In such a case, the national and cultural differences between these nations were removed by racism which just cast them “all into a nameless sludge”, devoid of nationality. Derogatory terms like “Slant” were common, and in such a case it didn’t matter whether you were actually Vietnemese, but rather just held the physical characteristics which the slurs discriminated against, and so the term and prejudice would too be applied to, say, the Chinese, Japanese or Koreans. Take Anderson’s example of the increasing racism towards Asians from Americans during the Vietnam War. Racism is a tool of domestic oppression which on the whole is not confined to national borders. (Thus for the Nazi, the Jewish German was always an impostor.)”Īnderson’s point here is relatively straightforward, and a chain of reason and logic is evident. “The fact of the matter is that nationalism thinks in terms of historical destinies, while racism dreams of eternal contaminations, transmitted from the origins of time through an endless sequence of loathsome copulations: outside history (…) Jews, the seed of Abraham, forever Jews, no matter what passport they carry or what language they speak and read. The first being that nationalism, as the name suggests, seeks to assert nation-ness and national boundaries, whereas racism does the reverse, reducing whole groups of people to their biological physiognomy and erasing any national differences withing the social group: To evaluate his view on nationalism and racism, it is, of course, necessary to outline his two main reasons for the differences between the two ideologies. Whilst Anderson’s approach was certainly groundbreaking, when reading his chapter on “Patriotism and Racism”, his denial of a link or relationship between racism and nationalism seems to contradict his most valuable insights on the imagined nature of nationalism. This marked a stark shift in thinking by contrast to the previously popularly held view of primordialsm and socio-biology, which saw nationalism and nations as products of natural biology which have existed throughout the course of human history. Thus, nations and nationalisms were imagined into existence. His 1983 book “Imagined Communities” became a seminal work in sociology and anthropology, helping re-define our understanding of nationalism as a socially constructed product of Modernity, through which developments in print media and shared vernacular led to a sense of belonging and similarity between individuals who would probably never meet.

Political Scientist Benedict Anderson has become one of the most influential thinkers in the social sciences.

Benedict anderson definition of nation