blue-komrade said: But where is the line between ethnocentric nation states and empire anyway. The major european nations all descend from multi lingual, multi ethnic empires… Or is that your point?
yes, the construction of a homogeneous French identity, German identity, Italian identity, etc.
pushing common languages and suppressing dialects, as happened more recently in China and Indonesia.
and forcible movement of people to line up with national borders, as took place at various intervals throughout the 20th century.
Sometimes this is used to argue that nations aren’t really real in any valuable sense, but once you go up enough contrarianism levels from the normies you wrap around and say “actually, constructing nations is Good.”