselves that not everyone was granted the same existence or experience with, but for the sake of the argument just pretend I’m speaking about either in a (still-abstract, I know) universal sense that actually exists*

To be honest, I don’t think about nationality at all. Americans seemed obsessed by it, it’s very odd behaviour. Settler guilt?

You gotta first understand how national identity is a construct of modern states. Prior to this we had different social configurations based on more tribal, family, congregate, fraternity/sorority ties. You gotta either go back to such aggregateals if you wanna overcome the national bullshit, or else invent a new kind of social relationship... tho we usually suck at it.

I know it's duh, but I'd say it depends a lot on where you're from and where you live, really.
Nations are just the human side (or product) of States. In most of the world, throughout Asia, Africa, and even Europe, States and nations are still often odd territorial arrangements where central (rich) powers overtake/colonize/occupy less central (poorer) powers and regions. The economy (commerce and the circulation of money) is now global since at least a few decades, and historically it has actually always been. The State, and even more the Nation, are on the other hand the fundamental unit of war on this planet. States that are not strong enough are eaten up by bigger ones, while States that are successful tend to last a long time, impose a unitary language, restrictions on economy, restrictions on religion, restrictions on culture, repression of any individual development. And this I believe is what we call a Nation. And everywhere, it seems to me, people that have less capacity and less autonomy in their lives tend to be persuaded by this silly "imagined community" where we're all the same, while the "strangers" are all wrong, perverse, and evil.
Personally I almost never met anyone who had a pacified or even univocal conception of their nation. People I know tend to interpret and choose their position on the matter, rather than being determined by it. Most I know actually hold very strong opinions, beliefs, and dogmas basing on this. And this is not limited to "official" or institutional nations (such as the one they put in your ID), but I find it also true for minoritary, traditional/spiritual, or "repressed" nations that strive for "liberation" or "sovereignity".
Coming from a latin country I gotta say a Nation is something you really have to suck around here. All my true friends, anarchists or not, are opposed and deeply hostile to the Nation, if not to the very concept of a nation, certainly to their own "real" (institutional) nation. Few of them idealize about a new/better/authentic nation, which sucks, but there's worse. Take this fucking football shenanigan coming back every 4 (if not 2) years, this time taking place in Trumpland for the pleasure of all the fans. Every two years these sissys get down on the field with their damn holy coloured jersey, and 95% of people at home would suddenly feel fucking honoured to literally die miserably in some dejected place away from home just to keep the stupid flag of their bosses' higher than the neighbour's. And very few of us, even in so-called "anarchist circles" have the guts to say how fucking depressing it all is. And this is like one summer every two.

Anarchists who live in the periphery of empires, inhabiting the last territories who still bear the embarrassing indignity of being widely recognized as colonies, have to contend with the disparate aspirational national projects from different state actors that want to become the viable alternatives to the status quo. These alternatives, whether capitalist or socialist, pro-independence (or leave or exit) or annexationist (or stay), paint themselves as staunchly anti-imperialist and are automatically conferred an air of radicality, rewarded by a core of zealot followers merely for their parties' stance against the colonial status, while being stale and ordinary in all other aspects. Such alternatives capture the imagination of the populace, even the small sliver of dissatisfied segments that occupy the spaces and the role of dissent. The main lack is seen as sovereignty and autonomy on a national scale, and equal representation, and there is consensus even among opposing parties that aspire to go beyond the colonial status. In these contexts anarchists seem doubly foreign to their neighbors, since the extent of their political orientation is the elimination of the colony on paper. It makes an anarchist in this context almost wish they'd get this matter out of their system, just so they could get their point across, but usually the geopolitical context makes it so this status will be maintained indefinitely, permanently holding the environments of narratives captured and locked around state solutions.

who didn't want to think of himself that way. Both his parents were French-speaking francophones, but he didn't really care about speaking French that much himself, even though it had been his first language. I guess his specific life was a little bit more complicated than the simple schema that most of us, around Montréal and stuff, use in everday conversation to explain these things. Like, I doubt very many Québ kids grew up with their parents making them pay a quarter to a jar every time they spoke English - and I'm sure that was traumatizing for him.

When I would say he was Québ - cuz if it means anything to be Québ, ethnically speaking, than that's what he is - he would take offense, as if I was denying the full spectrum of everything that he was; I wasn't being very Stirnerian, recognizing his Uniqueness, or something.

But from my perspective, when he said he wasn't Québ - or in another conversation we had, he said he was not a "subject of the Queen" - it was clear he was just denying some basic facts of who his parents were, where he'd grown up, how he was a product of these sorry and dismal facts.

When I was traveling in Europe, a lot of people who I had no doubt were anarchists were nonetheless happy to explain "here in Serbia, this is what we eat for breakfast" and show me historical places and tell me stories that had more to do with "the nation" than, like, the anarchist movement. And I don't know, if I received a visitor, I'd probably do the same. Anarchists already know the anarchist stuff, but they might not know about Tim Hortons or Niagara Falls or something. I think the key thing is, as anarchists, we are part of something that is bigger than our "nationality" (such as it is) and our tradition informs us that nationalism is shit, that it is a way of getting a bunch of people to march to some authoritarian drum, to ultimately anti-human ends.

The thing is, nationality just kind of doesn't matter. You have the one you've got, and if you're not happy about it, it'll probably be roughly as challenging and expensive to change it - in your own eyes, in the eyes of the state, in the eyes of any average stranger - as it is to change your gender. People do it, people even broadly succeed, but given that it's sort of made-up bullshit and a distraction from the good stuff in life, the more interesting questions are definitely about how to render nationality or gender as irrelevant and socially inconsequential as possible. (And the more interesting answers to those questions are latter-day illegalist in character)